The Human Cloud is personal to me.
*Just like the haircut jokes…kidding…but the best one yet is that my hair matches the cloud on the cover.
8 years ago I started my first 'freelance project'. It started with market research, then led to business planning, then resulted in saving 75 manufacturing jobs when my private equity client took action on that plan.
At the time I was over the moon and took insane pride in these results.
But I had no idea the true impact was much deeper than these 75 individuals.
The true impact was that this project exposed me to a new type of work.
Three years later I was on the 32nd floor of a Boston high rise.
It was my first real job and I was beyond pumped to 'start working'. I loved my coffee shop work (what I called my freelancing). But I thought growing up meant a full time job, specifically for a Big 4 accounting firm.
I'll be honest, at first it was pretty cool.
But within a week I gulped, because after the on-boarding kool-aid dried up, I realized it totally sucked. People looked like zombies. No one actually cared about their work nor our clients. And instead of choice, there was a pre-determined hamster wheel (I mean career ladder).
Which comes to my ‘aha’ moment.
This didn’t happen when I freelanced. I loved the work. I loved my clients. And I felt pride in the work being ‘mine’.
Thus instead of accepting traditional office work as normal, freelancing opened my eyes to challenge the status quo of ‘work sucks then you die’.
Spoiler Alert: The Human Cloud is about more than freelancing
I’d be a massive hypocrite if I said we’ll all be freelancers. I’ve worked in startups, in corporate, and I lead a software company with employees. There is a beautiful thing about companies.
BUT the paradigm of power has shifted from the organization to the individual thanks to the convergence of remote work, the freelance economy and automation enabling every single one of us to create a massive impact without resources that once were only feasible for companies.
This means YOU as an individual Change Maker hold the cards. You can be a freelancer and make $200k a year instead of working in an agency. You can scale a startup through hiring freelancers. Or you can accelerate your career in corporate.
The choice is yours. If you want to get nerdy about how cloud computing has done this - hop into the book!
Next Steps: Rewriting the Rules to Work
So why did I write The Human Cloud?
Because we’re at a crossroads.
~200 years ago we traded our shovels and crafts for a spot in the assembly line in the Industrial Revolution.
Today we’re trading the full time office for the remote freelance economy.
It is inevitable that in the next 5 years, over half the workforce will be independent freelancers. To be honest…we expected this transition to happen over the next 10 years, but thanks to Covid this transition will happen in 2-5 years, with the seismic shift already taking place.
BUT the question we all have to answer is what standard do we want to set for the new world of work?
I intentionally chose the term ‘new world of work’ over the remote freelance economy, because in 5 years this will just be ‘work’.
Will we perpetuate existing problems with work?
Will we throw the baby out with the bath water in getting rid of all existing structures?
OR will we find a balance - take the good and get rid of the bad?
The Good
The freelance economy unlocks unparalleled access for everyone, not just those who can be in an office for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Typically when we think freelancing, we see stories of bloggers on a beach, yet as one of our readers put it, “The world you describe was created of necessity not fun. It’s a harsh world but I prefer it to corporate politics”.
It’s mothers, it’s fathers, living in both rural and urban environments across the globe.
Like Sam Mason, a mother in Cincinatti who left her VP role at a software company to be full time with her kids. When she was ready to jump back into the workforce, she was told by a recruiter “I’m going to be honest. You’ve been out of the workforce too long. No one is going to hire you”. Good thing, because Sam started freelancing, and instead of never being hired, she earned $300k in less than four years. But deeper than the money, she LOVES the impact she can make as a freelancer. As she says, “I wouldn’t have been as involved in so many lives if I worked in a full-time role.”
Or Sharon Heath, a bookkeeper in Virginia who when tragedy struck was expected to prioritize meetings over family. Instead of putting ‘the company’ first, she scaled a bookkeeping freelance business that gave her choice over when, where, and who she worked with. According to her, “If one decent thing came out of what happened with my brother, it’s that it was a turning point for me. I would never go back to working for somebody.”
