Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment?
It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all solution.
Or worse, open floor plans.
Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due to covid isolation shifting people's personalities.
All remote work did was showcase people can in fact rebel against the status quo when the inertia associated is entirely self-inflicted.
I think that's an overstatement. I've been more remote than not for close to 20 years and 90%+ remote for close to 10.
That said, there is some point in time before which companies would have had to largely shrug and tell people that they had to stay in the office pandemic or not. (Which of course many jobs and professions basically had to anyway.)
Most people didn't know remote was possible until 2019
That said, I've been a professional programmer for all that time, which in my mind is practically made for working remotely. It's definitely taken longer for some other industries to be as amenable, which I believe has been due to the people in charge, not the profession.
I agree that general inertia has something to do with it, but that's a terrible reason to accept the way things are.
That's what your personal life is for.
Related: https://archive.ph/Ji4nM (WSJ - Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends)
[And no, I don't want to go back to 1950 at all, don't get me wrong.]
I started a job a few years ago and spent the first 4 weeks in the office in SF, then moved back to Australia. The relationships I established in that first month were invaluable for the first 6 months or so of my work there - lots of things were easier for me as a result because I knew who to message or connect on slack to get things done.
After about 6 months those relationships faded to the point that I couldn't rely on those social connections any more. It was difficult knowing who to message when I needed something done outside my team; and they had no idea who I was any more.
I don't think you need to be in the office every day, but I miss going to an office at all. Those casual social connections are crazy valuable. Zoom and slack don't give you the experience of sitting at a table with people over lunch and chatting. We dismiss those relationships at our peril.
Market has already listened and are going to favor the latter group and the remote environment is going to be here with us indefinitely. If for whatever reason you feel like going against this new market trend/correction, you stand to lose out.
Companies who are demanding hybrid or return to office are unironically putting themselves in walls that will limit their competitiveness in the long run. Again this is what the market tells us, many companies are realizing they can save on expensive commercial rent/logistic overhead and hire more remote workers.
During my somewhat passive job search, I've only been considering companies that have an office local to me (i.e. Central London). I've been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and I simply don't like it. Sure, I don't miss having to commute or offices with bad noise pollution controls, but I miss everything else.
Most of all, I miss being in town at the end of the day and being able to pop to the pub with colleagues if one of us needs to vent, or go to a salsa party nearby. I basically don't go out anymore; yes, this is a me thing, but it's also always been a me thing. I've always found it easier to have a social life on weeknights rather than weekends because I struggle to overcome the inertia of being at home.
This preference means some very exciting companies are effectively off-limits to me, and that's hugely frustrating; but I also know what I need.
I feel like picking jobs off of a desire to live a social life and feel like part of a community is extremely normal and valid. Remote work is essentially accepting that the primary way you'll engage with your colleagues and labor is through a screen, and that is an uncomfortable feeling (to some people at least)
The argument would be a lot stronger if most office work wasn't perpetually online to begin with.
Been on my own and remote since 2000. I am remote with my clients save for occasional face to face meeting when possible and I am remote with my subcontractors. It feels "extremely normal" to me and the last thing I've ever want is my friends and people I hang out with being supplied by my workplace. Does not mean that I've never made friends when I did "normal work" long time ago but it was just extra.
I do think that this discussion is often people who disagree not bothering to disagree, which probably explains why I read your comment wrong.
My coworkers are my colleagues. I don’t mind sharing a beer with them once in a while, but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That doesn’t lead to community, it leads to having acquaintances. And if you doubt that, ask yourself how many of your “work friends” from a job you’ve had more than a year ago do you still interact with?
The pandemic has been a joy for me because it’s let me separate my parasocial interactions from my true friends.
I still interact a lot with people I was on a team with >1 yr ago – the ones I met before we went remote. Can't say the same about the ones I was never in the office with, even though they seem like equally good people.
> but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That doesn’t lead to community, it leads to having acquaintances.
It has not been my experience that "community" arises particularly from this kind of homogeneity.
I'm also kind of curious what you mean by "parasocial" outside of the context of media.
I actually went back and forth on using it - even considering a hedge with a "quasi-" prefix. But it felt apt: plenty of my past "work friends" exist as little beyond a persona that I interact with via LinkedIn. I give a thumbs-up for their job change, we exchange polite offers to get a coffee that we both know neither will accept, and we go on.
