[ska]

I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown.

It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home.

There is a big difference between "never going to an office again" and "not going in 5 days a week".

[kodah]

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers.

The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical location are acutely unaware of their remote colleagues. On VCS systems they'll shout and have conversations with each other, they won't focus conversations in chat or make equivalent channels for hallway conversations, and they'll assign work to themselves first.

I'd like to have the option for remote work to be available to me in the future and if we're going to do that then that means people who go into primary locations must learn to play ball with everyone.

[kube-system]

In my experience, there are two ways for a company to be successful at having remote employees:

1. everyone is 100% remote

2. everyone comes into the office occasionally

Anything else leads to a two-tiered system.

[chrisco255]

I don't think so. My company was remote-first before the pandemic, but we still had about 25% of our staff or so go into an office regularly. The key is to have that remote-first attitude in spite of there being an office. One of the rules we had was "if one person is remote that's supposed to be on a meeting, then everyone has to treat that as a remote meeting and Zoom in". In other words, no one was on unequal footing for important team decisions, and if you had 5 people in an office that were supposed to have a meeting with 2 other remote peeps, those 5 people would jump on their laptops for the meeting, not huddle into a conference room. Subtle changes like this make a big difference.

[ghaff]

I work with teams that have rules like that.

The other thing to consider is that many of us routinely work with people across much of the world on a day-to-day basis. Even if everyone were in office--some are, some aren't--almost every meeting I'd be in would have people from 2 or 3 different offices. One office I work with a lot is in the same time zone. The other is 6 time zones away but that still works pretty well because we have meetings early in the workday our time, which for them is mid-afternoon.

[jcims]

This is my situation as well. My employer has >>100,000 full time folks spread all over the planet, and despite having one of the largest office buildings as my home base, for the most part I didn't work with anyone from it. So even back 3-4 years ago when I went to the office I spent almost all of my day on videoconference calls.

[taylodl]

That's the same conclusion my company, a Fortune 500 utility company in the US, came too. Their solution? 90% of the staff is expected to continue working remotely as the new normal. Frankly it's working too well. Productivity has increased, employees are happy, we've successfully on-boarded new hires and we can expand the geographical range from which we can hire. Win-win-win. The executives are happy, the workers are happy, we're all saving time and money - this is good!

[dalbasal]

Luckily/unluckily, companies can operate just fine with tiered systems. They're often more comfortable with this kind of structure.

[dstick]

You mean, you can't have some that are always remote and some that are in the office? Like a split?

[mjevans]

It's very difficult for humans to resist putting the burden on someone else. Like that in person meeting that results in a conversation where someone else has been given additional work, or 'needs' to help show someone how to do their job in a spreadsheet... etc.

Remote work forces everyone to contribute to the burden of documenting what's happening.

[rockinghigh]

The main reason people who have kids cannot easily work from home is because schools are closed and they have to take care of their kids during the day.

[slavapestov]

Yeah. In a hypothetical situation where schools were closed but workplaces were open, parents would not be able to go to the office to work either.

[ckgjm]

That’s why WfH really means Work FOR Home for many. I know of many who really worked 2 shifts, balancing between WforH and WfromH.

[bvirb]

My (small) company didn't skip a beat moving from entirely in office to entirely remote. In retrospect we were already having all of our conversations on Slack when we were in the office.

The key was we were always listening to music in our headphones.

[ramblerman]

This sounds a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Sure it's not entirely fair, but it's human nature.

It's akin to saying you want good relationships and friendships but without the hassle of all that conversation.

[j0ba]

That's fine. They can just take a salary cut if they need their employer to provide them an officespace.

[walshemj]

So workers have to pay for the costs of the office now -did you think that through

[withinboredom]

That’s a tax write off in the US.

[geoelectric]

I think it'll potentially shift radically for some industries. Tech and other knowledge worker industry adapts more easily to this sort of thing than most, and tech in particular probably will pivot for a large segment for sake of not having to pay rent.

