What will happen when all white collar work can be done from a laptop in any location?
>>1325787
From the digital nomad "community", might imply lots of westerners moving to cheaper locations, and even some redistribution of wealth as their salaries are spent there too.
something something immigration
>>1325787
comfy home office or travelling work
basically the dream
>>1325787
it's more a question of productivity than it is telecommuting to work. and it'd ultimately evolve into companies paying people on a contractual basis for work completed.
firms cannot evaluate and control employee productivity at home, to the same extent they can in the office workplace. this is especially a problem if they're employed on a hourly rate, as opposed to a contractor, who generally attracts a higher rate.
that said, the diminished costs of overheads could make up for the increased costs of contracting, but that'd depend on a number of factors, including energy costs, maintenance, rent/depreciation of property and equipment, ect.
if it were economically viable large companies would be doing it already (maybe some already are, who knows). it seems to me that the decreased cost of overheads is dwarfed by expenses expected to be incurred by switching from employee to contract rates. this makes sense when you consider how overhead costs are spread amongst a large workforce within a particular building.
>>1325822
its already happening for higher ups. wage slaves still have to go into the office everyday, but any position that is based on decision making and running shit is pretty much work from home, travel to meetings and functions when we need you. at least for larger businesses.
>>1325787
You'll still need someone on location to manage a remote team. Quality work is rare those days and if you already had to deal with indan "web devs" you know that it is not worth the hassle
>>1325822
The concept that "If it was profitable it would already have been done" is an attitude that stifles ambition and creating more efficient systems. The ones who become rich are the ones who make things work that will be cheaper but haven't been done yet.
>>1325822
I know a guy who, along with his wife, has been running a company for a pretty long time (25+ years, both of them are 55+).
Over the course of the last few years he's been looking to make it possible for everyone to work remotely.
This would allow them to hire people from the entire country (as opposed to just the capital city) and reduce the office space (it's not a very "good" space (old building) but it's basically in the center of the city so a very desirable location), that way they could reduce the maintenance costs, sell uneccessary shit, and either sell/rent the extra space.
I explained to him the technical details (Cloud Server, VPN etc.) and we concluded that it will be a pretty easy thing to do since the company is mostly into accounting/financial advising as soon as they get their shit together (it would require moving some pretty fucking old business applications to the new servers and they have to get everything in order).
Overall the company has around 25 people and once the "decentralization" is done, all the employees will be able to work from home (accounting so it's mostly just data calculations, entry and manipulation) and the only thing the remaining office space will be used for will be meetings with clients.
I guess in the end it depends on the company. Take that as what you will.
>>1325787
When that happens, then we all Pajeet now.
>>1325787
>What will happen when all white collar work can be done from a laptop in any location?
We're way past that buddy...
Remote workers are common nowadays.
The only reason companies sill prefer on site workers is mostly for self discipline & work hours reasons.
It's tempting as hell to sit on 4chan all day when you don't have a boss watching over you.
>>1325787
You're adding a 'when' here that is missing some key points:
1. white collar work, depending on what you look into has a LOT to do with people, trusting, managing and agreeing on making decisions
2. In particular, more white collar work is less about creating and more about combining and buying services (i'm too lazy to put references but generally outsourcing is increasing and has increased for decades to a point where even work on excel sheets can be outsourced by a services)
3. With the latter taken into account, meeting people physically becomes more important. You have to put more trust in trading wealth and purchasing services than creating them, this requires a better knowledge of the people behind.
I'd say more traveling sure. But the stay at home office is a lazy fantasy. I work for IBM (student) and even in that position I guarantee you, my colleagues who do the 'stay at home' thing, achieve less, get less noticed, have fewer responsibilities and are thus lesser 'white collar' than those who engage and are physically present. I believe this to be universal in finance, management, sales, recruitment etc.
