The era of remote-first work will place a greater importance on a tech professional’s ability to communicate effectively and reliably produce. This will place a greater importance on reliable signals to convey these competencies between prospective employees and employers.
The COVID19 pandemic has forced the adoption of remote work for many organizations. Companies are allowing workers to work from home. Many companies say they plan to continue that approach even after the pandemic. It's now common to see job postings now list 100% remote in the description. “Remote-first” working will be great for some people and disorienting to others. The location of a person will matter less. Social games like “office politics” will become less relevant. What will matter most is the added value you bring to an organization.
A societal change that is coinciding with this shift to remote work is the degradation of trust in colleges and universities. Alternative skill acquisition institutions such as online learning, trade schools with ISAs, bootcamps, and online certification training have become increasing popular. It’s becoming more common to enter the workforce without the typical 4-year college experience.
Less of an importance being placed on location, office politics, and of a college degree, and more importance placed on the potential additive effect a person brings to the organization means
Taking away the office, means taking away office politics and office games. In the social setting of an office, we find ourselves playing office games to control the perceptions of others on our value to an organization.
Even in the most lax of office settings, there is judgment on when people arrive and when they leave. Arriving early or on time signals responsibility and arriving late signals indifference to the role and to others. Leaving late signals industriousness, while leaving early or on time, signals a lack of dedication. Playing nice with your coworkers and manager boosts your good standing in the office. Peer reviews are about how much someone is liked as much as it is about the work a person does. Coming off as enthusiastic and engaged can do a lot for how your team and superiors view you.
Remote first work will start to strip away those elements of work and what will be left are the elements closer tied to a person’s output.
Getting things done, helping others, and being a force multiplier are not competencies localized to a specific area. All over the world there are very talented individuals with tech expertise with the soft skills needed to excel in an organization. They currently excel in their current roles and now have the opportunity to compete for even better roles. Like the quote goes, talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. Remote first jobs will allow for opportunities to be more evenly distributed.
College curricula have not been able to keep up with the speed of the information age. Much of the knowledge learned is too general to be useful in the real world. Requiring a 4-year degree is becoming less of a barrier for people to break into tech
Useful expertise for jobs can be learned through digital learning. There has been continuing innovation in the field of adult learning. Online learning has been popular for the last decade with sites like Udemy, Pluralsight and Lynda. Some platforms offer learning for more specialized skills and offer courses for preparation for certification exams such as A Cloud Guru for cloud certification exams such as Microsoft, Google, AWS certification exams. The Income-Sharing-Agreement model, where an online school educates at a low or at no cost to the student upfront, in exchange for a percentage of future earnings is also becoming more popular with the institutions like the Lambda School, and Flatiron School.
Talented people have gone through these programs and have had great success in the real world, proving the effectiveness of these programs. As location becomes less of a factor in hiring decisions, more and more of these talented individuals who have taken the alternative route to tech expertise will be able to compete for opportunities not previously afforded to them. They will no longer be restricted to opportunities based on their physical location.
With more talent available and the normalizing of remote work, hiring decisions will get harder. Hiring managers will no longer be limited to selecting a prospective employee based on a specific location. They can now decide between many potentially great employees from all over. With a wider pool of applicants, hiring managers will need to look for reliable signals to decide between applicants with similar levels of experience and talent.
Physical world signals will become less important. The “feel” a person gives off when interviewed or the “firmness” of a handshake are removed from the equation. At the same time prospective employees will need to provide better signals to show that they are competent and talented. Experience will always be an important factor, but what happens when two equally experienced individuals are compared to each other and the “personality” of the individuals are less reliable factors as in-person interviews become less rare?
If work becomes asynchronous, writing will become a more important form of communication. Clear writing has always been a useful signal for employers on the prospective employees ability to communicate clearly. It is the reason why cover letters are required and are important.
Writing samples in the form of blog posts and essays will increase in importance because it signals a few things. First, it signals a person’s ability to communicate thoughts and ideas clearly. It also signals a person's level of expertise in a topic. Finally it signals a person’s ability to self-motivate and publish work.
Being able to finish side projects to showcase your ability for a role has always been valuable and will be even more valuable in the remote-first age of tech work. As a signal it lets employers know a person is capable of starting something and finishing something. They also demonstrate the level of expertise a person has in the area in which their side project is about.
In a remote first world, career development time will be better spent on writing and side projects than attending conferences and meetups.
The shifting changes of what is important will be great for those who are able to communicate clearly, produce timely, and can be force multipliers to others and the organization. Those who struggle at these competencies will become less valuable in the job market and more easily and readily replaced.
If these changes to the way we work do play out like described in this post, what implications will it have to the psychology of work and the individual? How will it affect work life balance? How will the loss of the social effect of work change the meaning we place on work? Will self management become the most important soft skill in remote first age? These are the topics I plan to explore in the next post. If you’d like to be contacted when that post comes out, sign up for the Z10X newsletter.
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