Let's imagine there is no more office, and everybody works remotely. How long can this last?
As I have mentioned, offices used to be held together by mountains of paper. For the last ten years, offices were essential for gigabit ethernet and internet. Now what? In our neighbourhood, the semi-boomers are fleeing to the remote woody-woods, selling their houses, happy to rely on high-speed connections. 30 years ago, the Economist called it 'The Death of Distance".
The office symbolized cohesiveness. Everybody suffered the same things: bad traffic, jammed subways, nasty office politics, etc. Always something to grump about. Lots of flirtation, lots of marriages, lots of gossip.
These people are scattered and can hold together for another year. They can't even have parties, because nobody can interact with masks on. No smiles, no nudge-nudge, wink-wink. It was always the office against the world.
These people in the woody-woods are exactly the same distance away as somebody in India. Will the companies start hiring through zoom? They actually do, since that's how my son was hired. The future belongs to the companies who can figure all this out. With the young-uns, the dream was to have a downtown job, now what?
I remember when the old company moved the office to the boonies. We all had to go, and work in a truck yard. Can you still do that? All the new employees were sleepy locals with a short commute.
I'm just saying that this is something to watch for the next year or so. The only commonality that we Canadians will have is a horrible winter. All the new employees won't have that. The country will break apart with everybody yelling at each other. Wait! We already have that. :)
ps. the tax definition of an employee is someone who sits at a desk in the office. We always had to get rid of these people after a year. What is it now?
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