Do I ever have to work with real people again?
How is remote work and the Metaverse changing our society?
Pandemic or not, the Metaverse was coming. Ever since the internet was invented, people have dreamt of “plugging in” and never needing the outside world again.
Now days, this is not just a fantasy. If you are a technology professional, living within Amazon delivery range, you are set to never interact physically with other humans for the rest of your life, if you wish.
There is a new remote class emerging in society.
The Resurgence of Family Life
For the remote class, no longer do parents have to drop their kids off at daycare and go to work for 8 hours a day. This is a massive positive boost to the family’s cohesion. Adding 40–50 hours per week of family interaction into the home is a good thing.
It’s not digital nomading, we are digital homesteading.
Homeschooling becomes much more feasible. Instead of being forced to trust the government to raise our children, we can raise them ourselves if we wish to do so.
Remote work brings the return of the family unit.
Big City Exodus
The remote class and their families are fleeing major metropolitan areas for cheaper housing, more privacy and higher quality of living. Big tech and finance money is coming into the countryside, looking to settle down and build their lives anew.
Some rural folk have voiced concerns over rising real estate costs because of this exodus of remote workers. What will happen to these small town economies when higher income workers integrate into their markets?
The economics of the average citizen used to be centered around physical location and local businesses. The marketplace has changed completely. No longer does location limit yourself to job opportunities.
The world job market is becoming globalized, the wealth gap will increase as some people tap into the digital economy, and others do not.
Is remote lifestyle healthy for human development?
What is the human effect of greatly reducing the frequency of interacting with physical people?
- What is the effect on children growing up?
- How important is the loss of body language in our communication?
- How does this effect brain development? Our mental health?
- Will it be harder to make real life relationships?
I’m not a scientist so I do not know the exact truths for these questions, but they deserve study and thought.
Back to the Office is Dead
Sorry boss. I’m never coming back to the office.
People are tired of masks, lockdowns, mandates and being called back to the office just to be sent back home weeks later for the next virus variant.
There is zero reason for tech workers, especially web developers like myself to need to come into the office to do their job.
The amount of remote jobs in tech is still about 60% from my experiences. If you do not allow your employees to work remotely, they have options to leave.
The power of the internet is that it allows remote communication. Why do we force ourselves to do the opposite?
My Personal Hot Take
Remote work is not going anywhere and we need to learn to adapt and improve the working experience instead of play like it is a temporary thing.
We need to recognize that some professions such as web development do not have any need for physical human interaction and this is OK.
We need to think about and plan economics differently for local communities to compete with international remote workers incomes.
Children still need face to face time with other children. I think that the majority of the lessons I needed to learn in my life are soft social skills not technical. Body language is not replaced by emojis.
The remote class is here to stay and will be a highly disruptive socioeconomic force.
