Quick Takes: The Future of Work

What is The Future of Work?

When electricity replaced gas in cities, the job market for lamplighters all but disappeared. New technology likewise displaced switchboard operators, aircraft listeners, soda jerkers, and more. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, advanced robotics and other new technologies, who among us will be the soda jerker of our generation? Along with the changing nature of what we work on, many believe that where we work, how we work, and why we work is evolving just as fast too. The Future of Work is a catch-all industry phrase for the ideas, software, and services that will reshape work.

Is the Future of Work… now?

Yes, and no.

Of course, the way we work today is vastly different than 100 years ago or even 10 years ago. And many believe that COVID accelerated existing trends, and delivered us 5, 10, or more years into the future. Current trends that fall squarely into the argument that the future of work is today are: remote work, automation, pervasive e-commerce, and software eating the world in general.

But the future is always just ahead of us, so the biggest industry thinkers have already moved on to think about the next crop of trends and how they might reshape work. Popular lines of thinking contemplate the effect of artificial intelligence, artificial-, mixed-, or virtual-reality, universal basic income, and more, eliminating common jobs like truck drivers, customer support, data entry… and whatever you do today :)

What do you think the future of work looks like?

I’m glad you asked. I don’t have a crystal ball, but here’s one way it might play out.

Where will we work? I don’t think the future is as black and white as “work from home” vs “work from the office”. I imagine that flexible work will rule, with some companies having spaces where employees can elect to work either alone or with a team, when it makes sense. I also think where these offices will evolve in a world with a distributed workforce. Why have an office in downtown Toronto, when people already live there and have access to community spaces there? Instead, I’d like to see companies differentiate and reinforce their values with unique office spaces, like a ski resort, French chateau, Caribbean island, or other attractive working locations available for teams to work, live, and play.

What will we work on? The content of our work will certainly continue to evolve. There are a lot of Twitter jokes about hiring roles with names like “ChatGPT Prompt Engineer” with 5 years of experience to reflect that AI is going to do most of the heavy lifting. While that’s pretty cheeky, I think there’s some truth: humans will be called upon to exercise more taste, curation, and creativity than ever before. Jobs with clearly defined and repeatable processes won’t just be outsourced to lower wage locations as they have been since the rise of globalization, but outsourced to lower wage systems entirely - you’ll lose your job to Computers, not Chennai - with the rise of more powerful artificial intelligence.

Why will we work? We work for monetary, social, and status reasons. We need money for life, we need co-workers to sleep with (ahem, I mean friends), and we want to signal to our friends and family that we’re successful. I believe that work was never a great solution for social interaction; we should spend time with people because we share common interests and values, not because we share a paycheck. And status games are mostly silly.

But there’s still that pesky paycheck. With more automation and intelligence, the global standard of living will continue to rise. Eventually, we’ll be confronted with an evitable question: with an abundance of resources available to humanity and a level of comfort never before enjoyed, what’s the point of the grind? Even without the commute, what will motivate a mid-level manager? Keeping up with Joneses might be the answer, as we’re pretty good at creating desire. But I hope that humanity will eventually coalesce around working on larger, existential issues of survival - or pursue creative avenues of expression that bring each other joy with their creation and consumption. Sorry, fintech.

What are examples of Canadian companies focusing on the Future of Work?

Venue.live is an All Hands platform for remote companies. Companies like Shopify, Wealthsimple, and Ada use it to create world-class remote workplaces. It was founded by Jason Goldlist, also a co-founder of TechTO.

More Companies we like:

Wavy: A culture management platform for flexible teams that emerged during Covid.

Mentorly: The Montreal-based company offers tailored mentorship programs to companies for engaging, motivating, and training employees.

Unito: A no-code, workflow automation platform that enables two-way syncing for tasks, spreadsheets, contact details, calendar events, and more between teams and 40+ of the most popular apps and tools.

WorkJam: A modular suite of productivity tools for shift-based, hourly, and non-desk frontline employees.

Axonify: Makes sure your frontline remembers the things that matter most—and gives you the stats to prove it. Learn more about how Axonify is disrupting their industry on a previous episode of Quick Takes here.

#paid: A creators marketplace enabling creators to be paired with partners to collaborate with brands to grow their business.

*Honorable Mention to the original gangster Canadian Future of Work company Slack.

What do you think the Future of Work looks like? Let us know by replying to this email. Our favourite ideas will be featured in an upcoming newsletter.

Profile: Jason Goldlist and Venue.live

What is Venue.live?

