(Series) The Career Landscape During and After COVID: The Past, Present, and Future: How the Tech Industry was Pre-prepared for COVID and Teleworking

August 19, 2020

Click here to read the first instillation of this series which focused on career fields in which salaries rates are persisting, or even rising, during COVID-19.

Teleworking may seem like a modern ideation born only from the rise of technology (and in some ways it is and will continue to form remote work as the tech industry and technology develops), but its roots are far wider and deeper than the last 20 or 30 years.

In the 1800s, many entrepreneurs telecommuted to work, though not in the way we think of today. Shop owners and laypeople often worked from home because that is where their physical shops were located1. This changed during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and early 1800s as many workers commuted from their homes to worksites initially due to the placement of factories in city hubs and later because local governments began to implement zones that separated commercial and residential realestate1. Just before the Industrial Revolution took-off, Charles Babbage invented the first programmable computer, which as we now know went through many iterations to become the center of modern workplaces1,2.  These pivotal changes in work were followed by: the invention of “flextime” by a German company in 1967 when the U.S. began working on what would become the internet; the invention of “telecommuting” as we now know it by Jack Nilles in his 1973 book, The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for Tomorrow; advancements in telecommuting technology and actual implementations of telecommuting by companies cutting costs; and environmentally conscious initiatives to reduce carbon emissions in the 1990s1,2.

All of these momentous events and inventions led us to the modern day in which social media, the internet, and technological capabilities allow employees and employers to remain in constant, instantaneous communication around the world.

According to a New York Times article:

“Companies large and small have been trying for decades to make working from home work. As long ago as 1985, the mainstream media was using phrases like “the growing telecommuting movement.” Peter Drucker, the management guru, declared in 1989 that “commuting to office work is obsolete.”

Telecommuting was a technology-driven innovation that seemed to offer benefits to both employees and executives. The former could eliminate ever-lengthening commutes and work the hours that suited them best. Management would save on high-priced real estate and could hire applicants who lived far from the office, deepening the talent pool.3”

However, some of the tech companies that were early adopters of remote work in the 2000s ended up calling many employees back into the office, resulting in the ideation that if an employer created a mini-city with necessities and amenities including entertainment, lodging, gyms, and eateries that productivity would improve3. According to this same New York Times article, the issue may not have stemmed from employees abusing working from home or not being as productive without a boss looking over their shoulder.

The New York Times quoted Jody Thompson, who formerly worked at Best Buy as saying the company “went back to a philosophy of ‘If I can see people, that means they must be working.3”

The New York Times also quoted John Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco State University, as saying “When you hire remotely, you can get the best talent around and not just the best talent that wants to live in California or New York,” he said. “You get true diversity. And it turns out that affects innovation.3”

Due to the tech industry’s early adoption of remote working, even though there were some pitfalls, allowed the industry to be the first to request employees work from home during the initial reports of COVID-19 stateside. In early May of 2020, the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, reportedly emailed all employees announcing they could choose to work remotely in perpetuity even after the pandemic is resolved4. A large part of this quick move to telecommuting by tech companies may be beacaue “Technology companies invented the tools for remote work—file sharing over the cloud, videoconference platforms, and digital tools for sharing calendars, notes, and chats with coworkers,” according to a WIRED article.

This same WIRED article quotes Aaron Levie, the CEO and cofounder of a cloud company called Box, as saying this move by Twitter will prompt other large technology companies to shift to allowing remote work indefinitely for employees, even if these tech companies has previous issues with employees working outside of the office4.

In this article, Levie also mentioned how the industry and the products traditionally used in the tech world made the transition easy for his company4.  “We use Box, we use Zoom, we use Slack,” says Levie. “It was easy for us to transition in terms of the ways that we work.4” 

Levie also reports seeing increased productivity from his employees due to the bygone practice of required in-person meetings which often took place with peers from across the country or world and forced employees to waste “a day on an airplane or adjusting to a new time zone.4”

This quick shift also meant less growing pains for tech companies as every industry transitioned to employees working remotely. An April report by Dice, a company that connects employers with employees, reported that tech hiring processes remained steady on average and, in cases for companies whose services increased in. demand during the pandemic such as Amazon and Facebook, hiring even increased5. Certain geographic locations also saw increases in tech companies hiring. For example, between February and March 2020: Arlington, VA, San Diego, CA, and Raleigh, NC all saw at least a 20% increase in hiring; Tech hiring in San Diego, CA grew 23%; and the Texas cities of Austin, Houston, and Dallas saw “significant year-over-year growth (41%, 47%, and 36%, respectively).5”

While current tech hiring trends may not be as optimistic as early COVID reports indicated due to the resurgence of COVID cases after cities opened up, it is clear that the tech industry and the employees of tech companies are quick to adapt to market and societal changes6.

“E-commerce and delivery have been some of the largest drivers in job openings in tech just over the last few weeks,” said Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, in an August 6th CNBC article. Zhao assured tech workers that “What’s going on in tech is a reflection of what’s going on in the rest of the economy.6”

Zhao closed his statements in the CNBC article reminding the nation that “employment rebounds in tech,” it is the greater economy that should be the concern6.

For more information, click here to listen to a podcast from about the future of teleworking at Silicon Valley tech companies from Arielle Pardes, a senior writer at WIRED.

This series will focus on the fields that are excelling during COVID quarantine, the skills necessary to land a career in these expanding fields, working and learning from home, and other future-focused, COVID related topics. If you have an idea that you would like to see featured in this series, email marketing@captechu.edu. 

Resources:

  1. Pasini, R. (2018, Oct. 1). A History of Telecommuting: Remote Work’s Evolution Explained. Retrieved from https://www.virtualvocations.com/blog/telecommuting-job-search-help/history-of-telecommuting-remote-work/.
  2. Toptal. (2020) History of Remote Work, 1560-Present (with Infographic) (Updated). Retrieved from https://www.toptal.com/insights/rise-of-remote/history-of-remote-work.
  3. Streitfeld, D. (2020, June 29). The Long, Unhappy History of Working From Home. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/working-from-home-failure.html.
  4. Pardes, A. (2020, May 15). Silicon Valley Rethinks the (Home) Office. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-rethinks-home-office-twitter-slack/.
  5. Sudekum, J. (2020, April 23). Tech Hiring Trends Amidst COVID-19. Retrieved from https://insights.dice.com/employer-resource-center/tech-hiring-trends-amidst-covid-19/
  6. Reed, J.R. (2020, August 6). Tech hiring remains muted ahead of the latest jobs report. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/06/tech-hiring-slowdown-bad-sign-ahead-of-jobs-report.html.