Will companies working remote due to COVID-19 end up adopting long-term work-from-home policies?

And one thing wrong about Paul Graham opinion is companies can still have lot of unnecessary remote meetings, to be frank some managers demand more status meetings when team members are at various locations.

I have been working from home on and off from past few years. Work-from-home demands to be more organized, communicate more clearly, have proper references of what they are referring, etc. Everyone in the team should understand, value and respect this style of development.

I imagine so. I've been working remotely across a variety of companies for 7 years now. Each company views it as their competitive advantage. Once this experiment is forced across a variety of industries I think it's going to be eye opening for those who were set with the myth of productivity is spawned around collaborative in person stare downs.

I doubt it will work for most companies. Most companies don't have culture of remote working, and they just see it as a less productive way to work.

If they see a rise in productivity and a projected lowering of operating expense, then yes! It's like ~2008 when companies learned they can do the same amount of work with less employees. It was in a way a forced action but when they saw the benefits, they kept it that way.

Same could be true for WFH coronavirus if it lasts long enough to see positive results. Though, WFH in general is trending and feels like an eventual outcome.

The devil advocate in me wonders if the isolation of WFH policies will have a negative result on global immunities to at one-time non-serious illnesses.

Not to minimize the real-life costs of the pandemic, but it's acting as a kind of forcing function for remote work.

Not that remote work hasn't already been on the rise in recent years, but many companies that have held out are now going to join the experiment. If results are net positive, I wonder how the labor ecosystem will change.

I'm not the first to mention it, but full-time employees who gain experience working from home are probably more likely to try their hands working for themselves — either through picking up little consulting gigs or starting side projects.

My professional colleagues and I (separate companies but I know a lot of folks) in Shanghai have been under voluntary quarantine or with companies physical space closed, in forced remote work environments. I can work from almost anywhere with my services business but almost all my contacts are dying to get back to the office. Apartments are small here and people weren't prepared with dedicated spaces and agreed upon rules that "Mom/Dad is working right now and can't play with children or speak to her/his spouse". Generally I think it has been a huge bust for productivity even with all the happy talk. I know a few bosses anxious to get employees on-site where they can see them.

I hope so. I think the model of working from an office is outdated. It's terrible for the environment, bad on roads, and doesn't help work-life balance. I think there is room in the "work" industry to find a better way. There was a guy in this group or another that was working on a remote worker dashboard. I think something like that may become big business especially as managers accept the realities that it's cheaper to keep people away from the office than to bring them in.

Interesting point. I think short term this could definitely lead to productivity spike, however, long term we may see a lull.. Work from home is not for everyone and could be a challenge for some

It does depend a lot on the industry, and how long remote working goes on for (ie long enough to become a new normal, or just a blip that disrupts everything temporarily?). However it feels to me like remote working is enough of a ‘thing’ already that those people and companies who can and want to do it already are. There will be individuals who find they prefer it but it doesn’t feel like a revolutionary experience (like women working during the war was).

My husband has been working remotely for 12 years now, moving from first/second line manager to VP with 100+ reports on literally both sides of the world (in a tech company). He spends ~80% of his time in meetings and has to travel to various offices a lot because face-to-face is still important. He’ll get to travel a bit less which will make his job a bit less efficient (but also nicer :)), but it won’t change much.

When the tube strikes happened in London, people changed their commuting habits and a significant amount of them sticked to those alternative methods of commuting after the strike stopped. I was one of them, I started cycling then and continued. I believe that something like this will have a similar impact on working from home. The question then is, what are the impacts of working from home?

I really hope they do! Or at least become more open to flexibility.

Sure as goddamn hope so. Let the people work from where they want already.

Yes, I believe they will if it is possible to get people to work from home. My work already has a flexible policy, I already work from home 100% of the time. Have been for the last few years. Companies just need to trust their employees to get the job done, in the case of IT workers, that work can be done from any location. And for meetings you can use any of a number of tools such as Zoom, Skype, etc.