Office Centricity is Over!
Thoughts on how permanent remote work won.
Ever heard this quote before?
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” (Vladimir Lenin)
Guess what? This week, Remote work adoption jumped a full decade ahead.
Here's what happened and how it will change the way we work:
Unicorns are going remote
Up until now, no single remote company had more than 1,500 employees.
This just changed. Four billion-dollar businesses just announced they'll offer permanent remote work:
This sends an incredible signal to other Tech companies. Here's Tobias Lütke, Shopify CEO (the most valuable company in Canada):
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) May 21, 2020
Enters Facebook..
On May 20, Facebook made an announcement:
‘We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale’ (Mark Zuckerberg)
Facebook's goal is to have up to 50% of employees work from home within the next 5-10 years. See more details on his address through my tweet storm here.
My sense is that Facebook is going remote because they don't truly have a choice. COVID already has them working remotely and hiring in Silicon Valley hardly scales anymore, even with deep pockets.
Zuckerberg didn't seem truly excited about remote. He shared that Facebook simply doesn't have the square footage to bring people back to the office with social distancing. He gets that remote will boost senior developer talent retention, that's huge for him.
What's next?
COVID has every knowledge worker "working from home" for the foreseeable future. Companies that do well financially want to keep operating well and hiring.
Tons of companies are embracing remote work as a new norm. They may keep their offices, those would probably be reworked, possibly downsized.
When Tech Unicorns start hiring remotely at scale, smaller companies will follow suit. Technology is good enough, COVID is here to stay, employees love the flexibility.
There will be adaptation changes, yet working remotely will be the new norm!
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