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Welcome to the T3 Technologies podcast, hosted by AJ Wiesner. Join AJ as he explores a wide range of captivating topics, including the impact of artificial intelligence on our technological landscape. With a rich background in technology and over 29 years of experience, AJ shares personal anecdotes from being one of the first households to own a personal computer to founding T3 Technologies. Through thought-provoking discussions and special guests, AJ aims to provide insights and education, catering to both tech novices and experts. Discover the intersection of humanity and technology, and embark on a journey of discovery and growth with AJ on this exciting podcast.
Hey, everyone. I'm AJ Wiesner and listening to our T3 Technologies podcast, This is episode two. Today we're going to be talking about a topic that some people find very controversial. It's going to be about working from home and how do people feel about that.
00;01;01;06 - 00;01;31;11
So everybody said, okay, I can I add in there, can you cut that in the ADD in? All right. So all okay, we're going to talk about how the landscape has drastically been refined in the working world ever since COVID. So and we're going to dig in right now. So let's bring on somebody that I've known for a very long time.
00;01;31;14 - 00;02;02;01
He is just a great guy. He's a veteran. So I would say war hero, but I know he's not going to accept that at all. So and he's been a technician. He's been in sales, he's been in logistics. He's been all over the place. And also, Tony is a world traveler. So let me bring on my my sales rep and my friend Tony Mendez.
00;02;02;07 - 00;02;33;18
Tony, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, A.J.. Yeah, certainly not a hero. I'm flattered by the intro there. That's great. As AJ mentioned, I'm the sales manager or his sales associate, whatever you want to call me. They're here at t three. And for those that don't know, I got my start in Telecom in the Army. I actually worked with AJ's father's company right when I got out of the Army before starting school at Penn State for supply chain management.
00;02;33;20 - 00;03;03;01
And yeah, I'm just excited to be here and talking about today's topic. The hybrid workplace is exciting, especially because I am the premiere hybrid worker here at T3. Yet technology as I live in the back certainly is. I tell you why, Tony. You know, I'm ready to dig into this data because I've spent many hours, days even researching this data because I thought it would go one way.
00;03;03;04 - 00;03;25;23
And here it completely went a different direction from everything that I've read so much. yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. I mean, yeah, like living here in the bay right now. Like it's actually split in, like, the technology world, right? Like there's people that are coming back into the office in, like, the tech world and then like, also like Salesforce is right across the street from me.
00;03;25;25 - 00;03;56;19
It's Salesforce building. They kind of got rid of all their office space in a building called the Salesforce Building. Like, it's like, like a it's a landmark here in San Francisco. And it's funny to see like that the split or the hybrid versus the, you know, get back to the office model. Yeah, I mean, I can imagine that the well, Salesforce building is probably 80% vacant, 90% vacant at this point, I would say.
00;03;56;22 - 00;04;16;23
Yeah, Yeah. It's a funny juxtaposition because they have like the Salesforce building. It's like Salesforce and like there's a we work office in there, so it's kind of like, Hey, like Salesforce, nobody works for me. And then like we work is like, we like we're hybrid people. It it's interesting. I don't know you probably it's a funny topic right now.
00;04;16;24 - 00;04;40;02
If I got the janitor right, the maintenance guy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yes, they bring that up. That's what I must take on. Like the whole hybrid working or the work remote thing. He's like, it's. It's almost like. Like, you know, a caste system or, like, some kind of hierarchy. It's not fair to certain people that can't work from home, you know what I mean?
00;04;40;02 - 00;04;59;21
And it's typically like the service jobs like that that we would associate with not being like the best paid things of that nature. So the very interesting topic it is actually become controversial, which is while it's a pretty crazy thing for me, the data actually supports that as well. So what Elon Musk is actually saying, it's kind of funny.
00;04;59;23 - 00;05;27;05
Like as I said, the data that I pulled, I was shocked. I really was so and so much so, Tony. And anybody that knows anything about me, I had to get my coffee today because the dig in to this, I had to be right in prepared. And you know, my man Luke over there at the Y is being you know, we here at Steel Pixel Studios in Bethlehem and their production company for this great podcast that we're doing And shameless plug there.
