The end of remote work

The end of remote work. Several large companies are herding their employees back to the office. It may seem that the remote work era is coming to a close. But the data tells a more nuanced story. When I speak of asynchronous collaboration, I often get the following pushback. “Async is all about remote work, but we’re all in the office.” “Oh, but we’re hybrid.” “We value the energy of spontaneous conversations at coffee machines and in hallways.” Analytics India Mag even went to the point of saying that “AI is killing remote work”. They quoted a tech founder who said, “With AI handling much of the execution work—writing code, generating content, creating designs—the main bottlenecks are now cognitive: getting stuck on problems, running low on energy, or struggling to generate fresh ideas.” Meanwhile, Amazon and AWS’s war against remote work felt like the big news of 2024 as far as work arrangements go. Indeed, as we wrap up the year, it feels like remote work is dying off. But I wo...