Thread by @chris_herd

Over the last 12 months, my tweets on remote work have had 80,000,000+ impressions

Here are my learnings, predictions & advice

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

📚 The 21 most important lessons talking to 2,500 companies in the last 12 months taught me

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🏢 HQ’s are finished: companies will cut their commercial office space by 50-70%

The will allow every worker to work from home 2-4 days a week, and come into the office 1-2 days a week

🌍 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

⭐️ 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

💰 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

📈 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

✈️ 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 Rico seem to be the most popular

💃 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

🚨 Async by default: is the thing that organizations are struggling with most

The majority of companies have replicated the office remotely and it is causing strains that are beginning to show

🤕 Personal injury: These are exploding. Companies haven’t moved quickly enough to prevent them and back, neck and repetitive strain injuries are becoming a huge problem

Expect this to remedy this quickly by providing better, ergonomic equipment to workers

🌐 Universal problems: doesn’t matter the size of the organization, every company is dealing with the same thing

We spoke to early-stage companies, publicly listed tech companies, through to legacy incumbents with hundreds of thousands of employees

All will be more remote

🏭 Pollution reduction: many companies we’ve spoken to care massively about the environmental impact that eradicating the office – and the commute – will have

108 million tons of Co2 less every year

❤️ Quality of life: even more importantly companies are realizing that they don’t need to expect workers to waste 2 hours a day commuting to sit in an office chair for 8 hour

Almost every company we talk to believes that their workers will be happier as a result of remote work

😨 Remote pressure: a few companies we’ve spoken to have decided to be more remote than they initially intended because their competitors already did it

There is a fear inside companies that if they don’t go remote they will lose their best people to their competitors

👻 Remote fear: most companies aren’t scared about the quality of work that will be produced

They are scared about intangible things they can’t measure
‘quality of communication’ && ‘collaboration in person’ && ‘water cooler chat’

Many have realized these were excuses

🚀 Output over time: the measure of performance in the office is how much time you spend sat in your seat

The measure of performance while working remotely has to become output. Tools that enable this to be tracked more accurately are something we are asked for a lot

✍️ 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

👨‍🏫 Flattened orgs: middle management is in trouble, an unnecessary bottlenecks which serve no tangible purpose inside async organizations

Companies need coaching and facilitators to maximize organizational effectiveness

🎟 Company Resorts: Several companies are thinking about creating resort like compounds where work happens in person

Expect these to be built in incredible locations and focussed on providing the best on-site experience possible

👩‍⚖️ Remote Laws: Many companies are beginning to operate under the assumption that the choice to work remotely will become a legal right

This will give workers the option to choose where they work, and many companies are acting before they are forced

🛑 Meeting Death: Wasting 2 hours traveling to a meeting will end. The benefits of in-person are eroded by the benefits of not traveling

Conferences and quarterly networking events will become more important for cultivating in-person relationships

🎳 Internal community: Team cohesion and company culture isn’t impossible remotely – but it’s very different

In the same way companies are finally realizing the power of community externally – internal community may become even more important to a companies success

Why are so many companies talking to me?

FirstbaseHQ.com

🔮 The 2030’s will be remembered as the remote work decade

20 predictions on what is likely to emerge

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🚜 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

⚽️ 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

💩 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

🚐 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

🎫 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

🏝 Wellness Days: The pandemic has shown remote work works.The lack of boundaries has caused burnout

Many companies are implementing wellness days where their teams get an unplanned day off once every 1-2 months

🏡 Micro Co-working: a home on every street is transformed into a hyper local co-working space.

It comes with all the amenities needed, like high-quality coffee, and has on-demand fitness equipment like @onepeloton bikes

🧰 Vertical Tools: @NotionHQ, @LoomHQ, @zoom_us etc. are incredible horizontal products that do nearly anything

Vertical products that do one thing, operating around a constraint that looks like a feature, will explode to prominence

Meetings, async & culture big opportunities

🗣 Voice Tech: You speak 7x faster than you type and you read 2x faster than you listen

Tech that let's you consume and input via these modes will arise and interface with every possible tool you use

🚘 1 Car Households: The rise of remote will have tremendous indirect benefits towards slashing pollution

Families will benefit from only needing one car slashing cost of living, potentially cutting commuting a lot

💫 WFH Experience: offices have emerged to provide incredible experiences inside some companies. Lunches, launderettes, child care

Companies will differentiate in this domain rapidly. The remote culture and experience a company offers will be a massive attraction for workers

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Community Led SaaS: as no-code continues to grow, tech is barely a barrier

Communities become the moat important moat a company has

💣 Hybrid Implosion: the worst of both worlds because it dilutes the benefits of remote or office work

The maximization of the negatives of each mode will mean that hybrid companies are the least successful of the 3 options: remote, office, hybrid

🛠️ Remote Tools: Companies operating remotely now will have created tools every remote team on the planet needs @Zapier, @Gitlab, @GitHub, @FirstbaseHQ will spawn Mafias who take these internal tools and create startups around them

Several $Billion Startups to emerge this way