Many IT companies are struggling with the aftermath of the pandemic

For literally centuries companies, especially those engaged mostly in "office" type work, worked pretty much in the same way: The company would have office space and all employees would arrive there in the morning, do 8 hours (give or take) of work there, and then go home. This was how things worked a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, and even 10 years ago.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which started to make the news in the first half of 2020, changed things radically, though.

That's because a good majority of such companies took it extremely seriously, and most of them took very quick action and, whenever possible and feasible, outright demanded that employees do remote work from home rather than come to the office. In fact, many such companies, especially IT companies, quickly implemented a very strong rule that coming to the office was outright forbidden unless absolutely necessary.

The timing couldn't have been more serendipitous because in 2020 working most IT jobs from home happens to be technically not only feasible but in fact easy. Everybody has very fast internet access, and most IT work does not require being physically at the workplace, and can easily be done remotely. In fact, even most embedded system development companies managed to have the vast majority of their staff work from home, even when they needed to develop for and test physical devices: With small enough devices the developers could take them home. With larger devices that couldn't be easily transported (or were used by several developers) remote access systems were quickly developed that allowed using and testing the devices remotely, without having to be physically there.

The internet technology of 2020 even allowed things like project meetings to be easily organized and held remotely, rather than people having to be physically in the same room. The use of this remote meeting technology skyrocketed because of the pandemic, and it has become a fundamental feature of almost all companies.

This fundamentally changed working culture, especially at IT companies.

Previously, and for literally centuries, it was a given that to work at such a company you would need to go to their offices every day and work there. Now, however, almost all companies allowed and even demanded you to work from home, and had set up everything needed to do that. Every employee is provided with a work laptop, easily transportable from work to home and used there, and all needed pieces of software, both on the laptops and on the company's servers, have been meticulously set up to allow this to be easily done.

Thus, people's lives and schedules fundamentally changed: While previously their lives revolved around having to be away from home for over 8 hours every working day, and all of the practical arrangements this would need (especially for those with families), now their lives started revolving around them working remotely from home.

For many this was a real blessing: Not only were they able to save in traveling time and cost, now they could be at home all day to eg. watch their kids. Working hours also became a lot more flexible because they weren't physically restricted to be at the office, and instead they were much freer to schedule their work as they saw fit (other than the occasional company meeting.)

Millions of people have gotten so accustomed to working at home, and in fact built their entire life schedules around it, and had been doing so for 2-3 years straight, that now that the pandemic is unofficially over and most companies have ended their restrictions on being at the office, many of these people are finding it difficult to return to the old ways, where they have to be away from home for over 8 hours every day.

And, indeed, even though there is no need for any restrictions anymore, many if not most IT companies have continued their remote work policies to this day. They have just found it way too convenient, especially since over the years they have built their technological infrastructure, software and company culture around it, to support it. Some companies might have "mandatory office days", which might be one or maybe two days a week that all employees need to be at the office (unless they can't for some reason), but that's about it.

So what's the "struggle" here?

Well, at this moment there's kind of a "mini-recession" of sorts going on. Demand is low, and many companies are struggling financially. There's a scarcity of projects (either internal or for outside clients), and many companies have outright needed to issue temporary or even permanent layoffs.

But what does remote work culture have to do with this?

How it comes into play is that the company higher-ups in many, many companies are now looking at their empty offices. Where in 2018 these offices were stock full of employees every working day, now they are almost always completely empty. They look like abandoned, with hardly any people using them.

So many companies are justly asking themselves: Why are we paying expensive leases and rents for all this unused office space? Why are we paying for all this space just for it to not be used for anything? It's a huge money sink, which is really bad when the companies are struggling financially.

And, indeed, many companies out there are severely downsizing, in terms of office space. (I know this first-hand because I actually currently work for such a company.)

Of course this comes with a bit of a risk: If they severely downsize their office spaces, getting rid of the majority of it, what would happen if for one reason or another all the employees would need to come to the office at the same time to work? It's not inconceivable that that could happen.

By having significantly less office space than amount of employees, these companies are kind of cementing their remote work culture, for good and for bad.

And yes, there are indications that having all employees working remotely can have its downsides too. It's not all roses and sunshine. Many companies have noticed that their productivity has come down a bit, and one of the main suspected reasons is precisely because everybody is working remotely, rather than directly interacting with each other in the same place. Communicating online is sometimes not as efficient and productive as speaking to people in person.