In 2017, reporters Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel moved from New York City to Missoula, Mont., and started asking some existential questions. The couple — who both wrote for BuzzFeed at the time — were working from home and began to feel like something was fundamentally off about the remote work bargain. Why, in our own homes, are we expected to structure our lives around office norms if they don’t even make us more productive? Why are we beholden to working 40 hours a week if we’d deliver better results in 30? Why are all these tools meant to enable communication starting to feel more like surveillance?
