Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”
kenyarmosh.com
kenyarmosh.com
I really don't think pointing to a couple companies that are remote and have decent culture invalidates the point that offices foster collaboration and culture sharing. No, it's not impossible to do those things in a remote environment, but it is absolutely much harder. It's not that hard to understand some companies aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures remotely.
Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication.
Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places!
And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world.
So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.
Having worked for a company with a strong in-office culture that's significantly eroded during remote work, no, this isn't remotely true and is an almost comical underestimation of how hard it is to convert from an office-first to remote-first company.
The real issue is that if you're gonna be a remote-first company, you have to truly commit to it, and that requires significant effort and a complete change in mindset across many activities, including a profound retraining of management and staff behaviours.
I am interested in what you strong in-office culture, like, what does that mean? What things didn't translate to remote?
Ours is a very open access office culture. If someone wants to come and ask me a question they are encouraged to do so because we strongly believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. The result is I cannot count the number of times colleagues have taken advantage of the fact that they could just pop by to ask a quick question, inform me of a decision they're taking, or raise a concern.
The remote work equivalents of that are ad hoc text-based communications--which are extremely low bandwidth, disadvantage slow typists, and lack the emotional subtext provided by facial expressions or body language--or scheduling voice or video calls, which is relatively high friction and still is at best a lackluster substitute for a face-to-face conversation due to poor quality, laggy audio, crappy video, and so forth.
As a result, a ton of that communication has simply shut down in our organization.
The reality is we are not, and for a very long time will not be, in a world where virtual communications tools are as effective as face-to-face interactions. In this world of Zoom, who hasn't accidentally interrupted a colleague, struggled to get a word in edgewise, or found it difficult to hear someone due to a poor audio connection? Or wished for a whiteboard you could use to draw out a concept during an ad hoc problem solving activity? Or thought about pinging someone to have a quick conversation about some topic, only to give up and just write an email because setting up a video session just seemed like a little too much work?
And if your organization relies on a lot of ad hoc communication to function, it will suffer without changes to culture and practices.
The benefit of this is folks who would otherwise be left in the dark also get the benefits of seeing whatever answers are given (and recorded!), and reciprocate in realizing that there is a no culture of fear around questions or consulting others for advice / help.
You dismiss communications tools, but it's more about who is using them than the tools themselves in my opinion.
I work at an all remote org and we have definitely believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. And folks definitely take advantage of being able to pop by (huddle in slack, etc.), inform others of decisions, or raise concerns virtually.
On the flip side, I've worked in an org that was "move fast, open door, etc." but onsite and folks were constantly accidentally out of the loop because decisions would be made face to face but not propagated to the rest of the company (oops, sorry Jim, we forgot you were in the other office or god forbid on vacation). That's what I mean when I say these remote practices (ask in the open, having processes, effective communication) actually help onsite companies as well, and I feel most onsite companies simply ignore them for adhoc face to face lossy communication.
And in my opinion those virtual tools are inferior in many ways to face to face communication (and superior in other ways, as you point out), and those pros and cons matter and are genuinely impactful regarding how people should communicate and collaborate in a remote setting vs an in-person setting.
All that being said, getting back to the original claim:
I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.
Looking at my reply I realize it wasn't sufficiently responsive to the statement.
I think I have a deeper claim, which is that in a face-to-face office setting, culture is more likely to evolve on its own accidentally because human beings are inherently social creatures, and incidental interactions in an in-person setting result in a culture developing.
In a remote setting, those incidental interactions are far less likely to happen. That means the development of culture, and social connections within the organization in general, are less likely to occur organically. Instead, you have to rely on much more deliberate culture building.
So I think I agree with the statement that "companies with a strong practice of building and developing a work culture in an in-office setting will have an easier time transitioning to remote work, because they have practices in place to be intentional about work culture development and reinforcement".
I don't agree with the inverse statement (as posited by the person I responded to) that "companies that don't have a practice of building a strong culture in a remote setting will not have a strong culture in an in-person setting" because I think office culture is more likely to grow organically in a face-to-face setting where incidental interactions with people are more likely to occur.
Is learning to ride a bicycle hard? Of course. But once you learn to ride a bicycle, the benefits are immense. That is why people learn to ride a bike in spite of the initial difficulty. They know that the payoff is much larger in the end.