Or even students like Noel Arellano, a first generation college graduate in Texas who didn’t have access to full time internships. Instead, he chose Parker Dewey freelance micro-internships to build his resume, and in his own words, “I went from not being able to attain a single opportunity, let alone an interview, to having over 10 interviews and a handful of full-time job offers”.
The Bad
In the beginning of the book, we ask you to answer one question before continuing:
“Do I accept responsibility for the societal implications of gutting a system we’ve accepted as normal for the past 150 years?”
We’re not just playing with bits of code or convincing someone to go to Bali instead of Miami. We’re fundamentally altering the livelihoods of those we influence. And just like how this world amplifies our own unique value, it amplifies the problems we face as a society.
The current ‘gig’ economy hasn’t answered this question, and it shows. According to Benek Lisefski, a freelancer based in Auckland, New Zealand:
“Generations of young minds, tired of employment norms that no longer served their needs, thought gig working was their ticket to career freedom and meaningful work. Now they’re realizing they’ve traded one prison for another.”
I see 3 main problems with the ‘gig’ economy, defined as marketplaces that connect talent-to-client interactions through one-person, task based transactions with the same logic as Uber or Ebay:
The ‘gig’ economy is unrealistic. Being a freelancer currently means no benefits, roller-coaster income, social isolation, and lack of a defined career path just to name a few.
The ‘gig’ economy is exploitative. A marketplace model inherently removes the client to freelancer relationship, rewards the lowest bidder, and traps freelancers onto one platform.
The ‘gig’ economy is broken. Companies struggle to scale working with freelancers (Microsoft report). Policy makers struggle to understand it (AB-5). And the term itself can’t differentiate occupations like ride sharing with creative services.
Will we accept this?
The Reality: Now Is The Time
Are you too late?
HELL NO!
Yes…some freelancers and leaders have been in the trenches for 10+ years.
Yes…Covid has hit turbo.
But this is a long term systematic shift, not a months long moment in time where you can become a millionaire like the Crypto buzz.
It also isn’t a fad like silly bands. We’re talking work - the longest lasting trend in human history.
Next Steps: The Human Cloud Teaches Us the World We Should Choose
So why did I write The Human Cloud?
Because I want every single one of us to participate in rewriting the rules to work.
Matt and I have gotten our ass kicked in the Human Cloud for over 25 years collectively. We hope you can learn from our own mistakes and accelerate what took us 25+ years to learn.
Here’s a challenge!
After reading The Human Cloud, I recommend you lay out 5 principles we should hold ourselves to in the new world of work.
Here are mine:
Talent comes first. Whether an employee or freelancer. And whether approaching this as an employer, freelance platform/solution, or government policy, the individual worker should always be put first.
Hard work comes second. Right now our merit belongs to where we did the work. If in a company, it belongs to the company feedback system. If on a freelance platform, it belongs solely to that platform. Yet similar to one’s data, it should 100% belong to us the talent.
Collaboration over competition. My favorite aspect of freelancing is that the project ends, but the relationship only grows. Likewise with remote, working from home shouldn’t mean working alone.
Augmentation over automation. Robots can take our jobs. Freelancers can replace full time employees. But they shouldn’t. Instead, both automation and hiring freelancers should augment our ability to make an impact.
Uniquely Human. Work should expand our human potential, not suppress it. I am NOT saying anything goes, I am saying work should be an extension of what makes us uniquely human. For example halfway through the book we held an offsite in Cincinnati. We cooked together. We ate pancakes. And we did a mock wedding shoot. Maybe you skip the mock wedding shoot. But don’t skip the opportunity for work to be an extension of what makes you uniquely human. For me, this means relationships and collective accomplishment.
What are yours?
Wherever you are in your Human Cloud journey, I look forward to hearing your principles.
You got this!
Matt
*Yep, those are silly bands
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The Matthews