In response to the pandemic, tech companies have announced a wide range of policies concerning remote work.  Apple ,  Facebook ,  Google , and  Salesf

Hybrid Anxiety and Hybrid Optimism: The Near Future of Work

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2021-06-15 23:00:04

In response to the pandemic, tech companies have announced a wide range of policies concerning remote work. Apple , Facebook , Google , and Salesforce have embraced hybrid models, allowing for some remote work but requiring that all employees work from the office on certain days (or that certain employees work from the office every day). On the other hand, Coinbase, Shopify, and Twitter have declared that they’re now “ remote first ” or “ digital by default ,” even allowing employees to work from home “ forever .”

At the opposite end of the spectrum are companies like Netflix, which has commented on how not being able to get together in person is a “ pure negative ”, and Amazon , which has said that an “office-centric culture” is their baseline. In any case, though, remote work is here to stay. I’d argue it was always here for companies at scale (those with multiple offices, traveling employees, work-from-home days, and regular offsites), but the pandemic has made it clear that, in the future, every company will be remote (at least sometimes). 

As we start to go “back to the office,” it has become increasingly clear that the offices in question have changed irreversibly. Companies have shared in surveys , or stated outright , that the dominant model for the near future is hybrid work. Some fear it will be “ the worst of both worlds ”, but the term “hybrid work” is still poorly defined. Hybrid work isn’t a straightforward, linear combination of remote and in-person work — it is a significant evolution of the modern enterprise that asks (as former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky has observed ): What is the structure of getting things done?  

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