San Francisco ‘Froth Is Gone’ as Wealth Fades, Housing Slumps
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I think NYC has been one of the only US cities with "staying power" over the decades.
It just didn't have the same feel as sitting next to each other. Fewer ideas generated. Problems take longer to fix. Motivation is lower. Async communication just doesn't always work.
I predict a movement to return to office for these reasons:
1. After a few years, people will miss the "tribe" feeling. It can be very lonely to do remote work full-time.
2. In-person companies may start to outcompete remote or hybrid companies.
3. Highly paid western tech jobs are at risk of being outsourced to countries where top talent make 1/10th the amount.
I guess the "efficiency" gains of remote (more focus time for individuals? less distractions?) are more continuous/less thresholded OTOH because they're more related to individuals than the collective.
But basically the top reason (if true) means you kind of need to be all in on the in-person or you're kind of all out efficiency-wise. Very small companies I guess can go either way and be OK (though, people need to be extra passionate about their project and coworkers to be motivated without that in-person connectedness).
Big companies I think just don't work at all in the remote world. Everyone loses meaning. No one wants to do those big audacious or really challenging/messy things with no meaning (I mean, people will still do a lot of small things to get their paycheck). This may sound bad but...I am absolutely not going to do a giant, messy, complex refactor for a bunch of zoom heads who I can only talk to through some awkward hand-raising-button-disconnected-digital-cubicle social dynamics.
It's just inhuman the world we were encouraged to be a part of. And we talk as if it's "normal"... Anyways, yeah efficiency! Yes, it's just inefficient for big companies. And eventually we'll realize this. I hope.
citation needed.
Yeah I shouldn't speak for everyone... but I think for one, having a sense of mission contributes to meaning. And for two, having a sense of tribe (e.g. deep collaborators, partners in crime, healthy rivals) contributes to meaning. Both of which are much easier to have in person.
There's another important aspect too which is this sense of lifelong friendship that you may be building. People you know in person, you may feel that they're a "real friend" that you can meet up with in person in the future as well, regardless of what happens with your job. That's important too. I mean a "real friend" you can call or zoom with and it's still good. But it's hard to build a "real friendship" starting from zoom, don't you think? Not impossible, but much harder/rarer (actually phone calls or writing emails is perhaps easier than zoom).