“We’re not going back.”
My youngest brother lives in NJ and works in midtown Manhattan. Or he did until the pandemic anyway. He runs a department of 20 people who used to spend 2 hours commuting each way. They’ve all been WFH since March and love it.
They’ve all saved thousands of dollars and weeks of time not fighting their way in and out of NYC every day. He took an informal survey of his crew and not one of them wants to go back to doing things as before.
Productivity is up, absenteeism is down, so when his boss mentioned getting back to “normal” my brother essentially told him to “KMA. Ain’t happening.”
Which is kind of a pickle for the company since they signed a 3 year lease for horrendously expensive office space which now sits empty. Lots of that is going around.
I spoke to him on Christmas Day and he is pretty adamant. He is NOT going back to business as usual and neither will nearly all of his crew.
L
My son owns a company in Seattle. He has just under 40 developers. His lease expires the end of the month. Not only is he going “all WFH”, but he’s hired his last Seattle developer. They are too expensive. From here on out, it’s guys from flyover country. Just as good and half as much.