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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is these companies talk about digital connectivity moving to the cloud, editing files in the cloud, video conferencing in the cloud, make social networks in the cloud, buy things online without leaving your house, watch movies online etc. Everything is online, pretty, efficient, and convenient.

Then they turn right around and tell all their employees to move to the area, then to get in their cars, buses, trains and start commuting to a physical location, in one of the busiest, most expensive city every single day. So that these workers can then sit on chairs in a building and do probably the easiest thing to do with a remote connection -- write code, documents, email, monitor servers.

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If that's really such a waste then where are all the remote-only companies eating everybody's lunch? Has it not yet been long enough since remote working has reached some workable peak?

> If that's really such a waste then where are all the remote-only companies eating everybody's lunch?

Maybe they are eating it? Facebook, Amazon, and Google just have a very large buffet and it would take a while for them to notice.

Heck, I am taking little bytes (pun intended) every day ;-)

But seriously, I believe that could be the next revolution in the economy. We had the industrial revolution, the technological one (internet and such). Maybe remote work can be the next one. If it starts happening and large employers start to adopt it, it could change how cities and whole regions evolve.

Something like that?

    consume_remote_work(<<Byte:8>>) ->
        Do_something(Byte);
    consume_remot_work(<<Byte:8, Rest/binary>>) ->
         do_something(Byte),
         consume_remote_work(Rest).

Exactly! Can even to do it bit by bit if feeling particularly cruel that day.

Many players are already moving in the opposite direction. It doesn't mean that remote is not possible, but that remote is more challenging than colocation.

Consider: agile frameworks at their core focus on improving communication, but remote increases the barriers to communication. For humans, online social contact doesn't provide the same benefits as as f2f. It makes depression worse, not better. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/

I know someone at Amazon who gets flown halfway around the world over 4 times a year. They're not remote, but a frugal company like amazon decides it's important enough for them to visit headquarters regularly.

f2f is important greed and there is problem flying someone over 4 times over in year. Heck even more. It's the idea that it has to be the default. I work remotely but when we brainstorm an idea we like to fly to a site and hang around there for a week, white-boarding and socializing afterwards.

Timezones make communications harder as well, etc.

However I'll take these downsides vs the upsides.

Maybe they're eating their own lunch. I'd bet if the metric is revenue-per-employee, 37Signals is probably kicking most of the bigger tech companies arses.

37Signals does not have a scale worth comparing to.

I would think WordPress is a good example.

Google and Amazon have, instead of going remote, established branch offices all over the US, in every cool city where hip young non-Republicans live.

>>Then they turn right around and tell all their employees to move to the area

This isn't just a modern phenomenon. Note the whole point of outsourcing was that given how well the world is connected, it barely matters from where you get work done from. But what it is in reality is basically a cost equation.

Early IT departments in most companies were considered a back office expense so remote/outsourcing work used to make sense. These days most tech companies have a lot of money, so the cost thing doesn't make sense.

Good connectivity was never reason for remote/outsourcing work, so it doesn't matter how good it gets.

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