If you can figure out how to be effective in a remote setup, you will not only learn how to work remotely, but also how to communicate well in a team. Physical distance should and will become a nonissue for a software development team.
for you
> offices foster collaboration and culture sharing...
for you
Not everyone is like you. Your claims simply don't apply to those of us who have an easier time collaborating with professional colleagues remotely. It's unfortunate that we are completely disregarded and told what our preferences should be by people who completely fail or are unwilling to understand us
I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?
- People whose productivity is based on regular social interaction will work faster face-to-face.
- People whose productivity is based on long periods of focus will work faster remotely.
Alternate take 1: If IC positions attract strongly introverted people, ICs as a cohort will naturally be less desirous of returning to the office than cohorts that require some ability to extrovert (such as management).
Alternate take 2: ICs are responsible for their tasks/goals. Managers are responsible for the tasks/goals of their managed individuals as well as the health of the team. People aren't machines. Managing people is not as simple as checking if they're completing sprints on time. Are they overworked? Underworked? Happy? Depressed? Engaged? Disinterested? These sorts of assessments are important yet can be hard to determine remotely.
If managing requires some amount of extroversion, and also the ability to not just measure that boxes have been checked but attest that boxes will continue to be checked in the future, it follows that managers likely are "more keen for a return to the office".
From personal experience, technical individual contributors tend to be much more introverted, and something like ADHD can make constant interruptions far worse than a mere inconvenience. Still, some of them come across as outright misanthropes for some reason.
Introversion is fine, and even introverted managers can do OK so long as they don't bite off more than they can chew. But you cannot manage people if you don't have basic interpersonal skills. In fact, it's helpful to be able to look someone in the eye and see how motivated they are.
What a shocker!
I've come to believe that a lot of what managers, from those immediately overseeing workers, to executive directors, do is pleasurable to them individually, but really has no business reason. That is, it's all about personal power and making their subordinates do work they don't want to do.
If my belief is true, managers will of course be in favor of a return-to-office even if there's no rational reason for that to happen.
Finding a way to reduce distractions is easier at work: it's a lot easier to change jobs than to change families :-)
I wish I was better at home than the office, but I am not.
https://2date4love.com/workplace-affairs-statistics/
And one in ten workers admit sleeping with their boss, according to
https://www.studyfinds.org/third-office-romances-involve-mar...
Perhaps managers are missing a very particular type of non-virtual interaction. Surprised this isn’t mentioned more in this era of #MeToo. And I’d imagine that would provide a very strong incentive for many managers to push RTO.
I just find this bit entirely unconvincing. I don't have data to back up my claim, but IME 1 in-person interaction is worth ~5-10 'virtual coffee' type interactions via Donut or one of the similar apps. Maybe others feel differently, but I haven't found any substitute for live, in-person get togethers for connecting with colleagues on a personal level.
They are trying to keep things in harmony while focusing on output. It might not leave the work environment socially positive, but they aren't actively trying to make the place worse socially, either. That doesn't sound a bad deal considering some of us are very selective with relationships and frankly, selecting companies for colleagues would be a ridiculously long and potentially fruitless endeavor. Meanwhile, what you do get is someone who is a large net positive on other fronts.
One can deliver quality work cordially, but at a distance socially, in my experience.
Maybe some jobs don't require that, but as a software engineer I've needed to tread those interpersonal waters a lot. Discussions about interfaces, pushing back on requirements, picking up neat tricks, offering tough estimates, it's all much easier if there's already some report there.
Workplaces that try to use Work and Pay as a reason to have a social outing aren’t workplaces. I’ll fake it to be paid but if remote means it goes away… that is a very very good thing.
edited to add: People have also fallen in love online for decades. I know several people who met their spouses online.
What evidence would convince you that you don't need to discuss Johnny Carson's monologue at the watercoolor to interact with colleagues in a meaningful way?
Sure. But I'll bet you that sooner or later they've moved their relation from mostly online to mostly offline.
But that's not what reality is. Many people work in a lousy, suboptimal open office. They don't get to handpick their teammates. They might have to spend a lot of time commuting at times not matching their natural rhythm, which inadvertently has an effect on their mood.
And that's really all there is to it. If there's truth to how many people just "glue code together" in their developer jobs, then the immediate follow-up is "do you really need to discuss that much to glue code together, when requirements are already far out of your reach?" For many, the work literally becomes a case of "the more you bother me, the less work I'll get done", which coupled with the above and pressure to perform, is a recipe for disaster.
