I can imagine this being true in programming, but not being true for R&D where equipment and experiments with materials and prototypes are done.
Remote work actually is a drawback for the employee rather than the employer. Human contact is something that is quite important for relationships to form. Some people adapt well to it because they grew up on computers & grew up making friends on the internet, but for others in person communication is quite important.
I'd say it's a drawback for SOME employees, yes, but some others (Maybe the majority of the prepandemic remote force?) it's not, at all. It's awesome, and there are many of who never want to work in an office and deal with the commute every day again. We (somehow I'm speaking for all of us now) get enough human contact through our online relationships with our coworkers, and seeing them once or twice a year IRL.
> luck with landing with an exceptionally talented team.
For sure! I do consider it pretty lucky when you're able to do that. We seem to have done the same thing where I work, we just had someone leave for the first time in about 6 years!
I would think that you would also increase the risk of bad hires if you had any sort of inefficiency in your hiring process because then you would be less able to actually know the quality of who you were hiring by local reference.
However, to get away with that requires high levels of compensation otherwise people will take the safer option.
Also, “managing out” is one way of coddling a team but it’s not a choice. At best it convinces team members these people quit, but that’s hardly the reality of what’s going on.
I'm not so sure about it. Sure, if you compare work-related human contact to no human contact, the latter option is obviously worse.
But when you move to remote work, you get a lot of extra time and energy, which often creates more opportunity for socialisation. And this socialisation is, in my opinion, much healthier than with your colleagues. Want it or not, you're constantly "selling" yourself to your work peers: their opinion about you will greatly affect your career, and therefore income, and therefore a lot about your life. We all create a better, public version of ourselves, even if we do it semi-consciously. I don't even mean being dishonest (you should never do that), but just building a facade and toning down everything "negative".
Spending less time and energy doing that, and more time with people with whom you can be honest and open was one of the best things I've got out of switching to remote work.
I think it is all just rationalizations and prejudices. Sometimes teams work better, sometimes they work worse, and the distance is just one of many possible factors.
Commutes to the office mean that employees start the day sleep deprived and stressed out. Spending the day surrounded by one’s spouses, children and pets improves emotional resilience. People working from home have access to healthier meal options and avoid the afternoon brain fog that comes with catered lunches. Remote workers probably have a big, beautiful house in a sunny LCOL that is more pleasant to work in than an office in a typical overcast, drizzly tech metro.
So there might still be downsides from less efficient collaboration, but that’s outweighed by improved environment leading to better individual productivity.
But after being forced to work remotely for 1+ years I’ve found everything in your post to ring true for me personally. In addition, productivity is better because there are so many less interruptions (maybe only relevant to certain jobs requiring a lot of focus and a home environment without distractions)
Amusingly, when the lockdown began, I was fortunate to have space in my house to move my entire lab home. My colleagues and I have been making good use of rapid prototyping services and the FedEx truck to move stuff around. Hardware keeps getting "softer," and truth be told, 90% of what I do is coding anyway, because hardware runs on code. We are also learning to manage hardware remotely, so we don't always have to be co-located with it. We also use software contractors, though it's been a huge learning curve for us.
A side benefit is that, being un-located, there's no reason for me to be tied to a particular work site within a global business, or to be dependent on only the skill sets available at that site.
It's not binary. Companies with remote workers can still fly them to HQ or off-sites on a semi-regular basis (in normal times).
As you point out Nationalism has been a pretty recent development. It has mostly been enforced by indoctrination in the education systems and culture. While it has had many many issues, we have seen it reduce the number of conflicts and wars by a lot, and thus it appears to be a reasonable solution.
Whatever solution aims to replace it would have to not only overcome all of these barriers, but provide better results as well.