- The current population density of urban and suburban areas, is prone to pandemic scale events. However, density is great for a lot of reasons and this trend will continue.
- The latency and throughput of travel being so good, is prone to pandemic scale events. However, current travel is great for a lot of reasons and improving latency and throughput will continue.
- Bio-engineering advancing quickly, will be prone to cause pandemic scale events. However, we need to advance this domain for better medical treatments.
With these points above, the next large-scale, remote-work event is guaranteed, the only question is when.
Keep in mind (from a for-profit corporation perspective):
- They value stable productivity rather than productivity peaks and throughs.
- Land, buildings and infrastructure are 15% of employee costs.
- Pandemics are not the only form of churn requiring remote work, so are natural and unnatural disasters, etc.
- Reacting to the event, will always lag the event. Creating a vaccine or cleaning up a fire / flood / earthquake will require a few months at the least, everytime.
As a company making a decision today:
- If the employees working remotely have less than 15% productivity loss (but the company pays 15% less for real-estate), then remote-work is viable today. Like with Google, et-al.
- If the employees working remotely have a noticeable (i.e. 15% or more) productivity loss, then remote-work is not a viable option. However, maybe the increased stability is worthwhile for the company, and remote-work will be deemed viable.
In either case, it seems like a no-brainier to start investing into tooling to support automation or remote-work with increased productivity (Slack, Oculus, remote controlled robots, etc). While the word "covid" will phase out, the mentality of remote-work and hyper-hygiene (e.g. masks and hand sanitizers) will only accelerate.
This is similar to the change of era where "parents allowed the kids to play outdoors, unsupervised", these eras are sadly over.
I'm not even sure I believe this anymore. Seeing how many people out there believe masks are BAD for you makes me skeptical that most people will actually get the vaccine...
