A lot has changed since the lockdowns and the Submit or Flight response that ensued, when the migration from the Draconian rules of the tech hubs – Silicon Valley and New York in particular – began.

 

Working conditions shift with each new industrial revolution and despite the fact that the Information/Internet Era has been somewhat established for close to 20 years, we haven’t really seen a change. Until now.

 

The last industrial revolution shifted workers to a 9-5 schedule, and a five-day work week. Prior to that, working conditions were deplorable, there were no days off (with pay), and workdays were 12-16 hours, with no set minimum wage.

 

The lockdowns have brought about a sea change to the tech industrial revolution. 9-5? Those were hardly ever startup hours. People were chained to their desks into the night, which is why companies provided ‘perks,’ including, in some cases, on premises laundry, dental, medical, meals, snacks, et al. Not exactly the deplorable working conditions of the early Industrial Age, but the sentiment of management was the same: keep them tethered to their stations.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. The Who: We Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Now, remote work has become part of the new paradigm. After being forced to work remotely for some two plus years, why go back? Model proven and verified. Companies may still have offices, or co-working spaces, but it hasn’t been easy getting people to submit to the full time office routine again. Do all information workers need to be in office desk? On the other hand, in these challenging economic times, why pay the overhead?

Especially when the talent is leaving – or being driven out – of the tech hubs (California exodus continues, with LA, San Francisco leading the way: ‘Why are we here?’ ) Even Silicon Valley stalwart a16z is Moving to the Cloud (that’s Andreesen Horowitz, for those of us playing the home version, but you knew that…). They also announced that they’ll be “opening 3 new offices in Miami Beach, New York, and Santa Monica in addition to our existing Menlo Park and San Francisco locations. Our headquarters will be in the cloud.” They will maintain physical offices, but scaled down, no doubt, and for all we know, in co-working spaces, which seem to be increasingly housing investors’ – et als- offices these days.

Another sea change: so much for the need for dedicated offices.

 

Nor is Silicon Valley/the Bay Area or New York desired destinations any longer.

Bye bye, San Francisco: The top 7 U.S. cities homebuyers are seeking to leave. As CNBC reported. “A record number of potential U.S. homebuyers are seeking to relocate, according to a report published last week by real estate brokerage firm Redfin. The report ranked the cities Redfin users appeared most likely to try to leave:.

1. San Francisco
2. Los Angeles
3. New York
4. Washington D.C.
5. Seattle
6. Boston
7. Detroit

“Denver, Chicago and Minneapolis round out the list’s top 10.

“Correspondingly, these cities with the most net inflow may see an influx of homeowners in the coming months:

1. Miami
2. Tampa, Florida
3. Phoenix
4. Sacramento, California
5. Las Vegas
6. Cape Coral, Florida
7. San Diego
8. North Port, Florida
9. San Antonio
10. Dallas”

Next, Job Switchers Are Earning a Lot More Than Those Who Stay, said the Wall Street Journal. In fact, those who stayed as opposed to those who moved on is growing, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

The lockdowns gave us an opportunity to re-examine what was truly important to us, personally, since spending time in the office was removed from the equation. Seems that in this Information Age as the paradigm shifts, the idea of work/life balance has become more than a mere talking point or clickbait.

Collateral bonus.

 

Interesting that as we’re at the dawn of Web 3.0 and a shift to decentralization as opposed to the walled gardens that held sway during Web 2.0, that work is becoming decentralized (which, given the surveillance state, may prove to be a double-edged sword; time will tell).

And maybe the corporate structure as well. From the Industrial Age to the early Information Age, the power structure was the same and even the basic hierarchy, when you get down to it: in the tech sweatshops, not working long hours was frowned upon.

 

It was Mark Zuckerberg who named the new tech mantra recently. Rather than move fast and break things, the new catchphrase: It’s time to  do more with less.

 

Good advice generally at this juncture, but considering that Zuckerberg lost more than 50% of his personal fortune in the first four months of this year, do more for whom?

There are jobs out there – lots of them. And people to fill them, digital nomads or no, what to speak of the layoffs that we’ve seen and more to come.

 

Still, all in, it seems that in this new phase of work in the Information Age, it’s all about the terms of employment. Another sea change?  Meet the new boss and not quite the same as the old boss: Welcome to the new hirearchy (sic) as we plod ever onward and forward.