In today's era of digitalization, remote working has become the desire of many professionals. However, the view that "remote work is not suitable for China" sparked widespread discussion with the fermentation of the Jihu GitLab incident.
GitLab came into the public consciousness many years ago while searching for information related to remote working. In 2015, this company with only 9 employees started a remote working mode for all employees. In the special period of 2020, the popularity of remote working has accelerated. GitLab has released a complete remote work guide, launched an enterprise remote management course, and was even selected as a core case by a well-known business school. Today, its team has 2,322 members and 363 pets. All positions are remote working, and the official website is proud of its "zero office". This guide covers how individuals evaluate and find remote jobs, as well as how management designs remote teams, remote recruitment and cooperation, etc., and has great reference value.
In 2021, the Sino-foreign joint venture Jihu Yabo Technology was established in China, with Yabo Technology holding 46% of the shares and becoming the largest shareholder. At first, this was the dream company of many professionals. Zhihu account "Programmer in the Wheat Field", as an employee of Jihu, because the company works remotely across the country, he was able to get rid of life in a small apartment in a big city, return to his hometown to build a villa, and live an enviable pastoral life. Promote the company frequently. At that time, all Jihu employees were proud of the company and did not forget to emphasize the advantages of global remote working when introducing solutions to customers.
But the good times didn't last long. Nearly three years later, Qihoo announced changes to work arrangements and laid off more than 50 employees. The newly appointed CEO made many "unnatural" remarks, such as pursuing strivers and believing that strivers should not pursue a comfortable corporate culture and must make sacrifices for goals. Moreover, the CEO, who was a sales director but had no technical background, asked all employees to return to the office because he did not understand technology. As a result, many employees who are not in the city where the office is located face the dilemma of being laid off or moving to other cities.
Ctrip CEO Liang Jianzhang began to advocate hybrid office as early as 2014, and used the company as a pilot to allow employees to work from home one or two days a week. Its paper published in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics", the top economics magazine in the United States, shows that working from home can improve performance by 13%, increase employee job satisfaction, and reduce turnover rates by half. In 2024, he published an article in Nature showing that hybrid work can improve employee retention without hurting performance. However, some people have questioned these data. For example, the reasons employees choose to support hybrid working may be subjective, and the possible risks of working from home are not truly reflected.
In fact, remote working is not a phenomenon unique to China. After the outbreak, many companies in the United States also forced employees to return to the office. For example, Amazon announced in September 2024 that starting in January 2025, all employees would need to return to the office five days a week. In June 2023, 75% of technology companies in the United States have fully flexible office models, and by 2024 many companies will force employees to return. "Return to the office (RTO)" has become a hot topic, and Microsoft also requires employees to come to the company at least three days a week.
From a technical perspective, the conditions for remote working are increasingly mature. Film and Television Hurricane mentioned that in the future, cloud engineering may be used to provide remote editing collaboration positions for those who are good at editing.
For employees, the advantages of remote working are self-evident. Almost no one is willing to return to corporate work as long as they can make money remotely. But from the boss's perspective, efficiency and cost need to be considered comprehensively. Although remote working may reduce efficiency, it can save office rental costs and may also recruit cost-effective talents.
However, for large companies, remote working is almost impossible to achieve. Even if the remote transition is carried out during special times, it will eventually tend to force employees to return to the office, and at best a hybrid office model will be adopted to ease employee emotions. While remote work will always be around, it’s unlikely to become mainstream. After all, most people have limited self-control. A situation like GitLab, which is purely remote and has grown to more than 2,000 people and gone public, is a special case and is difficult to replicate. The more jobs that rely on corporate production materials, such as self-driving programmers, AI algorithm engineers, etc., as well as asset-heavy industries and fields that require high personnel collaboration, the less suitable they are for remote working. Of course, programmers are more likely to be in remote areas than other professions. Among them, full-site engineers are more feasible because they can take care of both the front and back ends.
An ideal society should give everyone the right to choose. Whether you like to work remotely, adapt to sitting in the office, or want to gain more benefits through "rolling", there should be corresponding opportunities. When evaluating economic development, perhaps we should not only look at production results, but also how much time people are freed from production. I hope you can share your views on remote work in the comment area, and don’t forget to like and save it so that more people can participate in this discussion about working models.
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