I wish I’d tried this.

Two of the tech industry’s biggest limitations today are recruiting talent and improving the diversity of its workforce. We see constant and legitimate complaints about both, and it’s time to come to terms with the fact that neither is going to markedly improve without some systemic change. What I’m about to suggest is not a complete fix for either, of course, and nor is it easy; but it is a straightforward and, I believe, inevitable step forward for both issues.

What is it? Remote working. It’s coming to a workplace near you, probably whether you like it or not.

We’re blessed to live in this era when the tech industry is constantly creating new tools for people to communicate, collaborate and share ideas more effectively. Yet most industries, including the tech industry, are still operating as if long-distance calling rates and pneumatic tubes were the only ways to get messages around a global company. You can build technology to change the world and reimagine how people work together — but, as the half-joke goes, must be willing to relocate to San Francisco.

Disrupting all the old models of working is great, they say, just not ours. (This is the very dynamic that has made the Bay Area unlivable unless you are extremely wealthy, and probably young.)

You can build technology to change the world and reimagine how people work together — but must be willing to relocate to San Francisco.

Basic human psychology is to blame for a lot of this. Humans naturally default to working the same way we survived on the serengeti 100,000 years ago — together, around a fire. We like seeing our colleagues, and communicate more effectively (or, at least, think we do) face-to-face. I have heard lots of reasons given for why remote working “just doesn’t work” at many different companies, and they usually boil down to this. We just want the people working for us nearby. If someone screws up, we want the neck to be wrung to be close at hand.

Yet from any rational perspective, this is extremely silly.

It reminds me of the Mad Men-era norms that were simply taken for granted as what was done in the workplace: strict dress codes, secretaries taking notes and picking up dry cleaning, reticence to new approaches and suspicion of technology. In that era, as in our own, people go through familiar, expected motions in the workplace because they’re the path of least resistance, and thus make everyone more comfortable, not because they’re necessarily the most effective or smart. Indeed, it’s innovation in how humans organize themselves that often makes people most uncomfortable — think desegregation or bringing women into the workplace, flattening hierarchies or (again) adopting new technologies.

Email and Slack work just as well across thousands of miles as they do between cubicles.

In the future, people will be incredulous that we once insisted that everyone in a company lived in the same metro area, which often entailed spending hours commuting each way to an office park where they sat most of the day communicating by digital tools (email, VoIP phones, IM, Slack, Webex) which, it turns out, work just as well across thousands of miles as they do between cubicles. Yet this is exactly what many of us do, and the tech industry is hardly alone in that respect.

Different Models of remote working

Over the last several years, I’ve had the unique opportunity to experience several different models of remote working. Each has presented a different set of challenges and benefits that I’ve done some thinking about. The three I’ve seen and experienced are:

Fully decentralized: employees are 100% remote, widely distributed, and mainly work out of home offices. Advantages: because “remote” is the norm, accommodating it is routine: everything uses web meetings, conference calls, collaboration tools by default. Downsides: building a cohesive company culture and interpersonal relationships takes a long time and very deliberate effort.

because “remote” is the norm, accommodating it is routine: everything uses web meetings, conference calls, collaboration tools by default. building a cohesive company culture and interpersonal relationships takes a long time and very deliberate effort. Hub-and-spokes: most employees are based in a centralized headquarters, with a sprinkling of remote employees based elsewhere. Advantages: the company is able to offer remote arrangements to high-value recruits they’d otherwise lose. Travel costs are somewhat lower. Disadvantages: remote employees have to work especially hard to be heard and have an impact. Often results in particularly onerous travel requirements for them. Remote employees can feel left out of headquarters company culture.

the company is able to offer remote arrangements to high-value recruits they’d otherwise lose. Travel costs are somewhat lower. remote employees have to work especially hard to be heard and have an impact. Often results in particularly onerous travel requirements for them. Remote employees can feel left out of headquarters company culture. Hybrid: lots of variations on this, but can involve many employees being based remotely and traveling for periodic centralized meetings. Employees may either work in home offices or in subsidized coworking spaces. Advantages: “remote” is again routine, and people are used to collaborating that way. Employees feel included in company culture. Big savings in central office cost. Disadvantages: “headquarters” can seem unnecessary most of the time, travel costs could be higher.

The right way to weigh these alternatives is through the lens of what it means for the company. The biggest benefits of remote working arrangements for a company are talent acquisition/retention and, at scale, lower costs (higher travel costs are generally offset by office space savings). Since few companies are set up today for a fully decentralized model (though some are pretty far down that path — IBM is a great example), transition costs are also worth taking into account.

Many companies have some form of a hub-and-spoke system today, which is probably the least ideal of the three, since it uses remote working as a supplement to the “real” office, as opposed to a reimagining of it.

The talent shortage is self-inflicted

Ultimately, not everyone can — or wants to — move to the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Boston, DC, etc., for a wide variety of well-reported reasons.

Whatever knowledge industry you’re talking about, over the last decade or two we’ve seen a concentration of these highly skilled, lucrative industries around major coastal metros, both driving up real estate prices and creating a painful housing crisis. This has enormous macro effects on everything from where millennials will be able to buy houses (hint: not within 30 miles of an ocean) to where your kids will be able to go to college (hint: probably not the UC system). Long-term, it is simply unsustainable and unwise.

Clinging to the Mad Men-era (or Office Space) model is a cultural anachronism that most companies are simply too afraid to let die for the same reasons we were nervous about allowing men to stop wearing suits and ties to work. It doesn’t feel “serious.” You can’t be a “real company” without a big central office with cubicles and full parking lot outside, right?

Are these the goals you have for your company? And if so… are you sure you’re focused on the right things?

Ask yourself instead — why do we only hire people from City X? Or Country X? How could we work differently with people based elsewhere? Is our resistance due to cultural discomfort, or because of something tangible?

Pools of talent, savvy and hard work are not clustered in a few big major coastal metros. That’s just where leading companies started looking. When they begin opening the doors in the next few years, get ready — there’s a lot more out there waiting for an opportunity.