Chris Herd Profile picture
Dec 4, 2020 22 tweets 4 min read Read on X
I've spoken to 1,500+ people about remote work in the last 9 months

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge before 2030

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍
🚜 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. Better schools, faster internet connections are a must
⏰ Asynchronous Work: Offices are instantaneous gratification distraction factories where synchronous work makes it impossible to get stuff done

Tools that enable asynchronous work are the most important thing globally remote teams need. A lot of startups will try to tackle this
⚽️ 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
🌍 Diversity & Inclusion: The most diverse and inclusive teams in history will emerge rapidly

Companies who embrace it have a first-mover advantage to attract great talent globally. Companies who don't will lose their best people to their biggest competitors
✅ Output focus: time will be replaced as the main KPI for judging performance by productivity and output

Great workers will be the ones who deliver what they promise consistently

Advancement decisions will be decided by capability rather than who you drink beer with after work
💰 Private Equity: the hottest trend of the next decade for private equity will see them purchase companies, make them remote-first

The cost saving in real-estate at scale will be eye-watering. The productivity gains will be the final nail in the coffin for the office
😴 Working Too Much: Companies worry that the workers won't work enough when operating remotely.

The opposite will be true and become a big problem

Remote workers burning out because they work too much will have to be addressed
✈️ Remote Retreats: purpose built destinations that allow for entire companies to fly into a campus for a synchronous week

Likely staffed with facilitators and educators who train staff of how to maximize effectiveness
❤️ Life-Work Balance: The rise of remote will lead to people re-prioritizing what is important to them

Organizing your work around your life will be the first noticeable switch. People realizing they are more than there job will lead to deeper purpose in other areas
💩 Bullshit Tasks: The need to pad out your 8 hour day will evaporate, replaced by clear tasks and responsibilities

Workers will do what needs to be done rather than wasting their trying to look busy with the rest of the office
🧘‍♀️ Health & Wellbeing: A lack of commute will give workers 25 extra days a year to do other things

Workers will exploit the freedom they have to organize things more freely in their day. Afternoon runs, morning meditation, 2 things a lot of people I know now do
🤖 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
💀 Death of HQ: the office is dead but offices will persist. They’ll be used less frequently then hardly at all

Co-working, subscription clubs, will emerge that let workers who prefer that mode of work to operate from there
🚐 Remote Living: Work from anywhere RVs will become huge business

Associated business parks and services will spring up. This will happen even more rapidly as self driving tech emerges

Expect a @Tesla product in this space
⚖️ lifework balance: massive increases in part-time and freelance work

A recognition that we no longer have to sacrifice work for living, we can organize work around our lives
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Community Led SaaS: as no-code continues to grow, tech is barely a barrier

Communities become the most important most a company has
🎟 Remote Visa: small nations coming together in order to attract remote workers at different stages of the year

Huge opportunity to synchronise education to enable families to be more fluid in their locations
🛑 Meeting Death: wasting 2 hours travelling to a meeting will end. The benefits of in-person are eroded by the benefits you get of not travelling

Conferences and quarterly networking events will becomes more important for cultivating in-person relationships
💃 Personal choice: the smartest people I know personally are all planning to work remotely this decade

The most exciting companies I know personally all plan to hire remotely this decade

~90% of the workforces we've spoken to never want to be in an office again full-time
✍️ Written over spoken: documentation is the unspoken superpower of remote teams. The most successful team members remotely will be great writers

Companies are searching for ways to do this more effectively. Tools that enable others to write better will explode
Interested in why these companies are talking to me? FirstbaseHQ.com

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More from @chris_herd

Jul 11, 2023
The phrase “Remote work” has been hijacked to mean Work from Home

Remote work does not mean WFH, it means Work from Anywhere (WFA)

Here are a few other things it means:
🤑Remote work means not being handcuffed to an expensive city with a high cost of living and little disposable income left over
🔑Remote work means access to the best opportunities from where you live your best life
Read 22 tweets
Jan 27, 2023
In the last 2 years, I've spoken to more companies than anyone else in the world about the future of work

Here are the 21 most important things I've learned:
🏢 Office Death: companies are letting leases expire and planning to cut office space by 50-70%

No company intends to have enough space for 100% occupancy. They will expect every worker to operate remotely 2-4 days a week
🌍 Distributed Companies: ~30% of companies I speak to are getting rid of the office entirely

They are doing this because they have seen productivity increase and workers demand it
Read 22 tweets
Jan 25, 2023
Over the last 2 years, I’ve spoken to thousands of companies & workers about remote work

I’ve shared those insights – often provocatively – to drive conversation on two things:

1. Workers deserve a better future of work
2. A better future of work = a higher quality of life
A better future of work is one that works for everyone.

From single parents to people with health conditions and impairments that make working in an office impossible.

Making what you can do more important than where you live – is a starting point in a much longer journey.
I spend every day obsessively trying to accelerate the world toward that future.

Because of that, I’m honored to be named as a leading voice in the Future of Work Space by Onalytica

onalytica.com/blog/posts/who…
Read 8 tweets
Dec 29, 2022
I've spoken to 2,000+ companies about the future of work in the last 12 months 

A few predictions of what will happen in 2023

[ a thread ] 🌍
☠️ Office Death: leases are expiring and not being renewed, companies will try to cut their office footprint by 50-70%

Nearly 0 companies will have enough space for 100% of their employee base to go back to the office full-time
⏰ Goodbye 9-5: The war for geographic independence is been won: workers can access great opportunity from anywhere

The next war is for time independence

Not needing to be online for an arbitrary “workday” which forces people to work when they’re not at their most productive
Read 23 tweets
Oct 7, 2022
IT leaders are the hidden superstars of remote work. They handle the hardest problems with no tools to help them do it

If you're a modern IT leader who wants to dominate the rise of remote work you should check this out 👇

brighttalk.com/webcast/19698/…
The more companies I talk to the more I hear modern IT leaders expressing the need to completely shift how end-user computing equipment is managed, due to remote work

There are a variety of reasons why
Managing end-user or desktop computing equipment was always the most manual, least rewarding, hardest to staff, and lowest ROI activity IT engaged in

There’s no reason to be nostalgic or protective about this set of tasks
Read 15 tweets
Sep 30, 2022
I’ve spoken to 2,000+ Companies worth a combined $500B+ about remote work

Here are a few things I've learned

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍
☠️ Office Death: If you go to the offices of big tech companies, out of thousands of seats only 2-3% are used on a daily basis

Workers want the flexibility to choose when or if they come

leases are expiring and not being renewed — Companies won’t have space to ever return
🏃City Flight: workers aren’t returning to the cities their offices are in

Many will end up quitting their jobs if their companies try to force them back to the office
Read 20 tweets

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