Work From Home...maybe...

The pandemic driven acceleration of ‘work from home’ (WFH) has created a conundrum for a lot of company leaders. Intuitively most feel the value of getting the teams back together in-person outweighs the benefit of working remote. Especially over time. But a lot of folks have adopted working from home as a new lifestyle, making even a 3-day/week return problematic for some, thus unfair for others.

The thing is, nothing about a job or a business exists in a vacuum. It's all a Darwinian battle for survival. Every person and every business in competition with every known alternative, all the time. True, but not talked about much.

So work from home? Good long-term strategy? Consider for a moment your own career in the context of your remaining life. Ideally, it'll be a source of great fulfillment, and the means to your financial security. Most of us envision increasing opportunity, responsibility and compensation. And as our value to clients and collaborators increases, increased job security as well.

“When you want to help other people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” Thomas Sowell

Three macro factors that preempt WFH, will disproportionately impact remote workers:

1.     Trust and Loyalty Drive Career Advancement: Opportunities for career advancement strongly favor people who demonstrate 1) trust, 2) loyalty, and 3) capability. In that order. Opportunities are rarely offered when trust and loyalty are lacking, regardless of capability.

IN GENERAL, trust is harder to earn when you’re remote. Likewise, loyalty harder to demonstrate when one has already prioritized ‘me’ over ‘we’. There are certainly exceptions! For example, if trust and loyalty are already firmly established, then less frequent in-person maintenance might be enough. But IN GENERAL, it’s likely people who work from home more will see fewer career opportunities, a flatter career trajectory, and earn less over time than people regularly interacting with clients and collaborators in person.

2.     Global Talent Pool: The talent pool for remote workers is global, not local, and the biggest differentiator is cost, not capability. The shift to WFH has greatly accelerated company’s efforts to hire remote staff from wherever it costs less. They have no choice. The existence of the cost differential assures that over time most relatively high-paid remote US employees will be replaced, or paid less as cost seeks parity.

3.     Artificial Intelligence: AI is already increasing productivity. Will AI displace human workers in 2, 5, 10 years? Hard to say. In the meantime, a very prudent career hedge is to build as much unique, personal trust as possible among clients and collaborators. Trust being FAR easier to earn in person than remote.

If you have career and financial aspirations, I recommend viewing your current career strategy and WFH in that context. Don't get so wrapped up in the short-term that you compromise your long-term. Just because a company says WFH is AOK doesn't mean it's best for you.

In the Darwinian battle for dominance, here’s to always being the fittest!

Dave

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Written by me, not ChatGPT