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> COVID merely accelerated this trend, as it did with a lot of pre-existing social and industrial changes. My perspective is quite different. Perhaps for more
by patrickk 6y ago
> COVID merely accelerated this trend, as it did with a lot of pre-existing social and industrial changes.
My perspective is quite different. Perhaps for more innovative companies this is true that it accelerated the trend, but there are plenty of stuck-in-the-mud companies where COVID-19 forced their hand to move to remote quickly, and they would've never done this without COVID. That's was I saw (outside the FAANG, outside the US) in a traditional industry.
There was a telling survey posted some months back (can't find it unfortunately) "What accelerated digital transformation in your company?" and the answers were management or COVID, the response was overwhelmingly COVID.
- monkeydreams 6y agoYeah, the shift was no means universal in breadth or depth, but it was there beforehand (remember Wework?) and this pushed more traditional industries to take it up. Another example would be ties; already in Australia it was becoming common to see professionals wearing business casual rather than suit-plus-tie (especially in summer). A walk around the CBD of Melbourne recently suggested to me that COVID has hit suit-plus-tie very hard, but suit and no tie appears to be going strong.
- ghaff 6y agoNot the survey in question but we did one last year that showed a significant acceleration of digital transformation. https://www.redhat.com/en/global-tech-outlook-report/2021 https://www.redhat.com/en/global-tech-outlook-report/2021 Also lots of anecdotal stories from senior IT folks. A pretty common theme is that COVID forced a lot of experiments that were on the maybe someday/probably risky pile and a lot of them turned out better than expected.