The media would have you believe it’s almost 50/50 whether people want to return to the office or continuing to work remotely after Covid-19.

The reality is far clearer

• 90% of people never want to work in an office again full-time
• 50% of people never want to work in an office ever again

The dissonance around this is huge

People who love offices love offices and think everyone else feels the same way as them. The problem is that clearly they don’t.

The office is broken and always has been.

It’s great if you belong to a very specific demographic. …

Companies who adopted technology 20 years ago replaced every company that didn’t.

Companies who adopt remote working will replace every company that doesn’t tomorrow.

The reason is incredibly simple: cost & talent.

Cost

Office-first companies won’t be able to compete with remote-first companies in terms of efficiency, both economic and operationally. Not only will remote-first companies increase their average level of talent with each hire, they will be far more cost-efficient. City living is subsidized by companies, leading to a lower disposable and quality of life.

💰Real Estate Cost

Office-first companies spend $18,400 on average, per workplace, per person

The best remote setup on the planet costs $2,000 per year, coffee included. …

‘I’m not against remote work’ they say

• ‘But what about the people who can’t work from home’
• ‘Not everyone can afford an extra room for an office’
• ‘There are people who miss the human interaction’

Variants of the same argument are currently being blasted on social media. It’s never the person writing that suffers these things, but they’re trying to look out for other people.

The office is a critical element of living it seems in the minds of many. A second-family. The quality of face-to-face interaction is so much higher than it is virtually. The risk to the business if you can’t mistakenly solve problems informally in spill out areas or round the water cooler. The gossip. Politics. …

The 2020s are the Remote Work decade.

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge:

1. 🤖Personal RPA: Robotic process automation will transform work for individuals.
   
   No-code tools that enable workers to built bots that automate menial parts of their roles will be huge
2. ⚽️ Hobbie Renaissance: Remote working will lead to a rise in people participating in hobbies and activities which link them to people in their local community
   
   This will lead to deeper, more meaningful relationships which overcome societal issues of loneliness and issolation
3. 🚜 Rural Living: World-class people will move to smaller cities, have a lower cost of living & higher quality of life
   
   These regions must innovate quickly to attract that wealth. …

The 2020s are the Remote Work decade.

Remote work has the potential to be the biggest quality of life upgrade in work history. A few predictions of what is likely to emerge:

1. 🤖 Personal RPA:

Robotic process automation will transform work for individuals.

No-code tools that enable workers to built bots that automate menial parts of their roles will be huge

2. 🚀 UI-Less Tech:

Friction while working remotely is one of the biggest communication problems for remote

Instant communication which isn’t distracting, disrupting or about surveillance will be super important

3. 💀 Death of HQ:

The office is dead but offices will persist. …

The rise of a global pandemic accelerated certain trends by over 10 years. Remote work, in particular, has been forced upon millions of workers who have now experienced the tremendous benefits first-hand.

Fortunately for people whose companies would never have considered remote working prior to COVID, they now know the pro’s massively outweigh the cons. This practice will be far more efficient in the long run and mean we’ll never return to office-first working in the future.

I had the good fortune of being a remote worker prior to COVID. I evangelized the benefits widely due to the massive quality of life increase I received as a result of it. The vast majority of people are looking forward to continuing to work remotely after COVID due to how successful it has been. …

The world has changed. A new normal has been accelerated by over 10 years in the space of a few months. Habits and behaviors that would have materialized over the coming decade have calcified in days.

The future isn’t remote so much as it is the present. The most obvious place where this is noticeable first was always going to be work. Remote is less about the future of work and more important to the future of living. Cities will be unbundled. Relationships will evolve. Real estate must adapt.

Everything will be affected.

Even areas that assume they will be immune will change.
One of these areas will be venture capital. …

I’m transitioning my longer-form content to substack.

If you’ve enjoyed my blog posts I’d appreciate you signing up here!

I will continue to blog about the future, technology, innovation. It will also include our investor updates and the remote work revolution

Thanks

chrisherd.substack.com