Hey slight tangent, do any of you watch commercial real estate? Relevant to this topic, I’ve had a decent number of friends and former colleagues mention their companies either sold or let their office leases expire to go permanently remote.
I think even the big kids won’t have a huge amount of success going back to how it was pre-covid. Employers are seeing entire teams threatening to resign when push comes to shove, and everyone in my wide circle of IT contacts that wanted to work from home permanently has either had their employer agree to it in writing, or have found another job that is 100% remote and paid more. Working remote is considered part of the overall compensation package now as well, and as long as employees have an edge, we won’t see a much of a swing back to in-office work being mandatory.
I worked in IT for 20 years up until 2017 and have never seen the job market this hot, not even during the .dot bubble. My wife decided to shop last fall and had 5 offers with better compensation in writing within the first 2 weeks, all 100% remote, and she never even got around to updating her portfolio. This has been par for the course with everyone I know working in any capacity of IT for the past year, roughly. Even if the market crashes and we head into a recession, I’m not convinced the worker shortage would even be simply offset or less.
