The Human Cloud

How Today's Changemakers Use Artificial Intelligence and the Freelance Economy to Transform Work

Matthew Mottola,Matthew Douglas Coatney

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781400219742
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Index: Computer Science

Empower yourself with the knowledge to keep up with the rapidly changing technical world of work, as two workforce productivity and technology experts lay out a clear picture of the?coming?revolution?in how work is done and how jobs are shaped.

If you listen to the news, robots are coming for your job. Full-time employment will soon be a thing of the past as organizations opt more to hire employees on a contract basis.?With technological advances across email, video, project management, and instant messaging platforms, being tied to a desk working full time for one company is becoming obsolete. So, where does that leave you?

The Human Cloud may be the most important book you read to prepare for how work is done in the future. In these pages, human cloud technologist Matthew Mottola and AI expert Matthew Coatney help you not only clearly understand the transition you see happening around you, but they will also help you take advantage of it.

In The Human Cloud, Mottola and Coatney inform you about topics including:

• How employees and employers will be able to take advantage of the new automated and freelance-based workplace.
• How they will be able to take advantage of the new technology disruptions the machine cloud will create.
• Why the changes employees and employers are seeing aren't the projection of doom that many are predicting.
• How to navigate the coming job marketplace.

By replacing fear with knowledge, you will better understand how this shift in employment is a good thing, be equipped to embrace the positive?advantages new technology brings, and further secure how your own job is shaped so you are never left behind.

THE HUMAN CLOUD

3

RISE OF THE HUMAN CLOUD

THE ENGINE MAKING WORK BETTER

Let me tell you about my dystopia.

For five days a week, around fifty weeks out of the year, I go to the same spot, for the same amount of time, and do the same thing day in and day out, with little to no control.

Wait, that’s not a dystopia—that’s just work.

I’ll never forget the day I learned this sad reality. I was on the thirty-second floor of a high-rise in Boston, excited beyond excited since many sleepless nights went into getting this opportunity.

Prior to this, I had worked on a project-to-project basis out of coffee shops, helping small businesses and startups with anything business-related—market research, accounting, business planning, literally anything I could teach myself through YouTube. While I absolutely loved it, I didn’t think it was work. Geeky I know, but I considered it fun. But everyone around me told me to get a “real” job with salary and benefits. So, I couldn’t wait to start what everyone told me was the dream job, being a partner-track analyst at a Big Four accounting firm.

But a couple weeks in, I had a near panic attack. After experiencing both ways of life, the real world totally sucked. People walked around like zombies, pointing to everything besides actual work to justify their existence. The perks. The logo. The upcoming happy hour. I felt like I was learning the truth about Santa Claus all over again—except this lie would affect the rest of my life.

WHY THE HUMAN CLOUD

While for me this “reality” totally sucked (#firstworldproblems), it was a privilege that it was even possible. Sharon Heath, a bookkeeper living in Virginia Beach, had to choose between work or family when Sharon’s brother died unexpectedly at age thirty-five.

Sharon’s family was thrown into a state of grief and turmoil unlike anything they had ever experienced. Sharon needed to coordinate the funeral logistics and be there for her family in Massachusetts. So, she dropped everything and returned to her family home.

Meanwhile, her company kept scheduling and expecting her to show up for meetings, without any regard for her terrible situation.

I’m sure it’s a feeling most of us can relate to, though perhaps not on such a drastic level as Sharon’s. Whether trying to take a vacation, catch your kid’s soccer game, or care for an ailing family member, companies often pressure us to put them first. For me, I just wanted to take my first-ever vacation after a year and a half with the company. I told leadership I’d be off the grid for two weeks and needed that time to clear my head. I hopped on a plane to Asia, and the second I landed, I had an email from leadership. It was a question they could’ve simply found on the spreadsheet I built for them, but it was easier to bug me. Respect . . . shattered.

But Sharon worked up the courage to voice her need for space and time. Since she had recently received a stellar performance review and a raise, it seemed like a simple ask. Her employer reacted positively at first, then quickly went back to expecting her to put the company over her family.

For Sharon, something inside her finally snapped. This crossed the line. So, with grief hanging over her and her employer’s demands in mind, she quit her job and jumped straight into the human cloud.

WHAT IS THE HUMAN CLOUD

The human cloud is a term that’s sexy and makes headlines. We, as an industry, like to throw buzzwords out there to make it even more confusing. Gig economy. Freelance economy. Liquid workforce. Elastic networks. Open innovation. I feel like a curmudgeon wanting to scream from my front porch, “Everyone just shut the fu** up!”

The reason is that, beyond buzzwords, the human cloud is just how we work in the cloud. It’s not a single tool or product. Rather, it’s a collection of tools and applications transforming how we work, from one job with one physical office to a digital, remote, and outcome-based world.

