On remote
Remote is here to stay, there is no question about that.
It opens the market for people that for any given reason can not or don't want to move to a particular location, and it enables companies to access talent worldwide.
1Commutes are generally terrible, specially in areas where most of the jobs are, and folks want to spend that time doing other things. Offices can be productivity sinks, with a lot of noise and distractions. Remote work is a perfect solution for folks that fall under these buckets.
I say this as a person who does not particularly enjoy working remotely.
That said, there are ramifications that are unclear to me.
Growth of junior profiles
How will remote affect the growth of new grads / very junior engineers?
It is much easier to onboard in a new company when you have experience. You will probably know the tools, you will be familiar with the processes, and in general you will know how software is made. Onboarding into the new company might be challenging, but it will most likely be doable.
People might come from a zero knowledge background. This is specially hard for people coming from Bootcamps or similar education programs.
The talent war
Every time I read someone from my home country (Spain) announcing that they will start working for a foreign company, I feel truly happy for them.
At the same time, that is a highly talented person that will most likely not be accessible for the local companies in a very long time. Not even the hottest startups in Spain can compete with an average American, or even UK company hiring remotely.
I think this will go two ways: either this pushes the local market to compete for global talent, even if it it without money (looking at you, 4-day work week), or this might hurt the ecosystem in the long term.
In-promptu collaboration
In a remote world, there is a rather high barrier to get someone's attention, which is not necessarily a bad thing per se.
Best case scenario you know what you want to know, you already know the people and how everyone prefers to be contacted, and you have developed enough trust to schedule time on someone else's calendar.
This can be specially tough for more junior profiles. Would I be asking dumb questions? Would I waste this person's time? is 15 mins enough? 30? her calendar looks incredibly busy and I don't want to disturb her with my questions ...
It is arguably easier to access someone when you work in the same space. You might see this person coming from a coffee break, or just going back to her desk after helping another perosn, which might be a good time to ask a quick question.
You can also read body signals (is this person tired? focused?), which are harder to get in a remote-only workplace.
Communication bandwidth
In a very Javascript Framework fashion, a new remote work tool is created every hour. While some of them are truly impressive and useful, for certain types of tasks nothing beats people in front of a whiteboard.
Rapport
It is harder to feel connected
The pandemic forced companies to replace the in-person bonding with all remote activities that are hideous. Since the pandemic started I have talked to many people (some extroverts, some introverts) working of different roles (some technical and others not), and everybody hated these remote team building activities. These events caused stress, dread and left them depleted for the day.
I don't know what the solution is, but I know for sure that a remote murder mistery where you dress up in front of your camera is not.
