Remote Work Is Failing Young Employees
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> We asked early career workers what resources they wished they could have had during those early pandemic months, and the responses were full of helpful ideas for any company. Most important, they wanted a clearly delineated mentor who — crucially — was not also their supervisor or in charge of evaluating their performance. One person suggested a dual mentor program that paired new employees with a co-worker in a similar position in the company who could offer advice on more quotidian concerns, as well as a more senior employee who could provide longer-term career advice.
And
> People wanted opportunities to sit in on calls with senior members of different teams — the equivalent of silently sitting in on an in-person meeting — if only to get a better sense of what others’ jobs entailed. They wanted access to email templates for specific kinds of intra-office and out-of-office outreach. They wanted to know what time was normal to reply to emails. In short, they wanted to be told what they were supposed to be doing at work and how to do it successfully. Even those who admitted that such guidance could quickly become stifling agreed that it was better than flailing around with vague expectations and zero guidance.
It's basically the prisoner's dilemma applied to an entire job market, someone is going to sell out so it may as well be you, but don't sell cheap.
A lot of this "people need to socialize" stuff feels very patronizing to me. I think socializing with coworkers used to be seen as a risky thing to do, now it's encouraged. I don't like the idea of building my entire friend group, or a majority of it, around who I work with.
And being unable to build meaningful relationships makes it harder to grow a career.
I grew up on irc, ventrilo, teamspeak, and now discord. Some of my best friends are just usernames (not even profile pics)! It is possible to build long standing relationships with people just through text and voice chat, let alone video.
> And being unable to build meaningful relationships makes it harder to grow a career.
Harder or unfamiliar? No generation has had remote as an available option as ours has. In the same way we say "X is harder than Y" in technology when really we mean "I have used X but not Y" it might just be something we need to attempt.
You must appreciate the difference between chatting online vs. in person.
I think you're seeing this in the wrong light; you interact with your teammates (even remotely) way more than most people. Isn't it healthy to have good relationships with them?
There's a huge difference between having good relationships with your colleagues and being forced to build your social life around your job. One is a basic requirement and the other is a huge problem.
I spent most of my childhood in my bedroom grinding to make a better life and "get out" of the small town I grew up in.
I got there, and after a few short years the world decided to retreat to their bedrooms.
I enjoy riding the Tube, or cycling, or walking. I enjoy driving too. I enjoy seeing people on busy high streets, I enjoy chatting / playing card games over lunch at work, etc.
I never made work my entire social circle, my colleagues were always colleagues, I have other avenues for that.
There's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever, which might have made sense for a month or two in March last year but now is just a sign that you're dealing with someone who is either deliberately lying or just has no understanding of the situation.
I genuinely think that WFH for the vast majority is just a step towards the dystopia of having people live in endless tower blocks somewhere, plugged into a wall with a VR headset and a nutrition drip. It'd be more efficient and convenient.
But I don't want to be efficient. I could maximize my efficiency by jumping off a bridge.
That ain't life.
I think if you look at it at just the surface level it does seem like a step backwards. In really there's a reason so many companies switched to it, it wasn't because they're secret operatives trying to plug us up to nutritus-3000 to maximize our LOC, it's because of reduced friction for the worker.
I think a lot of people forget about terrible managers as well, with WFH the surface area of harm a bad manager can cause you is limited which can immediately make a terrible office job into a tolerable remote one.
I have literally zero interest in a Zoom call to someone who's in the same town as me, I'd rather jump on the bus or train and see them.
I don't see that as being increased friction because to me travel and seeing people is _better_ than sitting in front of a screen for longer - it provides a welcome break and helps me to see more about the world.
I just find the entire thing odd. Like, being in the pub is better than on a phone call. Being at a theme park is better than being in a sim. Being at work is better than being at virtual work.
The whole situation is absurd to me, like a bad movie plot.
And I say this as someone who will probably prefer the hybrid approach of seeing my teammates 1-2 times a week. The less time people are forced to waste lavish amounts of time, fuel, and their lives to commuting, so much the better.
You talk about being "forced" to be in an office but ignore the other side of being "forced" to work over video calls.
I mean, neither are forced, like I said I just left the industry. So it goes, life moves on. What a shame to have wasted so much time on a dead end path, though now I'm having great fun doing other stuff. :)
If you don’t want to be “forced”, then become your own boss- this is a Y Combinator site, after all. Become an entrepreneur or a freelancer. Or drop out of the workforce entirely into the ranks of r/antiwork.
It sounds like you’ve found a new path, that’s great! You do you, but trumpeting it in such an oblique way is just Vaguebook humblebragging.
Most office jobs aren't even going as bonkers as software dev.
If you see me saying "software development left me behind" as a humblebrag, that's on you.
I had a job I loved, and propaganda deleted it.
