- [Eden Chen] I think, like, I think the bigger question for me
around telecommuting is there seems to be sort of this new wave of the
way people work.
I think one result of that is telecommuting.
You have a lot more freelancing, a lot of people working multiple jobs.
So, I don't know.
Is it something that you've seen at your church, I'm assuming,
in Silicon Valley where people are working new roles?
And how does that affect your church?
How does that affect the congregation?
- [Justin Buzzard] I'd say for the most part, our people love it.
That's a way of life in Silicon Valley, telecommuting.
I mean, it's a results-oriented work environment in Silicon Valley.
It's not an hours-based, in the office work environment for most companies.
And so, many people are telecommuting.
Many people are working from home.
Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are starting companies where they're hiring
kind of around the globe based on best wages.
A good friend of mine, entrepreneur, he's hiring software engineers, and a lot
of those software engineers he's not hiring in Silicon Valley because he has to
pay a higher wage there.
But he's hiring them from the Midwest.
He's hiring them from the east coast where he can pay a different wage.
And so, the whole way he runs his company is different.
And certainly, you don't have that face-to-face time every day, but there are
creative ways for him to do that, that I think is healthy and good for the economy
because he can start this business, and he can start it at a cheaper cost.
But there is some relational loss in terms of a company's culture because you're
not all together.
- [Eden Chen] Yeah.
One of the companies that our company does a combination of...
We have an office, but people work from home on Fridays, and honestly,
for us, it's pretty flexible.
A lot of times people just work from home, like, during the middle of the week, too.
We don't have very stringent rules around coming to the office.
A lot of people like coming into an office and working with other people,
having face-to-face conversations.
But I think one of the companies that we sort of have wanted to emulate, and I
think a lot of companies wanted to emulate is the company called InVision.
I think they have more than 500 people that are working remote.
And what they do is they have...
A friend of mine at InVision is, like, the, I think his title is, like,
head of culture or something like that.
And his role is really to make sure that in a remote-based company with hundreds
of people, real relationships are being formed.
And I think, like, a lot of companies that do a good job in that culture are actually
more intentional about the off-sites that they have.
When they're hanging out, they actually, like, are more intentional
about that because, like, so many kind of, you know, jobs where you do go
into office, you don't really have a deep relationship
with your coworker anyways.
So, in terms of, like, that relational loss,
it may not even be there.
And, like, for our company, most years we do a international trip where we fly our
whole company out to a international location.
We spend a week to two weeks there.
Like, last year, we went to Tokyo.
The year before, we went to New Zealand.
But those are the times when, like, really deep relationships are formed.
You're, like, on this off-site, and you're all living in the same location.
You can do stuff like that with remote teams that maybe if you assumed that if
you were in the office that relationships were being formed, and they really weren't
that, you know, that would be sort of, like, a similar relational focus.
So, I think, like, relationships are never going to go away, even with remote teams.
And the good remote teams are actually, like, more aware of that than maybe some
of the teams where you're in a physical location.
- [Justin Buzzard] I think there's a win for families in more remote working.
In a lot of ways, it's a return to pre-Industrial Revolution where most
people worked on a farm at home, and they're with their spouse,
with their kids, with their neighbors throughout the day, and that's where
work took place.
So, least in my church, people are loving it.
What we have at most company, not most, but many companies in Silicon Valley have
work from home Wednesdays, and that's the culture.
So, the middle day of the week, they're working from home.
People love that.
And oftentimes, they're doing it much more than that.
So, it means, oftentimes, more time with their spouse, family, kids,
and that's been really healthy, really good.
- [Eden Chen] Yeah.
And I think it's actually, like, more productive from a
business standpoint, too.
Like, the reason why we do work from home is so people don't have to drive to the
office and waste time.
- [Justin Buzzard] Yeah.
They're not wasting time on their commute, and the utility bill, you know, a lot of
ways that it benefits the company you can save costs.