What I expect to really take off, though, is things like managed IT you do from home for some manufacturing company somewhere--small groups embedded or servicing larger companies that can be hired and spun up more cheaply from elsewhere in the country.

Basically, everything that people said would happen (but didn't work out) with globalization in knowledge worker industry, I personally expect to actually happen and work out with "domestication" of it to include a large segment of remote workers. The business considerations are mostly the same, minus the cultural, governmental, and time zone barriers that prevented it from working.

[ghaff]

A lot of outsourcing was basically done with the difficulty set on hardest to get at perceived lowest labor costs. So you ended up with big time zone differences, cultural and language issues, etc.

[geoelectric]

Yeah, exactly. Back in the 90s-2000s, though, it was easier to deal with an office-based outsource hub that had its own line manager, etc, mostly because things were so damned slow to send back and forth that you wanted to chunk project coordination. Those were comparatively rarer in the US, since anywhere you could put one together had enough tech industry to make the costs there prohibitive.

Nowadays, you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots, and train them on the last bits on the job for not very much more money than an international team, when all costs are accounted.

It'll be interesting seeing the trajectory of tech salaries over the next however long though. That part didn't happen either but probably will now.

I can't imagine why someone would pay a Bay Area FAANG salary for any job that could be fulfilled at Arkansas costs. That makes it a really positive outlook for Arkansas techies, maybe a little less so for us in San Jose. I'm sure there are special cases and vanity teams, and culture moves slowly sometimes, but if things truly spread across so will the comp.

[cmxch]

> Nowadays, you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots, and train them on the last bits on the job for not very much more money than an international team, when all costs are accounted.

Why just the "good" or "perfect" techies?

They need to be less picky about who they hire. One could even go with the less desirable, "diamonds in the rough" candidates and still do well. If it worked passably with guest workers, it can work with flyover candidates.

As for my personal situation, I'd be happy to have options that were more than just government or healthcare.

[ghaff]

Logically, to the degree that a company really is indifferent to where in the US people live, I'd expect a new equilibrium to develop that's somewhere between the Bay Area and Arkansas. But, as you say, there's a lot of inertia and Google isn't likely to one morning announce an across-the-board pay cut in the Bay Area so they can redistribute it to workers in other locations. But you could certainly imagine things like premiums for new grads shrinking.

[geoelectric]

Equilibrium is what I expect. That may have a more sharp effect than the math would suggest, though. Bay Area SWE salaries inflated via competition in a way I suspect completely deflates with area pressure off. The cross-effects of a limited pool tend to be multiplicative, not additive.

The fact that the people doing the hiring probably enjoy those salaries too is maybe the biggest counterargument I'd have to my own prediction and the reason I think it'll take a bit to change. I'm firmly convinced that's one of the phenomena that have kept college degrees inflating--cognitive dissonance around admitting you shouldn't perpetuate your own experience.

FWIW, I think a lot of techies would probably love to have the freedom to live wherever they want and make a decent living. The comp gold rush has been fun, but the industry will arguably be better when it's gone. But the transition period--especially for those of us already at FAANGs or similar--that gets spicy.

Personally I'm hoping it means in a decade or so I can pseudo-retire to an easy remote job somewhere cheap enough to be happy on what an easy remote job pays. Given how hard actual early retirement can be to swing nowadays, that'd be a great holdover strategy to have available.

[majormajor]

> Bay Area SWE salaries inflated via competition in a way I suspect completely deflates with area pressure off.

It will be very interesting to see just how big the pool of people who can pass the interviews[0] but weren't willing to relocate is.

The demographics (and housing prices!) in the tech hubs reflect a big influx of highly-paid developers. If only 10% of the folks who could pass those interviews and get those offers were willing to relocation, that'll cause a much larger downward pressure on prices than if, say, 75% were, in which case the pool doesn't expand as much.

