Remote work is here to stay

It seems incomprehensible now, but when I joined the information economy as a newly minted engineer in 1989, I scored a private office. As we closed in on the millennium, vast open plan cubicle farms sprouted up like the creeping ground ivy about to strangle my lawn. The open plan, optimistically spun as collaborative space, was a huge savings to employers. By the early 2000s, few engineers had private offices.

It’s dawned on employers navigating a global pandemic that gig economy workers are fully adaptable to remote working with no loss in productivity.

The prospect of chucking the expense of collocated desks with the concomitant Silicon Valley paycheck will be irresistible to every CEO and bean counter. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said last Thursday that Facebook will be aggressively hiring remote workers. Zuckerberg expects 50% of Facebook’s 48,000 employees to be working remotely in 5 to 10 years.

Make that 5 to 10 months, Zuck.

“For a worker in a given location, their options are to find work at a local tech firm, or one of the national companies that are open to remote work. But if a substantial number of big tech companies like Facebook provide a remote option for their workers, the labor market everywhere has the potential to be transformed.” — Matthew Zeitlin

When we finally get clearance to return to our collocated desks to get those bottles of hand sanitizer from our 24 inch mobile desk caddies, we can all say buh-bye to the collocated desk era. It ain’t coming back.

Where Facebook goes, others follow. Few gig economy workers will miss the open plan office space. Forward-thinking employers will continue to attract the most talented people from a worldwide pool.

Global is the new local. And now local…might well be your old broom closet.