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Comment by _curious_ | Hacker News Reader

It's a succinct and plausible set of positions held by the author, but I'm not sure this one holds up:

"The disruptions in face-to-face work will be a drag on economic efficiency, leading to slower growth in revenues, lower profit margins, and reduced cash flow."

Maybe I've been doing business remote/virtual for so long already that I see actual face-to-face as the economic inefficiency more often than not. Earlier, the author espouses the obvious benefits of being in person, but I think those have been outweighed by the trade-offs for many years already. What many will simply need to adapt to going forward is the type of communication differences required for successful remote/virtual/verbal interactions.

Quality listening skills and straight talk are more important than ever!

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I suspect that we here on HN may suffer from selection bias, in that many of us do work that is most amenable to moving to remote.

There is also an issue of transition, where there plausibly is quite an efficiency lag (months, at least) before people become get really set up, even assuming they are able to be as (or more) efficient.

I strongly agree. This extends to reddit as well. Whenever it comes up, there is the overwhelming consensus of "I love WFH/dumb middle-managers are wasting everyone's time to feel useful". And while I agree there is definitely a bias towards demanding in-office working which is probably excessive, and that many people can be very successful working remotely, I feel like much of this attitude is romanticization.

Personally, I struggle to focus at home, and I have a pretty ideal WFH situation. I am fortunate enough/foolish enough to pay for a trivial commute, but I'm simply more productive in-office. And I don't think it is just me, many many problems can be solved in-office quickly without having to set up online calls (or letting an email thread drag on for weeks).

And the larger attitude among my office was that working from home is a burden. We're all software devs, we all have no strict barriers to WFH, but most people prefer going into the office most of the time.

When it comes to actually building a product there is definitely face to face benefits.

However, I'd point out that many software companies have far more sales people than engineers. There has been this expectation that salespeople should fly out, and have meetings, meals, and expensive drinks with the companies they sell to. Now magically that's all vanished, but sales are still happening. The cost of some sales efforts has presumably plummeted.

The problem with your comment is that you're forgetting all sales are remote now.

Once the lockdown is over, I wouldn't bet on the company that keeps doing remote sales versus the company doing normal face to face sales.

I'm not forgetting. That's my point. The sales are remote, and thus cheaper. No plane flights, no crazy expensive wine at dinner with customer.

And sure, they'll revert back, losing the efficiency gains once the government stops accidentally intervening in sales practices.

Are you assuming sales will keep to pre-covid levels in all this? At least in some industries that seems like a stretch...

Businesses that require face to face contact (ie. the service sector) employ the most people of any sector in the economy. And then there's manufacturing, resource extraction, construction, etc..., which all can't be done remotely. The amount of jobs which don't require physical presence or face to face contact are a minority of the workforce.

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