Future of Work Insider
In the matter of
The future of work
You have an argument about where work is going. We publish arguments. This is how you file one.
Most publications ask for a topic. We ask for a position.
An article that surveys what six analysts think about hybrid work is a summary, and summaries are what everyone already has. What’s scarce is someone who has watched a thing happen from the inside and is willing to say what it means, in public, with their name on it.
That’s the whole filter. If you can finish the sentence “Everyone believes X about work, and they’re wrong because…” and you have the standing to finish it, we want to read the rest.
What gets published
- Sch. A
A position someone could disagree with
If nobody in your industry would push back on your headline, it isn’t an argument yet. Contested is the standard.
- Sch. B
Something you saw, not something you read
The restructuring you sat through. The tool that failed in week three. Firsthand evidence is the thing we cannot get anywhere else.
- Sch. C
900 to 1,600 words
Long enough to make a case, short enough to be read on a Tuesday morning. We’d rather have 900 tight words than 2,000 padded ones.
- Sch. D
Your own voice
Write it the way you’d say it to a colleague you respect. Use AI to research and to check yourself; don’t send us something you didn’t write.
What gets struck out
Said plainly, so nobody wastes an afternoon:
- Pitches from agencies or link-building services on behalf of a client. These are deleted unread.
- Anything whose real purpose is a link to a product page. Every outbound link we publish carries
rel="nofollow sponsored", so there is no SEO value here for anyone. - Offers to pay for placement. We don’t sell editorial, and taking the money would put the site in breach of Google’s spam policies anyway.
- Content marketing dressed as opinion: the piece that concludes your employer’s software solves the problem.
- General AI explainers with no first-hand view. We already have more of these than anyone needs.
Terms
We don’t pay for guest contributions, and we say so up front rather than at the end of an email chain. What you get instead is a byline, a two-line bio, one link to your own site or profile, and distribution to an audience that reads this stuff on purpose.
You keep copyright. You grant us the right to publish it here and in our newsletter. We ask for the first four weeks exclusive; after that, republish it anywhere you like with a link back. We edit for length, clarity and house style, and you’ll see the edit before it goes live.
File your argument
After you file
Everything gets read. Most of what we turn down is turned down for one of two reasons: the argument was a summary, or the writer had no particular standing to make it. If we say no, we’ll tell you which one, because that’s more useful than silence.
If we say yes, you’ll get edits within a fortnight and a publication date. Your piece goes out on the site, in the newsletter, and gets a place on the docket.