12-19-2020, 08:16 AM
** 17-Dec-2020 World View: Working from home
This isn't new with the pandemic. It really exploded in the late
1990s, when Indian consulting firms hired thousands of programmers to
work the "graveyard shift" in remediating Cobol software on IBM
mainframes in the United States for the Y2K problem. I was Technology
Editor for CFO Magazine at the time, and I was following that
situation very closely. It was an amazing success story.
The two examples you gave -- secretarial and human resources -- once
again were being displaced long before the pandemic -- not by
Ukrainians, but by technology. Prior to the 1980s, if you wanted to
write a memo, you would ask your secretary to come into your office
and take dictation. The ability to take fast dictation was an
important skill for secretaries, along with fast touch typing. Almost
all those secretarial jobs have been gone for decades. Similarly, HR
functions have been replaced by software. PeopleSoft led the way in
the 1990s (since acquired by Oracle) as a major HR management system.
Even Lotus 1-2-3 and other spreadsheet programs displaced a lot of HR
functions, just as WordPerfect displaced a lot of secretarial
functions.
People working at home is also a long-term trend, as I'm sure you
know. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it began to be common for
programmers to work at home and log on to their timesharing systems
with a modem over a phone line.
So these are all long-term trends, and the pandemic has sped up the
trends. However, there's an economic law that applies to these
situations -- the Law of Reversion of the Mean. When a trend value
speeds up temporarily, then it will compensate by slowing down later.
So for example, when there's a new crop of college graduates in June
2021 then, unlike you, they will be completely unfamiliar with
corporate cultures. They will have to work in the office for at least
a year or two to get to know everyone and to know how things get done.
So it would not surprise me in the least if, next summer, the trend to
working at home suffers a reversion.
Guest Wrote:> This is the black swan I expect. I haven't been in the office
> since March. I was told the soonest I might be back is July
> 2021... if they even want me back in the office at all. I'm a
> programmer/cloud guy/engineer. So, my job is safe. But, why on
> earth would you pay a secretary $50K a year (with benefits) or an
> HR person $75K a year (with benefits) or whatever when you could
> hire a Ukrainian (or Indian or whatever) for $10K a year (with out
> benefits)... it's all the same if it's 100% virtual.
> If work stays 100% virtual like it probably will for most people,
> everyone who is not super skilled in a very specialized area is
> going to have their job very much at risk. You don't need an H1B
> visa to bring the person into America so they can work virtually
> from the same time zone. I know a lot of very smart/competent
> Ukrainians that wouldn't mind working Graveyard shift to get a
> "high paying" job working for a US Tech company. All it takes is a
> decision by the employer to hire someone over seas. There are no
> restrictions on that for 99% of jobs.
> Americans have really screwed themselves with this
> Plandemic.
This isn't new with the pandemic. It really exploded in the late
1990s, when Indian consulting firms hired thousands of programmers to
work the "graveyard shift" in remediating Cobol software on IBM
mainframes in the United States for the Y2K problem. I was Technology
Editor for CFO Magazine at the time, and I was following that
situation very closely. It was an amazing success story.
The two examples you gave -- secretarial and human resources -- once
again were being displaced long before the pandemic -- not by
Ukrainians, but by technology. Prior to the 1980s, if you wanted to
write a memo, you would ask your secretary to come into your office
and take dictation. The ability to take fast dictation was an
important skill for secretaries, along with fast touch typing. Almost
all those secretarial jobs have been gone for decades. Similarly, HR
functions have been replaced by software. PeopleSoft led the way in
the 1990s (since acquired by Oracle) as a major HR management system.
Even Lotus 1-2-3 and other spreadsheet programs displaced a lot of HR
functions, just as WordPerfect displaced a lot of secretarial
functions.
People working at home is also a long-term trend, as I'm sure you
know. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it began to be common for
programmers to work at home and log on to their timesharing systems
with a modem over a phone line.
So these are all long-term trends, and the pandemic has sped up the
trends. However, there's an economic law that applies to these
situations -- the Law of Reversion of the Mean. When a trend value
speeds up temporarily, then it will compensate by slowing down later.
So for example, when there's a new crop of college graduates in June
2021 then, unlike you, they will be completely unfamiliar with
corporate cultures. They will have to work in the office for at least
a year or two to get to know everyone and to know how things get done.
So it would not surprise me in the least if, next summer, the trend to
working at home suffers a reversion.
