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Yea I agree with this. Ever looked at an executive calendar? All day meetings. That’s almost all they do. Relationships are critical, so of course they’d prefer in person.

The problem is imposing that view on everyone, forgetting their individual contributor roots

C'mon, if you enjoyed social interaction so much, you'd be a salesperson; not a manager talking to the same people all the time. Nope, you like being in charge and 'directing' people.

In 13 years of software development, I've never had a productive meeting where a manager was present. Only when engineers get together to argue and hammer out details is it productive. If a manager is present, he/she makes the decision or just agrees with the lead engineer and no further discussion takes place.

So, my view is that managers are useless and a net drain on the company wallet. Walking around, making decisions you're not qualified to make, approving time off, talking to people for 6 hours, time tracking, pushing employees to work more is the most useless role ever created.

My favorite development job is one that had no manager. The lead communicated with the director, who reported to the CEO. It was great because the lead was an engineer that coded with the rest of us. No meetings or other useless activities. When the company was purchased, the software architect was made the new manager as part of the new structuring. Immediately, he instituted metrics and developer rules. Within a year most engineers had left. Thank you management...

At my last job, we 3 engineers were doing fine without a manager, once again the lead took care of things and reported to the director. But the director's best friend needed a job and became our new manager. And here we go again... Within a year and a half I'm the only engineer left on the team and I end up quiting 3 months after shouldering the load and working 7 days a week.

I don't trust any manager and I go out of my way to avoid them even as far as refusing promotions to avoid more interaction with one.

I'm a manager and I talk people using teleconferencing apps 6+ hours a day. I like it better than doing it at the office, where I comically have to use the same technology to talk to people in other offices.

I'd rather stay 6+ hours in meetings in more comfortable clothes (loose shorts) and sitting in a more comfortable chair - not to mention the lack of people wanting me to leave the meeting room because of THEIR meeting.

Yes, communication suffers to a certain extent, but occasional visits to the office eliminates the problems with 1:1s you mention. And at least in my experience, this small degradation of in-person communication isn't such a big deal.

So if you surveyed me, I'd say "Please let me stay home!". Also, if IC work is "great to do remotely", I'd rather see my team at peak productivity remotely than indulging any possible desire I could have to talk to them in person. As a manager, I exist to unblock and help my team, so what's best for the team is best for me.

> where I comically have to use the same technology to talk to people in other offices.

For my current company, I have no team members in my local office. So for the short period where I was going into the office, I never had an in person meeting.

I have been the CEO of a successful company for 5+ years and a senior director/manager in others. I very rarely had meetings. If you pick the right people for the job, and make sure they know what the goals/deadline is, then the best thing you can do is to not bother them with meetings. Find ways to measure progress without interrupting the team flow. Make it clear that you expect the team to solve problems themselves without constantly asking for permission etc. It isn’t rocket science. I spent about an hour a day working when managing. The rest was me doing my hardest to not slow down the team that was doing the actual work. It worked really really well.

Ahhh, sorry if it came off that way. Honestly, I have good friends that are managers. And I think I work for good managers. I just think it is probably not as satisfying being a manger or executive if you don't have people around you to manage. If everyone is doing their work just fine without all that close supervision, it probably feels like you are not as appreciated. But I was not trying to be uncharitable.

I am sure you are a very good manger.

Don't you think it's a lot more plausible that extroversion correlates with becoming a manager in the same way that it correlates with wanting to see people in the office? Or that it's simply easier to do the manager job in person than over the internet?

I manage a linux team so this battle was lost for me long ago, but having managed a site-oriented team before, it was a lot easier to build relationships for me and the team members.

I definitely think there is certain personality traits that lend to the "traditional" manger role in an office.

What I think could be interesting over time, if this "new normal" let's call it, of working from home, persists, could that lead to a different set of personality traits being attracted to or being better suited to this new work situation?

I don't know, but it seems like the nature of work is changing rapidly right now and, that could perhaps, lead to a rapid change in the nature of a good manger or perhaps leadership changes because of it in ways ?

I guess we shall see.

> I just think it is probably not as satisfying being a manger or executive if you don't have people around you to manage

I still get to manage my reports remotely. :P

Now, I like to view myself as helping them succeed, rather than browbeating them into submission to enact my will. But even if I was this caricature of a manager that you posit, why would it be better for me in person?

If anything, my "big shot" factor is higher remotely than it is in person. Physically, I'm just a normal person, made of meat and vulnerable like anyone else. If I am speaking to a large audience, they can actually participate. An audience member might throw out a little joke here and there, a bit of heckling, etc. I can't stop it! (Not that I'd want to, personally.)

But over video? Well, first, I can make it a live stream. Boom, I am in power, no heckling possible. But even if it's technically a two-way call, once you have a few dozen people, there's no audience banter. I control the conversation, completely. Heck, I'm the only one with my camera on. I'm the center of attention. I have the power to mute people. I'm a God!

> If everyone is doing their work just fine without all that close supervision

That's a pretty good description of my team. And you're right: like anyone else, I enjoy feeling appreciated. But bossing people around in person is not a way to obtain appreciation! Providing useful feedback, helping people ensure they're are working on meaningful projects, helping resolve weird interpersonal situations -- in other words, being a good manager -- is what results in real appreciation.

And all that stuff can be done remotely. But again, it sure is less fun, at least for me. Having a difficult performance conversation with someone over video sucks, for the same reason that it sucks to break up with someone via text message.

> Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc.

Have you ever tried meeting in person for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a different quality of voice so some people sound muffled and I can't "turn the volume up" to understand them. Screen sharing at a desk is awkward and involves huddling close to look at a screen, god forbid I forgot my glasses. Eye contact is annoying because some people like to stare deeeeeeep into my eyes when I'm talking about stuff and I find it distracting. Whiteboards are nice, but I can kinda do the same thing with draw.io or visio on a screen while chatting. And we haven't even begun to talk about people who don't shower enough or like eating stinky food.

lol, see? I can make in-person meetings sound terrible, too!

And then there's the larger in-person meetings in the conference room. I don't get my giant screen, keyboard, and mouse. Nah I gotta have my clumsy laptop, it runs hotter in my lap, the keyboard isn't as nice, and then they probably dimmed the lights a tiny bit because the projector is on. ZZZzzzzzZZZZzZzZZZZzzZZZZZzzzzZ

Okay now I'm just being totally unfair lol.

In person meetings can be nice, but I can totally live without them.

Edit: But I don't totally disagree. There's always gotta be that ONE PERSON who has their microphone like 500 times louder than the other people. And then somebody who has their microphone super quiet. So I either can't hear the quiet person, or get my ears blown out by Loud Howard. And the worst part is hardly anyone knows how to adjust their mic (or my favorite - some idiot in IT forbid adjusting the mic via group policy. WTF?!)

> Now, I do still sneak in some IC work from time to time, and it's obviously great to do that remotely. And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

It is unfortunate that only one group can get what it wants. The people like yourself that enjoy working from the office do so because of the in-person interactions. If the people that want to work from home do so, then those in person interactions are possible.

I'm a big fan of "1-2 days in the office, the rest of the time at home" in order to get _some_ of that in-person interaction. Unfortunately, they requires a VERY specific set of circumstances; specifically, people willing to live close enough to the office to come in (though not necessarily as close as if they had to come in every day).

> I often meet and talk with people for 6 hours in a day. Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc. It kind of sucks, like, a lot.

I actually haven't had o be 5 hours of Zoom and could see that could get old quick. An interesting thought since its the managers inclination for in person meetings - if one could actually organize the 1-1s to be a walking session. But instead of having both the manager and the report driving into the office to walk around the office - perhaps the manager could drive to the report's neighborhood for a 1-1 walking meeting.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Maybe the report can come in 1x per week. Not fully remote but a lot more flexibility than full on office.

Lore tells us managers can't enter your home uninvited. Very clever to have the meeting nearby instead!

I have never in 25+ years of professional development had a productive meeting with a manager. However I have had plenty of productive meetings with engineers. My impression is that most managers mistakenly think they are productive and bringing value when they interrupt the people who are doing the real work. I have been the CEO of a company for 5+ years and in director/management roles for other companies. My teams were way more productive than the competition (according to our customers) and I almost never had meetings. The only rare exception was when a engineer was stuck or spinning his/her wheels. I would then get a few highly respected engineers together and let them help the engineer getting it resolved. All I did was to facilitate the meeting and keep my mouth shut after explaining the problem we needed to get solved. That’s all I needed to do. I probably spent about 1 hour a day on actual work. Mostly fending off bad ideas from other managers, defending the team from clueless managers who wanted to get involved, and making sure our customers stayed informed and happy.

Thanks, I think that's a fair assessment

But now think for a bit: are video meetings the only way you can talk to your colleagues?

Here are other ways you could talk or at least do some of the updating work: chat, email, shared doc, quick audio catch-ups (Slack amongst others). Not just to send what can only be sent by those, but why not explore different ways of doing this? Managers seem allergic to trying anything besides "doing a quick call"

Why don't you put a headset and try walking around and having a walking meeting?

"People have different quality headsets" Ok how much is one of those? I guess it fits the budget. Can't do much about the connection, sure, but maybe the company can think of supporting the employees?

Do all meeting need to be 1h long? I call BS on that one. If the meeting is done it's done, but some people feel like dragging it over.

Linux development has been, for the good part of 20 yrs, done without zoom, phone calls, 1:1 meetings. Mostly through chat (irc, not slack) and email. It's doable

If only people could be ok with the middle ground of spending some "meeting days" in the office and "individual contributor days" from home.

Probably would make the ICs more happy as well since now you know you can focus as opposed to getting nudged randomly.

Even with WFH meeting once or twice a month for a meeting works great. Lunch hour and afternoon traffic isn't as bad as rush hour.

I'd say the vast majority of meetings I'm in we are looking at code or documentation anyway so video calls work the best anyway. But I look forward to when using something like VRChat is a viable option as well.

So a manager prioritizing personal minor convenience (single individual) over productivity and comfort of the reports would be considered a charitable interpretation in MBA land? edit: removed "You" as the author is not part of the group that supports the behavior mentioned

I guess you didn't read my whole comment. I'll quote the part that you didn't read:

> So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

By the way, I definitely don't have an MBA. I've written around a million lines of C++ over my career. So I understand what it's like to work as an IC. Have you managed?

I retract the "you" from the above statement the rest of it still stands. I have managed people and had run my own company but will not extrapolate my experience more generally as I am pretty introverted by nature which is not very representative.

If your comment is just saying "managers who do things to their own benefit, to the expense of their reports, are bad," then we're in agreement.

> And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

noted: edited the comment to reflect