[0] the usefulness of the algorithm interview can be debated, but I don't see remote work putting any pressure on this process

[bluedino]

>> you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots

How many are there, though, really?

And what happens when you now have to compete with _every_other_company_ that also wants to hire them?

They'll make more money, good for them. But the majority of companies will just have to settle for hiring C-level talent.

[geoelectric]

Why not hire C level talent from the flyover states?

Speaking specifically of my own lane, tech, I think you might underestimate how many people--particularly people of color--never make it into the "industry pipeline" because of lack of local opportunities. Those of us who came into the tech industry from the side in the 90s know the school doesn't make much difference at all in most jobs, it's just a predictor of whether you've otherwise prepared. The initial preparation tends to be self-driven, in the best employees, and they exist everywhere. The biggest differentiator comes down to whether someone gives you a shot, and that’s almost entirely about contacts and location for name-brand-company SWE positions.

However much competition there will be then, there's more now with everything chunked up. We're talking about an existing situation. Widening the applicant pool to cheaper applicants can't do anything but help an employer.

[chrisco255]

This is an important point, so much of the so-called diversity problem with Silicon Valley is driven by the enforced colocation of techies into a small geographical area in central CA. You also lose out on people that are more family oriented and not apt to move far from where they grew up. There's plenty of smart and talented people that are hard workers who need that kind of proximity to their loved ones and they can't just pack up their whole extended family and move to SV.

[analog31]

Granted, I've never worked outside the Midwest, and what I know of tech hiring is mostly from reading HN. My impression is that "we only hire A players" is considered to be kind of a running joke. Interview processes seem, from a safe distance, to be dystopian. In addition, there seems to be an article every week on "hiring is broken" and an entire ecosystem of startups trying to solve that problem.

Yet somehow firms do OK with the people they manage to hire.

So maybe firms could just be less fearful of hiring, attract equal talent, and get on with life.

I doubt that I'd be considered an A player. My employer already makes productive use of talent in the Midwest, but we are not predominantly a software company.

[nitrogen]

One of the first ever desktop app stores had its desktop app developed entirely by a flyover state team in 2002. So the devs exist, if you can find them.

Also, there's plenty of C-level talent in the bay. You can pay the same and get B+ or better in an inland state.

[cosmodisk]

If the tech salaries would become much lower, a lot of people would simply start doing something else, which in turn reduce the pool of candidates. I'm not in a very intense tech job, however it still requires lots of reading, trying to figure out things and some days are nerve wrecking and tense,which often results in headaches,etc. So why do it for low money if I could go and many other jobs that would require additional reading once a year and won't have to sift through stack overflow comments to be able to do my job..

[standardUser]

I have a group of coworkers who've taken the initiate to slyly relocate during the pandemic, in some cases signing leases and buying houses. I think their idea is to either stay fully remote indefinitely or find a different remote job if the company won't abide.

The remote revolution may be overblown in general, but for programmers, the appeal is particularly strong. They've seen the promised land and it turns out it's in a nice home office in Bend OR, not a Bay Area traffic jam.

[psim1]

If by "slyly" you mean without notifying their employers, this could backfire on them in small and big ways. In a small way, it would affect local/state taxes that are withheld. In a big way, employers--whether rightly or wrongly--want to know where the employee lives in order to set a cost-of-living salary. If the employer finds out you're taking a SF salary while living in Bend, there are likely to be consequences.

[sedachv]

> set a cost-of-living salary

This is total nonsense, and you should never put up with this rationalization if HR tries to pull "cost of living" on you. Explain to them that it is called a "labor market" for a reason. Prices in markets are determined by supply and demand; pricing is not driven by cost except as a floor. This is economics 101.

[psim1]

The major tech companies are doing it. Nonsense maybe, but you're not going to win an argument with them. "At-will."

[sedachv]

What argument? It is a salary negotiation. Do you not bother to negotiate your starting salary either?

