#58: US Freelancers Grow From 38.2 to 51.1 Million, Bonehead Startup Lays Off 900 Employees Over Zoom
While data proves the Human Cloud is a happier, healthier, and more sustainable way to work, Bill Gates says we're only starting to see how technology will change our lives.
🦮 Luca’s Book Of The Week
😎 Thank Ya Bill
Sounds a lot like our endorsement from Daniel Pink:
Important Updates:
What’s our take for each update? Enjoy on Apple Podcasts or below!
🚀 MBO released their ‘Great Realization’ State of Independence Report. Cool stats below:
Number of Freelancers grew 34%, from 38.2 million to 51.1 million
68% of newcomers were Gen Z or millennials, and 55% of newcomers were female
66% of full time freelancers believe they are more secure than traditional workers
78% Say they are healthier working independently
👎 900 employees from digital mortgage startup Better.com were laid off over Zoom right before the holidays. No 💩 66% of freelancers feel more secure.
Micro-Internships, think student freelance projects, blow away traditional internships. Hell of a job Parker Dewey!
Feel like moving? Credit to LinkedIn’s George Anders.
Can An Entire Company Be Built In The Cloud?
Sounds crazy right, but Gumroad was built this way (100% remote, freelancer-first) and is thriving in scaling through this model.
Some crazy cool quotes from Sahil’s article on this:
Hiring people full-time and leasing a new office in San Francisco to work out of was untenable. Instead, I hired a few engineers as contractors. These contractors saved the company. They fixed bugs and maintained the site while I answered support tickets, designed features, and wrote about new initiatives.
Today, working at Gumroad resembles working on an open source project like Rails. Except it’s neither open source, nor unpaid.
Instead of having meetings, people “talk” to each other via GitHub, Notion, and (occasionally) Slack, expecting responses within 24 hours.
When someone new joins the company, they do what everyone else does: go into our Notion queue, pick a task, and get to work, asking for clarification when needed.
Want to be featured on The Human Cloud Podcast?
We’re booking for December. If you’re freelancing, hiring freelancers, or tapping into technology to ethically shape the Future of Work we want to talk with you!
Don’t worry if you don’t have a personal brand or following. We actually prefer that since you’re probably busy driving change :)
