Why we're working anywhere but the office

From the latest issue of Kanebridge Quarterly magazine. Order your copy here.

For many, working from home is the new normal. The transition from being based in the office to working off-site has been a fundamental one, and almost four in 10 Australians worked from home at least once a week throughout 2023.

While figures show a slight decrease on 2021, working from home (WFH, it even has its own acronym) has continued to escalate in white-collar occupations, with 60 percent of managers and professionals eschewing the traditional office set-up. And those who aren’t already doing it wish they were. According to the annual Taking the Pulse of the Nation report, almost all workers (94pc) would like to do at least part of their work hours at home.

“I would say that the days of only full-time in the office for all employees are likely gone for good,” says the author of the report, the Melbourne Institute’s Professor Ragan Petrie.

“The trends in Australia mimic those in other countries where hybrid schedules are quite common.”

But is it all good news? Among the many compelling reasons to ditch the commute — saving time, improved mental health, higher productivity and being able to put the washing on — there are the well-documented shortcomings regarding the isolation, and missing out on the opportunities that those casual catch ups in the stairwell can offer.

Opportunities for casual connections for in-office workers are not enough to entice many. Image: Shutterstock

“Constant drop-bys for chit-chat are not productive, but purposeful conversations are,” counters Petrie. “There might not be shortcomings of working from home per se, but rather not having the right infrastructure and support in place for workers to be productive. It’s important for employers and workers to figure this out.”

For those who are new to the workforce, flexible working arrangements are just the way things are. According to one survey, two out of every three Generation Z workers believe that the option to work from home is a non-negotiable.

Underpinning the normality of remote work are the advancements in automation and technology that make the transition smoother than ever — and perhaps support the use of email and text over the meetings and phone calls that younger generations shy away from.

“People of different ages have differential experience with technology, and there are some ways of communication people may feel more comfortable with than others,” says Petrie. “Certainly, technology plays a large role. Those whose jobs allow them to tap into technology to perform their tasks are well poised to be successful with a hybrid schedule.

“In the end, if worker output is satisfactory, why is it important where it is done?”

At the start of the pandemic as office-goers scrambled for a space to call work, the kitchen table was the go-to location. Now working remotely has become a more permanent arrangement, a purpose-designed study area or hybrid space is as desirable in real estate brochures as a media room or butler’s pantry.

Roger Wardy is a director at Ray White Touma Group in inner city Sydney, where more than 100,000 office employees have left the CBD for the greener pastures of remote work arrangements.

“Most house hunters want to see a home office or office space these days, and in larger homes it’s an expectation,” he says.

“As such, we’d be more likely to market a six-bed home as a five-bed plus office. If a buyer works from home, that will definitely add value.”

But the home office is just the beginning. Having paved the way for more flexible work arrangements, there’s now a growing trend towards co-working environments for companionship, productivity and a delineation of work and home.

High-tech co-working spaces offer several advantages over working from home, making them the preferred choice for many. A professional environment means distractions are minimised, and you’ll have access to state-of-the-art amenities that you probably won’t have at home. And then there are those networking opportunities — co-working spaces attract a diverse group of professionals and who knows what you might find out at the communal coffee bar? It’s something that’s making its way up the agenda for apartment developers, too, with those on the front foot offering co-working spaces along with the pool, gym and rooftop entertaining.

At the luxury new development Paradiso Place in Surfers Paradise (pictured above), the entire 2900sqm 26th floor is dedicated to a state-of-the-art co-working space, maximising 360-degree views of the Gold Coast from the ocean to the hinterland.

“To have the option of working in a space like this with all the facilities of a high-tech office within your own apartment building is an exciting prospect for buyers,” says Total Property Group Managing Director Adrian Parsons. “We have been receiving a great deal of interest in this development from business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals who can see themselves waking up in their luxury apartment with ocean views to go for a walk or run along the beach, use the onsite gym, then conveniently head to work in a state-of-the-art co-working space within their own building.”

The space incorporates a boardroom, private meeting rooms, work pods and multiple hot desks. And it’s not all about focused work; there’s also a spacious balcony event space and a Coffee Emporium complete with baristas.

“With working from home becoming the new normal, we are seeing many Australians choosing to move to quality lifestyle locations like the Gold Coast, and a full-floor co-working space of this standard is attracting a high level of inquiry,” says Parsons.

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.

Why we’re working anywhere but the office

In a post pandemic environment, Australian workers are voting with their feet and skipping the office in favour of other, more appealing environments

A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.

Playing a different game

Overlooked