Given something closer to the ideal with more collaborative requirements, then yes, in-office would be better no doubt. With the caveat of the disadvantages one would still have.
My life is not about my employer extracting 100% of my productivity from me. I have a better quality of life working from home and I’m going to keep it.
I mean this without sarcasm, the 'Guidelines' at the bottom of the page and in particular the 'In Comments' section are really on point and worthwhile to read.
I think you’re really overestimating how much my comment either adds or detracts from the conversation.
But I can say it in a clearer way: I do not care one single iota about the investment companies have made in leasing buildings whatsoever. I do not care to be babysat at work and I leave places that choose such paths. I look down on people who want to have that either as an occupation or a career. I will be laughing the entire time the physical workplace burns because it’s comical.
Have you ever read Candide by Voltaire?
The difference is now when I’m waiting for bureaucratic machines to move, I can at least do it in the comfort of my home.
I’d be willing to go back into office for the right job, but history tells me they don’t even want to interview me anyway :)
The owners of all of that office space are going to lose a lot if nobody goes back to the office. Are they paying to incentivize any of this "return to office" stuff?
Likewise, if the business real estate market crashes, what are all the ripples? Are there people paying to prevent the crash because it would hit them indirectly?
The direction of decentralized work effort has let people step back from the trees to see the forest, and simply ask why a company thinks it's even worth their in-person time. This should even be a stockholder fundamental question if a chunk of company expenses goes to keeping lights turned on.
Of course not all shared-location work environments are created equal, and too many in management are both lazy and power hungry. They (and their companies) want to blame anything but their own horrific employment practices and lazy, out-of-date policies. So it's not all a bad thing remote-work has become as big as it has. However, like all human activity pendulums, the remote-work vs in-presence work one WILL swing back. I expect many of us will get a great deal of enjoyment in seeing it when it does.
Maybe part of the difference is my company has dozens of field offices scattered across multiple states, so they're already used to a lot of their employees essentially being remote.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-19/bosses-do...
While 35% of non-executive employees are in the office five days a week, just 19% of executives can say the same, according to a survey by Future Forum, a research consortium backed by messaging channel Slack.
Yes, maintaining a positive and welcoming work culture is intentional. However, human-to-human interaction is a big part of that. There's a big difference between having a few get-togethers per year and being able to ask someone (who might not be in your immediate circle) out to an actual coffee.
Also, career growth is 100% about who you know. Knowing everyone is easy at small companies but is impossible at larger ones. Yes, you can ask your skip-level for an intro to someone outside of your immediate silo, but I'd argue that this is more difficult for people that aren't intrinsically-motivated to make that leap themselves. This is something else that is bolstered by closer proximity and person-to-person interactions.
Everything else mentioned here varies from person to person, IMO.
Offices can be very fun places to be, even if you have a thriving social life. For many, it is very difficult to make friends outside of your regular social interactions.
Yes, there's Meetup, but (a) not even town has a thriving Meetup scene; you can almost bet on Meetup sucking in rural/suburban neighborhoods, and (b) it takes a real ability to go into an event knowing that you'll know no-one and that you'll do your best to leave knowing someone. I hosted large Meetup groups for many years, have gone to countless events and have interacted with probably thousands of people, and I still have a lot of trouble with this because I strongly prefer, and have always preferred, being by myself. Anyone that says "it's easy bro" is probably naturally good at this and doesn't comprehend that someone could struggle here.
On the other hand, offices can be a means to an end for people with families who want to spend as much time with them as possible. For these people, perks and social outings aren't incentivizing. However, many people with families are CONSTANTLY distracted in ways that they wouldn't be in an office. Crying babies, toddlers being toddlers, pets, random noises, etc. are common enough to create a bingo card out of. I don't think this reduces "productivity" (which is in the eyes of the beholder), but these things definitely wouldn't happen in offices.
E.g. - training a junior developer vs. turning a senior "debug commando" loose, - collaborating on an architecture vs. deep thinking about an algorithm, - screen sharing vs. whiteboard doodling, - dealing with an underperformer vs. getting out of the way of an overperformer, - when to check in with a home worker vs. when to let an office worker focus, - etc.
There's just so many people completely focused on One Right Answer to the question. Even if it's a different One Right Answer for different people. As an engineer I'm interested in the trade-offs in every choice, but the discussion is so polluted that you can't really trust anyone to treat the subject with intellectual honesty.