Remote working is here to stay
Remote work will create equality in job and education opportunities
In 1974 I was stationed on an aircraft carrier that pulled into port at the US navy base in Subic Bay, Philippines after one month at sea. Five thousand men flocked to the bars and brothels of nearby Olongapo city. On the way, the sailors crossed a bridge over “shit” river where the water was brown and smelled putrid like an open sewer. A few sailors would throw coins in the river and children who appeared to be between 10 and 14 would dive into “shit” river to retrieve the coins that might mean they could buy food to eat. I saw this and thought to myself, why is fair that where you are born determines whether you are poor or well off?
Fast-forward to 2020 much has changed. Many people in developing countries have risen out of poverty and have a growing middle class as a result of globalization. The Internet enables jobs once done in western countries to be outsourced to countries like the Philippines.
There are still barriers to equality in job opportunities. Steve Jobs built the headquarters for Pixar, and the $5B Apple’s spaceship headquarter complete with 11,000 parking places based on his view “If a building doesn’t encourage [collaboration], you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity. So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.”
Marissa Mayer, an early employee at Google, was appointed the CEO of Yahoo and in 2013 banned working from home for all employees. I read in horror the story of a low-level employee at Yahoo who lived in Modesto where housing was affordable had to commute 2 hours each way to keep her job. I thought to myself, why do these companies need to have everyone work at their corporate headquarters when the technologies they created enabled people to work remotely?
In 2019 Google announced plans for a corporate headquarters in San Jose, Ca. that would create more than 7 million square feet of office space that could house up to 25,000 employees and include 5,900 units of housing. A manager at Google explained to me they believe a centralized workforce was valuable to enable different departments to work together, and they found it difficult to manage remote teams from companies they acquired.
This seems to contradict Google’s own internal review of 5,000 employees which found “We were happy to find no difference in the effectiveness, performance ratings, or promotions for individuals and teams whose work requires collaboration with colleagues around the world versus Googlers who spend most of their day to day working with colleagues in the same office,” writes Veronica Gilrane, manager of Google’s People Innovation Lab.
The advantages of remote working are so significant that it should be disruptive to the traditional corporate headquarters. Companies could employ the best people in the world for much lower wages than in competitive job markets like Silicon Valley. Assuming 15% to 20% of an employees’ working day is unpaid time commuting to work equating to over $3T in unpaid commuting time based on total USA annual personal income approximating $18T. Business travel spending in the USA in 2019 was $1.3T, not including lost time due to travel. Buildings, facilities maintenance, commuting transportation are significant costs.
Remote working reduces global warming and benefits the environment. CO2 emissions are forecasted to decline 8% in 2020 due to COVID 19 lockdowns. The canals of Venice are the cleanest they have been in many years. Indian residents could see the towering peaks of the Himalayas from Punjab for the first time in 30 years, after a massive drop in pollution caused by the country’s coronavirus lockdown.
While many jobs still require a physical presence and face to face communication is still optimal, it does appear that working from home will be more common. About 77% of Americans who normally work in an office environment are working at home, according to a survey conducted April 17–22 by staffing firm Robert Half International. Of those, 60% said their work/life balance has improved without a commute, and 79% want employers to let them work from home more frequently in the future. Almost half of those surveyed in the San Francisco Bay area planned on moving in the next few years citing high housing prices, high cost of living, traffic, etc. Perhaps there will be a blended approach with working from home most of the time and the occasional physical meet-up.
The COVID 19 crisis has forced businesses and people to work remotely and discover remote working actually works. Prior to COVID 19 companies like Hotjar, Basecamp, Automattic (the software developer of WordPress) had close to a100% remote workforce. Now Shopify will be moving to a 100% remote workforce. Atlassian purchased Trello, which had a 70% remote workforce and are trialling and developing guidelines for managing a remote workforce. Google announced allowing work at home for employees for the rest of 2020. Twitter has announced permanent remote working. Mark Zuckerberg stated that tens of thousands of Facebooks 48,000 employees can permanently work from home and predicted half would work from home in 5 to 10 years.
Remote learning could open the best universities to the best students worldwide at a fraction of the cost. Georgia Tech, a top engineering school, launched an online masters in computer science in 2014. The degree costs just $7,000 (one-sixth the cost of its in-person program), and the school now has almost 10,000 students enrolled, the largest in the USA.
My hope for the future from 1974 may yet come true. Where you are born will no longer define whether you are poor or well off. More people will work remotely and be able to choose where they live. It will be your job skills that will set your income, not where you are born.
