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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
This just isn't my experience at all.
One area I work heavily in is biotech. It requires labs, so working from home is a real problem. But government in both Mass. and California has prioritized rules that make sense for biotech, and the labs have generally stayed open. On the other hand, Biotech also requires broad collaboration among people dispersed all over the globe. The improvement in the ability to work from remote that has occurred over the last couple years has really helped there. But all those people are still clustered near top notch universities and medical centers. Yes, some are in Florida (I do a lot of work in Florida), and both Miami and Gainesville can benefit, but they aren't going to turn into little South San Frans any time soon.
I do less in traditional tech areas, but still a fair bit. The remote work has broadened hiring at a point when Mass. and California had a shortage - the fact that we can hire into a California company someone who is in Montreal or Chicago has really helped. Of course, when the pandemic is over, a lot of those people are going to have to move to Mass. or California or lose their jobs.
I do think there are opportunities for the places that aren't traditional innovators, but the biggest beneficiary on that score is going to be Canada, because they didn't spend four years fucking up their immigration system and keeping furn'rs out of their schools.
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After the initial getting used to it, I haven't seen too many problems with remote work at all. We kicked off our implementation of a new EMR in March 2020 with go live of May 2021, and that went amazingly well considering it was entirely remote. Our researches don't seem to have had too much of a problem with staggered lab use, and they're still publishing. The IRB, Sponsored Projects, and Tech Transfer offices are all super busy. Some offices / departments are sticking with remote work entirely. Some (like ours) is going to be hybrid unless someone tells us to do something else entirely. Obviously, most (but not all because of telemedicine) of the clinical work has to be done in person, and teaching hands on care has to be in person. But I don't think we'll ever go back to 100% on campus for everyone. Maybe some of the other institutions out there are doing things differently--I think Rice wants everyone on campus--but this seems to work for us AND I think employee recruitment/retention is going to drive a lot of the decision-making in the years to come.
I do this silly scavenger hunt every year. To do well, it's a good idea to have a fairly diverse team in terms of skill-set and locale, so the whole project is remote. I had no idea how well those skill sets would translate to an entirely remote workforce, but they're invaluable. I also teach appropriate use of social media to students and faculty. I've had grumbling from older faculty on how they don't use it so they don't have to know it. Very shortsighted. The people who bitch about not being able to have a firm culture through zoom clearly have never spent a lot of time developing relationships, interacting, being actual people online. Those of us who have been fucking around on the internet for years haven't had a problem with it.
This place, almost 20 years on this site, most definitely has a culture, shared values, and if we had to collaborate on something, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have too much of a problem doing so.
On a totally different note, I'm really sorry to read that you're having to go through chemo again. I'm feeling a little raw since I lost a friend yesterday to cancer, so I'm as sincere as I can possibly be when I say I hope you kick its ass and these six months are not too painful/onerous. I want you around for a long time.
