Interview with Brian Forberg, History 150 Spring 2020, Conducted by Courtney Forberg, April 9, 2020.

Brief Biography:

My father, Brian Forberg, was born on September 26, 1967 (in the same hospital as me) and has lived on Long Island, New York for much of his life. He attended Susquehanna University (SU) from 1985-1989, where he met my mom and attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting. He began his career in the finance industry when he worked for an alum of SU in New York City. He later was able to work from home when he was part of both Nexa Technologies and Northern Trust Bank, which currently gives him over twenty-five years in the financial industry. Throughout my childhood, I remember my dad being the main parent to pick me up from school, bring me to sports practices/games, or interact with me after my school day. He currently has his own office in the basement of our house and works full-time, where he consults with his team and clients on an international scale every day.

Research: 

There have been a few transitions to what the “normal” working structure has looked like. Very early on in the United States, agricultural jobs were the most common and the most valuable. However, “since the advent of the industrial era, other needs such as supervision, communication, and the cooperative use of resources and equipment have predominated, leading to the centralization of the workplace, first in factories, then in offices. The notion of work and family as separate and relatively autonomous behavior spheres grew out of this physical separation of the centralized workplace and the home” (Christensen). The fact that my dad works from home is particularly notable because of this developed idea of the separation of work and home. 

It is also interesting how the needs and capabilities of society shape the interaction of the aspects of the workplace and home. In this century, there has been a huge growth in communication technology, as well as the need for rapid results. “The mobile business model in the service sector not only provides the advantage to the customers to avail services from anywhere, any amount, and any time, it also creates an innovative opportunity to service providers to provide services from his/her home through automated internet-based computer systems” (Kumar) The opportunities of this structure have been recognized by some, as “the proportion of employees who primarily work from home has more than tripled over the past 30 years, from 0.75% in 1980 to 2.4% in 2010” (Bloom). However, despite the “ the notion that working from home is a strategy commonly used to balance work and family demands, and that such amenities draw women, particularly mothers, to jobs that facilitate this form of work flexibility. Few jobs facilitate telecommuting as a substitute for on-site hours in the first 40 hours worked per week, and female-dominated jobs are not more likely to do so than male-dominated jobs” (Glass). I thought this was an important point to bring up because working from home brings the opportunity to act as the main carer, which is typically associated with mothers. 

Citations (MLA):

Bloom, Nicholas, et al. “Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment*.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 130, no. 1, 2014, pp. 165–218., doi:10.1093/qje/qju032.

Christensen, K. The New Era of Home-Based Work: Directions and Policies. Westview Press, 1988.

Glass, Jennifer L., and Mary C. Noonan. “Telecommuting and Earnings Trajectories Among American Women and Men 1989-2008.” Social Forces, vol. 95, no. 1, 2016, pp. 217–250., doi:10.1093/sf/sow034.

Kumar, P M, and P S Aithal. “Working from Home – A Transition in the Concept of Workplace.” International Journal of  Current Research and Modern Education (IJCRME), vol. 1, no. 1, 10 May 2016, pp. 244–249 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2779236.

Transcription:

Courtney Forberg: Okay, I’m here to conduct an interview about social change. Could you please introduce yourself?

Brian Forberg: Sure. My name is Brian Forberg.

CF: All right. The first question I have for you is can you describe your childhood a little bit and maybe what your mom and dad did growing up?

BF: Sure, um, we had a fair- I had a fairly normal childhood. We were close and a loving middle-class family. I have one brother. We spent most of our vacations when I was young at our house, either on Lake George or we would take trips to Florida, where we drove all the way there all the time to my grandparents’ house. We really didn’t travel much by air, by plane, or out of the country when I was young. I was heavily into all kinds of sports: baseball, hockey, basketball, football, tennis. My dad was usually my coach, and almost always involved in running the leagues until I progressed, obviously, to the club teams where the coaches were already there. My dad and I were extremely close, and he gave up a lot of opportunities for himself to coach my teams. My dad was a policeman in the 103rd precinct in Queens, in New York City for 23 years. It was a pretty rough area in the city at that time. And my mom was a housewife and work part-time in a department store.

CF: Alright, so let’s talk about what you saw yourself doing for work when you were in college. How did you imagine the structure of your life in future years?

BF: I think like most kids in college, I had an idea what I thought I wanted to do, and that was accounting, but I didn’t know how far I would take it at that, at that point. As far as the structure of my life, I probably didn’t have a clue at that point [interviewee laughed], like most college students, but can say that it fell into place pretty well, where I have always had good employment through my years and had a wonderful family who enjoys each other’s company.

