I'm Never Going Back to the Office Full-Time

Since I grew up in Maine, I learned to fish at an early age. The possibility of what would emerge from the dark water was endless, and scary at times, and it served as a powerful metaphor anytime I have faced change, challenge, or questions of what path to take. Fishing has taught me to embrace the unknown, and it's a mindset I've continued to apply to my work throughout my career.

I've got to be honest with you — I LOVE remote work. Its has very little to do with comfort, freedom, or work life balance. (Although it does have a little to do with being able to make time for fishing). But it's got more to do with the fact that I simply don’t work a traditional 9-5.  Very few of us screw “widgets on wonkels” any more. We are intellectual capitalists and contributors. 

Early in Remotely's conception, I was asked how many hours I was working. 

I looked at the inquirer with a cheeky smile and said, laughing, "why all of them, of course!"

I don’t work a shift, or certain hours, or even certain projects. My use case is that I may be required to be anywhere, at any time, for any length of time. That means  the architecture and technology around me needs to assume constant variety, account for that,  and protect that. The way I work isn't special. It's not unique. In fact, it's very common.

It's hard for me to find people who are excited about waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, crowding into elevators, buying $13 lattes, and having mandatory corporate fun and useless meetings.  

Sure, there are of course a ton of use cases for needing to work onsite.  But in 2022, those are now the exception, not the rule.

 I'm never going back to an office full-time. There, I said it.  Like anything in life, you have to push, endure, maybe even suffer to get what is truly worthy.  To me, remaining remote is worth it. And I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one that feels that way.

You also must have discipline. Affirmation without discipline is delusion. Do your work. The freedom feels even better. It may sting hurt or burn for a while – however something tells me there is a truly remote architecture and model out there for each of you and your organizations.  You've just got to work to find a way to make it successful.

The bottom line is that if we want to remain remote, we need to remain secure.

Bring your own devices, bring your own logins, corporate VPNs, laptops and local admin rights have been blended into quite a mess the past few years. Most mid-enterprises do not have the resources to standardize major solutions and instead manage complex and high human overhead tech stacks.

To help untangle this mess we need to be able to answer the following questions:

1. What technology does your org have and use to do remote work?
   
2. What applications, configurations, locations, or actions put your org at risk?
   
3. What's your risk? Where's it coming from? How severe will it be?
   
4. How can you fix all of the vulnerabilities you've identified?

That is what we are building at Remotely.

A cloud native platform that answers nearly all of these questions, without an agent, in 30 seconds, across every single domain connected device.

We've also built reports that you can export to CSVs to allow you to visualize YOUR information across the business to begin to prove value in risk, compliance, and security remediation.  We're also building elegant Microsoft Core Middleware to reach out and interact with end users and devices, and to augment and extend standards in encryption, antimalware, antivirus, RMM, or Systems and Application Management.

In talking with customers — this is the BIG FISH of the moment. Who, where, what, and when will a breach occur? With each breach costing mid size enterprises up to $3m — and the explosion in remote work making it 67% more difficult and 44% more expensive to manage users at a distance. Lack of observability led to lack of ability to take action led to lost security and user productivity. There were no models showing it getting better. 

We had to jump in. And so, Remotely was born.

Listen, I'm not saying that I've got remote work (or fishing) totally figured out and perfected. I'm not sure what the answers are to any extent more than any one else — I've simply spent 20+ years looking for them. The only promise folks like me make is to work our fingers tired daily to deserve the opportunity to work on figuring it all out.  Every now and then its fun as well. 

Remotely is our best work to date, with almost instant value. We invite you to “buy the ticket, take the ride”.  We're excited to deliver new features at rapid pace based on our direct feedback and requirements, innovations we are working on, together with changed in the ecosystem and threat landscape.  And ya, I'm excited for some fishing too.