The remote future

I’m back home from Hawaii after a short flight delay and a long wait at baggage claim. Despite sleeping under 4 hours, I feel pretty good and motivated to get shit done. It was a good vacation.

My friends and I talked a lot about remote work in Hawaii yesterday at the beach. My friend who had been living on Oahu since prior to the pandemic had mentioned that the local surf spots during weekdays has spiked significantly presumably due to remote work.

Unsurprisingly, Oahu has become a top destination for remote workers. My friend who lives in the upscale newly built Ward Village says there’s constant construction and I counted two new big residential high rises going up.

He’s also there temporarily just enjoying life while working remote. He says there’s quite a few people in the same boat that he’s met in his coworking space. It’s a great life for sure. He surfs a couple times a week. Plays a couple rounds of golf a week. And then participates in various other activities like dance classes and barbeques throughout. He often works remote from his rooftop pool.

He’s admittedly just coasting out there and knows that the peak of engineers taking advantage of remote work is behind us. My friend’s got a great situation as he’s a talented engineer who is incredibly effective. My guess is that these opportunities for the majority of individuals will start to disappear significantly in the coming months and years.

The cost of engineering talent is going down due to the global workforce and AI. Tech companies also know that their employees have been living fairly cushy life styles over the last few years with high pay and very modest work hours.