For example, think about the two most common activities we consider work—communicating and collaborating. Do we still need one physical place to talk to each other, ask questions, share files, and ask for feedback? Or can we do this at a coworking space, your favorite coffee shop, your living room—or, in my case, literally a cloud (since I wrote this on a plane)?

Of course, we don’t need one physical office, since not only does each activity have a digital equivalent, but the digital equivalent is proving better for productivity and creativity. If I were in an office right now, about thirteen minutes into working, a colleague would come into my office to tell me a joke or ask a question. We’d talk for thirty minutes, and by the time I looked back down at my computer, I’d be running late for my next meeting. I’d half pay attention in that meeting, trying to finish what I started before being interrupted. Then both the meeting and what I was working on would be semi-productive.

When packing up to go home, I’d stress about how nothing got done and how my night would turn into catch-up. And the cherry on top . . . I’d sleep for about four hours or be up all night thinking about the work I didn’t finish. Now, extrapolate this to life in an open office . . . yikes! Meanwhile, in the human cloud, communication is on our terms. Need three hours with no distraction? Don’t answer the Slack message. Or, leverage tools to optimize for your own workflow.

Unfortunately for Sharon, the ability to control her time wasn’t an option. Let’s face it, accounting jobs, like many others, aren’t known for flexibility. Thus, she has a pretty tough predicament on her hands. How could she get safety and stability while achieving flexibility in a career not known for it? She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. So, how did the human cloud help?

OUR NEW OPPORTUNITY

Fortunately, Sharon knew about Paro, a human cloud platform for analysts, bookkeepers, CPAs, and CFOs.

Human cloud platforms are the digital matchmakers of the human cloud. They connect freelancers, also called independent talent, with those who need the talent, along with providing common support functions like contracting and payment processing.

You may think of a platform like Upwork (a merger of oDesk and Elance) or Freelancer.com. These were trailblazers, but they didn’t invent freelancers. Technically, the term free lances goes back to medieval mercenaries who fought for whichever country paid them the most (yikes). And, there have been many models since the 1950s connecting freelancers with businesses—temp agencies, consulting agencies, and staffing firms. But early internet pioneers were the first to directly connect those doing the work with those needing the work, a model called direct-to-talent, effectively using software to cut out the middleman.

Traditionally if you were a freelancer, you would work for an agency, and the customer would contract with the agency, not you. This meant all the margins and control belonged to the agency. If you did well, the agency benefited. If you did poorly, the agency put someone else in. And if you did so well the customer wanted to hire you, the agency would block it unless the customer paid a big fee. Thus, this first leap—removing the middle layer between talent and those needing talent—really was monumental, and the next step was the human cloud.

For Sharon, joining Paro meant she had direct access to clients. She didn’t have to handle finding clients or contracting. She could focus on being the best bookkeeper, which in return resulted in quickly earning $4,000 a month.

Connecting to clients around the globe is just one advantage of a human cloud platform. Software also enables communication and collaboration tools like G Suite, Trello, Slack, and JIRA, facilitating rapid, more efficient working relationships. These tools reduced the friction of all the ancillary tasks that go into work, enabling Sharon to focus on her actual work while making her working relationships feel more effective as a freelancer than when she was a full-time employee. She not only unlocked doors to new clients but was able to more meaningfully and efficiently manage a larger number of clients and projects.

With this combination in hand—easy to connect with clients, easier to work with clients—her demand skyrocketed tenfold within six months. The demand was so great that she turned her sole proprietorship into a family-operated S corporation, Gold Star Bookkeeping, and employed three people, including her husband and daughter.

She now handles bookkeeping for thirty-six companies, bringing in $26,000 a month. But it’s not just about the money. She unlocked opportunity well beyond landing a better full-time job. She unlocked a mindset, or as she said, “If one decent thing came out of what happened with my brother, it’s that it was a turning point for me. After he passed away, my thought process changed.” And this mindset unlocked an opportunity beyond what one company could provide. “I would never go back to working for somebody. Not having an employer over my head is the most liberating feeling in the world. I make my own schedule. I choose the hours I work every day and what I work on. I choose the clients I want to work with, and the ones I don’t.”

HOW WE WILL EMBRACE THE HUMAN CLOUD

The story of Sharon is incredible. But it’s not unique. It’s the result of a paradigm shift in how we work from one job in one physical office to a digital, remote, and project-based world.

But. The human cloud is just a tool. Not a magic trick. Nor an “end.” It is just a means, a medium for us changemakers to make a bigger dent in the world.

Sharon used the human cloud to help her family and have multiple streams of income that weren’t location- or communication-dependent.

For me, the human cloud is a tool to accelerate my opportunity feedback loop and control where I work, when I work, and what I work on. I write this from a coffee shop in Singapore where the Wi-Fi is great and the food is even better. And, my best friend and I hav...