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'The Future of Work is Remote' (venturebeat.com) 186

Posted by msmash from the future-of-work dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook's F8 2019 developer conference dominated last week, with talk of AI and AR/VR and privacy. But the news and reactions were all largely expected, and frankly, I was disappointed there was no detail on end-to-end encryption messaging across Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. No, what really stood out for me this week was last night's Stripe announcement: Its fifth engineering hub will be remote. Stripe has decided that hiring 100 remote engineers makes more sense than hiring 100 engineers in one place. Housing and relocation certainly played a role in the decision, but not enough to just choose a location with a low cost of living. Stripe would rather hire the best 100 engineers, regardless of where they are in the world.

That's huge. It's also inevitable. Remote work is happening everywhere you look. Coffee shops and restaurants, temporary offices and co-working spaces, train stations and airports -- private and public spaces are full of people doing their job remotely. I've been thinking a lot about this, and not just because VentureBeat's editorial team is almost all remote workers. In my personal life, I've noticed a clear pattern. All my friends, and their friends, choose to "work from home" every chance they get. If their job allows once a month, they work from home once a month. If the maximum is once a week, they do exactly that. If their boss is on vacation or traveling for work, they work from home for as many days as the office environment permits. Whatever the maximum is, that's what they do.
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'The Future of Work is Remote'

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  • Yep (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pak9rabid ( 1011935 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:14PM (#58547404)
    Been doing it for about 5 years now. I don't see myself ever going back voluntarily, the benefits are just just too good (no random distractions from co-workers, no commute, save on gas due to a lack of commute, eat lunch at home every day). I save quite a bit of money too from the aforementioned lack of commute and eating at home every day.

    • Re:Yep (Score:5, Funny)

      by totallyarb ( 889799 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:22PM (#58547448)
      But on the other hand, not needing to make oneself presentable for colleagues can have a negative impact on one's standards of personal hygiene. Ahem. Or so I've heard. Definitely not saying this from personal experience, dear me no.
      • Only if you're a lazy slob :p. Seriously, if I don't shower/brush my teeth every day I get a mental fog that just sucks for working with.

        • Re:Yep (Score:5, Funny)

          by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @02:08PM (#58547754)

          Only if you're a lazy slob :p. Seriously, if I don't shower/brush my teeth every day I get a mental fog that just sucks for working with.

          I find I just defecate in my pants and just swat the flies away occasionally when I work from home. Sometimes I just eat the flies instead of getting a balanced meal.

        • I am, however, thinking of asking my CPA if boxer shorts and t-shirts can be written off as "business attire"....

          ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        It's good to get out once in a while, although i work from home and can have groceries delivered i tend to go out every lunchtime to buy food.. Also forces me to remain relatively presentable... I just walk to the shop as it isn't far, and gives me a break from the house.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        And your point is?

    • Yet a lot of places (including Google who provides a bunch of services that make remote work easier...) still demand coming into the office. The few times since taking my current position 4 years ago that I've been approached with interesting offers I've turned them all down because working remote was (at best) a couple days a week thing or "maybe" in 6 months.

      I honestly just don't get it. There are certainly people that do better in an office (either because that's just how they work best or they don't hav

      • Re:Yep (Score:5, Interesting)

        by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:53PM (#58547662) Journal

        I'd think companies would be more supportive of remote workers as it can save them considerable real estate costs.

        It's baffling, isn't it? As noted in TFS, Stripe is planning to hire the best 100 engineers in the world, and they can get them because they're not required to move to silicone valley. (Sure, that's not actually going to happen, but the point stands.) If you need an actual office that people go to once in awhile, pick some space in flyover country near an airport and a hotel. The CEO can run the show from his condo in Hawaii and go surfing every afternoon, the CFO can do his job from his historic Chicago brownstone, etc.

        Why own and operate a multi-million dollar property in an overcrowded and expensive city with miserable traffic? It makes no financial sense, and it doesn't make anyone happy. In the old days it helped to get the talent all in one place, but now it really doesn't matter where the talent lives.