[jupiter90000]

In addition, some states may penalize the employer for not paying state payroll taxes including state unemployment insurance for the employee. Realistically, this may be difficult for a state to determine but if there is a lease or mortgage involved it could make it more likely.

In any case, as an employee I may not care that much about paying back taxes later or whatever, but I think you're right there could be unintended consequences with this.

[withinboredom]

This is easily handled when filing your taxes. Your employer will never know. Where it might impact things is having out-of-state health insurance and finding a doc that will deal with that. I up and moved to another country (not slyly) and I rather like it; my son speaks fluent Dutch. Look up the Dutch American Friendship Treaty.

[aspaceman]

I think they mean ask for forgiveness instead of permission, as the saying goes.

[cudgy]

Sounds like a great employer ... asking permission to move. What’s next? Provide them with spousal income figures so the employer can adjust your pay accordingly?

[standardUser]

That makes as much sense as basing someone's salary on their zip code, as if living in a less wealthy area make them a less valuable employee.

[lovegoblin]

> There is a big difference between "never going to an office again" and "not going in 5 days a week".

Yes, but I'd argue there's an even bigger difference between "not going in 5 days a week" and "going in 5 days a week."

As soon as you're remote even just part time, that means all your internal tooling and everything must be remote-compatible. Way more of your communication becomes async-by-default. And if some people are 1-2 days wfh, what's to stop some people from choosing 100% remote? And if that's happening, why limit your hiring to local?

Even part time remote employees is a culture shift.

[sokoloff]

I think a lot of company leaders will nod along with the picture you paint above, but any company that's 40% or less remote will probably recenter on sync-by-default, in-person, and where being-at-headquarters matters.

[ska]

Pandemic has force many/most placed to come up with something remote-capable, at least temporarily. It's a big shift, I absolutely agree. I think it's mostly all that happens though - the "slippery slope to remote" you describe mostly wont happen. Of course we are both speculating.

[folkrav]

Anecdotal: my wife just got confirmation that it's gonna be 1-2 days/week from the office on her end once things calm down. I'm fully remote, with the expectation of a larger in-person team sync-up every week or two (that didn't happen yet because of COVID). My sister's boyfriend's team are already talking about 3/4 days of remote work after COVID.

I do agree that for most companies it probably won't be full remote, but if it just resolves in more flexibility, I'm all for it.

[hwoolery]

"a few more remote friendly companies". Respectfully disagree - the market will make this decision, and now that employees have all tasted the benefit, they are going to work for companies that give them that freedom. On top of that, most companies have seen equal or greater productivity (no commute, fewer sick days, etc), and will at least downsize their real estate for cost savings. There's little argument to make people come back to an office if there is no obvious benefit.

[ska]

There are some pretty strong assertions in your comment that I'm not convinced we actually know the answer too yet. I've seen senior people talking about "manageable productivity drops" more than "no difference", or "even better" but of course sampling bias applies.

But also, there is a potential semantic difficulty. By remote friendly I am thinking about "open to hiring a single person in a different city/country", not "employees that don't come into the office much".

I would draw a distinction between those, and I'm not convinced we'll see a huge shift in the former.

[formercoder]

My guess is the following will take place: companies will generally be more open to WFH. Those who spend more time in the office will develop stronger networks and relationships, will be able to advocate for themselves more easily, and thus will be more successful. People will snowball back into the office as they see this happening. Keep in mind I’m generalizing, I’m fully aware that you can create a culture that doesn’t disadvantage those that are remote, I’m just not convinced that broadly will happen.

[cudgy]

“ Those who spend more time in the office will develop stronger networks and relationships, will be able to advocate for themselves more easily, and thus will be more successful. People will snowball back into the office as they see this happening.”

Completely disagree with this. The future is going towards decentralization of work using tools like virtual reality and other communication mediums that have yet to be created. This area is already hot and huge sums of money are going to be spent to optimize for it.

