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Remote work was easy. Hybrid is hard.

Good morning! This Thursday, the companies that made remote work easier are already thinking about hybrid work, Bill McDermott's plan for ServiceNow, Amy Klobuchar's antitrust bill and Chamath Palihapitiya's thirst-trap Twitter pics.
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Remote work was easy compared to what comes next. Pretty soon (hopefully!) some people will be back in the office, which means suddenly reckoning with whatever a hybrid work environment is supposed to look like. And you know what sucks? Meetings where half the team is in a room together and the other half is on the phone.
Conferencing and meeting providers know what's coming, and are already trying to build better solutions.
There's a flattening happening here: The home office getting a little more professionalized, and the conference room getting a little more virtualized. Poly is working with IT managers and procurement teams to help them build WFH kits for employees who are outfitting their home offices. Zoom is building a virtual receptionist tool, too, and a way to use Zoom Room cameras to make sure conference rooms aren't overcrowded.
Oh, and one to watch:Teamflow just launched. It's founded by ex-Uber exec Florent Crivello, and uses spatial audio and a video game-level design to make walking around the virtual office look and feel much more like a physical office.
Protocol's Joe Williams just published a profile of Bill McDermott, the CEO of ServiceNow. You should read the whole thing, but I asked him to explain a bit about the man and the company.
Bill McDermott is one of the most prolific leaders within the software industry, after taking SAP from a roughly $50 billion on-premise provider to a $160 billion cloud player. Now, he's trying to work his sales magic again and push ServiceNow into the upper echelon of tech vendors.
But that mission is increasingly pitting ServiceNow up against industry giants like SAP, Microsoft and Salesforce, who all sense an opportunity to expand into the burgeoning (and lucrative) employee experience industry.
Three more quick Bill McDermott fun facts:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the newly installed chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, is moving quickly to keep fighting the antitrust fight against Big Tech, Protocol's Emily Birnbaum reports. Klobuchar plans to introduce sweeping legislation to reform the country's trust-busting laws today, and while it has some high bars to clear it also points to what the Biden administration might try to get done.
Klobuchar is taking aim at the biggest tech companies. Her bill comes out strongly in favor of making it harder for larger tech companies to acquire smaller competitors; they'd have to prove the mergers don't cause problems, rather than the government having to prove they do.
Why sales teams at Box and Segment rely on Slack to build stronger customer relationships and seal deals faster.
Read how sales organizations at Box and Segment are harnessing the power of channel-based messaging to keep communication strong, seal deals and streamline the sales cycle when everyone is remote.
Vinesh Kannan quit Google because of what's happened to other employees:
Tiffani Ashley Bell said what we were all thinking about that Chamath Palihapitiya picture:
Speaking of Palihapitiya: He's not running for California governor after all:
Elon Musk acknowledged some of Tesla's production quality issues:
Speaking of Elon, he's also back on Twitter, and using it to pump up Dogecoin, praise "Sandstorm" and embrace his new identity:
Dom Leca is now building a browser, and explained why he got out of working at gig economy companies:
Matt Francis is the new CTO of GameStop. He was previously an engineering exec at AWS, and is joining GameStop at a super chill time.
John Matze was fired as Parler's CEO. He said in a memo to staff: "I did not participate in this decision."
Deborah Liu is the new CEO of Ancestry.com. She joins from Facebook, where she was Marketplace VP.
Ott Kaukver is Checkout.com's new CTO, and Nick Worswick its new head of sales and marketing. They previously worked at Twilio and WeWork, respectively, and were hired in part for their "public market" experience.
Tencent fired more than 100 employees and blacklisted 37 companies as part of an anti-bribery and embezzlement investigation.
Gearbox Entertainment is merging with Embracer Group, putting two big game developers together. Lots of consolidation in the gaming industry right now.
Box bought SignRequest, adding a digital signature tool to its offering. Arguably a little late to that particular party, though it is a pretty hot market right now.
A weird trend of the pandemic has been the huge growth in tiny-house offices, backyard-shed offices, tent-on-the-lawn offices and all manner of other ways to get away from the kids without technically leaving your own property. Well, here's a better idea: Take the office on the road! The new Airstream Flying Cloud Office has pull-down dry-erase boards, plenty of USB power and a big desk in the back with lots of room for an office chair. So you can both be "at work" and "in Yosemite" all at the same time this spring.
Why sales teams at Box and Segment rely on Slack to build stronger customer relationships and seal deals faster.
Read how sales organizations at Box and Segment are harnessing the power of channel-based messaging to keep communication strong, seal deals and streamline the sales cycle when everyone is remote.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day; see you tomorrow.
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Ott Kaukver's name was misspelled. This story was updated on Feb. 4, 2021.
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