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Re:The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies to Work from Home. Som... by lukifer on Thursday March 05, 2020 @06:06PM (#22499338)
Arthur C. Clarke predicted that computers would usher in an age of telecommuting more than 50 years ago: https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/arthur-c-clarke-predicted...

As with most predictions, there's a difference between predicting something existing at all, vs. predicting normalization/ubiquity; so there's a sense in which he was accurate, and a sense in which he missed the mark.

There are a million little reasons why physical proximity still makes a difference to company culture and human behavior, so some amount of that will always be with us. But I think it's fair to say that while we'll partially regress to the mean after Coronavirus blows over, the rate of WFH-friendliness will end up being significantly higher. (Depending on how long the scare lasts, the necessity of distributed-first culture changes might even grease the wheels for hiring remote workers, leading to secondary effects on the labor market.)

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