By Larry Coffman
Post-pandemic, is there a remote possibility that the Big Three tech companies in the Seattle area will learn that having many more of their employees work remotely is a good thing?
It took said pandemic—and a gubernatorial mandate—to finally force the bulk of their employees to work from home, thus ending—albeit temporarily—the near-gridlock on area streets and highways, most times of the day. Hopefully, they’ll see the benefits and have a much greater percentage of employees work from home in the post-pandemic era.
Again, the absolute irony of this whole discussion is that the very street-strangling culprits are the same people who make it possible to work (and shop) from home—namely Microsoft, Google and Amazon! And we hope that online-travel giant Expedia also gets the message, in order to curb the home-to-work travel volumes of its thousands of employees. And if there’s any good news from Boeing’s travails, it’s the reduced impact on traffic.
Too bad, however, that it took becoming the world capital of coronavirus cases to give us renewed hope of one day becoming the…
Telecommuting Capital of the World? [Originally published May 15, 2019]
What’s wrong with this picture? Here we are in the heart of Amazon/Google/Microsoft Land with the fifth-worst traffic in the nation!
Isn’t Microsoft the company that had the goal of putting a computer into every home? And isn’t it, along with Amazon and Google, the leaders in the digital manipulation of the public—in whatever direction they choose? And why aren’t the folks who invented videoconferencing and telecommuting using it to their fullest possible advantage?
Furthermore, why do these companies continue to expand their campuses and office capacity at great expense, rather than encouraging their employees to work from home to the maximum extent possible? Doing so would seem to be a win-win for them and the traveling public as well. And that’s not to mention the windfalls for stockholders.
I’d like to know the average number of employees who work from home weekdays at each of the three companies. I’m willing to wager the percentages are in the single digits for all three. And I gotta believe the benefits of free Orca cards, shuttle buses and staggered work hours would pale by comparison with keeping thousands of employees off the streets and highways during the workday.
Based on 16 years as marketing manager at the former Metro Transit, I can guarantee you that selling telecommuting is a lot easier than selling carpooling or transit.
We got a taste of the telecommuting potential during the Seattle Squeeze tunnel opening, when officials plead with the public to work from home and lessen the pressure on downtown streets. And the results were amazingly successful for that brief time.
The trending away from socialization is clear. For example, there’s been a 25% drop in organizational memberships since 1974. And research on today’s Gen Y and Millennials shows that most aspire to be self-employed and have little desire for leadership or the personal interaction provided by clubs.
And Seattle, as a recent study revealed, is the second most popular destination in the U.S. for Millennials to work and stay. Moreover, the kind of work that employees of the Big Three perform lends itself well to telecommuting.
Think of the impact of a concerted Work From Home campaign by the Big Three on a continuing basis. What’s stopping Seattle from becoming the Telecommuting Capital of the World—other than the will? There clearly is a way.
P.S. Check out the related stories linked below. Interesting to note that Amazon is No.3 among the nation’s top 100 telecommuting companies—and that neither Microsoft or Google even made the list! And the second story takes Google to task for its investment of billions of dollars in office buildings.
https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/100-top-companies-with-work-from-home-jobs-in-2017/