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And stop saying that all creative thinking needs a whiteboard. There are 2 advantages to a whiteboard (you can draw arrows and circles) but linked are 17 reasons why a shared Google Doc is better, including that everyone can write on it at the same time. https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/collaboration-and-whiteboarding/#google-docs-as-a-remote-whiteboard
At Facebook, employees will have to be a certain level of seniority to be allowed remote. In our experience junior people tend to have more experience working digitally, not less. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/05/22/coronavirus-remote-work-post-pandemic/5242420002/
With hybrid it is hard to give everyone the same work experience. Shopify did a great job thinking through this and will require everyone in a meeting to be physically separate and have their own camera and audio setup. https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1263483498339405824
If you don't require this you get hybrid calls, and these are horrible (see link). The only thing worse isn't getting invited to the meeting in the first place because the co-located people had an impromptu chat and even forgot to tell you the outcome. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#hybrid-calls-are-horrible
I think that whenever there is a headquarter there will always be two ways of communicating. To get everyone on the same level you need the leadership to leave the shared office so that the only headquarter is the one online.
During COVID we tend to equate working remote with Working From Home (WFH). At GitLab we'll pay for office space if you want it. WFH will never be the best for everyone. We do see that some people who prefer an office in the beginning transition to WFH during their first months.
My prediction is that at most hybrid companies the leadership will keep working from the headquarters and the default way of working will degrade from 'remote first' to 'remote allowed' (remote employees a second class citizens).
Employees will discover that the company didn't make the shift from rewarding attendance to rewarding output, and that remote workers are not getting promoted at an equal rate because they are less visible. Jeff Morris Jr. had a good take on this in https://twitter.com/jmj/status/1263513964945653761
The productive remote employees will leave for 'all remote' companies that invested in getting everyone a manager who understands what they do by having only one function reporting to a manager, not a multifunctional team of which the manager doesn't understand most disciplines.
At GitLab much of the work is multi-disciplinary, but we don't have the different disciplines report to the same manager. Instead we have stable counterparts and we require each hire to be a 'manager of one' who can self-organize without a project manager. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#no-matrix-organization
After their most productive remote people leave the hybrid companies will blame the lack of productivity on remote instead of the actual cause of hybrid being very hard. You'll see the Yahoo/IBM like moves to force everyone to come to the office again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2017/10/12/why-ibm-brought-remote-workers-back-to-the-office-and-why-your-company-might-be-next/
Andreas Klinger who is head of remote at AngelList summarized this as: "Returns optionally” -> leadership goes back -> trips from remote-first to badly run hybrid -> stop outside of special areas. https://twitter.com/andreasklinger/status/1263587036625121282
Some companies will go all remote, part of them are already cancelling their leases during the pandemic, and another part will do so after finding out that hybrid is hard. Most of these will be successful which is wonderful for the world.
There is so much talent outside of the major metro areas and all of these people can suddenly compete for the high paying and rewarding jobs at the world's leading companies. It will help spread income a bit more equally around the world (despite that inequality will still rise)
Companies will pay market rates based on your location (see link). Rates outside of major metro areas will go up. Market rate inside of major metro areas might go down a little bit but this is counteracted by the giant shortage of talent that still exists. https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/
I want to thank Sue Bostrom for the suggestion to write this and @darrenmurph for partnering on remote. I welcome questions and suggestions. If you want to learn more about remote work we wrote an e-book full of tips that you can download from our homepage https://about.gitlab.com/
