Have you noticed that the future of work hasn’t changed very much in the past 15 years? We are so busy coping with the present that we have a hard time revising our view of the future. Today’s links will keep you current.

• What it’s really like to work for a tech giant
  Take a ride on the Google bus with Franz Kafka.
  “You take your coffee to your desk. But it’s not your desk. It’s a hot-desk. And, as you’d spent time talking to the woman at the coffee machine, you’re now left with the hot-desk in the corner. The one that smells of tuna. And continues to smell of tuna, regardless of the many emails you’ve sent complaining about the smell of tuna.”
• Gigs with benefits
  The New Yorker on the employees vs. contractor question at Uber and the like. “Work is changing. The protection we offer workers should change as well.”
• Small regions rising
  In the past 25 years, smaller urban areas have become increasingly competitive. Great keynote from Aaron Renn
• Google’s monastic vision for the future of work
  “The idea of living not just near one’s employer but in a world of its creation will sound horrifying to many workers: company towns were supposed to have vanished as an industrial-age perversion. But there are socially responsible reasons for holding employees in lavish corporate dorms. For one thing, it keeps them from messing with the local real estate.”
• Tomorrow’s world today
  “The rules are changing. Where your talent is, who your talent is, what they look like, how much they cost, how you connect to them, how they connect to you. What conditions they want, where they will work, how they will work, all of those are rules and the rules are all changing.”