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"Work" is a Verb

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Work is a Verb #33 - Paid Trials Show What Interviews Can’t

Work is a Verb A newsletter by Most Interviews Measure Polish, Not Performance Long interview processes are exhausting. I’ve been on both sides of them, and I genuinely couldn’t tell you which is more stressful. As companies try to hire more for skill and make better judgment calls on motivation, communication, and working style, the instinct is usually the same: add more steps, more panels, more hoops to jump through. It feels rigorous. It also does not seem to work very well. Robert Half...

Work is a Verb A newsletter by Token use is the new seat time. At many companies, AI success is being tracked through usage dashboards: tokens consumed, seats activated, prompts per employee, weekly activity by team. Those numbers keep rising, and that growth is often presented as proof that a real transformation is underway. Usage, adoption, effectiveness, and leverage are different things.A company can have high usage without changing how work gets done. It can integrate AI into daily...

Work is a Verb A newsletter by We have an important announcement. After careful consideration, Remotivated is adding ghost jobs to the platform. We heard from users that our current experience, where every job is verified, every company's remote culture is transparent, and you can actually tell whether a role is open before you apply, was, frankly, too straightforward. Several people told us they missed the emotional complexity of the traditional job search. The ambiguity. The suspense. The...

Work is a Verb A newsletter by Last week, the Bay Area published its 25-year infrastructure plan. Transit routes. Housing density. Commercial zoning. The kind of decisions you measure in concrete and steel, not the way the wind is blowing today. Buried in Plan Bay Area 2050+ is a planning assumption that should make every RTO-mandating executive uncomfortable: remote work is permanent. Nearly 27% of the workforce will work from home (up from 11% in 2011) and demand for new office space is...

Remotivated logo and scissors cutting a ribbon

Work is a Verb A newsletter by If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you know I think most job boards are broken. While I've been writing about it, I've been building something in the background. For the past year, actually. Today, Work is a Verb subscribers get to see it first. Remotivated is live. A job platform where every listing is real, every company is screened, and you can see how they actually do remote work — before you apply. Check it out Why this exists Every major...

Work is a Verb A newsletter by I just got home from a trip to Houston for a friend's baby shower. There was a keg, 40 pounds of brisket, and about seven dogs running around. It was awesome... which is not something I ever expected to say about a baby shower. It checked the usual boxes — celebrated the parents, brought people together, had way too much food. But it did it in a way that felt like them, not like a Pinterest template. That's actually a pretty good framework for thinking about...

Fulfilling Roles: A venn diagram showing Passion on one side and skills on the other. The overlapping section is fulfilling remote work.

Work is a Verb A newsletter by I've been hand-screening companies for our job board over the past few months. As of this week, 106 have made the cut. That sounds like a lot until you consider how many didn't. For every company that earned a spot, several more got filtered out. Even among those that made the cut, there are some I could absolutely see myself at and others that, while clearly awesome, just wouldn't be right for me. That screening process is the same exercise you need to do for...

Work is a Verb A newsletter by Most job search advice assumes a massive, undifferentiated talent market. Cast a wide net. Play the numbers game. Apply to everything that looks vaguely interesting and let the chips fall. That advice will sabotage your remote job search. It’s not great advice for any scenario; it’s an appeal to our jaded side. Usually to sell AI application tools or resume services.But it is absolutely fatal when you’re looking for a great remote job. Remote work flips the...

Gru meme saying "schedule a meeting to make the decision, then No one prepped so we schedule another meeting".

Work is a Verb A newsletter by I've had weeks where my calendar looked like a Tetris championship. Color blocks, back-to-backs, "quick syncs," recurring standups, status updates. All very organized. And yet the work was stuck. The real blocker wasn't effort. It was availability. The one decision that would unlock five other tasks couldn't happen because the people who could make it didn't share 30 free minutes for another nine days. Their calendars were packed with meetings that didn't decide...

A board game and rule book with a remote work theme

Work is a Verb A newsletter by You know what ruins a board game? House rules that only one person knows. “Oh, we don’t do it that way.” “No, you can’t buy that yet.” “Actually, you owe me rent twice.” Most workplaces run the same way: pay bands no one can explain, promotions that feel mystical, flexibility that’s technically allowed but quietly punished. When the rules aren’t explicit, proximity to authority becomes a cheat code. Equity is simply this: everyone gets the same rulebook and the...