The Bull Case for Remote Work

On March 12th 2020 the world changed.

In the 15 months since remote work has accelerated 15 years into the future. Where prior to the pandemic only 3% of the US workforce worked remotely full-time, after the pandemic 10X that number will.

In number terms the change is enormous. 3–4M full-time workers operated remotely full-time in 2018. By 2030 that number looks set to grow to at least 80M workers. This should be considered the base case scenario. I expect that number to increase dramatically as millions of workers experience normal, healthy remote working for the first time.

What people have worked through in the last 15 months has been the worst possible version of remote work. Lockdown, homeschooling, unable to travel, can’t see friends, little freedom to do the things that make us happiest. As a result, workers have not been able to experience the intangible benefits of remote. The things that make it 10X better than working in an office full-time. These things obviously won’t return immediately, but eventually they will.

The rush of investment in solving problems remote workers have always faced will lead to many of them being better addressed than in the past. This investment will lead to the core infrastructure needed to enable remote work more easily to emerge rapidly. The thing…