00;05;27;05 - 00;05;44;23
Yeah yeah, yeah. Moses Lord they're my man. Luke The one time I walked in there, I said, You know, what's up there with people and chocolate? You hooked me up and my man Luke about wise beanie hooked me up. So yeah, good guy, Good guy. Anybody in the area, I would say go visit him. So he's pretty cool.
00;05;44;26 - 00;06;00;05
So. All right, Tony already taking you right? There already is Second episode. We're looking for sponsorship. That's right. Yeah. There we go. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're ready to hit this Tony right here, this data, because this is this is actually really crazy, so. All right, here we go. Balance it off. You know, I'm going to go into this.
00;06;00;05 - 00;06;24;25
I'm going to say this first is that, yeah, for some people, you may agree with this data and you may disagree. You may have a certain political point of view with another political point of view. This is just raw data. So this has no political affiliation whatsoever, as is strictly statistics, and that's it. So, you know, don't come in the comments saying, well, you should set this instead.
00;06;24;27 - 00;07;02;16
This is strictly statistics. So first statistic that I found amazing is that, Tony, there are only 29% of Americans that have a job description that gives them the ability to work from home. So, yeah. So all right. So we think of work from home. We think everyone's working from home. The truth is that there are 70, 71% of jobs in United States, such as, you know, nurses, doctors, maintenance, men, manufacturing.
00;07;02;18 - 00;07;29;27
So, you know, so what we do, you know, as being onsite technicians and, you know, Yeah, pulling cable. it's a service workers, construction workers, Right. Yeah. So we're, as you know, interested in service in trades, basically. Correct? Right. Whereas like there are other, you know, marketing can work from home. It definitely can work from home if needed.
00;07;29;29 - 00;07;58;05
So there are certain industries that had that ability. But only 20%, 29% of Americans have a job description that gives them the ability to work from home. So. All right, more crazy numbers here. Again, these numbers are based upon June of 2023. So and, you know, again, Tony, hours pulling this data. So there are 100 you actually do the surveys or were you out there like do it?
00;07;58;10 - 00;08;16;08
I was in the pyramid. There I was. okay. So you didn't do these surveys? You didn't conduct these survey? No, no. Then that was like Family feud. We surveyed, you know, 100 people. So, no, no, this is all obviously, somebody else conducted this survey and then we pulled all the relevant data from these surveys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00;08;16;11 - 00;08;42;23
Okay. So. So we surveyed 100 people. So good sample size. Yeah. So. Okay, so here we go. June 2023, there are 135.6 million full time employees in the United States right now. So these are full time employees, people that are actually working in the United States. I don't know what the population in United States is, so don't ask me that question.
00;08;42;25 - 00;09;09;02
About 300 million. I'd probably say I'm a little north of that. Right. So so about a third of Americans have full time jobs. Right. Again, 20, 23, there are 12.7%, roughly about 17 million people currently working from home. So everyone. Okay, we're going to phrase that now as we are working from home, because we all like we like acronyms, right?
00;09;09;02 - 00;09;38;02
So, all right. So also 28.2% or about 38 million people currently working in a hybrid environment. So and for those listeners, I'm sure you're all aware, work from home designates that you strictly work from home. You do not come into the office. And then obviously hybrid means that you are in the office certain days and then you're working from home certain days.
00;09;38;04 - 00;09;57;16
Was there any threshold on that? Like you had to work one day a week or like there was the year not up for the hybrid Hybrid? Yeah, but I say no. I was just out trying to see how many hours we really spent on this research that you're talking about. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Coming up in the next episode, episode three.
00;09;57;18 - 00;10;30;19
So, okay, so now obviously there are companies that are introducing hybrid models right now. Some of those companies are Microsoft, Target, Amazon, HubSpot, Google and Airbnb. So those companies are currently introducing the the hybrid model. And obviously there are some companies currently that are bringing their employees back to the office on a hybrid model, not be cut there, but yeah, guys, so I'm going rephrase that.
00;10;30;21 - 00;10;59;25
So there are some companies that are bringing back their employees on the hybrid model that were strictly work from home. Okay. And then there are some companies are going fully remote, so some of those companies are cash up as one of them, Dropbox, a grinder and a company called Gum Gum. So yeah, I never heard of gum gum before, but apparently they do online media research, things of that nature.
