Writing Sample 05 · Op-Ed · Long-Form Essay
THE FUTURE
OF WORK
A senior executive with a contrarian take and no time to make it land. He believed the whole "future of work" conversation had gone soft — all perks and no point — and he was right. We built him a ~1,800-word argument that didn't hedge. It became the trade's most-shared piece that month and got him quoted in three other outlets within the week.
Sample anonymized & shared with permission. Representative of voice & range — your work stays yours.
For three years we have been asking the wrong question. Not "how do we get people back to the office" — that's a logistics problem dressed up as a strategy. The real question is the one no leadership team wants to say out loud: if the office disappeared tomorrow, would anyone here actually miss it? When I ask executives that privately, the honest ones go quiet. They've spent millions on ping-pong tables and cold brew to answer a question their people stopped asking years ago. The perk was never the point. Belonging was. And belonging is not a floor plan.
The companies winning the next decade aren't the ones with the best return-to-office policy. They're the ones who figured out that proximity was always a proxy for things that have names — trust, momentum, the feeling that your work is seen. Rebuild those, and the building takes care of itself. Keep mandating the commute and you'll get bodies in chairs and nothing behind their eyes.
The ask
He had a real conviction and a calendar that left no room to express it. Every "future of work" piece he read said the same hedged nothing, and he wanted to plant a flag — to be the person who said the thing everyone in the room was thinking but nobody would print. He needed it to sound like him: blunt, a little impatient, never cynical.
The argument
We didn't write an essay about remote work. We wrote an essay against a comfortable lie — that the office debate is about square footage. One thesis, defended hard: proximity was always a proxy for belonging, and you can rebuild belonging without rebuilding the commute. Every paragraph either advanced that claim or earned the right to the next one.
The result
The trade's most-shared piece of the month and the line "proximity was always a proxy" turned up in three other outlets' coverage within a week. It got syndicated 40-plus times, opened two keynote invitations, and gave him a position the whole industry now associates with his name.
Two short sentences, one reversal. It reframes the entire debate in twelve words — which is exactly why an editor at another outlet could lift it as a pull-quote without context. We wrote five candidate thesis lines; this one won because you can disagree with it but you can't ignore it.
WHAT I DELIVERED
- 01
The argument
One sharp, defensible thesis — proximity was a proxy for belonging — staked clearly enough that the whole industry could argue with it by name.
- 02
The structure
A spine that opens with the uncomfortable question, lands the reversal, then earns each claim so the reader nods before they notice they've been led.
- 03
Evidence & specificity
No vague trend-talk. Concrete numbers, real executive behavior, and the named things proximity stood in for — trust, momentum, being seen.
- 04
The close
A final line built to be quoted out of context — the twelve-word reframe an editor could lift straight into a headline.