CF: Mm-hmm. Um, the next question is, can you describe the time when you started working from home? How did you feel? How was the transition from working in the office, back to the home?

BF: Okay. Sure. Um, so I was a CFO of a financial services broker-dealer in Hauppauge, New York. And I also owned a piece of related custody and clearing firm, which managed in serviced our customer’s account, the account to the broker-dealer. So we sold that company to a firm in Dallas, Texas and as part of that sale, I went to work for Nexus technologies. And that’s kind of when I started to work from home.

BF: You know, how did I feel about it? Um, I guess it was good and bad to it. Um, you know, I was happy that I could work home and I didn’t have to travel into the city every day, and have that commute time. But there was still an opportunity where I could go into the city a couple of days a week. So um, you know, I didn’t have a problem working at home. I think at the beginning, I was excited about it. And I think I transitioned pretty well to it.

CF: Yeah. And when you got that job, did you know you had the opportunity to work from home, or?

BF: Yeah, we had a part- they had various different companies and different departments that were in the city, but most of the people that I worked with, were in Texas, and in California, so there wasn’t a great benefit of me having to go into New York City every day. So um, you know, it worked well for me being you know, at home here.

CF: Okay, can you talk a little bit about what your job in those jobs you had, what your role was in those companies a little bit more?

BF: Sure, so um, yeah, I’ll just talk about the ones when I work kind of work from home.

CF: Yeah!

BF: So the first one Nexa, obviously, I was prod- at first I was a product manager. So, we designed the permissions and controls for our proprietary trading platform. So like, when people go online and they trade their stocks and everything. So we had built some for big Canadian companies like TD Bank and Scotia Bank, so we actually built that platform. So I was a product manager on that. And then also, while I was there, I transitioned into being the director of market data. Where basically, when you talk about market data, that’s stock quotes and financial data that fed our trading platforms and also other middle and back-office systems. And I was responsible for kind of sourcing the data from the different exchanges and also compliance and, and reporting the usage of data back and forth to those customers.

BF: And then, what I’m doing now at home is, after I left there, I now work for Northern Trust, which is a financial services company that caters to corporations, institutional investors, and ultra-high net worth individuals. My team oversees the financial functions related to custody services, which are basically- the custody services is we need to safely hold and service the assets of our customers. So that’s the custody part of it. This includes, you know, includes sourcing custodial partners in markets all over the world. We’re in about 93 markets all over the world, processing invoices related to the services, forecasting and reporting on expenses paid to our executives and the responsibility that all payments are posted correctly to the company’s financial records. So I kind of oversee that whole department and most of the people that work with me are in London and in India.

CF: Okay, so it sounds like you do a lot of stuff like online and you do communication across a lot of borders. Can you describe some of the main things that allow you to work from home in your perspective?

BF: Sure. Um, yeah, I think one – I’m by nature I think I’m a very organized and self-disciplined person. So that’s important for somebody who wants to work at home. I usually don’t have any distractions. Usually in the normal case where we’re not in the Coronavirus situation, my wife works so nobody’s really home, so there are no distractions here, kids or anything else to distract from my focus on my work. And I think it works because, like you mentioned a little bit because the people I work with or most associate with are in time zones that require me to be available very early in the morning my time so it works. I’m not commuting at that point. I’m home at my desk being productive. And also most meetings that I do are video conference or WebEx. So, I’m not sure there’s a big benefit of being in an office space.

CF: And can you describe some of the instances where your job structure influenced your life in some way?

BF: Yeah, I would say I’d have to say our life structure and include my wife.

BF: Um, so I’ll give you one instance. So back when I mentioned before we sold our clearing firm, part of the agreement of the sale was I had to sign an agreement to work with them in the office, here in New York for two years. And my wife, who was working for Chrysler Corporation and she was kind of moving up and, you know, starting to be offered chances to rise in Chrysler. But that would have meant moving, you know, possibly to different states. So, you know, we talked about it and we decided not to move. One because of my agreement. And two, because we were looking to start a family and we want it to settle down in one place.

CF: Mm Hmm.

CF: Okay, and the next question I have for you is, can you describe any specific positives or negatives you have noticed about being a home worker and not being in an office environment with other colleagues around you?

BF: Yeah, I think, I think you mentioned that there. I think the one- I think the big benefit is if you’re if you’re disciplined with the less commuting, you find more productive work time during the day. I think you can be more productive. I actually think my, my firm probably gets more time out of me than if I actually committed to an office. But, there is that piece where there are certain times that it’s good to be in an office, to be interacting with people, to be in, you know, face to face meetings. So there’s obviously there’s positives and negatives to everything.

