Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, debates about the future of work have been a fixture of the zeitgeist. In the early days, we read and wrote about who would be working remotely. By mid-pandemic, we read and wrote about how remote work would...well...work. Today we are all reading and writing about the most important question of all:
How much of this is going to be permanent?
No, this question is not new. It has been a part of the background to the discussion of remote work since the beginning. What IS new is that starting in late March and reaching a fever pitch by early June, we have observed two changes in the Narrative structure of how remote work will continue or end as the pandemic fades in the United States.
First, we have observed that it has shifted from a background topic in the broader discussion of the workplace impact of COVID-19 to the dominant topic. In Epsilon Theory parlance, our measurement of its narrative attention has risen dramatically. This shouldn't be surprising. Frankly it isn't all that interesting, either. As CDC and state-level restrictions fall along with infection rates, of course businesses and companies are grappling with the question more than they were. So of course it is a more frequent topic of discussion. So of course it is grabbing more of the narrative attention, even from the perspective of a natural language processing algorithm.
Second, we have observed that the discussion has transitioned from a mess of generalized, survey-level musings about the future of work to a clearly bi-modal narrative structure. That is a fancy way of saying that there are two distinct narratives being promoted, each of which has some linguistic distance from the other, and each of which has relatively strong internal linguistic cohesion.
I'm sure you can guess what these two poles are: one camp arguing that remote work is here to stay, and the other arguing that rumors of the death of the office have been greatly exaggerated. Or something like that.
And that is true.
Or rather, it is true that there is a lot of Missionary effort being expended to convince you and me that most companies and executives think about and are acting on these issues in one way or the other.
Well, it's a little bit more complicated. It's also a bit more interesting.
It's more complicated AND more interesting because any time missionaries work to shape Common Knowledge, they often look for points of connection to other powerful topics and areas of mass interest. That's the basic recipe for that deadly theatre we talk about so much. And there may be no topic with more potential such points of connection than the future of remote work.
It is inherently a COVID-19, vaccine and mask policy-related topic, so framing remote work in terms of the pandemic is almost unavoidable. The below network produced by the software from our friends at Quid gives you a little glimpse into what we mean. As a reminder, each dot represents an article from May 2021 about the future of remote work. Colors mean linguistically similar clusters. Distance and lines generally represent linguistic similarity. North/South directions have no meaning outside of distance. Bold-faced nodes in this network are those which are also about COVID, masks or vaccines. In all, that's about 60% of the universe. And they're everywhere. It is exactly what you would expect given the fundamental link in origin between the two topics.
The future of remote work is also, however, easily linked to general labor concerns, the role of work in American lives, corporatism and the social contract with our present system of capitalism. While nowhere near as widespread as COVID, the questions about whether and how American workers ought to return to offices is absolutely being linked to these topics.
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Trying to figure out who benefits from each side of this narrative is an interesting thought exercise. I’m sure it’ll continue to be politicized to hell and disconnected from all semblance of reality, though.
Yes, in the world of reality it is not very clear to me at all where various interests align on this.
If remote work becomes the norm, what is the role of national boundaries?
Agreed, in terms of ‘sides’ I wonder what the narrative engine data would show about the socio-political narratives of class, redistribution, fairness, and inequality which seem to be deep in so much of the country’s angsty discussions right now. Overbearing corporations trying to maintain culture and build teams in person certainly plug into multiple pieces of that circuitry…
National boundaries delineate sovereign states. The treaty of Westphalia initiated widespread acceptance of non-interference. That and the corresponding obligation of mutual recognition are what make states sovereign. The international dimension of mutual recognition is central to the states acquisition of a monopoly of the means of violence within its territory. How remote work fits into this scheme remains to be seen but there are many readily accepted cases of “outside” interference. Forces in Iraq, Belgrade, Mali, Syria. Sanctions of various kinds to the same effect.
What’s the definition of violence in the virtual world? Does it include a taking of an enemy actor’s hashtags to appropriate their digital currency? What rules govern state actors right to take such actions? Does digital violence have to lead to physical world harm to be considered an act of war?
I don’t know if I inhaled this from somewhere or a combination of somewheres, but I think there is a chance that in-person work will devolve to the ‘unskilled/essential’ realm. Some jobs cannot be done via Zoom and I think there is at least a chance that these will become better paid owing to a ‘danger-pay’ component to cover the costs of commuting, childcare, looking ‘presentable’, and to compensate for more rigid hours.
Let’s assume and likely agree in wide paths that only certain types of work, certain roles, can be done ‘remotely.’ The ‘knowledge worker’ in what’s become old language. The patent attorney? Sure. The trial attorney? Less likely, all Zoom considered. The miner or manufacturer? Eh. The project manager or programmer? The writer? Hmm.
If we’re off on that foot together, let’s also assume that not every knowledge worker, not every patent attorney works the same way, requires the same inputs to be productive. Even ‘fully actualized.’
So, first step lots of folks can’t choose ‘remote work.’ Second step lots of folks are bad at ‘remote work.’ Sure, it’s here to stay but not for everyone. A privileged few and socially independent minority. Is that a good thing for the Pack?
In my exposure to cubelife the corporatist response has been “Buh,buh,buh the culture”, while angling to get butts back in seats without exposing themselves to bad press or outcomes. There may be something to the idea among some that insisting on maintaining your WFH status is an open invitation to have your job contracted.
Must admit that my early guess on a rushing exodus from commercial office space turned out not to be true. Yet.
A good question. I think there are very clear social negatives to the dominance of the here-to-stay narrative winning out.