THE END OF REMOTE

& why it’s time to stop talking about it

I posted this on Linkedin 2019

“Using the word 'remote' in the commercials VFX industry always felt a little negative to me. ‘Remote’ implies 'absence' or 'distance.' But lets look at 'online' shopping. The word ‘online’ has come to represent choice & cheap availablility. It’s a positive movement. You could argue that NOT meeting face to face for VFX work is a little like NOT seeing your things before you buy them, which doesn't seem to have slowed down Amazon very much. Are we about to experience a new era of remote in VFX?”

Looking back, I love that I was peddling a slightly unfashionable idea. Of course, nobody knew that the Covid-19 pandemic was about to switch everything around. Now, in 2021, it feels like old news.

Face to face is still the gold standard

We humans have ‘mirror’ neurons that are not as readily triggered on zoom calls. As a result, we feel less empathy through computer screens. Bonds don’t run so deep. Personally, I don’t think you can claim to have met somebody after only a video chat.

BUT ITS FAR TOO EXPENSIVE

There will remain a small niche, at the top of the industry, for the few facilities who are able to sell ‘face-to-face’ but for a large part of the industry, it’s already over.

In light of this pivotal change, it’s becoming less valid to claim that remote is cost-effective by virtue of its vastly reduced overheads. Remote rates are now just what VFX costs. Why bother to make comparisons with old fashioned ways of working?

The end of remote is now

Can there be a more powerful indication of the new permanence of ‘remote’ than the rise and rise of the words ‘face-to-face’?