That's because it's true. You're either a remote company or the remote people find that they routinely hear about things much later than everyone in the office knows about them.
I've tried to properly document basic reasonings and how-to's for future people in the roles, and told that wasn't really the work needed done. Then again, management failed to understand that onboardinng and more routine-ish tasks could be documented and sped up.
I jumped ship from my previous job (that was forced WfH with grumblings of returning any day now), to a 100% true remotework position. I'll *NEVER* go back to a hybrid or WfW job again.
Your company may not have any remote employees, but if four people on a team are at the company's US headquarters and the fifth is in the company's office in Ireland, expect the Irish employee to get cut out of the loop constantly.
I think this notion is built on pre-pandemic reality, when it was like 95% in office, 5% remote. Then remote was a 2nd class citizen, in-person conversations reigned, and remote ppl were fairly out of the loop. But when 50% or more of people are remote, everything is “remote first”, basically all communication happening in Slack (or at least being summarized online), and I just haven’t seen this happen.
Basically, I agree that your company is currently remote-first, even if they have offices and most people are in one location, but only time will tell if it stays that way after coming out of the pandemic (strongly depends on company culture and their policies).
It does need to be a culture of “remote first” communication, with the office primarily being a place for people who want a more social work experience. But I suspect this will be a lasting, common setup for many tech companies, that works well.
The market advantage only works where there is a lack of labour. In cities with a big scene, there will be a lack of labour for a given industry.
everyone remote will depress your labour's value because you are competing against a much bigger pool of talent.
In tech its not so apparent yet, because there is a short supply of staff generally. But that wont persist for ever.
There's a lot more programmers on the market right now than 10 years ago thanks to bootcamps and short degrees.
Honestly, for each one hired you generally need a proper engineer to cleanup the mess afterward. I'm not worried about an oversupplied of qualified engineers anytime soon.
Being good tech staff is a hard skill. This idea that there will ever be enough just because the demand is high (and therefore there are many people getting schooling) is not healthy. Even when there are a lot of tech workers, there will be sourcing trouble. Instead of not finding anyone at all, companies will find very poor tech folks. In a very real sense this is already a problem today.
Remote roles ask for so much more interviewing but offer more money.
I'm not sure this tracks with my experience. It seems like the organizational structure of a company is what keeps people from learning about things, not their location. The common case I can think of is that some meeting occurs in which a decision is made, and that decision and the context around it are not communicated outside the meeting (in a timely or efficient way, that is).
Some people are "in the know" and others are not, but it's a function of who they work with, not who they meet in the hallway.
If you mean gossip, watercooler chat, that kind of thing, sure. But, I don't miss that stuff.
Maybe you're thinking of some other example that I'm not.
Being remote often means you have more unknown unknowns, because you can't see the daily goings-on. If you haven't experienced this, you're either very lucky or your company is a lot more remote-centric than you think it is.
Are you satisfied with your job? Are you being paid the amount you want? If yes, who cares? I try to avoid being too informed about certain things anyway because it ends up making me a target for added responsibilities that I don’t care about.
You're not working on a team if decisions are made by 5/6 of the people most of time without even a consideration that the other person might have input. At that point you're a weird internal contractor, and to your point, if they wanted me to be a contractor and just deal with whatever choices the team makes without input, I'd expect to be paid as a contractor.
Sometimes people use face to face as a crutch.
I was told the look into another language was part of "a bake off" between a couple options, and I assumed they'd have a more general meeting/decision before picking. I'd made my general opinion known earlier, but I didn't want to clutter meetings that weren't about the relevant decision by cramming my opinion on the matter into them.
I have no idea if my opinion would have changed things, but I never got the chance to find out. I'd have rather lost an argument where my point of view was heard than just had any objections overridden by default though.
I've asked about the decision later on, but that was after tens of hours of work had gone into the system I disagreed with, so making the case for throwing away most of a week of a couple dev's work is a lot harder to make than pushing to not "waste" that work in the first place.
I've been working remote for 2 years, and the team has been mostly good about it. I bring this up specifically because it's a good example of the pitfalls that can hit even a team that is otherwise doing a good job of remote inclusion.
The whole point is that not having folks as looped in to meetings and choices when you're remote makes it a lot easier to intentionally or accidentally cut people out of important decisions. In this case, now I have to be the disruptive jerk that's going "I don't like this. Stop." if I care, or I just have to go along with the decision.
If an employer is not willing to accomodate remote first and payme well as a contractor, I'll find another one willing to.
It is also about being able to be effective. Because if they don't tell you things, your productivity goes down.
Sure, for a reasonable amount of time until either you are able to be once again, or they let you go.
> Productivity is the company’s problem, not mine.
I know this can feel hard to believe when you're stuck in a crappy situation, but there are many folks who value their output for its own sake.
You might also choose to care about your productivity because it can correspond with your ability to get promoted, earn more, etc.