Workcations Is a Complete Scam
According to a recent article in the Washington Post , the “workplace” phenomenon is gaining traction. These hybrid work and leisure trips promise to combine the best parts of a productive work day with a relaxing break. The idea of ”the best of both worlds” is always seductive, but what if it’s a complete lie?
This is what a “working city” should look like: You open a store in a new city and work remotely during the day, leaving the evenings and weekends free to relax. In theory, this gives you precious flexibility that makes extended stays easier. But if you’re a workaholic (or your company expects you to be), you’ll likely find yourself sticking to your normal schedule – time difference be damned – leaving less leisure time than you might imagine.
In the meantime, when it comes to work, you’ll probably do less than at home, because let’s face it, lounging by the pool with a book is so much more fun than having your third Zoom meeting of the day. It’s like deliberately planning a tropical vacation during hurricane season so you can stay inside and work while your increasingly bored comrades climb the walls.
This is why it is so amazing to see “jobs” being sold to traveling families. I’m not a parent, but this seems like the worst use case to me. Of course, if you take your family on a business trip, they will have ample time to explore their new surroundings – without you. Not only is this a bummer for your kids and spouse who supposedly want to hang out with you, but it goes without saying that your spouse is available for ongoing childish disputes to facilitate your plan to work full time on vacation. …
Jobs benefit your employer, not you
If it starts to sound like the opposite of “the best of both worlds,” it’s because it is, but only to you. Employers love this shit. When you take a break, they have to pay time off and figure out how to fulfill your responsibilities; when you go on a business trip, they pay the bill (or at least they should). Using a “workplace” allows them to eliminate both factors and gives them PR material: they can turn your trip into a “perk” for potential employees, while discouraging existing employees from actually taking a break, especially lower-level employees. Your direct reports may see you on Zoom and think, “Damn, if my manager is on vacation, I probably should too.” (This is bad.)
Unsurprisingly, companies like AirBnB, Landing (which is essentially AirBnB for subletting apartments and whose CEO is listed in the Post article) and Blueground (ditto, no quote) also love this trend. Convincing remote workers to uproot their lives for months increases the demand for off-hotel housing, which drives up their value, allowing them to raise even more funds from private and / or venture capital firms – and that’s what it’s really all about. ( Air BnB had revenues of $ 3.4 billion last year and still received literally billions of dollars in direct investment from Sixth Street Partners and Silver Lake Partners in April 2020 , so it is obvious that the strategy works.)
Strikingly, the Washington Post has a guideline to never go on a vacation that belongs to a person who could send himself into non-space because his employees are so afraid of being fired that they pee in bottles. pass out and even die at work . In many ways, it is the culmination of a nearly 100-year crusade against things like “living wages” and “sometimes not working.” The Federal Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the minimum wage at $ 7.25 and, among other things, limited the standard workweek to 40 hours. Naturally, corporations have spent the last 80 years successfully weakening the FLSA (and the unions that made it happen) to finally bring back 18-hour shifts for 12-year-olds. If you could bring John D. Rockefeller or Golden Age copper baron Marcus Daly back to life for a day, they would die of happiness as soon as someone explains the work. Expect your employees to work on vacation without telling you directly – and somehow get them to thank you for it! – this is exactly the genius that they would appreciate.
There are people for whom a “desktop” is believable or even desirable, but they call it a “digital nomad ” and it is more of a deliberate, long-term lifestyle choice. The overwhelming majority of workers cannot achieve this, and the management knows it. But offering better vacations is expensive; laundering a 24/7 work concept down to something that sounds cool is free. Don’t fall for it. You only have one life – don’t waste it working on vacation.