00;11;00;02 - 00;11;25;22
So yeah, yeah. If you're some gum gum, give me a call. Let me know what you do. Yeah. So anyway, with that said, Tony, with that data that we currently have, I find it staggering, first of all, that only 28% of Americans have the ability to work from home. Well, I mean, your numbers, that's 40% that are at least sometimes working from home, right?
00;11;25;22 - 00;11;51;18
If we're looking at the the 28 and the 12 there. Right. So so I mean, that's a significant amount of people that. Wow, it's almost not only anymore it's that's almost teetering on the majority there. You're like 40% of people that are so right. I think it's good It's good for us. It's good for it is. And again, it's a very it's a it's a hot topic.
00;11;51;21 - 00;12;18;08
And obviously, you know, COVID changed this whole landscape, right? So COVID went and changed the playing field. Ironically, Tony, and again, I don't had this in my notes, so but I'm going to I'm going to speak outside of my notes here. Apparently, there was a work from home movement that started prior to COVID. yeah, absolutely. I remember that when I first started.
00;12;18;09 - 00;12;35;29
Like after I was done work with your father, I finished my degree and then I went into like my corporate America job. And I remember I was just always lobbying to get like I was working to get at least to work from home days a week. I was trying to like I was like, All right, how do I?
00;12;36;02 - 00;12;54;05
I was working in Conshohocken and then I was living in Philly and I was like, okay, for the summer, if I could have like a work from home day on Friday, in my day, I could get a beach house and, like, justify the cost, you know what I mean? Like, so I could go to, like Jersey Shore all summer and, like, spend four days there and four days.
00;12;54;05 - 00;13;13;05
And so, you know, maybe like, or three days in Philly. So that was my ambition with it. So, yeah, I do remember this being a thing. And again, I was probably I'm already at 12% right now, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've, I've always aspired like a bit of a traveler, so I like to keep it, move it, but yeah, yeah.
00;13;13;05 - 00;13;33;10
And Tony, you're just in. We're in South America. No, Central America. Central America. Yeah. I spent a few weeks in Guatemala last month. Right? Right. And you and you worked from Guatemala and you were able. I did. And it was exhausting switching from English to Spanish every day. It was brutal. Yeah. So what's the technology for making it possible?
00;13;33;10 - 00;13;57;26
Well. Well, yeah, it's a it's definitely a but but and again, that's to be a topic. The next episode that we're going to record is one of the benefits of a work from home environment is that geography is no longer an issue when it comes to employing. Yeah, no, no, it's not like a technology plays a big role in that.
00;13;57;26 - 00;14;23;20
I mean, and I hate to be the sales guy here, but but ever since we made the switch to LA, a sales hosted phone system, yeah, I've been able to do quite a bit. I worked from Paris, Nice, Guatemala, Barcelona, Australia, so I've done quite a few things and like I hope hopefully it was not that interrupted to our typical business flow.
00;14;23;24 - 00;14;54;18
I couple did some vacation days, but yeah, yeah. You're in a small company and my vacation days don't really mean too much. It's mostly me just working wherever I'm at so well. And you might remember too, we're working with we're doing a project during COVID. Obviously we're doing a lot of projects during COVID as well as most of the companies in the United States where we're working on a project for a, you know, medium sized business that wanted the ability for their employees to work from home.
00;14;54;20 - 00;15;16;12
And we are working with it's a rather larger project for us at least, and we're working with the VA directly. And there was a girl from Avaya that we were working with and she is working from Hawaii. Cut, cut, cut. Let's let's cut. Let's not refer to you, the ladies as girls. Let's just call them someone, all right?
00;15;16;14 - 00;15;33;01
Okay. What do you think, Tim? That's a good run back. that's fine. Whatever works. All right. Okay. All right, all right. My bad. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Kill your flow there. Well, well, well. I was like, Okay, all right, I'm gonna start with the income of it, all right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll start over with that.
00;15;33;01 - 00;15;54;04
Okay? So. Okay. Yeah. So you're going to be. I'll cut that out, Tiny Tim, right? You're gonna be all you got. Yeah, I got it. Okay. He's going to have to. I Sorry. I can't see you got to like Tim, so. All right. All right, cool. Thank you, Jim. Yeah. So, yeah, Tony, if you remember, during COVID, we were working on a feather rather large project.
