Back To The Office

The writing is on the wall for in-person office attendance – it’s never coming back, and why should it?

Sure, the fathers with 3 young children love to go to the office to get away from the noise, but mostly everybody else likes to work from home.

That will not change.

Recent data points back to my thesis and show that the dispersion of young tech workers throughout the United States will alter the make-up of the tech industry.

First, it will make tech wage bills demonstrably lower since most companies have a policy of paying per local wage structure.

If workers move from Manhattan, New York to Boise, Idaho, tech workers will get paid a Boise wage.

The latest thwarted recall by New York state has fallen on deaf ears.

For instance, New York Mayor Eric Adams called on city residents to “get back to work” after the arbitrary lockdowns.

His call to action was met with a resounding thud and Adams recently acknowledged hybrid work may be here to stay.

Nearly one-quarter of workers are in the office twice a week, according to the survey, with that number dipping to 11% for four days a week.

Still, the share of employees who are working fully remote fell from 54% in October 2021 to 28% in late April, the survey said.

While the numbers show more workers are heading back to the office than a few months ago, the survey also unveiled that remote work is likely to persist, as 88% of employers have said a hybrid office model has a high chance of permanent existence.

Naturally, the percentage of fully remote workers was due to dip because the country opened back up, we simply aren’t locked up anymore.

However, I believe we will migrate into a binary world where high-production workers will be able to spell out the type of work environment they want, and low-production workers won’t have any negotiating power to dictate terms.  

At the very worst, highly productive workers will be forced into in-person office work 1-2 times per week if they are alpha workers.

This shows the amount of leverage that tech companies have lost in their battle to retrench workers back into the old world that no longer exists.

The world has really changed since early 2020 and the tech industry is still fumbling through the fallout and unintended consequences.

Geographically, this is a disaster for tech strongholds like Silicon Valley and good for the low tax strongholds of Austin, Texas, and Florida.

On the bright side, this phenomenon will produce new, exciting, and successful tech companies from parts of the world we never heard of.

Lastly, for the thriving entrepreneur, these events mean that it has never been cheaper to create and maintain a tech company with no need to pay for office space and the ability to outsource work to an army of remote workers in different time zones.

The elevated job vacant numbers reveal that tech workers are being pickier in what job they want to do and increasingly choosy in what type of politics they hope their employer to have.

Outperformance has never been so important in 2022 and the treatment of top employees compared to low-level employees has never been starker and more polarized.

Essentially, I am highly bullish on the future of technology and it’s up to us to create this thriving environment.

 

WHO NEEDS THE OFFICE?