Workers that rely on the traditional staying in the office to gain relationships and schmooze with the boss will be left behind. Besides, why is it assumed that the bosses will be in the office?

[dalbasal]

I think that "after the dust settles" may not be such a specific point.

We sit at our desks and communicate via IM & email anyway. The internet has changed reality, and changed a lot of the underlying logic for the status quo. Social distancing for a whole year is one hell of a catalyst.

Meanwhile, there are real economic factors like large housing cost and wage disparities between (often nearby) locations. Reasons why remote isn't always good notwithstanding, underlying economics exerts has a ratchet like influence. ...Not to mention globalisation.

So yes, I agree that the maximalist prediction is overblown. That said, I think this is a complex chain-of-events type of process that is now going to be moving faster. Companies are now more experienced/capable of remote. Employees are more capable of it. People have an understanding of it, how to fix it, etc.

It's a combination of prevailing wind and gust of wind.

[zelos]

That's definitely my sense of it. In normal times I worked from home one day a week and it was (ever so slightly) frowned on. I expect that to shift to most people doing one day a week at home and many doing 2-3 days.

[lastofthemojito]

I'm curious to see what other changes come about in this new sometimes-remote world.

These days, most professional employees get a set amount of vacation time, lets say 20 days. In the previous system, if you wanted to fly halfway around the world to visit family or what-have-you, you might use half of those vacation days in one go. Now, if you're only expected to be in the office 1 day per week ("Meeting Monday"), you could take that same trip and use just 2 days of vacation, assuming you're working, or at least a making a passable semblance of working during the rest of that trip. Heck, you could take almost half of the Meeting Mondays for a year if you work the rest of the time.

In some sense, that's no problem. One of the big points of remote work is that it doesn't matter where you are, as long as you get your work done. But the reality is, those occasional in-person days seem to be very important for really connecting with teammates. If Nomad Ned seems to always be missing Meeting Monday but I can rely on Local Larry to be there, I may be much happier and feel more connected with Larry, even if they both take the same number of vacation days per year.

Between geopay, tax rules, wanting employees to be close enough to an office for in-person meetings or emergencies, etc, I think employers are going to become much more invasive in terms of tracking the locations of their employees going forward.

[corobo]

Oh yeah the real change will be that you now have to work when sick instead of taking the day off

Just work from home :D

[jermaustin1]

Thankfully my job has kept the same sick policy, if you are sick, don't work, just rest and get better. Granted we are all consultants and contractors, so it also saves them from paying for a full day with a likely substantial decrease in output.

[tester756]

wtf? no, lol.

I don't think anyone sane would even suggest that unless very specific stuff

[irrational]

My company has already said that we will never be a remote working company after the pandemic is over (we have all been working remote since last March and they are saying that it probably wont be until August or September that we move back to campus). I think most of that is because the company just finished building 2 million square feet of additional office space on campus just before the pandemic.

[pjettter]

But what if their workers are more productive those days when they are working remotely? That should pay down on the investment sooner! I never understand shortsightedness...

[francisofascii]

Has anyone brought up the Sunk Cost fallacy yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect

[irrational]

To whom? The company has many tens of thousands of employees. Who knows who is in charge of these kinds of decisions.

[ghaff]

The whole landscape probably shifts a bit. More people fully remote. More WFH more days per week than they did before. And so forth. But, yes, I don't expect many companies who currently have an office(s) to close them down. Maybe reconfigure, shut down expansion plans, hotel as needed, etc.

Won't really affect me as I was fully remote before this (in spite of being commuting distance from a company office). But I definitely know people who have moved out of the area.

[ska]

I agree the whole landscape shifts, I just think it won't be even distributed and most of the change will be relatively small, not radical reorganization.

[lostcolony]

Yeah, that's my hope too. It expands the 'reasonable' region to work from by a LOT, and gets the benefit of both worlds. Honestly, a lot of companies would benefit if they used it as reason to try and ensure that on site days were synced, and any meeting of substance was held for those days.