00;15;54;11 - 00;16;20;00
And, you know, there were a lot of projects obviously going on during COVID trying to immediately change the work landscape so that way everybody could work from home because there were lockdowns actually in March and we were working with someone from Ohio on a rather large project, and they had a dad that lived in Hawaii and obviously had some health ailments as well.
00;16;20;02 - 00;16;45;22
And there was concerns that, you know, with COVID coming, would the father be able to take care of himself so this employee was able to work remotely in Hawaii with their dad. And then obviously the time zone was a factor because they're 6 hours behind and this employee had to work on East Coast time. But nonetheless, this person was able to work remotely.
00;16;45;25 - 00;17;21;09
And again, that the whole landscape has changed even from that perspective where, you know, work from home or even, you know, the hybrid environment, it's it's going to be here to stay. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, putting my sales hat on again there. One thing that I found as the you know, we moved from just kind of like exceptional work from home person to like 12 to 40% of people working from home is that there's actually been some like price development as well.
00;17;21;11 - 00;17;44;23
So in the past, you know, I like, I like to think of myself as like an advocate for the customer. I mean, it's basically like my pitch every time I talk to people, they just think of me as a freaking store and I'm here. I'm not going to sell you anything that doesn't make sense. And, you know, right now I find that it's becoming more and more typical to adopt a hybrid.
00;17;44;25 - 00;18;06;01
Like if you have a hybrid environment, it makes a lot of sense to adopt like our hosted solutions, you know, like VPN configuration and things of that nature. Again, sales staff tend told me not to do this, but that it's really tense. I don't do anything salesy. Yeah, yeah. You said they'll be salesy, but like this is like a sales thing.
00;18;06;01 - 00;18;36;11
This is like, Hey, we could save you a bunch of money. I mean, I find like these people with, like, they'll have like ten people working at their office and they'll have ten separate phone lines. And for that same amount of money that they're spending on their phone bill, I can migrate them to a hosting solution with RingCentral, you know, and they're going to be saving so much money with a way more robust phone system with all this technology that like, makes it makes me able to be and this is anecdotal, I get it.
00;18;36;11 - 00;18;58;25
It makes me be able to work from Guatemala or work from here in California or wherever I'm like, And you get like this robust functionality and you save money. So you're like, not only do you improve your technology and your equipment and your experience for this like hybrid work model, but you actually save a bunch of money monthly, Like it's not just like a one time thing.
00;18;58;25 - 00;19;21;11
It's like you are going to save so much indefinitely, you know? Yep. And who knows what the productivity gains are, right? That maybe you'll switch going back to maybe will go back eventually to this like this office model. But like I find that this is really this hybrid solution like some of this technology actually saves you money while you're still in that transition phase.
00;19;21;19 - 00;19;49;22
Right. And it doesn't even stop there. It doesn't even stop with just like location based stuff. I mean, if you think about our industry, we've been doing like this hybrid thing. We've always had field technicians, right? It's not like we work from like one building. You know, we have people out in the field all the time. So to have that connectivity, you know, to be able to like, hey, like if somebody has a question about a project that one of our texted, we can get on the phone with that technician immediately, like they're in the same office as us.
00;19;49;22 - 00;20;10;12
So, yeah. No, no. Yeah, I'm sorry. I kind of got carried away. I guess that was right. They don't put on your sales because I'll just keep going. Know I love it. I love it. I absolutely love it. No, you're right. Yeah, right. So obviously the the need to communicate with employees that weren't based in the office was always a need.
00;20;10;12 - 00;20;28;10
So. And you know, I am I've been in this industry for for many, many years. Yeah. Hello children out there in the industry. Yeah. But you know, before back in the day right, So you had your, your pager. Me When I first started. That's what we had. We had a pager so I carried on quarters. That's how old I am.
00;20;28;13 - 00;20;51;24
Right. Right. Yeah. So then then obviously that migrated to radios. We had Motorola radios that you could only use in a certain geographic area if you went to like if we did work out, let's say like in Harrisburg, you're done. You're done, right. You can you can get in touch. No communication there at all. And then we went to Nextel.
