https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/coronavirus-bill-gates-says-…
I trust Bill Gates knows what he’s talking about and gives me another layer of confidence to hold the stay at home names long term.
ZM, TDOC, PTON, the world has changed and the youngest generations are just going to continue the trend moving forward. They are growing up in a world of one day delivery, streaming content, meetings online, work from home, subscription based, work out at home, faster, convenient, instant.
TMB
ZM, TDOC, PTON, the world has changed and the youngest generations are just going to continue the trend moving forward. They are growing up in a world of one day delivery, streaming content, meetings online, work from home, subscription based, work out at home, faster, convenient, instant.
The only barriers in my mind to WFH are the middle managers who only know how to measure productivity by seeing butts-in-seats. These people are older, but there are a LOT of them, so it may take some time before they come around or fall out. I’ve seen this play out at work, where the better managers have embraced it and found more effective ways to measure productivity; while the worse managers are slowly being revealed as incompetent.
The employees still “meet” as much as they need to, just like face-to-face, at least with Zoom it’s just a click to start an immediate meeting with all chat participants. (We used to use Webex, much more of a chore.) In this way WFH is an vast improvement, because it’s a lot easier to share screens and discuss issues when anybody can share what they want…as opposed to an in-person meeting where you’d need a projector and screen and it’s too far away and the people in the back can’t see or hear, etc, etc
So I think the trend is inevitable. For my industry anyway (software) there’s no downside at all. It’s just more efficient and cost-effective. The vaccine euphoria will be short lived as the reality of the getting everyone inoculated starts to settle in, and the market realizes we’re really in this for the long haul.
In the first part of the written story, Gates seems to be saying air travel will stay lower than pre-COVID. My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away
In the second part, other Microsoft people say it will return to pre-COVID levels, at least for the routes their people use. We believe that as we return to the skies, the travel routes we’ve had … will resume at the level they had been before
So even inside Microsoft, there are still differences of opinion. I vote with the reduced travel, because the execs paying the bills know they can save money without hurting progress.
Not hurting progress? For some jobs there is little to no impact. Even saves on commute time. I work for a large tech firm. Here, WFH is working well for engineering and similar jobs. An initial cost to outfit employees with some ergonomic help, then full speed ahead.
Social impact? Maybe. I miss sitting in the cafe talking with friends. Others feel the same way. Amelioration? Company seems sensitive to that. They offer “counseling” and other forms of support if employees are having difficulty at home. Two teams I know of schedule what I could call “social hours”, where we meet and talk about anything but work. Catch up with each others’ lives. Kind of like going out for lunch.
Our factory output is still running well too.
WFH is working now that the country is wired for high speed internet. And we are able to work with anyone across the country, not just people willing to move to our town. WFH was forced on us but seems to be viable for longer than COVID.