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

[ a thread] 💻🏠🌍
The numbers 📊

3–4M full-time workers operated remotely full-time in 2018

By 2030 that number looks set to grow to at least 80M workers

I expect that number to increase dramatically as millions of workers experience normal, healthy remote working for the first time
Pandemic Remote🦠

What people have worked through in the last 15 months has been the worst possible version of remote work

Lockdowns, homeschooling, unable to travel, can’t see friends, little freedom to do the things that make us happiest
Normal Remote 🚀

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 Future 🔮

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
Remote Infrastructure 🎡

The thing standing in the way of companies going remote or becoming more remote friendly is typically the ease in which it can happen

As these barriers to entry get removed, remote becoming exponentially more widespread becomes almost inevitable
Coming Disruption 🧨

What happened to companies that didn’t adopt computers in the 1990’s?

What happened to companies that didn’t implement software in the 2000’s?

What happened to companies that didn’t embrace the internet in the 2010’s?
Remote Revolution 👊

What enabled each of those revolutions to happen was massive investment in each of these areas that led to tremendous innovation.

What happens to every company that doesn’t become remote?
Working Preferences 📈

The data coming from internal surveys by companies of their own people tell us how revolutionary this will be

Habits and behaviors have calcified over 15 months and workers now know almost every knowledge-based job can be done remotely
Genies out the Bottle🧞‍♂️

Who wants to go back to wasting their life sat in a pollution emitting steel box, living in an expensive city with hard any disposable income, leaving behind family and friends in pursuit of opportunity when they no longer need to?
Mass Resignation 🏃‍♂️

A recent report by Bloomberg stated that 40% of workers would rather quit than go back to the office full-time

For Millenials that number was even higher: 50%

Companies who try will find out whether workers mean it
The suggestion 📣

Some of the largest tech companies on the planet announced intentions to go back to the office full-time

What followed was talent telling leaders that if they went through with the plan they would quit for remote competitors
The Response 😥

The capitulation was inevitable. How quickly it happened was the only surprise.

The trends of massive companies changing their approach to remote work suggests they have already realized that many people will follow through on this promise to leave
Why now? 🤔

Many of us live and work in a knowledge based economy. Sit at a desk and do most of your work on a computer? You are a knowledge worker

Stand a whiteboard and brainstorm ideas regularly? You are a knowledge worker
The Knowledge Economy 🧠

In a knowledge economy, companies are the people they employ

Don’t have the most talented people? You aren’t likely to be the most talented company in your space
How big could remote work be? 🌍

Not every job can be done remotely

The roles we are talking about are typically desk jobs

How many desk jobs are there in the world? 255M
How many jobs will be remote? 🧮

There will of course be some pullback as companies try to return to the status quo

What decides how many people work remotely won’t be companies

It will be their people demanding it by rejecting a return to the office
How do workers feel about the office? 😭

95% never wanting to work in an office again-full time
70% want to work remotely 3+ days per week
40% want to work remotely full-time
Sceptics remain 🚨

Issues such as the burden of childcare, isolation, mental health, not having enough space in tiny apartments are fair questions asked of remote

Those things are challenges of pandemic-enforced work from home
Potential Answers ✅

As lockdowns ease, childcare returns

As things start to unlock your ability to spend time working in coworking spaces around other people, grab coffee with friends, or work from a coffee shop a few hours a day becomes a possibility
Young People 🌆

Young people living in shared apartments is more an implication of the high cost of living in cities, and needing to be close enough to commute daily rather than an issue with remote work
Remote isn't what some people think it is? ❌

Remote work does not mean you never see your teammates

Remote work does not mean you work from home every day

Remote work means working from wherever you do your best work
Progress ⚙️

This is about evolving from the industrial revolution of work being designed for the collective

Remote work is about empowering every individual to design work around their own requirements in order to do the best work they have ever done
The Future of Living ☀️

Remote work isn’t just the future of work. Most people really don’t care about that

Remote work is the future of living. That is something everyone can get behind
The bull case for remote work
The Bull Case for Remote Work 🎯

Applying those statistics to the overall number of remote work provides a compelling argument towards the belief that a majority of the desk jobs globally will be done remotely a majority of the time by 2030
By 2030 📆

An astonishing 97% of want to work remotely after Covid

50%+ want to work remotely a majority of the time

At that scale, 128M+ jobs will be done remotely at least 3 days a week by 2030

If we hit the higher end of that spectrum 247M+ jobs will be done remotely
The Remote Work Dilemma 🔐

Every company will be forced to go remote and become increasingly remote in order to remain competitive. Inevitably, more people will become remote as a result.
Competitive Advantage 💪

Any company less remote than it’s biggest competitor will be:

Less Talented: can only hire the best person they can afford in a 30-mile radius

Less Cost-Efficient:have to pay $10K-$50K per worker every year on office space
How Office Companies Perish 💀

Office-first companies will bleed talent while their costs remain flat, while their biggest competitors become more talented with lower overheads
Replace of eCommerce vs. Stores 🛍

eCommerce crushed physical stores because it has better:

- Cost
- Choice
- Convenience

Remote companies crush office-first companies for the same reason
Welcome to the Future 🚀

The habits and behaviours that have calcified since make it almost impossible for anyone to go back to the office full-time.

And the longer it lasts the more people who want to go to the office less

Full-time office work is dead

Long live remote work

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More from @chris_herd

6 Jul
Remote work changed my life

I missed my daughter walk, laugh, and talk for the first time due to working in an office

I was told this is normal: “just what happens when you have to put a roof over your families head”

Turns out the need to be in an office to work was a lie
I dream of a future of where you live not determining your access to opportunity

- I’m from a small city in Scotland
- never stepped foot in Silicon Valley

At no other point in history could I still live in this city and have raised $15M to build a global tech company
Offices have been great for some people and terrible for others

The data of women falling out of the workplace during covid id a horrific example of this

Remote work should lead to the most diverse, inclusive and accessible companies in history

But will it?
Read 6 tweets
2 Jul
I've spoken to 10 of the biggest organizations in the world about their plans for remote work

Here’s what you need to know:
🏢 HQ’s are finished: companies will cut their commercial office space by atleast 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: 30-50% of companies will get rid of the office entirely and go remote-first

Companies doing this have seen their workers decentralize rapidly, leaving expensive cities to be closer to family
Read 19 tweets
24 Jun
I've spoken to 2,000+ people about remote work in the last 12 months

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge before 2030

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍
🚜 Rural Living: 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
Read 21 tweets
23 Jun
fear: offshoring from remote work

reality: renaissance of states, cities, towns, and places forgotten about as people left in pursuit of opportunity only available in big cities where they can now return to due to remote work
many of the people who fear this have no idea how high wages are in the places they think jobs will disappear to
and some people genuinely argue that a $10K-$50K expense of an office is going to keep jobs here? $10M-$50M per 1,000 person company

after a global pandemic that literally proved almost any job can be done remotely over 15 months of a global pandemic
Read 7 tweets
9 Jun
Back to the office, hybrid or fully remote?

I spoke to 1,000+ companies over the last 6 months to find out more about their plans

This is what I learned

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍
🏢 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
Read 23 tweets
8 Jun
Remote work is about access to opportunity

I’m from a small city in Scotland. Never stepped foot in SF. Likely never have to

No longer an obstacle to success 🔥
I still live in that city in Scotland

At no other time in history would I be able to do what I’m doing from this location

Remote work will do this for millions of other people globally as well ❤️
I can stay closer to family and friends

My daughters can grow up near their grandparents

Remote work is the most important quality of life improvement in at least a generation
Read 4 tweets

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