Remote Work is Here to Stay

Hundreds of Millions of office-based workers all over the world have quite suddenly found themselves working remotely.  As I talk to my peers at different companies, I hear over and over how well it is actually working out for their teams.

I’ve watched the remote work take hold over the last couple of years. I noticed it most profoundly at 8th Light when I was COO.  When I started as 8th Light’s COO in 2017, about 30% of our engagements were remote. The other 70% were on-site with our customers.  In less than 12 months, that number had inverted.

What happened?  Most companies (including 8th Light’s) introduction to completely remote workers came as a result of the tightening labor market.  A team member would decide that they needed to move to a different part of the world where we didn’t have an office. Rather than lose the employee, we would offer a remote position and place that person on one of our remote clients. Our clients too made the remote shift in order to access and hold on to the best talent.

In 2017, I said “no” to an employee who wanted to relocate to a city where we didn’t have an office and work remotely. He took another job that did offer remote positions. 8 months later, we ended up working on the same project with him with other remote developers from our team. He was the last to leave 8th Light based on location.

This last month feels like the rest of the office-job world is catching up with this trend. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced office workers to figure out working from home.  

Now that we are here.  There is no going back. Even when this pandemic recedes, I predict that our appetite for remote work will not.  City centers have built their last new office buildings. Expressways will never again be widened. Urban migration will reverse as we see more and more people choosing where they live without concern for what office jobs are nearby.

That is why, despite this being a tough moment, it was the right time to start One World Coders.  I knew that remote development would be the future. I just didn’t expect it to become our new normal so quickly.

Welcome to the future.