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An interesting sea change in knowledge work is happening. Does anyone know if any other companies have made a permanent switch to remote like this during the p

An interesting sea change in knowledge work is happening. Does anyone know if any other companies have made a permanent switch to remote like this during the pandemic?

codezero 6y ago
Quora is a pretty small company, and the sum total of all startups (not including FAANGs) all going remote will be a small fraction of the population of workers. I guess that’s why you specified knowledge workers. I dunno. Here’s why I think it will and will not happen. My company has been up to 50% remote in the past six years (way earlier when we were smaller) and have gone fully remote since shelter-in-place. We have a really well established remote culture, so it was pretty easy. We’ve had people join in remote roles who found that they were not able to work well in that way. I think it takes a confluence of the company culture, the individual, and the management’s willingness to do new and different work to accommodate a remote work culture. This will not be broad, and some who try it will fail miserably, others will discover new inefficiencies and problems they’ll sink a lot of time into trying to solve. A bulk of the population will go back to their normal day-to-day, and as long as the rest of the world isn’t adjusting, I think it’s unlikely for such a dramatically different work style to take hold outside of a few niche areas. I would love to be proven wrong though, as I really dislike living in the Bay Area, and I’ve become a lot more comfortable working and managing fully remotely over the past four months. Related: My company is fully remote until 2021 - and we’re actively considering what to do after that. I am pretty convinced I will be moving forward with assuming my own team will be fully remote (support and services) if they want to, and I plan to only visit the office for important company/management meetings, but we’ll see what happens after the economy crashes completely.
naveen99 6y ago
Definitely an increase in percentage of remote positions in the June who’s hiring thread. Around 50% I think

An interesting sea change in knowledge work is happening. Does anyone know if any other companies have made a permanent switch to remote like this during the pandemic?

codezero 6y ago

Quora is a pretty small company, and the sum total of all startups (not including FAANGs) all going remote will be a small fraction of the population of workers. I guess that’s why you specified knowledge workers. I dunno. Here’s why I think it will and will not happen. My company has been up to 50% remote in the past six years (way earlier when we were smaller) and have gone fully remote since shelter-in-place. We have a really well established remote culture, so it was pretty easy. We’ve had people join in remote roles who found that they were not able to work well in that way. I think it takes a confluence of the company culture, the individual, and the management’s willingness to do new and different work to accommodate a remote work culture. This will not be broad, and some who try it will fail miserably, others will discover new inefficiencies and problems they’ll sink a lot of time into trying to solve. A bulk of the population will go back to their normal day-to-day, and as long as the rest of the world isn’t adjusting, I think it’s unlikely for such a dramatically different work style to take hold outside of a few niche areas. I would love to be proven wrong though, as I really dislike living in the Bay Area, and I’ve become a lot more comfortable working and managing fully remotely over the past four months. Related: My company is fully remote until 2021 - and we’re actively considering what to do after that. I am pretty convinced I will be moving forward with assuming my own team will be fully remote (support and services) if they want to, and I plan to only visit the office for important company/management meetings, but we’ll see what happens after the economy crashes completely.

naveen99 6y ago

Definitely an increase in percentage of remote positions in the June who’s hiring thread. Around 50% I think