00;20;51;29 - 00;21;07;08
So we had the push to talk. And you also had a cell phone. yeah. Now a fancy that was a short phase. That was a short phase. Was like a little person talk. That was cute. Right? Right. One day I'll bring on a guest that used to work at a Nextel. So and then I then then we moved on to cell phones.
00;21;07;08 - 00;21;34;04
Right. And then you moved onto apps, onto cell phones that you can communicate. So I remember when texting was like a big deal. And I remember, Tony, like way back when you had a paper text and you paid like a cent or whatever it was for every text that you sent or received. I do, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, man, I bought, I bought a Star Trek Motorola when I was in 12th grade of high school, just so you know.
00;21;34;05 - 00;21;56;08
And I remember that you were able to reach me through a website. You could text me from a website. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm getting old. But you like your belief that though you were still bill for that tax rate as it came through. yeah. Like every email text I got paid I had to pay for like once I hit like my limit of like 200 text, which that would be crazy for Gen Z right now.
00;21;56;12 - 00;22;17;10
They would not know what to do. Fun fact, way back when that was like 1,000% markup. So yeah, the cell phone companies, 1,000% less for you to send a text than what they were charging you for each text. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are good times. Good times. So but obviously but yeah, no, it goes, it goes beyond that.
00;22;17;11 - 00;22;38;09
But like the one big thing now is like, you know, in our industry we had to be communicating naturally because of the field stuff. And then also just because we're a communications company, we had to be in touch with people if we were going to sell our products. Like if we're not living it like it's really a hard pitch for the sales guy, but it's you have to use it.
00;22;38;09 - 00;22;58;13
You have to use for us now it's it's graduated with like the hybrid models. We're not just like doing the connectivity because every body has that connectivity. Now everybody has a cell phone, but we do now is work on user experience and like the customer's experience. So if someone calls into our shop and they have a question about something, we can get answers right away.
00;22;58;13 - 00;23;13;23
We don't have to like say, why don't you call AJ? Here's his cell phone number, right? We can only kind of get them on the horn right there. Have a little group chat, get to the bottom of it. If we can't get in touch with AJ, you don't have to call us back. We have him on the phone, you know what I mean?
00;23;13;28 - 00;23;40;23
And I think that it like that's the biggest thing that I found, with like the hybrid solutions that we have now with the house in particular before it ever made sense, it didn't have like a impact. It had a, an adverse or negative impact on the bottom line. But I think today it's really not only is it like adding value in terms of technology and user customer experience, but it's actually saving you money too.
00;23;41;00 - 00;24;01;10
So it's really, really interesting how much it has changed in the short time that I've been in telecom. It's short 21 my God, 20 years. So that's four times money. That's not a start time. my God. Short two decades. I know. You know, if I turned 40 this year, age of 40. I know. I don't know.
00;24;01;12 - 00;24;21;07
Well, some of us are getting older. Something that's a little older than that. And there are some people that are a lot older. I mean, Yeah. I mean, you know, well, obviously, everyone knows that my dad was in the industry and you started off many, many, many moons ago and my dad got out of the Navy and how he got started.
00;24;21;07 - 00;24;49;19
His career was a he was a janitor for Bell, Pennsylvania. And then got promoted from within, from being a janitor to being on the line crew. And so alignment and he actually installed wires on on poles and then Yeah, yeah, yeah. And from there, you know, then he got into business, telecommunications and when he got into it, into business, telecommunications there, there was no digital technology.
00;24;49;21 - 00;25;26;10
It was all hard wired and physical relays. So and then so that was probably back in the sixties for my dad. Moving forward, obviously 60 does things like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. So and then from there, you know, you go, you move forward into the digital age, right? And so where you had a on prem telephone system with lines that came in, whether they were digital lines or they were analog, different types of ways to communicate.
00;25;26;13 - 00;25;53;01
And now, you know, look at us now. I mean, we have like many different business models to go ahead and help your business. yeah. With their yeah, with their technology. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's wild to be still maintaining things that we were using and maybe even your father was using. But back when he was a field tech, like, it's crazy to, like, run into at1, you know what I mean?
