Packy McCormick On Remote Work (1 Viewer)

[Joe Bryant]

My friend Packy McCormick is a thoughtful guy. He wrote a detailed essay on his thoughts on where Remote Work is going and the implications. It's long but good.

https://notboring.substack.com/p/were-never-going-back

 

[Joe Bryant]

McCormick in the article talks about 3 levels of remoteness in work.

1. Old School. Everyone in the office.

2. Hybrid. Some office some remote.

3. Totally remote.

What's you're situation? What do you think is best?

 

[Corporation]

We are an old school type organization. All the higher ups thought we would be option 1 when the new normal arrives. After hearing feedback and seeing how efficient we are in the WFH model, they have moved to option 2. The balance of office/home will be key and it will be dependent on your job function to a large degree. Option 3 complete remote is a non starter especially for our customer facing associates. 

 

[Osaurus]

McCormick in the article talks about 3 levels of remoteness in work.

1. Old School. Everyone in the office.

2. Hybrid. Some office some remote.

3. Totally remote.

What's you're situation? What do you think is best?

I’m a consultant so normally it is old school with everyone in the office. Fortunately for me, I work on-site with a high profile client who was moving toward partial remote working or “teleworking” prior to the pandemic. I will be working one day a week on-site for the client and the other days remotely from home for the foreseeable future (or at least the 4+ years remaining on the contract). The kind of work I do requires me to remote into servers all day so it really doesn’t matter where I am. The bonus for my client is they don’t have to pay me for travel time when I’m at home and not commuting. So hybrid for me I guess or 80% remote. 

 

[snogger]

McCormick in the article talks about 3 levels of remoteness in work.

1. Old School. Everyone in the office.

2. Hybrid. Some office some remote.

3. Totally remote.

What's you're situation? What do you think is best?

We manage the Microsoft 365 environment so working from home is no different then working in the office to support the environment. The only difference is that we use MS Teams to help/ask for help with Co-workers instead of walking up to their desk.

The talk around our company is that when going back to the office becomes the "norm" again sometime next year, our team will be Hybrid.
We will probably only go into the office once a week for Team meetings.

Before joining this company I worked 100% from home for 3 years. I did miss the chance for Face-to-face interactions/meetings with co-workers. So I think Hybrid will be much better.  

 

[Ron Swanson]

I've been working from home + travel for about 10 years with about one week a month in our corporate office. It has been wonderful and I'm way more productive than I ever was in the office. I was always a little self conscious about inopportune dog barks, etc. but the pandemic solved that for me. Losing the travel has also been awesome.

We have a pretty good mix of WFH, hybrid, and on-site in our company depending on the job. It does surprise me how many of our folks who have been WFH for the first time due to the pandemic that can't wait to get back to the office.

Long term I think we will trend more towards WFH but with flexibility.  I love the ability to not geographically restrict recruiting for certain positions. Lots of good folks work in areas that could never commute to us but they can WFH and be a win-win for all. And frankly, in a lot of cases at better value for us.

The pandemic + satellite internet services like Starlink are about to really open up the traditional job market to the benefit of a lot of people.

ETA - I should have read the article before spewing my comments.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Very good article -- I love this sort of long-form analysis.

I'm not 100% sold on WFH in every white-collar industry, but I do think the author is right that WFH is very likely to become much more normal and widely-accepted.  He makes a great point that we're currently in a relatively embryonic stage of this, and it will only become more prominent as technology catches up with the trend.

Great point here:

People Will Move More Often. They’ll experiment with new cities. That could be another win for Airbnb, whose long-term stays let people live in a new place for weeks or months at a time. It’s also part of Chamath’s thesis for acquiring Opendoor. As more people move more often, iBuyers that make the process of buying and selling a home easier will gain more market share in a growing market. 

Now that my kids are out of the house, I would jump at the chance to pick up and live someplace else for a month or two at a time.  I'd want to keep my "home" because I'm a settler by personality, but the ability to travel more and sample different parts of the country would be sweet.

One item that the author either missed or glossed over is how the spread of WFH will affect the white-collar / blue-collar class divide.  This isn't so much "economic" class because there are a lot of place-bound roofers, electricians, plumbers, etc. who out-earn white-collar cubical drones.  But if this author is correct, white-collar cube monkeys are about to enjoy a massive increase in their quality of life, in a society where they enjoy way more cultural capital than blue-collar types.  Our political parties are already in the early process of realigning themselves along white-collar (Democrats) vs. blue-collar (Republicans) lines.  An broad increase in remote work could potentially create a politically toxic source of conflict.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Also, some of the sectors that the author identifies as prime candidates for remote work are going to see massive downward pressure on wages if he is correct.  I would not want to be a 20-something engineer facing a lifetime of competition from however many Indians with engineering credentials. 

And cushier jobs tend to pay less than dirty jobs -- labor economists call this "compensating differentials" but it's a commonsense idea that happens to fall in line with supply-and-demand.  Jobs that go in the remote work direction can attract good workers at lower salary points.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  I voluntarily went into a cushy line of work with a correspondingly lower salary than I could have gotten in other fields, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made aside from conning my wife into settling for me.  But it does matter.    

 

[Joe Bryant]

@IvanKaramazov you would like his other articles I think. He's got a weekly newsletter that is like this each week. He's a good guy. 

 

[shuke]

Also, some of the sectors that the author identifies as prime candidates for remote work are going to see massive downward pressure on wages if he is correct.  I would not want to be a 20-something engineer facing a lifetime of competition from however many Indians with engineering credentials. 

