Predictions 2021

We’re going to see a lot more people working remote from distant locations. 2020 has taught the doubters that remote work is a valid option in many industries. I was already remote before 2020 but we recently learned that we won’t have an office to come into and that we’ll just be coming in when needed. Friends in other industries have seen their offices shut down and employees told they can work from anywhere because they are able to get the job done and don’t need to pay for the office space. Hawaii seeing a downturn in tourism is offering to help people fly out there to work remote.

There will be a rapid increase in paranoia and anti-science rhetoric as more is understood about the COVID-19 virus and early assumptions are shown to be false. As vaccines enter the human trials we’ve already seen a rise in the anti-vax movement. Virology, epidemiology, and medicine are highly specialized fields but you will see people and even news media take things out of context or not understand the science or process behind something and then try to make a judgement on it.

No more whiteboard interviews. With remote work on the boom and the industry moving forward while still distancing, we’ve seen that tech interviews do not need to include the white board. There will be new tools developed to better assess a candidate’s abilities and thought processes when coding. Many of the training and pair programming tools have been repurposed for interviews during the pandemic. We’ll see more of these tools developed and marketed for remote interviewing.

We’re going to see a shift in music culture. Not only will we see a lot of new and creative music coming from artists who are already popular but we’ll see different types of music becoming popular. Garage bands and people who previously hadn’t been big in the music world will start to become popular. Already music stores have seen an increase in interest in the guitar. Prior to COVID it had been on the decline but is seeing a renewed interest.

Look for medically inclined tampering with your life (in ways harmful and not) to increase in the next year. It’s not just covid, but a variety of things that people would have been wary of will probably come to pass in the next year, including things like temperature scanning when entering places with crowds, etc., and more stringent enforcement of vaccine mandates. The political heat over where the line is will continue to ratchet up as well in response. However, it also means that there is a much bigger market for things that will be positive in the long run.

Regulatory pressure is going to be brought to bear more forcefully on big tech companies, particularly on social media companies. There are few electoral parties on the planet that like them or find them beneficial and they’ve made enemies everywhere while alienating their own users, showing decreased value to advertisers, and becoming easier game for large players in the market. This could represent a very interesting time for upstarts in those markets.

People are going to be less neutral about remote work. Either they’ve done it and they hate it, or they’ve done it and they like it a lot. Expect multiple major shifts IT hiring as a result – they are going to be keeping their eye open for things that caused a problem during the lockdown. “They”, in this case can refer to both the interviewer, and the interviewee, as both have learned a lot this year.

Travel and big events (including large conferences) will still be locked down at the end of year in some places, and there will be less of it. Some events will go away, while others will morph into online-only events. There will, however, probably be a fair bit of travel right after whenever COVID dies down, simply because people are going stir-crazy. All this assumes that there is no major war that breaks out.