Working Assumptions

What we thought we knew before Covid and Generative AI - and what we know now

Julia Hobsbawm

25 APRIL 2024 | WHITEFOX | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £15 | 9781916797277

A rapid-response book to the seismic changes affecting working life, Working Assumptions will extend the work which has made Julia a leading commentator around the world. Her landmark 2022 book The Nowhere Office, which was an immediate category bestseller on Amazon, presciently predicted the rise in hybrid working long before anyone else, and developed into her successful podcast of the same name, now in its fifth series.

Published by Whitefox in association with Fully Connected, the author’s podcasting and broadcasting company, Working Assumptions explores the speed and scale of the impact of Covid-19 and the eruption of Chat GPT on the workplace, working attitudes and norms, to take a clear-eyed view of what Julia identifies as ‘The Amazing Age’ – a new era replete with challenge and opportunity for working people at a pace not seen in over a century.

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orking Assumptions provides fresh analysis and data on six essential areas: jobs and skills, commuting and office life, culture, wellbeing, leadership and generational shifts. It draws together Julia’s fortnightly columns for Bloomberg Work Shift, and includes a preface from Lynda Gratton, author of The 100-Year Life. The book features insight from exclusive interviews Julia has undertaken for Bloomberg, The Nowhere Office podcast and with key thought-leaders including technology futurist Azeem Azhar; Professor Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University; generations experts Chloe Combi and Dr Eliza Filby; Professor Arpit Gupta of NYU Stern School of Business; Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global; Peter Miscovich, Global Future of Work Lead, JLL; and the view from those working across the ‘collars’ – i.e. the white and blue collars alike.

Human and machine come together in the illustrations, as the award-winning graphic novelist and comics illustrator Nicola Streeten and AI illustration tool, Microsoft Bing’s DALL-E, provide a series of line drawings.

Julia Hobsbawm said: “As the quantum shift in how we live and

work continues to develop exponentially, the questions of how

humans and machines work together gains new salience. I wanted

to draw together various strands of my thinking, publishing

and broadcasting around work in a rapid-response collection of

ideas. Although we are at a significant inflection point, we are

also on the cusp of a truly amazing age, in which not only are we

seeing generational shifts affecting work, but work is affected by

generational AI which in turn is constantly being reborn.”