Disputes of Russians about remote work have passed into the stage of a conflict of generations

Remote work, which has become the only possible condition for compliance with the self-isolation regime, over the years has managed to turn into our new way of life. Although not everyone likes it. A massive rejection of remote work is observed in the United States, including in the IT industry, which is considered to be the main stronghold of freedom, both in European countries and in Russia. According to a survey conducted by one of the major job sites in the summer of 2023, 64% of the surveyed managers positively assessed the abolition of the remote work format, and only 28% of respondents noted that they regret returning employees to the office. Another 8% of executives said they didn’t care. The most interesting thing here is the dynamics compared to the 2020 pandemic year: back then, as many as 55% of managers positively assessed remote work.

Meanwhile, employees do not really want to return to the offices. This is understandable: it’s really very convenient to iron clothes during Zoom or Skype meetings (when the camera is turned off, of course) or to have time to pick up children from school during lunch break. Why not, if productivity doesn’t suffer?

Only here, too, there is no agreement. But there are pitfalls.

On one side of the barricades are those who argue in the vein: “What difference does it make, from home or from the office, it’s all the same, because it’s a full time job and a full package of tasks.” And even more than that – remember how during the pandemic, when we were all just cautiously tasting the remote, many suddenly discovered that an eight-hour working day suddenly became twenty-four hours. And the magic formula “work stayed at work” has disappeared somewhere. Now work is a holiday that is always with you. Oh well.

On the other side of the barricades are opponents with their monologues: they say, yes, the mere absence of the need to go somewhere every morning (especially in bad weather!), to stand in traffic jams or undergo an erotic massage session in the subway during rush hour is worth a lot! And, accordingly, those who do without it seem to work, but so … pretend …

The point of the argument is that both sides are absolutely right. And both, paradoxically, fit into a capacious line: “Here, fatigue is considered the measure of work.” Just a different kind of fatigue. The funny thing is that it is possible that the ideal solution exists. This is a hybrid format. Let’s say three days a week in the office and two days remotely.

A common argument is that remote work is beneficial for everyone! It is beneficial for the employer – you can not spend money on water, electricity, providing a workplace, paper, pencils and paper clips (and sometimes you don’t have to spend money on renting a room at all!). And it is beneficial for the employee – sit in your dacha in a hammock, knock on the keys and earn money! Beauty?

As usual, with reservations. Remote work has created a world without borders for us – just not quite the one we dreamed of. Usually, with the words “I work remotely”, a seductive image of a lucky person is drawn who rented out his Moscow apartment and left for Bali or the Maldives (it doesn’t matter where to work if remotely?). It really happens, but more often in fantasies. Reality is much rougher.

“I don’t know a journalist in Moscow who would agree to work for that kind of money,” I snapped when a friend asked me to recommend an intelligent person for an interesting project with a very modest budget.

The answer was unexpected:

– Why in Moscow? Surely there are guys somewhere in Saratov or Ryazan, well, or somewhere else. Let’s look among them. They have lower average salaries there, they will ask for less. I don’t care where they write from.

Truly: if you do not see the difference, why pay more? The possibility of remote work vastly expands the range of possible candidates – and now, as if there is no need to overpay Muscovites for their Moscow salary expectations! You can find a great person at a distance of several hundred kilometers – and pay him a little more than they would pay in their hometown. Well, if you also save on office rent, it’s generally gorgeous!

Go ahead. Those who work remotely and immediately get a job on such conditions are less and less likely to register in the state and under an employment contract. Approximately at the same time as the trend towards remote work, self-employment appeared – in fact, freelance legal and understandable for the tax authorities – and more and more companies began to trick: let’s, they say, we will register you as a self-employed? Again, under the plausible pretext of benefits for the employee, the employee, they say, pays 13% of personal income tax, and the self-employed – only 6% of the tax. Here’s just a nuance: this seven percent difference will include the absence of paid vacation, sick leave, pension contributions, voluntary medical insurance and other “goodies”, in exchange for which people usually give a work book. Yes, and the employer wins much more than the employee – he saves about 20% of the taxes that he would have to pay for the employee (well, he should not pay for the self-employed).

So, maybe soon the employees themselves will stop “pecking” at the seductive remote work, if it is accompanied by not too seductive financial conditions. Well, or there will be those for whom the distance format is still decisive and who are ready to dump for it. First of all – women with small children who want to spice up their decree with at least some money.

Although there is another nuance: youth should not be underestimated. It seems to us that the pandemic that brought remote work was only yesterday. Came – got sick – left – forgot and returned to the office. Not certainly in that way. Almost four years have passed, and during this time a new generation has managed to enter the labor market. This year, those who entered universities in 2019 graduated from the undergraduate program and almost immediately, in the second semester, went to distance learning. For them remote work is the norm of life and the only possible scenario. They are not “quickly accustomed to the good”, like their older colleagues, no – they do not know any other option than this one, the “good” one. About the same as post-Soviet children sincerely do not understand the salt of the expression “sold for Coca-Cola” – why sell for it, it just stands in the store as an integral part of life! – so these young people do not understand the claims – “they were spoiled by remote work!”

Here you go: young interns from the faculty of journalism come to our editorial office every summer – and in the last two years you hear from them more and more often: “You don’t need to come to the editorial office, right?” They don’t even ask, they claim. And after all, very soon it is they – with these habits – who will set the tone in the labor market.