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For a long time, it’s been true that the internet can help your career far more than whoever works in your office. Open source contributions, emailing people asking for advice, engaging people on social media… all the way up to raising money. The future was already here, it was just unevenly distributed. COVID forced some who were holding out to face reality of a global, distributed work force.

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All fine for Big Tech workers, but let's not forget about the large array of others who work in more "pedestrian" parts of the IT industry, ie those working for enterprise shops who are still working through the early stages of cloud adoption.

If you want to progress your career, networking on the internet is far more effective than trying to grind the way up the chain in an old school IT company via in-office schmoozing. That is a dead end with or without WFH.

Again, depends heavily on the industry. Also, I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing; I see a lot of "Twitter famous" people fawning over each other at the moment in something resembling a white-collar version of the US tipping culture, but I don't think that kind of behaviour should be allowed to take root more than it already has. One of the other positives we should be taking from a remote-first culture is greater appreciation for the practices of other cultures (since they are now so much more accessible). I hope we're not sliding towards a world where American fake niceness dominates and more reserved modes of interaction are sidelined.

This is a very interesting take that I have not considered. I think you are right about this though. Thank you for sharing.

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