Tech Talent Migrates To Collaboration Startups as Hybrid Work Comes Into Its Own

Executives at some of the world's largest technology firms are leaving prime jobs to join startups that build communications and collaboration tools, a market expected to skyrocket as more businesses settle into hybrid work arrangements. From a report: Raymond Endres, Facebook's former top engineer for its Messenger app, left the company last month to oversee technology at Airtable, which makes cloud-based spreadsheet collaboration software. His initial focus will be on prepping the San Francisco-based startup to meet an expected surge in enterprise demand. That means ramping up investing in new product features and infrastructure in the year ahead, while tripling the size of his engineering team to roughly 300 workers, he said.

[...] Sarah Cannon, a partner at Index Ventures, said she knows of at least a dozen recent communication and collaboration startups founded or led by former top people at big tech firms. Many high-level developers and engineers have been building these kinds of apps inside large companies for years, she said, and Covid-19's impact on conventional workplaces is now prompting them to strike out on their own. On the funding side, she said, investors have grown less skeptical of productivity, communications and collaboration tools, which many companies in the past were reluctant to adopt at scale. Spending in the global collaboration and enterprise social software market is forecast to reach $4.5 billion this year, a 17.1% increase from 2020, according to the latest forecast by information-technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc. It expects to see double-digit gains into 2022. As the pandemic wanes, an estimated 60% of global companies are developing a permanent hybrid workplace model, Gartner has said, where most employees come into the office no more than three days a week. Gartner estimates that more than 1.1 billion workers around the world worked remotely last year, up from 350 million in 2019.

Won't you be my neighbor?

[Ostracus]

Collaboration tools as in geeks having social skills? Darn we got into open-source so we wouldn't have to do that.

Re:

[Aighearach]

Collaboration tools moderate interactions to walk you through it, because otherwise you'd have to use social skills to navigate collaboration.

Re:

[Aighearach]

A tool will not help in your case.

things have indeed changed

[SirSlud]

I work at a not small company (~ just under 10k employees world wide) and I must say I'm quite surprised that the return to work model they're proposing is only going to be 2 days a week in the office, where it was all 5 days before.

To what extent we represent other similar companies, it does represent a huge shift I never thought I'd see in my lifetime or would at least happen much much more gradually.

Re:

[luis_a_espinal]

I work at a not small company (~ just under 10k employees world wide) and I must say I'm quite surprised that the return to work model they're proposing is only going to be 2 days a week in the office, where it was all 5 days before.

To what extent we represent other similar companies, it does represent a huge shift I never thought I'd see in my lifetime or would at least happen much much more gradually.

That's very nice. My employer had us in a 3-day-office/2-day-home schedule before the pandemic. We are scheduled to go back in September, using the same 3/2 schedule.

I think your company is more generous than the standard, yet it seems to me that most companies that want to retain knowledge workers will shift into some sort of hybrid system. The pandemic has created an employee (not employer) market, and employers are keen not to lose the workforce they need when the economy is fully back to normal.

Addi

Data Farmers

[ReeseMac]

These execs know the way the wind is blowing. Farming data - communication tools - that's the future. Whether it's for the sake of profiteering or simply staying safe from being somebody else's harvest...

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

What they've found is that for most normal people who do normal everyday jobs that can theoretically be transferred to online platforms, when they actually tried to do this with the existing tools, they were really, really bad. Most of them are minimal viable product & need dozens of additional features to make them even remotely useful/effective, then there has to be some way to miraculously quickly train ordinary people, not software engineers, in how to use them effectively in their particular domain

Physical communting should be disincentivized

[couchslug]

Physical commuting is a polluting waste of time for many jobs and rewarding WFH or otherwise disincentivizing physical commuting by tax law would offer benefits similar to other anti-pollution measures.

One promise of the computer age was to reduce wasteful meatbag transport cutting traffic jams and energy waste, Some may have emotional reasons to object but that's like having emotional attachment to tar sands oil.

Re:

[HiThere]

Yes and no. The thing is, humans have social instincts. We tend to work well with our friends (not necessarily, it must be admitted, on the designated task). We tend to want to cooperate with people we meet. (I'm not claiming we're always successful at that.) When we don't know someone and don't meet them, we are less willing to oblige them.

So physical proximity and "the coffee room" are parts of the glue holding organizations together. Remove those and you'd better replace them with a different glue.

This should settle the diversity argument

[Snotnose]

I've always felt that if diversity, mattered a single whit then those companies that were diverse would rise to the top of the stack. I haven't seen that happen. Which means, to me, companies that hire based on merit, rather than diversity, did better.

That said, I've worked for companies that valued diversity (Qualcomm), and those that didn't give a shit (many others). The only difference I've seen is "thou shalt not say stuff" with the diversified. Qualcomm was a great place to work, and I really l

They've found a new space...

[AmazingRuss]

... that will need new bullshit buzzwords. Their destiny calls!