00;25;53;04 - 00;26;10;21
Are like, are you going to PR? I mean, that's pretty antiquated stuff these days. So if a couple of customers with the PRI so. Well we have a call me you guys should call me right away. Yeah. Like if you got a PRI, we could save you a bunch of money every month, I promise. We got a three guarantee, the t three guarantee.
00;26;10;24 - 00;26;44;12
I'm not going to namedrop any names yet. You? No, no, please don't. But. But we have we have a we have a customer. That's pretty profound. And for being in the Lehigh Valley and he has a phone system in his house and that that that baby there I his phone system specifically I believe was discontinued in 1997 I believe.
00;26;44;13 - 00;27;02;20
Okay. Yeah. And it's still working. Yeah, it's still working to this day. Right right. Yeah. And sales had again, right guys, get a phone system with us. It'll last another 30 years. Know we get to go the hour like it's not that big of an investment. The ROI is unbelievable though and you have a screen on your phone instead of like a flashing red light.
00;27;02;24 - 00;27;33;26
Right. Right. So and obviously, you know, obviously with the different work models. Correct. With with only technically speaking, you think about it, 20% of Americans that can work from home, there's still a need yet for on prem phone systems. So and for those that are listening in and there are different types of phone system models we're gonna talk about again that's always a phone system.
00;27;33;29 - 00;27;57;07
And the first one on here and on prem is where you have a box in your building. So now obviously, like for us, for example, we have an office here in Pennsylvania, we have an office in Florida, our phones in Florida communicate back up to the phone system in Pennsylvania via VPN. So there's no physical box down in Florida as well.
00;27;57;07 - 00;28;29;08
Then we also have our hosted platform that we currently use at t three as well for other communications. So but on Prem has its place currently and we're we're still selling some on prem solutions. It seems the landscape is moving more towards a host, a platform where there's not a physical box at your site. You strictly use the internet to communicate out for all of the technology on that communication platform, whatever.
00;28;29;08 - 00;28;59;16
Yeah, yeah, right. So but you know, you know, there's still a place for on prem and there's certainly certainly and obviously we had a made an article about this and, you know, it was very, very interesting read, believe it or not, about the sunsetting of plotlines. And again, for those viewers who don't know what a punchline is, let me tell you, it stands for plain old telephone service.
00;28;59;23 - 00;29;25;07
So what that means is it's a line that like your grandmother had or if you grew up in the eighties that you would have had in the eighties and you would connect these lines to a telephone system in a business environment. Well, now, obviously, in Tony, I'm going to let you talk about this more so because, you know, put your put your sales hat on Again, we'll talk about this.
00;29;25;09 - 00;29;46;13
But there's a way that we can save our customers money even through an on prem solution. Is that right? Yeah, certainly. I would say that you know, again, this goes back to me like being the advocate for the customer. I say that with like tells I don't know if it's true. Like I really am always trying to find like the best solution for the customer.
00;29;46;16 - 00;30;07;22
I don't even want to sell it to them if it's not going to save them money. Like I hate to leave a site and be like, okay, yeah, just keep your partner system or whatever. But like it, you know, sometimes it doesn't make sense to, to like switch to a wholesale solution or you know, but the on prem will really it really varies.
00;30;07;22 - 00;30;27;12
I think if you're like a very dense office with a few lines, with a few lines and maybe like the on prem is going to be the solution still and it can still accommodate the latest technology. So it's not like, you know, we get an on prem solution. You're getting something that's silly, antiquated, you're getting like a a very good solution.
00;30;27;12 - 00;30;50;16
It's the same. It's like the next step of that solution that we were talking about of that one customer in particular that was discontinued in 97. So that system was probably 17 years old at that point. And now, you know, what is that close to, what, 26 years later? We're still it's still working. Yeah, 20, 26 years. Yeah.
00;30;50;16 - 00;31;17;04
I'm pretty good at the Yeah, like, I think that you're still getting like another, you know, another three decades of a phone system by even with the on prem. So, you know I just tried to find like the best solution for each case. Right. You know, and there's a place for all of it for I find that for smaller reasons, smaller businesses, you're always going to you might benefit from that holistic solution these days.