It’s 7:15AM on a Monday morning. Your alarm goes off on your phone and you sleepily roll over to hit the “off” button. You sit up, take a big stretch, and then pick up your black glasses sitting on your nightstand. The world you now see is heightened. On the right-hand side of your frame you see your busy Monday calendar and to-do list, and on the left-hand side you see a snapshot of the Monday weather forecast. You look down and you see Jack, your avatar husky from Roblox, who greets you with a ball. He’s ready to play.
Then you go through your morning routine. You brush your teeth, get dressed, and make a cup of coffee. Today’s going to be a great day.
It’s now time to sit down at your home desk and go to the office.
Your glasses switch to work mode and your avatar (aka you) walks into the office, you say a quick ‘hello’ to your colleagues Jen and Dan who are sharing office gossip, and you head to your first meeting with your team. The meeting turns out to be productive, cost efficient, and collaborative due to the AR software used in your day-to-day work life. You scurry out of the meeting and into the next portal which is happening with a potential client on Roblox.
This is the future of work. This is what work will look like in the ar/vr, and the eventual metaverse.
What is the metaverse, you ask? In our (and Thomas Ball’s) definition - it’s the quassi-successor of the internet in which economies, companies, and individuals, on a decentralized platform, can socialize, build, play… and most importantly - work. Think of it as a hybrid between atoms and bits, the digital world and the real world, coming together to make a heightened reality. You could also describe it as the “http” of web3.
Make no mistake - the software, demand, and hardware for the metaverse is already here. Economies are actively being built, brands want a bite of the digital revenue opportunities, and digital homes are selling for more than homes in the real world. So - what are we waiting for? Well, the function in which the digital “you” can hop seamlessly from one universe to the next has yet to be linked. That’s up to the collective software community to build. Until then, what’s stopping us from preparing the workforce?
First, here are a few predictions we have on what work will look like in the next five to ten years. Call it our manifesto, call us crazy. But the shift to digital interaction already happened long ago. This is how our day-to-day will continue to be impacted:
It’ll be acceptable to go to work as your avatar. Yes - remote work is here to stay.
Hiring fairs and interviews will take place in the digital world - like Roblox or Fortnite.
Employee perks will be given in the metaverse (like new skins, exclusive concerts, alt coins, etc.).
Users will want a way to pre-verify and wear their hard and soft skills on their avatars. Kind of like a PDF resume meets Fortnite - where you wear your achievement badges proudly.
AI plus the metaverse will be the reason why discovering and hiring candidates becomes more efficient. There’ll be more (and unique) access to qualified talent due to remote work, smarter matching tools to said talent, and new ways of classifying and verifying preferred skill sets for roles.
You might be thinking to yourself, “what kinds of jobs will the metaverse create?” To be honest - this is I’m thinking about more often than not. Will it automate antiquated jobs, and at the same time, create new ones? Yes. Will it give individuals access to new lines of revenue that weren’t necessarily there before? Yes. Here are some examples of what work could look like:
Museum docents in Decentraland. Kind of like The Curator in Ready Player One.
Real estate agents who rent out parcels. Want a tropical getaway condo in The Sandbox?
Retail associates who sell real merch (that’s then shipped to your real home) at Roblox concerts.
Actors and actresses performing on *digital* Broadway.
Black jack dealers at digital casinos. This would have the ability to boost player retention and engagement.
I also believe that the implementation of the metaverse will bring more labor opportunities to the real world in non-obvious ways. Yes, it’ll create more jobs in tech - but I also believe it’ll bring more sales and retail jobs. It’ll create a new idea of productivity and collaboration. It’ll expand what’s possible in the workplace. Here are some very tangible scenarios:
One day you’ll be able to go up to a Domino’s Pizza station in Roblox, place a large order (don’t forget the lava cake!) and, a REAL pizza will show up to your REAL doorstep. This opens the door for more pizza orders and, therefore, more real employees.
Brands want so badly to be a part of the the new virtual world. Take for example Laliga joining GreenPark, or NASCAR partnering with Zed Run. The opportunity for brand exposure and consumer interaction with users in the metaverse is limitless, and every brand wants (or will want) their share. This will create more gig work for designers, marketing experts, and support staff.
Secondly, here are a few roadblocks I see to the workforce fully adapting to working both alongside and in the metaverse:
If a user is only interfacing as their avatar - from interview to hiring - employers will need a way to verify hard and soft skills that are required of that job.
Professional resumes will need to be interactive and, even possibly, in 3D.
Hardware will need to be affordable at mass consumer pricing. The idea of the metaverse is not to limit access, but instead to democratize opportunity.
We’ll need to find a way to separate your professional avatar from your personal one. No one wants their boss to follow and engage with them on TikTok. Same would go for the play and professional metaverse. So - do we introduce a private/public function? Who will create that? Who will control that?
The future of work is something everyone can get behind. But the future of work in the metaverse? It’s a controversial topic. Some think it’s just a fad, intangible, or Zucks way of Facebook-ifying the world. I believe it’s going to be what creates economic opportunities for everyone in the next five to ten years - and that the metaverse is here to stay.