[hodgesrm]

I love the outdoors, so your comment really speaks to me. But speaking as someone who has worked remotely for the last 15+ years I'm skeptical that the model will become even close to dominant.

* Not everyone is equally productive when working remotely. For a variety of reasons some people just work better in offices.

* Mixed office/remote teams are unstable. People will be drawn to offices if only for career reasons, which makes it harder for the remote works, hence makes the office more attractive, etc.

* Some jobs are just better done in person. Auto repair is not a remote job. Same for manufacturing.

What I hope for is that companies will realize they don't need everyone to commute to the office every damn day. I freed up about 3 hours of transit time and reduced my annual carbon emissions by about a ton just by commuting one day less in the Bay Area. There's no reason why most white collar jobs can't work from home a couple of days a week. This would already be a huge improvement.

[cmdshiftf4]

>Not everyone is equally productive when working remotely. For a variety of reasons some people just work better in offices.

It's probably a bit bleak to say, but those people will likely be replaced by others who are productive working remotely given the new, wider talent pool a fully remote company will have access to.

[solidasparagus]

I don't understand this thinking that remote work will lead to hiring all over the world. I've worked on a bunch of teams split across timezones and I have never seen a team successfully function as a single team with more than a 3 hour timezone difference.

[cmdshiftf4]

Oh, I'm not one with such beliefs. I think the work being spread over certain timezones is the likely direction it'll go in, which still vastly broadens the talent pool for the companies involved.

An example being Shopify's announcement today was followed with them switching previously Canadian, or Toronto/Ottawa specific roles to being remote and available within the Americas.

[121789]

I think the reality is that you never get the best of both worlds. Companies will not spend on expensive real estate and amenities for people only in the office 2-3 days per week. Either there will have to be big sacrifices (open offices with no reserved desks/seating/equipment, like how consulting does this), or there will be no office offered at all.