        This winter we had some miserable weather here in the midwest, and a lot of states pretty much entirely shut down. My office worked from home some of the days with sub -30 windchills, and honestly we didn't really notice. We're all using cloud services already from our cubes. No different doing it from the couch while the wind howls outside. We all got the same notifications of comments and changes, updates and tweaks. Life went on, and we didn't go to the giant concrete building in the city.

        How, again, do you justify owning that, maintaining it, and keeping the power and HVAC on?

        We'd rather work from home, and you want less overhead. Ignore the whining of middle-managers, and lets do what's best for everyone.

        • I'd think companies would be more supportive of remote workers as it can save them considerable real estate costs.

          It's baffling, isn't it? As noted in TFS, Stripe is planning to hire the best 100 engineers in the world, and they can get them because they're not required to move to silicone valley. (Sure, that's not actually going to happen, but the point stands.) If you need an actual office that people go to once in awhile, pick some space in flyover country near an airport and a hotel. The CEO can run the show from his condo in Hawaii and go surfing every afternoon, the CFO can do his job from his historic Chicago brownstone, etc.

          Why own and operate a multi-million dollar property in an overcrowded and expensive city with miserable traffic? It makes no financial sense, and it doesn't make anyone happy. In the old days it helped to get the talent all in one place, but now it really doesn't matter where the talent lives.

          I think you are going too far to the other extreme, but over all I agree. There are still positions and jobs where in person interaction is required or beneficial. There are also those that simply do better in an office environment (preferring personal interactions, lack of good remote working space, lack of discipline, etc..) and there is nothing wrong with that. There is also value in having a presence somewhere like SF or SV, but to have more staff there than needed is a silly waste of money/resources in

          • There are still positions and jobs where in person interaction is required or beneficial.

            That island exists, and is rapidly shrinking.

            Sure, if you are building cars you need to be there on the assembly line. Whoops! That's not true either, the car building business is rapidly going remote too. You don't need to sit on the assembly line to use the automation tools or order parts. If a robot breaks down somebody needs to be there to change it out, but that's about it.

      • a lot of places (including Google who provides a bunch of services that make remote work easier...) still demand coming into the office.

        Google's new motto should be "hypocrisy is us" because Google at Google, hypocrisy gets you promoted. It's the backbone of the whole organization.

    • Been doing it for about 5 years now. I don't see myself ever going back voluntarily, the benefits are just just too good (no random distractions from co-workers, no commute, save on gas due to a lack of commute, eat lunch at home every day). I save quite a bit of money too from the aforementioned lack of commute and eating at home every day.

      Statistically speaking, stepping into a motor vehicle is one of the most dangerous things Americans do on a daily basis. When I was working 100% remote, I also negotiated to give back an extra hour of work every day in exchange for taking an hour every day to exercise. (These two hours every day would have normally been wasted sitting behind a steering wheel in traffic.)

      In the long run, you might be saving more than just money.

    • But there is the lack of Synergy.
      This really depends on your work, but some jobs require more interactions, you are going to interact more if you are in a room of people, vs over a WebEx or Skype. Also those distractions such as water cooler talk, is actually a useful method of helping one change their approach to a problem.

    • The best part is I get to decide when to get up in the morning. No more stress getting ready, and I work so much better too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsa ( 15680 )

      I'm the other extreme. I don't like working at some place else than where my work is. No colleagues to ask things and banter with, no handy resources of data nearby, it's lonely at home... I never read work mail at home either.

  • 1099 payed by unit and have to rent there computer / account / software to work.

  • I thought the future was Gig economy. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:22PM (#58547444)

    Or was it Automation? Maybe it's all three. Your new gig is to be remotely unemployed by outsourced automation. At least if you can say, "Do you want fries with that" you are safe... Oh wait, no you aren't. Just tell the robot you want Carl's bigass fries with that.

  • makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:22PM (#58547446)
    When you think about it, you, as an employee, have two choices:

    A) Work at the office, so get up, get ready, dress for the office, drive through traffic, park, walk in, then do valuable work, all while knowing that you must do the reverse at the end of the day. You spend time and money going to/from the office and along the way you pollute, and risk being in an accident and potential injury or illness. or,

    B) Work at home, save money on commute, save time and energy, and pollute far less (conceivably) From an employer standpoint your employees can work in your brick and mortar shop which you have to heat, cool, and maintain all while living in an environment conducive to sharing illness, while causing your employees (whom you pay part or all of their healthcare costs) risk injury and illness just to come to work

    Or, you could save that infrastructure cost, have healthier, happier employees and also reduce the costs of healthcare for yourself and your employees via reducing that travel...

    Now I am sure I missed several costs there, but you get my point!

    • Better food at work, it's cleaner, more ergonomic, the view out the window is better, there are easier ways to get some exercise, and it's easier to collaborate with workers there than over the phone or email or other social media tools. The tools I need are at work as well, I work on embedded systems so there's all sorts of actual stuff you need behond a keyboard and screen.

      I'm also not that social, if I worked from home I'd go stir crazy from the lack of human interaction. I would most likely be less happ

  • Everything old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:22PM (#58547454)
    In five years these same people will be extolling the virtues of having workers on site so they can collaborate better or whatever other reasons they come up with. In another five years, they'll be back to working remote to save on costs, etc.
    • It's the behavior of an underdamped harmonic oscillator [wikipedia.org] as it tries to stabilize at a new steady state position. For a system like this (methods of work), overdampening would be the result of people being too set in their ways and reluctant to try new things. Underdampening would be the result of people being too willing to try new things - not enough reluctance to try crazy new ideas, and prematurely concluding the idea isn't working.

      While ideally you want the system to be critically damped (since tha

    • The trend is clearly in the direction of remote. Sure, backtracking happens, the stock market does that too.

      Remote is not something you just jump into without preparation. There is a class of employees who will take advantage of the situation to be fully absent from work in every sense, I have seen it with my own eyes. Managers are some of the worst offenders. You have to have that culture where, even if remote, you still have regular and effective communication. You have to have that culture where people k

      • I have to confess that I can't understand how anybody can game the system in the way you describe. First, I would argue that if people can sit on their hands while working remotely, they can do so as well at the office - it is not all that difficult to look busy. Second, such employees are obviously not necessary - and if they are not detected and fired in short order, some managers are not doing their jobs. And, again, we are back to the uselessness of managers, as things currently are.

        • I have to confess that I can't understand how anybody can game the system in the way you describe

          Better work on that understanding, because it happens. You are right that this also happens at the office, and if you speculated that the same people are likely to be remote slackers if given the opportunity, you would be right again.

          Working remote requires more discipline and more integrity than working in the office, where everybody is watching each other at optical frequencies. Take someone who is skilled at tactics to avoid work even under direct, constant scrutiny and give them remote privileges, it's

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          One of the key differences is that in the office there is more casual checking in on people to see what they are doing, while remote requires a more active process.

    • Re:Everything old is new again (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @02:10PM (#58547774) Journal

      Indeed. I've seen so many technologies & management techniques repackaged by the next generation under some fancy newfangled buzzword (and misused) that I consider Dilbert a documentary, not a comic strip. Humans are f$cking silly.

      One of the reasons the "remote work" prediction is problematic is that tasks that are easy to remote-ify are also easier to offshore to some low-wage country. Thus, either every offshored person in the US becomes unemployed, or they end up doing something else that is not easy to remote-ify.

      In general US workers are becoming coordinators instead of direct "do-ers". Tasks that are repetitious or easy to define are offshored, with the US staff coordinating between the overseas do-ers and management or end-users. Globalization made labor relatively cheap, including skilled labor. The hard part is communicating what exactly is needed to be done. One has to be somewhat "embedded" with the requestors of the service to understand what they really want because a lot of communication is implicit, context-based, and/or requires domain knowledge.

