What I Learned Speaking to 3,000 Teams About Remote Work

Remote work is the biggest workplace revolution in history and nothing will deliver a higher quality of life increase in the next decade than this. Workers having more flexibility to decide their work schedule, able to operate when they are most productive rather than a fixed day, enables a far better future of work than the one we currently experience.

Organizing work around your life is a huge transition with major implications. Gone is the requirement to beg your bosses permission to go to an appointment, it is the ability to drop and pick your child up from work every day with time in the afternoon to go for your recharging run.

I’ve spoken to 3,000 companies about remote work

These are the 21 Lessons I’ve learned:

1. 🏢 HQ’s are finished: companies will cut their commercial office space by 50–70%. They will allow every worker to work from home 2–4 days a week, and come into the office 1–2 days a week
2. 🌍 Fully distributed: 30% of the companies we talk to are getting rid of the office entirely and going remote-first. Companies doing this have seen their workers decentralize rapidly, leaving expensive cities to be closer to family
3. ⭐ Access talent: The first reason they are going remote-first is simple — it lets them hire more talented people. Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role
4. 💰 Cut costs: The second reason they are going remote-first is because it lets them be far more cost-efficient. Rather than spending $20,000 / worker / year on office space they can provide the best remote setup on the planet for $2,000 / worker / year
5. 📈 Remote burnout: The productivity inside the companies we’ve spoken to has gone through the roof. Their biggest concern is that workers burnout because they are working too hard. They are actively exploring ways to combat this
6. ✈️ Remote onsites: 60%+ of companies we talk to are already thinking about ways to use time together physically to improve culture. The most popular we hear is flying the team into remote locations for ~week. Portugal, Spain, Puerto…