Is remote working going to evolve our careers to the next level or bring them to extinction?
I’ve always loved the idea of remote working. Taking a day or so here and there to work from home without the distraction of the office or the exhaustion of a commute. So I should be pretty happy with the current state of remote working?
On LinkedIn I’ve seen plenty of posts by white collar professionals claiming that “I can work as effectively from my family home next to the beach as I can in my office, it suits me much better and so my employer has to respect that”.
I found this article from Luay Rahil a good explanation on why I also feel that this was not a positive long term development. Basically if you can pay someone remotely in the USA to do some graphic design work, why would you just not outsource that to India where the exact same output can be produced far cheaper?
I’m however not convinced by the prediction that all white collar jobs will be outsourced. After all, it has been possible to outsource a great deal of IT work to India and other countries since (approx.) the year 2004 and even earlier, and even with the obvious cost benefits there is still today high demand for local skilled IT workers in the advanced economies.
Nevertheless it does beg the question that if you are 100% remote, then what exactly are you bringing to the table? Localized knowledge of a specific industry, laws and regulations? Fluency in a particular human language or dialect? Are you just somehow more talented at what you do than someone in another country? If we are truely honest, for most of us our benefit is physical proximity and the enhanced levels of collaboration that it enables.
As the article suggests, the ability to adapt to a hybrid way of working will serve us well. The ability to whiteboard and collaborate for two days a week can absolutely fit with some days of focused work at home will provide a competitive reason to retain white collar workers in country.
