Summary of Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen's Out of Office EPUB

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The dark promise of flexibility is that it gives workers the freedom to work on their own schedule, for less, with no labor protections. It primarily benefits a company's bottom line and makes the workforce less resilient and resentful.

#2 The defining characteristic of the flexible workplace has never been freedom, but rather worker precarity. The future has always been some sort of flexible work configuration, but we have a rare chance to redefine its character and where its benefits will flow.

#3 Between 1979 and 1996, more than forty-three million jobs were eliminated from the American economy. In the 1980s, the composite of laid-off workers tilted more towards lower-skilled jobs, whose pay averaged under $50,000 a year.

#4 Productivity culture is rooted in the performance of work: making a to-do list and crossing items off it, achieving in-box zero, writing and sending memos, or holding meetings. Some of this work serves a purpose, some of it stinks of desperation, but all of it offers the worker the feeling that they’re productive.