Is there anything preventing from you doing a "commute" before work each day when working from home or renting an office space like a WeWork? If you like it, nothing is stopping you from doing a commute.
> There's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever, which might have made sense for a month or two in March last year but now is just a sign that you're dealing with someone who is either deliberately lying or just has no understanding of the situation.
I don't know if that's a fair characterization. Everyone has their own risk tolerance and for different people that's a different value. Maybe someone lives with someone older, like a parent or close relative, and doesn't want to be a vector to transmit to them?
> I genuinely think that WFH for the vast majority is just a step towards the dystopia of having people live in endless tower blocks somewhere, plugged into a wall with a VR headset and a nutrition drip. It'd be more efficient and convenient.
I see requiring people to come into an office leads to the same thing. I want WFH so I can move out of a city central area and live in a cheaper community where I can walk around without fear of getting mugged, know local business owners, etc.
I have left the industry because of WFH. I have no interest in compromising, it was fun, and none of what you have described is fun, so why bother?
I wish you the best in front of your screen.
So it is possible to do but because it isn't required to actually "get to" work it feels futile?
> it was fun, and none of what you have described is fun
I haven't really described much here. I'm just asking if "commuting" to get coffee from a local shop or something could serve as a substitute. Your response seems to indicate that it couldn't but I'm not exactly sure why that is.
> I wish you the best in front of your screen.
I don't know if this is meant to be a dig but, if you're a SWE or in IT or something you're probably going to be behind a screen for a majority of your job. Even people in NOC monitor screens most of the time.
I honestly find these people to simply be trolls. The views espoused make no sense.
Imagine if I suggested that they just video call their children from the office as a replacement for watching them grow up.
You want A, I want B. We can have both, it ain't even hard.
I hope it's not coming off as me trolling. I'm genuinely attempting to see what the other side of this discussion is. One side seems to represent remote work as a way to decentralize the industry allowing us all to move to lower cost of living areas, reduce the time "working" by not needing commutes, spend more time with family and children, and improve the amount of focus time you have.
As for the work-from-office side of things: I don't actually know why people want to return. As from what I can gather: people miss commuting and miss seeing other people. It seems fairly straight forward to me how this could be replicated in a WFH environment.
1. If you miss commuting adding a fake commute (home -> subway -> coffee shop -> subay -> home) into your day can help.
2. If you miss seeing people working from a shared office space like WeWork or attending meetups with other people in your field seems like a good substitute. You can talk shop with people who are actually your friends (changing jobs doesn't change your social group).
I see these as being very direct substitutes for what I see people bring up and I don't understand why these are not the same. Maybe because other people you are working with are not also doing these? Maybe it's that if the commute or socialization aren't part of the job it feels sort of "pointless"? I don't understand this though.
> Imagine if I suggested that they just video call their children from the office as a replacement for watching them grow up.
Funnily enough this is one of the reasons people like WFH. They can spend time with their kids instead of commuting.
> You want A, I want B. We can have both, it ain't even hard.
Actually, it is sort of difficult. In a world where we assume all workplaces allow WFH then yes, we can do both. Coworkers who want to work in an office can self organize into rented office space but the default of remote workers will change things: conference rooms need to allow people to dial in, people need to document discussions/decisions that are randomly made in office, etc. In a world where work-from-office is the assumed norm it is much harder to join a company as WFH since many processes are just not there.
> here's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever
if people are forced to vaccinate and wear masks by their own government why is it theater when they just want to expose themselves to 25-100 less people everyday? Cant have it both ways
Frankly I just don't interact with corona-obsessed people in real life any more, which they probably prefer. Everyone wins.
I left the industry, only software development has really gone all in on it.
"Sure, I went to a packed restaurant with friends this weekend but I feel uncomfortable coming into the office."
I would find it amusing if these guys weren't so _serious_ about it.
It's a religion.
agreed to socialization, i dont need daily face to face socialization with those i work with, we already slack and chat while we work.
im against full/part time return to office, the only thing i would consider is optional social event days once a month or so (previously we had work events for all sorts of seasonal events) id go in for those sometimes, just to socialize with my fellows.
I agree that some types of employees have started neglecting duties because "wfh i do what i want" but the rest of us are working/helping others just as much as before, if not more.
You're not refuting OP's point though.
The article includes the following quote:
> “I was shocked at how all the skills I had learned on how to navigate this type of environment in person evaporated remotely,” Kiersten said.
And also:
> “If I was sitting next to my manager, I could just have a quick chat and move on,” he said. “But I’m much less likely to Slack my manager and ask something because I don’t know what they’re up to at the moment. The amount of on-the-job learning has reduced dramatically.”
So the author managed to find the two 20 year olds who struggle with online communication and it's async nature. It seems clear that the OP makes a good point.