      • One of the reasons the "remote work" prediction is problematic is that tasks that are easy to remote-ify are also easier to offshore to some low-wage country. Thus, either every offshored person in the US becomes unemployed, or they end up doing something else that is not easy to remote-ify.

        One of these being ability to speak and understand idiomatic English without interference from one's native Hindi. That's why some companies, such as Rural Sourcing [ruralsourcing.com], are promoting replacing outsourcing to India with outsourcing to Indiana.

      • One of the reasons the "remote work" prediction is problematic is that tasks that are easy to remote-ify are also easier to offshore to some low-wage country.

        It's not a prediction, it's actually happening. Has already happened to a large extent. The prediction is: it's going to happen more. Pretty safe prediction, it's simply a better model.

        Does it imply more offshoring? Maybe yes, maybe no. Timezones are a real thing, that tends to keep a lid on the offshoring just by itself. It means, if your offshore boogeyman is going to overcome that difficulty they need to be more that averagely talented. In other words, a net win for you, you want them on your team. Chanc

    • Yes indeed. A couple of years ago is was the open office plan. No doors, no cubicles, only a few offices for conferencing. Everyone was supposed to be working in each other's armpits to maximize collaboration and brainstorming.

      My former boss was a big believer in the school lunch room office plan. Fortunately he didn't have the money to do the remodel of the building.

      • My former boss was a big believer in the school lunch room office plan.

        Of course, with a closed office for himself because, reasons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      That is one of the defining characteristics of the tech community. Repeating the same patterns over and over, and fetishizing not learning from from or even about the past.

  • The future of *some* work is remote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:26PM (#58547476) Homepage

    If you're in an "information" job this may be true, but a whole bunch of other work out there will always require going to the work, not the work coming to you. Not too many plumbers are going to VPN into your house to fix a busted water main. Welders, pipe fitters, boilermakers, construction, HVAC, etc. can't work remote.

    Also, work that is easily "remoted" means it will easily move to the lowest cost performer. If it can be done at half the price by someone in Slovinia, it will be. I like working from my home office when I get the chance, but it can be a double edged sword.

    • Re:The future of *some* work is remote (Score:4, Informative)

      by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:47PM (#58547624)

      I can tell you that in ever company I have worked for, remote workers are the first to get shit-canned.

      • I can tell you that in ever company I have worked for, remote workers are the first to get shit-canned.

        And the first to find new jobs.

    • Re:The future of *some* work is remote (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cordovaCon83 ( 4977465 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:48PM (#58547628)
      Welders, construction workers, and the like have transitive jobs. They are "on-site" jobs, not "remote" jobs. Most of them do not report to a specific office. They are often paid per diem to be on-site. They are often not beholden to live in an area because they need to be near the work - they go home when the job is done and live in temporary housing until then.

      While this form of "migratory" work should be taken into account, I don't think it really falls into the context of this conversation. Today's modern social problem is that the well-paying office jobs are causing housing costs to go through the roof and making it impossible for the service industry workers in a given area to find affordable housing. Allowing "remote" work alleviates this issue.

    • Not too many plumbers are going to VPN into your house to fix a busted water main.

      Bad example. Plumbers are the practically the original example of remote workers, they pretty much never "come into the office". No, your home is not there office. They will typically have a home base, but it isn't your home, and they are seldom there. It's just a fixed address where parts and supplies can be delivered.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )

      If you're in an "information" job this may be true, but a whole bunch of other work out there will always require going to the work, not the work coming to you. Not too many plumbers are going to VPN into your house to fix a busted water main. Welders, pipe fitters, boilermakers, construction, HVAC, etc. can't work remote.

