Who knows what the vague post-coronavirus "new normal" will look like? Companies that have long resisted the telecommuting model are realizing that they can actually be productive from the couch or kitchen table. Some companies, like Twitter and Square, have already announced that employees can work remotely indefinitely if they wish, while others are ready to let their office leases lapse. According to Global Workplace Analytics, by the end of 2021, 30% of American workers will be telecommuting at least two or three days a week. Virtual communication tools are no longer a convenience; they are a necessity. To make the "forever WFH" a reality, the six women featured here are building, teaching, and refining the tools we need (email, faxes, spreadsheets of the future).

G Suite (Docs, Drive, Calendar.) In 2017, Google's portfolio solidified a bit with the launch of Google Meet, a sophisticated sister to the popular Hangouts video conferencing tool.Meet. is led by Sumita Hashim, a 15-year Google veteran. Under her leadership, the formerly premium-only product was made free at the height of COVID-19 (and will remain free for years to come). Says Hashim, "From a business perspective, this was a very easy decision." The challenge, of course, was to offer it on such an accelerated timeline." Hashem's team is also developing new user-friendly features, such as closed captioning (and more translations) in more languages than just English, and cloud-based noise reduction software. (But more exciting to Hashim than the sound of multitasking, however, is the change she sees already taking place in the broader work culture. She says, "I think people are learning how to use meetings as a way to connect, rather than just as a transaction."

Ali Rail is grateful to have broken the "reply to the last email" culture. As vice president of customer experience for Slack, the business-approved instant messaging platform, Rayl works to make life easier for more than 12 million active Slack users every day. The tool has been revolutionizing interoffice communication for more than a decade (Rayl was one of Slack's first eight employees), and the platform has welcomed 12,000 new paying organizations since the outbreak of the pandemic. slack's success is partly due to its asynchronous work Slack is one of the few communication tools that supports asynchronous work. As you know, the burden of housework and childcare still falls almost entirely on women," Rayl says, noting that Slack's channels are designed to facilitate flexible back-and-forth communication, so she can participate in brainstorming sessions between walking the dog and studying for seventh-grade algebra. He points out that the company's Slack channel is designed to facilitate flexible back-and-forth communication. (To support its growing user base, Slack has revamped its desktop interface, released a template library to automate tasks, and unveiled a remote-themed emoji pack (including one that shows Wi-Fi is down). Slack has also become a virtual workplace watering hole. We have an Animal Crossing channel, and every day someone says, 'Hey, post the price of turnips in the thread. ' That's how we stay connected to society. That's what makes us human."

When the company's name becomes a verb, you've officially succeeded; Zoom is now synonymous with video conferencing (a service the company offers), connecting millions of people around the world. It has connected millions of people around the world. Janine Pelosi, the company's chief marketing officer for five years, navigated it all: unexpectedly rapid growth (from December to April, the number of daily conference attendees grew 2,900%, from 10 million to 300 million); a PR nightmare (in March, online trolls used Zoom's Zoombomb," an unauthorized intrusion into calls, went viral. The platform is growing in popularity as more companies upgrade to the premium model, which allows for meetings longer than 40 minutes. 'I know for sure,' Pelosi says. 'What I know for sure is that we're not going back to the way things used to be. 'I don't know exactly what that's going to look like; it's going to be Zoom

It's been just over a month since Olivia Nottebohm was named chief operating officer (COO) at Dropbox. As the new COO, Nottebohm was supposed to travel to 12 offices around the world. I could only make it to Austin and New York," she says. Instead, the California native got up in the middle of the night to hold virtual coffee meetings with offices in Japan and Australia. Despite her exhaustion, Nottebohm was quick to lead the response to increased demand for Dropbox, including Dropbox Business, a premium extension of Dropbox: in the first quarter of 2020, the company had 14.6 million paid users, up 10% from the previous year. From hospitals that needed 100 new accounts overnight to manage their supply inventories during a pandemic to National Geographic and Ben & Jerry's, more than 450,000 teams now use the service. 'Companies are stepping into new territory. If they win, we win."

Archana Rao has never telecommuted in her 20-year career, but as chief information officer at Atlassian, a software giant that provides project management tools such as Jira and Trello, she has worked in offices in eight countries He was responsible for transitioning the company's 4,500 employees across eight offices in eight countries to a remote-first model. Atlassian itself helps more than 170,000 technology teams collaborate and build software, including large corporations such as General Motors, Spotify, and Verizon. technology to launch a historic astronaut rocket; Walmart used Atlassian to support e-commerce during the pandemic (the company reported a 74 percent jump in online sales); St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's IT St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's IT, research, and operations teams used Atlassian's project management software to help prioritize and manage employee work. As demand for Atlassian's tools grows, Rao is preparing for an even more rapid company growth and a future in which Atlassian products will be critical to sustaining the economy. Collaboration tools are not just nice to have, they are a necessity," he says. It's a way of life."

"I've been a computer geek most of my life," says Erica Joy Baker, Director of Software Engineering at GitHub, an online community used by over 50 million people to share programming tools, write and review code, and build high-tech solutions. The transition to WFH was not difficult for the company, says Erica Joy Baker, director of software engineering, because before COVID was implemented, about 70% of GitHub's employees worked remotely. The demand has kept Baker busy. She has built versions of GitHub tailored to the security needs of large companies such as IBM and Wal-Mart, and is helping institutions use the program profitably. Johns Hopkins University is using GitHub for an app that tracks reported COVID-19 cases in real time. Johns Hopkins University is using GitHub for an app that tracks reported cases of COVID-19 in real time. She believes that WFH may open opportunities for people who dream of a career in technology but don't want the expensive Silicon Valley lifestyle that comes with it. 'Now we're seeing that remote work is possible,' she says. People are learning in different ways."

This article appears in the Fall 2020 issue of Marie Claire.

The print version of this article stated that Zoom has grown from 10 million "users" per day to 300 million per day. This article has been updated to reflect that "daily meeting attendees" is the correct term, not "users."

Design by Hanna Varady + Rayl, Rao, Hashim, Pelosi and Nottebohm: Courtesy of the Subjects; Backgrounds (used throughout): Katsumi Murouchi (2),. Aaron Foster, Arthid Huangtumluck/All Getty Images