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.
The interesting question is, why now? I mean on the surface sure - because we have a pandemic and state ordered quarantine. But the more interesting question is - why is this finally provoking companies and why do we think they will continue the trend in the future post-quarantine? I've been a remote worker since 2006. It's been obvious to me for a long time that companies could go all remote or some version of remote, and it would have all the positive effects we all know about:
-- 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?
Under normal circumstances, no one wants to be the first mover on something major like this because it's extremely disruptive to the way most people work without a clear example of the benefits. You're mentioning all of the upsides but there's a lot of execution risk in shifting a large organization to a remote setup. There's also a lot of management layers that are largely redundant with remote working and they've likely fought tooth and nail to prevent it.
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.
I don't think all of them will -- it's probably significant that Twitter was already thinking about this. However, I know my CEO never would have run this experiment without the pandemic. Now, he has data he didn't have before, and he's publicly said that this changed his mind.
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.
Oh I agree with you. I work for a company making software for utilities. Our company policy doesn't allow working remotely at all! Engineers (not developers) need to work on systems that are isolated and staged in our campus. There's no chance that they can work remotely. Rules for other teams are slightly relaxed, it depends on the managers to let their teams work remotely for some time.
Since the pandemic started, the company has had to adapt and make a mechanism for these engineers to work remotely. The engineers aren't as productive (from what some colleagues told me), but they can manage. On the other hand, our VP has been reporting that there's been 0 effect on software development teams and are happy to consider bringing us back to office much later.
counterpoint - everyone's company is competing against every other competitor who is also doing WFH. they're all on the same playing field. if folks think F2F helps productivity, they'll force that, especially if they know that some competition will stay with WFH.
I don't think that's a counterpoint. It depends on executives continuing to believe F2F is superior.
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.
possibly shouldn't have used the word 'counterpoint'.
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.
There was some kind of artificial barrier to remote-only that COVID forced the industry to break through. Maybe there was some stigma associated with it. Maybe there was natural resistance to a workplace model which was somewhat untested at scale. I think the current mentality held by most executives who make these kinds of decisions is that face-to-face meetings are better than video-chat.
But now that the industry is on the other side of that barrier, it seems to have no reason to go back.
I ve had the same question. I think it's because over the years, companies and employees have gone virtual
-- 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.
Well, it's not happening now. It's been happening gradually for a long time. All my friends in tech including FAANG have been working remotely to a certain degree. Some only once a week, others twice or even fully remote. And even those in the office work mostly in "remote" mode since they need to collaborate with people in offices all over.
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.
I have the same speculations re: why, so far, they have been so reluctant to do so.
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.
Real-estate cost is not an issue for most companies. Also, all fully remote companies that I know have company "retreats" twice a year for all employees, which is expensive. It's not mandatory of course but very important.
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.
Real-estate and cost of living drives compensation which is a main issue for most companies.
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.
> They might need to intervene with remote work as well.
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.
If the time zone difference is San Francisco to London, sure. But I've lived in Pacific while working for a company in Central, and live in Eastern while working for a company in Pacific, and it's not a big deal. You just adjust your daily cycle by a couple of hours.
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.
It turns into early hour / late hour meetings that your dread and don't want to do. I bet as a result people silently start not working with those big time zone difference teams and it become bifurcated.
These advantages have always existed, and yet most of the FANG have resisted WFH policies until now.
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.
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.
That's the usual argument, and honestly I'm not even gonna put a lot of effort into arguing. People work differently, fine, it's your XP, sorry it's not working that well for you.
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 the usual argument, and honestly I'm not even gonna put a lot of effort into arguing.
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.
I'm a director of engineering with a team of 20 engineers. Been successfully remote for 6 years or so now. I guess I make it work, but hey, maybe at some point in my career I'll understand.
I'm a director of engineering with a team of 20 engineers. Been successfully remote for 6 years or so now. I guess I make it work, but hey, maybe at some point in my career I'll understand.
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.)
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.
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.