      I think you're misunderstanding the normal definition of working from home: not working from a shared company office. A lot of those roles you list will often have to attend client sites,

  • Soup du jour. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:29PM (#58547500)

    Yeah I heard this 15 years ago, and I myself worked for 3 years remote. Then management gets infected by whatever is trendy, they reverse course, do New Thing for a while, then they fall prey to the latest soup du jour and change course again.

    Does upper management have a gullibility problem? I think hey do. Anywhere -- not just where I"m at now -- I've seen this disease of chasing the fashionable thing everywhere I've been to, and in doing so all they do is piss off the workers and blow wads of cash on useless initiatives. Remote is just one such thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Does upper management have a gullibility problem? I think hey do. Anywhere -- not just where I"m at now -- I've seen this disease of chasing the fashionable thing everywhere I've been to, and in doing so all they do is piss off the workers and blow wads of cash on useless initiatives. Remote is just one such thing.

      It is more like "safety in numbers". They have no clue how to do their job, no vision and no actual leadership skills. So they just jump on the current hype.

  • I'd love to send this to my CTO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rastl ( 955935 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:31PM (#58547510) Journal

    I would send this to my CTO but I would rather be employed than right.

    He's got the "everyone in the office, no matter what" mentality even though most teams are spread out across our entire country and work together just fine using remote tools already in place. He gives no justification for his regressive policy. He just doesn't like remote workers or people who are part time in the office.

    Of course once this becomes more widespread all of our talent is going to bail, leaving the dregs to have to pick up the slack that they can't do.

    Which will justify a proposal to outsource the work since the in house teams can't do it.

    I hate corporate politics.

    • But if you're not in the office, how will mgmt make sure you're following the dress code?!?!??!?!?

    • all of our talent is going to bail, leaving the dregs to have to pick up the slack that they can't do.

      Then it's clearly time for you to bail, don't you be the dregs.

    • I would send this to my CTO but I would rather be employed than right.

      He's got the "everyone in the office, no matter what" mentality even though most teams are spread out across our entire country and work together just fine using remote tools already in place. He gives no justification for his regressive policy.

      He does it for two reasons. First, because he can - he is the boss, and he has to let you minions know that his dick is bigger than yours. Second, because he has to justify his job - this is just one element to prove that his position is not, largely, useless. Although it is, of course.

  • I've been 100% remote since 2005. The future is a long time ago
  • I work from home periodically and have team members that work from home every week. Usually works out well.

    I read once that if you take the top 1% of software developers in China that is more than all of the developers in the US. You have to go up to 3% in India. What that means is that it is difficult to compete on pure skills. Where we can compete with somebody in India, Colombia, Croatia, etc. is that we are often in the office and can collaborate in person.

    Just my $0.02

  • While I would like a good solution to have employees work remotely we have found that we lose 30% of an employees productivity if they work remotely and that is especially true if they work from home. When no one is watch them they tend to take care of the dog or order pizza or work on that leak in the bathroom and state that have done work when they haven't. I find myself having to micro manage these people more and more which then takes considerable time from what I need to do. (and I have a boss to repo

    • You're describing a serious management problem, not an employee problem.

      Seriously. You've just gone down the list of abusive and incompetent management attitudes and strategies, and tried to hit every last red flag.

      The problem isn't them - it's you. Probably you personally, but definitely the culture and attitude of the company as a whole. If you're not motivating and enabling your employees to do their best work, you're a shitty manager.

    • There is a flaw in that 30% conclusion. You aren't comparing it to their time actually doing work in the office. It's just as easy to slack off and not do work in the office.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TechHSV ( 864317 )

      From a managers point of view I can only see this working if there is a PAR job manual and some monitoring software and or cameras to guarantee if we pay for 8 hours we get 8 hours of work.

      What type of work are you doing? I would think you want to measure output, rather than hours in a seat. Is this some type of customer service type of job, where they need to answer phone calls?

      You should be firing anyone who is not getting the job done, no matter how many hours they are working.

