I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people.
It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.
-- Reduction of commute, which is good for the environment and good for people's stress levels.
-- Reduction/elimination of the cost of office space
-- Ability to recruit across a wider geographic area
-- Greater employee satisfaction as people can live where they choose
And so on and so on. And yet in the face of this information, plus studies that show higher rates of productivity when employees / workers control their work environment (and schedule), companies have been resistant. I can speculate on the reasons for this (read: control, stuck in industrial era management practices, etc), but the question remains: why do we think companies will suddenly become enlightened and embrace this long-term?
As for why now? I believe it's simply because now that peons have had a taste of WFH and all its benefits (and realized everything you enumerated), it will become one of the most desired "benefit" in a job. It was a massive leap forward from WFH being a "nice to have" to a "must have" to even be considered by a lot of candidates.
The trigger event was the forced experiment. Studies convinced me, but I don't have to take responsibility for the health of a whole company so it's easier for me to advocate for risks. Seeing how your company actually behaves in a 100% WFH world is better evidence than a study.
The evidence already existed that WFH is, generally, better. See Stanford's Bloom 2013.
But executives are afraid to take big risks like that. They doubt studies. They overindex on personal experience. Which this gave them.
Now that they see what WFH actually produces, their worldview shifts to what was already true. You get talent that's more productive. Lower costs so you can afford more talent, or, alternatively, more expensive talent. Fewer geographic restrictions so you can recruit a bigger pool of talent.
Once you're convinced WFH works, these advantages can give competition an edge. An executive doesn't want to be on the wrong side of that edge.
But they have to see it first.
There's no reason they go back to thinking F2F is better, unless it actually is, and currently no evidence suggests that is true.
c19 has given people an experience of "almost everyone WFH and the company didn't end".
"There's no reason they go back to thinking F2F is better, unless it actually is". It IS better for some people individually - we see it here on HN in comments from people who prefer to be able to go to an office. There isn't a "one size fits all" approach.
To the extent that we see more WFH across the board, I think it'll be driven far more by "get rid of the office expense" - hard $ savings - vs "everyone's more productive!". They'll be "productive enough", relative to the cost savings of less (or no) office space.
Just my 2c, obviously.
Companies have touted open desk workspaces as some grand collaborative masterpiece for years now. It's a very big difference to advocate working from home because you also have to acknowledge that was a total farce.
For big companies it's harder to work fully remote. There are too many people and teams and dependencies. Twitter is not small but also not big.
But now that the industry is on the other side of that barrier, it seems to have no reason to go back.
-- Companies have gone virtual, they exist in slack, basecamp-type tools etc. In the 2000s it would sound unthinkable to put your corporate secrets in someone else's server. Today it's commonplace
-- Employees have gone virtual. Their CVs are in github, and the flaky silicon valley market has made them conscious of their personal image / website. They prefer a supermarket of opportunities rather than a long-term relationship
These things oiled up the gears for the transition, and covid gave it a big push.
The bigger issue for me is what will happen to the US tech market. Why would Twitter hire people in the US if they can hire much cheaper people from Europa and other locations. The US government restricts immigration for the same reasons. They might need to intervene with remote work as well.
Biannual "retreats" for companies that are fully remote sounds like a good idea, and I wonder if there is somewhere between "biannual retreats" and "butts in seats 5 days a week" that companies will meander towards.
Do you mean all boundary gateways should censor all information and knowledge, that are past without prior authorisation or a heavy tax, by default? Because that is how customs IRL work.
One other benefit to companies - maybe they won’t pay a premium anymore for people who live in expensive areas.
Domestically, it only gets complicated when you have an entire office of people in a different zone. Then large meetings get hard to schedule around lunch and COB.
Personally, I find it pretty funny how this "work that can only be done well in person, in an office" can suddenly be done remotely no problem when the government mandates that everybody stays home.
You're spinning things toward your bias with your sentence. Who, exactly, is saying it can be done "no problem"? My experience is that any communication-intensive work is significantly harder and more time consuming. We just don't have a choice now, so we're doing it.
My XP is that remote communication is different, seem to take longer, but is also far superior. When you're forced to communicate via documents, diagrams, chat, etc you put more effort into your content. You try to anticipate questions to avoid wasting a few round trips. It forces you to think more about what you're saying, it forces you to think about edge cases, specific details, etc.
That's fine. I would like to explicitly point out that calling something the "usual" argument doesn't make it any less valid. You are both claiming to not bother arguing while also taking a fairly dismissive posture. My feedback is to instead ask people why they feel a certain way. I'll answer as though you had:
For your point about clarity and organization of written communication: I completely agree with you. I suspect you're an IC engineer without many non-technical responsibilities, though, because you're ignoring all things that exist outside of technical design and planning intended for technical audiences.
Not everything is well suited to diagrammed or long-cycle asynchronous communication. At some point in your career, you might need to start handling things like working with lawyers on requirements where they have varying degrees of product understanding, nuanced feedback from a large sales team, tough and iterative product roadmap decisions in the face of revenue shortfalls, personnel issues as they come up, and so on. For conversations that span disciplines or involve career development or crucial feedback, having a high bandwidth pipe through which to quickly identify gaps in understanding or holes in communication is invaluable. That higher level coordination is vital to the success of most businesses, and it became significantly more challenging. We have to do it, though, because the alternative is much worse.
My opinion is that remote work has been great for IC engineers. I generally support liberal use of remote work for IC engineers. The world doesn't work if everybody sits in that role, though.
Great. I stand corrected when I suspected you were an IC.
Do you have the same non-technical responsibilities I mentioned having? How have you approached the portions that I cited as being challenging without high-bandwidth communication channels? And if you have you held this role in a non-remote office, how do you know whether you're being as effective as you were then? (I always like to hear more about how people measure their effectiveness.)
This was exactly what happened with my company. When I was hired, three people in the interview process stated explicitly that remote work was not an option, and don't even ask.
Then when the state shut down, suddenly it was perfectly fine for hundreds of people to take their work computers home.