[quote=deadzone]Your reasoning for why some remote workers makes sense, and it has nothing to do with Covid. My point is the great majority of things went to extreme levels due to covid. One is remote work, the other main change is the Fed printed over 4 trillion dollars and doubled their balance sheet in 2 years.
With Covid winding down, there will be less Fed support and less folks working 100% from home, overall. You just keep giving niche examples. I never claimed that work at home will completely go away after Covid. But it will go down significantly. It has been publicly announced by several of the major Tech companies. Are you claiming they are lying? What insider knowledge do you have at Amazon and Google that I don’t have? Just because your company isn’t requiring people to work at the office doesn’t change that.[/quote]
I didn’t say that covid was the cause of all remote workers to begin with. But now that covid has proven that remote workers are viable, businesses are seriously considering using remote workers because it’s been proven by many companies that it can be implemented successfully.
That’s the point. The cat is out of the bag. My company was already remote friendly before covid, and simply extended that as an option…But other companies that were hesitant before and saw the results, many are going to continue that.
Previously, most companies were hesitant even consider remote workers as an option because there was the concern about productivity, reliability, etc. Covid forced some of these companies to do this in order to keep running.
Many (not all companies) have figured out it works well for them and even when covid is no longer going to be an issue, they will continue with a remote friendly policy. Some companies will do old school and revert back in office only.. And some employees that are either scared or take offense to that will have the opportunity to switch employers, if their skills/abilities/etc are in demand.
Honestly, Google and Amazon prefer in office, but given how well they pay (better than MSFT), given their comp packages, I’d pour coffee for them if I could get in. Amazon is a little unique in that you don’t really get much before 3 years. If you can survive for 3 years though, that’s serious $$$$…In both cases though, they have enough satellite offices that an employee prospect just has to report to “a” field office. And I’m pretty sure for the right candidate best of the best, they will still make exceptions than the norm…In San Diego, that’s totally possible because like I said Google, Amazon, Apple all have a sizeable presence here now…
The other thing you are discounting is the issues with the supply chain and the now uncertainty of war….Onshoring is now making a comeback where at least in the hardware sector, companies are now compelling to onshore Fab and moving away from China and even Taiwan (or at least second source stuff domestically)… I mean, Taiwan will still be a leader with TSM, but they too are setting up shop here in the US because given the political instability right now in China, there’s a vested interest and a national security interest to bring some of this work back into the US. And given that we have inflation, perhaps that US wages now can justify having some of this manufacturing done in the US again. While companies like Intel never able to let US chip fab workers work remotely to begin with, they are expanding their footprint by now spinning up Fabs in the US for that reason. TSM and Samsung doing the same thing…
These manufacturing jobs won’t be available in CA, but elsewhere in the US, it’s good news.
Long term.. Political instability is probably good for the US…US has the unique privilege of being worlds away from Europe and Asia, where the geo-political instability is happening. Just like in WW1 and WW2, continental US was shielded from main conflict…Seems to me, that US is a safe bet right now to expand to fix the supply chain issue, especially with inflation, that can justify higher wages to do it here.
The serious consideration is if a company spends a fortune to setup more FAB in Taiwan, what if China overruns it like Russia did with Ukraine? From a national security interest, it makes sense to invest in the US.
Work is coming home. And as long as there is hardware work, software work will follow and all the ancillary support technology that comes with it.
