The Big Winners and Losers From the Remote Work Revolution

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News, News Commentary

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most news is all about the immediate present. For instance, everything that is happening in the economy right now could be a historical anecdote in five years. But sometimes, norms change—and they stay changed for decades. I think the remote work revolution is just that sort of a paradigm shift. Here's a stat that should blow your mind: Office occupancy across the U.S. is still just 43 percent of its pre-pandemic high. That means that white-collar offices have had a worse recovery than basically any other economic category—worse than restaurants, bars, stadiums, and even movie theaters. But who is remote work actually working for? What are offices good for? And how will the remote work revolution change the way we relate to each other and the places we live? Today’s guest is Julia Hobsbawm, the author of 'The Nowhere Office,' a new book about the remote work revolution that combines history and reporting to ask a big, beautiful philosophical question: Is remote work making our lives better, or worse? Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Julia Hobsbawm Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up guys Rachel Lindsay here and I am teaming up with your favorite
0:04.0	Ringer podcasters to deliver the bravo drama and news that you've been craving on
0:08.9	morally corrupt. It's the show about all things bravo from the housewives to
0:14.3	summer house and everything in between. We'll be mentioning it all every week.
0:20.0	Check it out on Spotify and the Ringer.com.
0:22.9	Today's episode is about the remote work revolution.
0:32.2	So for the last few episodes we've been covering the economic situation in America which is
0:36.6	incredibly complicated and confusing and important but also a bit of a bummer to be honest.
0:42.7	But a point I should make in the show more often is that most bad news is short term bad news
0:48.7	because even if stocks fall into bear territory even more and even if the housing market
0:53.5	does a new term and retail sales decline and the auto market shrinks and inflation sucks
0:58.6	for another year to 18 months and we have a technical recession for half a year.
1:02.4	All of that is probably going to end like everything that we're going through right now will
1:06.9	probably in three years time be a historical anecdote but not everything is a short term
1:13.2	historical anecdote. Sometimes revolutions happen things change and they stay changed for decades.
1:20.5	And often these paradigm shifts are technological in nature like you can draw a line in the
1:24.6	historical record and say here was the time before cars and then here was the time after cars
1:28.5	and it changed cities and transportation and everything. You can see the same about electricity
1:32.7	your smartphones or computers and I do not think it's hyperbolic to say that the remote work
1:37.1	revolution is that kind of a revolution. Decades from now we're going to be talking about
1:43.4	how remote work is still a thing and how its ripple effects are touching geography and the
1:50.4	future of cities and the nature of commutes and where people live and how families come together
	...

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