I'm not buying this.  Off-shore engineering consultants have been available long before COVID came around, but my experience with them has been less than positive.

Also, while I fully support some sort of hybrid model, nothing replaces face-to-face in person for brainstorming, problem solving, etc.  Plus too much of engineering is hands on.  Root cause analysis, prototyping, testing, etc.

 

[Joe Bryant]

@IvanKaramazov you would like his other articles I think. He's got a weekly newsletter that is like this each week. He's a good guy. 

@IvanKaramazov and others, while I'm thinking of it, David Perell https://www.perell.com/ is another guy you'd like. Packy is part of David's "student tree". David does a ton of super cool stuff on writing. 

They are both great examples of this new crop of young and talented writers. 

 

[BrutalPenguin]

I've been to the office once since March to pick up a new monitor.  I really don't mind it, but I'm somewhat of a misanthrope, so fewer annoyances from co-workers is good.  The biggest downside is that it's more difficult to keep poor decisions from being made when I'm not in the conversation.  Only half the company goes in regularly and that was just reduced with the recent spikes.

 

[Osaurus]

I went into my office to pick up a new laptop for the first time since the summer. The whole building was a ghost town with maybe 10% of the parking garage full. Not heading back again until next year if summoned. 

 

[Kao-Lin]

2. Hybrid. Some office some remote.

Right at 50/50.  I do a lot of research and program management.  PM is easily a home thing.  The thought of other folks handling my research has me reaching for a gallon size Xanax bottle.

 

[Ron Swanson]

I'll add to this conversation that for remote or hybrid to work a good intuitive communication platform is imperative. In fact, with the right tool, the conversations are much better than in person because more people are easily involved and at their pace. We use Slack for this and it was transformative for us, even pre-Covid. Here's hoping Salesforce doesn't destroy the platform.

 

[tymarsas]

I'm not buying this.  Off-shore engineering consultants have been available long before COVID came around, but my experience with them has been less than positive.

Also, while I fully support some sort of hybrid model, nothing replaces face-to-face in person for brainstorming, problem solving, etc.  Plus too much of engineering is hands on.  Root cause analysis, prototyping, testing, etc.

In the software industry there are a lot of companies going to a permanent remote model. They still want employees to be located in the country or continent for a number of reasons (eg. keep the employee model instead of a contractor model, makes communication easier due to time zones). I see this as a great thing for employees that don't want to move to more expensive cities. It will also be tough for smaller companies to compete for talent when anyone in the country can get paid a silicon valley salary.

I just accepted a new job that is 100% remote. I will miss the face to face interaction with co-workers but I've been working from home for 8 months now so I figure it won't be much of a change.

 

[Poke_4_Life]

I'm in a quasi government job and have been WFH since March.  We have been told we won't have to go into the office until at least June 2021.  

We were 'Old School' before the pandemic, with most cubicle monkeys being allowed 2-3 WFH days per month.  

I believe we will move to a full hybrid model for most cubicle monkeys.  I've even heard the phrase 'locate for your day' tossed around.  Meaning if you have an important meeting that will work best in the office be in the office, otherwise WFH if so desired.  

I like being in the office, but I've adapted to the short commute and I'm not sure I could get back in the swing of going into the office regularly again.  

The article hits home with me on several levels.  Wife and I are empty nesters and she is also full-time WFH.  If I can WFH most of the time, we may relocate to a small town or a lake house, or the mountains, or beach, or just try them all.  Plus if our kids ever move 'away' we can just follow them if/when the grandkids come.  Win/win/win.

 

[The Commish]

I've been doing this for the better part of 21 years.  The first two years, I worked in office a couple days a week, then at home the rest of the week...after that I've been home 100% sans a meeting once a year at the office.  I have ALWAYS had the resources to do "on call work" from home, so I never experienced what DBAs/SAs/Network Admins etc had to deal with prior to that in getting up at 1am, driving to the data center etc.  I say all this so people understand the perspective from which I am coming as I give my next comments.

I dove in head first with WFH and it's been awesome, to the point where I've turned down positions because in that position it wasn't an option to work from home.  I was in the banking industry for the entirety of this experience and even spent time in a part of the country where our bank didn't even have a presence...not an office, nothing.  That was a little weird, but not bad.  As I've watched this WFH concept morph, it's become much more of a "follow the sun" kind of model for us.  So people are "on call" during their working hours but get to be "off" in the evenings to be with their families.  That's a product of remote work/WFH.  That's the biggest benefit I've seen over all this time.  The second biggest benefit is cost savings.  Cost to my company, cost to me, cost to my family etc.

All that said, it's NOT for everyone.  It takes a certain kind of person not to get side tracked, lose focus etc.  I know many people who HATE it.  They like being in the office and chatting it up etc.  I'm task/goal oriented so that stuff doesn't matter as much.  I don't know how the pandemic is going to alter perspective on this.  My hunch is, and why I've changed some of my investments around a bit, collaboration suites are going to get a big boost over the next 3-5 years as companies explore this possibility more.  I think this has opened the eyes of some, but also understand there are some that just won't go there.  Personally, I think it's great.  It's made my work/life balance unbelievably good.

 

[heckmanm]

My company has been nearly 100% WFH since March, with only a small onsite staff (mail room, etc).  Prior to that I think we were hybrid, although I don't know the percentage.

What I'm hearing now is that we'll continue from home until at least April, and they are looking at an arrangement after where half the people will be in the office 3 days and home 2, and vice-versa for the others.  All of that pending the outcome of vaccines and such.