“ By 2021, though, revenue growth slowed and the stock plunged. The company has shed at least $100 billion in market value since then.”
Guess I should have shorted it or something. 100b additional valuation? In no world is that justified for a company whose main technology product has no moat beyond a UI that’s slightly better than Amazon Chime. At this point video conferencing software is almost a fungible commodity.
If there is one company which should be going all in on remote work, it would be Zoom. It has all the cultural and business reasons to foster remote work. And yet, they are doing this.
This confirms my hypothesis that remote work is overhyped and works only for a tiny sliver of workforce which is senior enough to work independently but not too senior that it needs to interact with a lot of other people.
After a lot of debates, I have come to realize that remote work can be awesome but needs complete rewiring of corporate culture, especially how we collaborate and communicate. Biggest obstacle to that is the ingrained habits of decision makers, who have worked for decades and find it easier to mandate RTO rather than changing their habits. On the other hand, I see remote being adopted by startups, typically led by young-ish founders who got used to the flexible lifestyle during COVID.
I will admit your response gave me a little whiplash :P
When I started reading I was getting very ready to disagree vehemently ("remote work is overhyped and only works for a tiny sliver of the workforce")
But your last paragraph seems to describe far more what I've seen in reality; that it's often risk-aversion/not-wanting-to-commit-to-change/leaning-on-what-they-know/wanting-to-look-like-they're-doing-something that I've seen driving RTO in various locations. This hypothesis is supported by, as you point out, the increasing, albeit incrementally, list of companies and teams that have implemented remote successfully (my own included, obviously only speaking for myself/not for my employer).
So, to be clear, I don't think you're wrong that there's intentional focus on communication and collaboration that is _absolutely_ needed to make remote work, and that's harder for someone who doesn't know what that looks like (or for someone junior without experience working in that modality).
HOWEVER I would object to is the assertion that it's "overhyped and only works for a tiny sliver of the workforce."
Since starting to lead remote teams ~5 years back (after having been a dev on one for a few years prior) the delta between remote vs. in-person has been a _negligible_ friction point vs. much more "typical" aspects of management: Individual work habits, motivations, life externalities, team and org dynamic, "standard" disagreement or conflict, etc.
I'd be lying if I said the remote aspect was zero cost, but not only was much of it recouped in building better processes as you may have suggested above, but this enabled both hiring some amazing folks who likely wouldn't have been options if we only looked local, and supporting all of our lives with significantly increased flexibility, both in terms of personal life and in things like time-zone based coverage for outages and on-call. All-in-all, a massive benefit.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 14.6 ms ] threadGuess I should have shorted it or something. 100b additional valuation? In no world is that justified for a company whose main technology product has no moat beyond a UI that’s slightly better than Amazon Chime. At this point video conferencing software is almost a fungible commodity.
What a bizarre and arbitrary criteria. Also, wouldn't affected employees start moving so that they are 50 miles away from their offices?
This confirms my hypothesis that remote work is overhyped and works only for a tiny sliver of workforce which is senior enough to work independently but not too senior that it needs to interact with a lot of other people.
After a lot of debates, I have come to realize that remote work can be awesome but needs complete rewiring of corporate culture, especially how we collaborate and communicate. Biggest obstacle to that is the ingrained habits of decision makers, who have worked for decades and find it easier to mandate RTO rather than changing their habits. On the other hand, I see remote being adopted by startups, typically led by young-ish founders who got used to the flexible lifestyle during COVID.
When I started reading I was getting very ready to disagree vehemently ("remote work is overhyped and only works for a tiny sliver of the workforce")
But your last paragraph seems to describe far more what I've seen in reality; that it's often risk-aversion/not-wanting-to-commit-to-change/leaning-on-what-they-know/wanting-to-look-like-they're-doing-something that I've seen driving RTO in various locations. This hypothesis is supported by, as you point out, the increasing, albeit incrementally, list of companies and teams that have implemented remote successfully (my own included, obviously only speaking for myself/not for my employer).
So, to be clear, I don't think you're wrong that there's intentional focus on communication and collaboration that is _absolutely_ needed to make remote work, and that's harder for someone who doesn't know what that looks like (or for someone junior without experience working in that modality).
HOWEVER I would object to is the assertion that it's "overhyped and only works for a tiny sliver of the workforce."
Since starting to lead remote teams ~5 years back (after having been a dev on one for a few years prior) the delta between remote vs. in-person has been a _negligible_ friction point vs. much more "typical" aspects of management: Individual work habits, motivations, life externalities, team and org dynamic, "standard" disagreement or conflict, etc.
I'd be lying if I said the remote aspect was zero cost, but not only was much of it recouped in building better processes as you may have suggested above, but this enabled both hiring some amazing folks who likely wouldn't have been options if we only looked local, and supporting all of our lives with significantly increased flexibility, both in terms of personal life and in things like time-zone based coverage for outages and on-call. All-in-all, a massive benefit.