Venue.live is an All Hands platform for remote companies. Companies like Shopify, Wealthsimple and Ada use it to create world-class remote workplaces.

What problem do you solve exactly?

Remote teams have unique communications, culture and measurement challenges. There’s so much noise in Slack, email, Drive, and Zoom. How do you know what’s important to the company? How do you bring your culture to life when every company is using the same set of mundane tools? And how do you know if any of your initiatives are actually working?

And how do you solve it?

The Venue platform makes it simple to create compelling messages and deliver them in creative ways. We’re starting with re-imagining your live All Hands series, transforming it from “just another Zoom” into an engaging experience that teams love: presentations are better, key messages are received, team connections are made, and you can measure the success.

What stage is the company at today?

We have an amazing list of early clients that love Venue. We’ve already hosted thousands of All Hands for them, and we’re adding more every week. Meeting participants have also blasted 3,849,247 emojis, which is a lot more than we were expecting 😆

Earlier this year, we participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch and raised a $4M seed round from Accel and angel investors like the CEOs of Slack, Squarespace, and Remote.com.

That raise has given us the ability to grow our team to 12 people with a long runway to build the communications platform of the future.

Why did you start Venue?

When I joined Wealthsimple in 2015, we had a recurring company-wide All Hands meeting called “Holy Time”. It was a really special space on the calendar, and no one missed it. As the company grew, I saw how important that kind of All Hands ritual was to shaping the direction, values and culture of the company. But I also saw the engagement challenges as the team grew; what worked with 10 people didn’t work with 100 or 1000 people. Large teams have different challenges, they’ve always had to contend with engaging distributed teams across offices, and more remote work has only compounded the challenge. I wanted to build a platform that would solve the communications and culture problems for big teams.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you might also know that in my evenings and weekends I am the co-founder of TechTO. Since 2014, I’ve hosted a recurring Meetup for tens of thousands of people that is essentially a monthly All Hands meeting for the tech community. Moving online during COVID exposed me to the existing video conferencing and virtual event tools available at scale, and made me realize there was an opportunity to build a platform that I’d want to use, one that would solve the remote engagement challenge.

How did you meet your co-founders?

Before I knew what I wanted to work on, I knew who I wanted to work with. I worked with Danilo (CTO) and Pei (lead engineer) for many years at Wealthsimple. Frank (COO) and I went to the same business school. I wanted to build a founding team with experience, complementary skill sets, and a fun approach to work. I wouldn’t be working on Venue if this team didn’t want to take the plunge all together.

What lesson do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

People matter, not industry or role. I’ve worked on really exciting projects that I hated because I didn’t enjoy working with the people on the project. And likewise, I worked on some projects that seemed super boring but that were really fun because of the people. There’s too much focus on joining a “rocketship”, working in the latest hot industry (“climate tech” and “Web3” come to mind right now), or looking for a certain title (eg, CMO, Head of Product, etc). Just find awesome people and build with them and learn from them, no matter what.

Top Headlines and Content

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TechTO Talent

Business Development Associate, The Rubic (Calgary, Hybrid)

Why is this cool? The Rubic is an advanced robotics start-up in Calgary, AB. At The Rubic, they work tirelessly to revolutionize the logistics industry with their fully autonomous robotic solutions. They have a friendly environment and hire the best-in-class talents to be part of their team. You'll be part of developing the next generation of warehouse robotics and will support the overall development of the company. APPLY HERE

Product Marketing Specialist, Clinia (Montreal, Hybrid)

Why is this cool? Clinia is a health technology start-up developing a search infrastructure for the digital health system of tomorrow. Their mission is to shape the future of search in health by optimizing healthcare navigation and simplifying access to health resources. As a Product Marketing Specialist, you will primarily work collaboratively within the Product team to refine the Clinia product narrative and go-to-market plans as they apply to their core personas and markets. APPLY HERE

Future Opportunities (All Departments), notch (notch, on-site)

Why is this cool? With smart technology, notch reduces the barriers to integrate with restaurants and distributors' existing systems to make food service better for everyone. They are the company behind some of your favorite restaurants and are growing faster than ever. notch’s mission is to enable every restaurant and distributor to seamlessly manage and grow their business operations online. APPLY HERE

Events and Links

Check out the interesting content, events, and happenings for the community here:

• TechTO Together: January 16, 2023 - Kick-off 2023 with us! - REGISTER HERE

• TechTO Together: February 6, 2023 - Announcements coming soon! - REGISTER HERE

• Intuit Prosperity Accelerator: Toronto - NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS until January 13, 2023 - APPLY HERE

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