    • Re:From a Management Point of View (Score:5, Funny)

      by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @04:08PM (#58548608)

      I think you'll find your employees are more productive when you learn to use paragraphs.

  • In a nutshell, because of managers. Managers are, for the most part, good only for artificially generating work to justify their position. More and more people working remotely will put a dent in said managers' capacity to generate such self-serving, and otherwise useless, work. This will become as the remote work trend becomes established.

  • Some good. All... not so much. (Score:3)

    by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Monday May 06, 2019 @03:24PM (#58548294)

    Some remote work is a huge boon to work life balance. At many times, it makes zero sense to fight your way through traffic to a physical office. But 100% remote is unlikely to ever be the norm.

    The problem with 100% remote is that human relationships are still very much defined by in-person interaction. A lot of nerdy types might find office banter about your kids' T ball games a frivolous waste of time, but those sorts of interactions can be very important to getting people to trust the folks they work with. Being there encourages a lot of impromptu relationship building discussions that would never happen over the phone or email.

    People are also more likely to treat someone they see every day well as opposed to a disembodied email generator with they occasional VOIP chat. That's a big part of the reason why the 100% remote workers tend to be the first fired in a layoff. If the boss is told they need to let 10% of the workforce go, it's a lot easier to pick the guy you've never personally met than the one you've been chatting around the water cooler every day for 5 years.

     

  • I didn't really care for it. All the other employees only really got together once a year at the Christmas party. We talked on the phone regularly during the year about business matters but it was harder to get team cohesion (yes, yes I know. Many of you are antisocial and couldn't give two fucks about getting to know your co-workers).

    I left IT in 2014 and have worked as an attorney in a 9 - 5 office ever since. I like that arrangement much more. Reasons:
    1) I have to make efforts to shower, shave, a

  • Yep, I love "working" from home. I get so much done on my own projects when I work from home. Right now I'm working on some woodworking projects and having to come into work to write code is really cutting into my tool time.

  • I don't see working at home as a perk for employees when the next logical step would be to employ people also working remotely, but from another continent... If employees and employers never meet, where is the loyalty?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      well, yes, that is the actual reason companies get so excited about this. Not only do they get to save on seating costs (since now the employee carries the burden of paying for their workspace), but you can hire vastly cheaper people. It isn't about getting 'the best', but cutting costs and hoping that the reduced productivity hit too hard.

  • Jobs that can be done remotely are the easiest to outsource. If your job doesn't need you to be in the office, they don't need you to be in the country either. Your replacement can be somebody from halfway around the world who will do the job for 1% of the cost.

    In the much longer term, the jobs that are easiest to remote are going to be the same jobs easiest to replace with software.

  • I love how proponents of working remotely often seem to assume that everyone prefers it, and thus if you have everyone offsite you will be picking from a pool of only the best, as opposed to a pool of only the people who want to work remotely.

  • Robert A. Heinlein predicted that with his Waldo short story.

    Let's hope we won't get operated by a robot, remotely operated :-) by a surgeon in his underpants on his couch.
    At least not yet.

  • Everyone's pointing out the obvious upsides to working from home (no commute or hassles or expense finding parking, etc.).

    But I've also seen companies do such things as revamping an office with a trendy "open floor plan", and subsequently driving workers away. Anyone who really valued the ability to go into an office and shut their door to keep noise out, or get a bit of privacy fought tooth and nail for any excuse to work someplace OTHER than the open floor plan office space.

    I think the challenge for a lo

  • It will happen, but it will happen much slower than people hope it will.
  • I started off not being a huge fan of WFH, primarily because anyone who I know who worked from home was a bit of a slacker and a low performer. There were too many stories from other managers complaining their staff are hard to get hold of during the day.

    Fast forward a few years and I'm fortunate enough to have two high performers on the team. We've been working together successfully for around 3 years and last year, both their circumstances changed. At different times of the year, they moved away fro

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