CF: Okay. And in past decades, it has mothers being the main caregivrs for children to various activities and such. Can you describe your outlook on this notion? Because I know that, especially for me, you’re kind of the parent that drove me around and took me to at all my different activities.

BF: Yeah. So I think all the mothers obviously do a great job at home, and it’s not an easy job. But I think, I think it’s changing a lot. I think, you know, obviously women are great in the workplace now. I mean, even in the firms I’ve worked for, and the one I’m in now, there’s an increased presence of women at all levels of the company and they do the job just as well as men. So, you know, I don’t think that’s the- I don’t think it has to be the case anymore. Some mothers choose to still do it that way and it’s a great profession. You know, my outlook, like you said, is I had a lot of this role with you and it created a bond and relationship with both you and Alexa, um, that I might not have had otherwise. It also gave my wife a chance to have a career that she wanted.

CF: And especially during this time in quarantine, many are made to work from home that normally wouldn’t. Can you describe some of the hurdles you’ve faced while working at home, that those people are now imminently facing in their lives?

BF: Yeah, I think I think the first and most obvious is at first it’s kind of hardware and infrastructures issues. It takes some time, depending on your company and how much access and interaction you’re going to have. You have to get the right equipment. You have to get the connectivity and the system access to be productive. This takes some time. You have to separate yourself from distractions. I think you know, people have to make sure that they have a place in the home or wherever they’re working that they, you know, they’re not constantly bothered by others. So they could focus on their work. And I think, you know, you have to set a disciplined plan of how you’re going to go and approach your day. You have to keep- you need to follow a structure every day and be laser-focused, because it’s so easy to be distracted, that if you don’t follow that you could easily, you know, kind of lose productivity.

CF: And the last question is, in some of the research I did before this interview, I found that the work has transitioned from the farm to the factory, then to the office building. Do you think that, um, this work could transition into mainly homework in the future? I know you talked about technology. So do you think it’s possible that with these advancements, it could happen at some point?

BF: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s a great question. And I think it’s, it’s, I think there was definitely a move toward work from home before this whole Coronavirus pandemic. It was coming anyway. But I believe the current situation will rapidly escalate the process. I don’t think a lot of companies are going to return to work nearly the same as they were before. I know that our company, you know, I know that a lot of companies, including our company, is looking at a couple things, you know, you can have shared workspace, where it’s becoming, it’s becoming a big thing where companies can cut the amount of physical space and buildings they actually need. So basically, you know, you could, you could share a desk. So where one person had a desk, you could now have two people share that desk where one person comes in Monday and Friday, the other person comes in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Or whatever. So I think that’s definitely moving that way there.

BF: And then, you know, I think it’s gonna take some evaluation. Saying that some jobs are functions, you know, some may be conducive to home, there’s other job functions where it just not gonna work at home. And then there’s another valuation that has to be made to see if people are performing well. So you have to be able to evaluate if a person is performing up to what their capabilities were in the office. And I think it also had- the last thing I think it has to do, is I think it has to do with somewhat with region. When I say that, I’m saying I see with our company that people that are in our company in India.

CF: Yeah.

BF: Like to be interacting with each other. I don’t think they love to work from home. You got a member there at home. There’s more people at home in India.

CF: So maybe different cultural values?

BF: Yes. Yeah.

CF: Interesting.

BF: So, yeah, I think that’s some of the things but I think it’s definitely going in that direction. And quickly.

CF: Awesome. Thank you so much for participating in this interview.

BF: No problem. Pleasure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Interview Process

This interview was conducted in person. I used Voice Memos on my computer to record. Before beginning the interview, I tested the program to ensure the best sound quality. I found the best angle to place my computer to hear both of our voices evenly and made sure to conduct the interview in a quiet room in my basement with limited distractions and noise. There were no major obstacles in the technical part of the interview and I did not have to edit the recording in any way. 

Conclusion

I think the interview went very well and that my dad had very thought out and descriptive answers. I gave my dad an idea of the questions before the interview and I believe that this increased his comfort level in answering the questions. I felt that the interview flowed nicely and revolved around the topics I had anticipated most of the time. I did diverge from my questions a few times to dig deeper into a few things he mentioned, and I think this brought a more natural flow to the conversation along with more insightful details. If I was to conduct this interview again, I would try to expand more on my dad’s view on the changing roles of the mother and father that are represented in his situation. Also, I don’t think my responses reflected my genuine interest in what he was saying enough.