I would say that the majority of my friends and close Social Circle are people who I met and worked with an office at one point. Sure it started with cooler chat and beers after work, but it evolve to going to weddings, backpacking trips, and our partners becoming close with friendships of their own.
I do like workplace community, even if I'm only close with a subset of my colleagues. I find it vastly more fulfilling to work with friends that I enjoy. I don't like turning off my personality and become a faceless COG working with other cogs for 8 hours a day and find it depressing
It makes sense—wherever you spend the most time around others is where you’re most likely to make friends and feel a sense of belonging.
Remote work upends that. It’s great if you already have an established social circle, but bad for people who want to develop one.
There’s no reason why work has to be the main thing that satisfies these needs, but it’s fulfilled that role for so long that it has sucked up most of the oxygen from alternatives.
I hope that as remote work continues to take off, we’ll see a new wave of third places that can take over this function. There’s a huge opportunity here for anyone who can help socially struggling remote workers feel more connected.
I prefer this to spending £40 for the train to then drink £8 pints in overfilled London pubs while standing outside and shouting over each other. I actually don't want to spend more time with my colleagues after spending all day with them, I prefer to have a second friend circle which is more diverse than <group of people who happen to work in the same company as me>.
This works great for you but for many it doesn't. Both are valid perspectives.
For every bold company that leans into remote, the majority rest check the public temperature and do what seems in line pending open revolt form their employees or competitors offering remote.
So much of the public temperature around remote work is oriented around heavy support from public figures for return to office. By some employees supporting it as well, everyone risks getting swept back into office whether they like it or not and don’t have a job with enough power (like a talented dev) to go against the grain and protest.
If you’re not in those jobs with leverage and at a company considering RTO or not, Employees supporting remote work are espousing very safe career views, and the employees who disagree risk going against the grain with mgmt who want the office back so stay silent.
So this is what I mean by OP’s opinions mean everyone else gets swept in it as well.
The Mayor of NYC and state governor are directly petitioning companies to “fill our downtown!” For Pete’s sake.
So, with that in mind, I’m advocating for employees who want to go back to consider how their vocal opinions affect other employees who don’t want it, which based on the ghost-town hybrid office attempts and midtown NYC being at like 40% capacity are a critical mass of workers, to understand how their vocal-ness gets co-opted by entities that care a lot less about that worker’s having a friend group and more about commercial real estate, getting commuters back and generally abstract “well this is how it’s always done” logic, and to understand that they as employees add the final piece to making RTO happen in a way that harms all employees who aren’t in nimble jobs like SWE but should still be able to see their families grow up even if they don’t know how to code.
On the remote work side, you have largely tech companies which are down for it no issue but aren’t most companies, and then you have employees who just want to see their families and soccer games and get to know their spouses before age 60.
This population gets ignored by the somewhat very powerful stakeholders for RTO by wrapping up the argument in abstract “national /personal meaning” arguments as if the office is the only way to get those, and then the addition is that the stay-at-home employees are pajama-wearing slackers who don’t understand this greater good.
But, as long as employees don’t budge by and large and hop companies for remote, this is in balance for both the employees that want to be remote and the ones that want an office.
But when employees who want to RTO and start advocating for it, it’s changed. They add the final piece for employers and stakeholders who ultimately just want commercial rent paid and downtown lunch traffic to say “see, employees want RTO too!” This is all over LinkedIn and op-eds consistently.
The sweeps start happening, and everyone comes in, all because Bob wanted easy access to after-work pub experiences. At the cost of other employees’ family lives and literal hours of their day on a commute.
I’m not advocating for censorship, I’m advocating for candor in evaluating what’s going on.
Candidly, I believe that employees who advocate for RTO are playing into the hands of stakeholders who don’t care much at all about those employees interests and reasons for going in, and by extension it damages fellow employees who want to stay remote.
The issue is, and by extension my primitives:
- remote employees can stay remote without damaging RTO employees’ social connections as there are a mountain or ways to get those social connections outside of easy-mode work.
- if RTO employees start going back, remote employees get damaged. There is the binary in office/not in office option. demonstrated outcomes are RTO pressure from some leads to RTO pressure for all.
- so, remote employees aren’t infringing on RTO, but RTO infringes on remote. There is more than enough evidence of this. One is allowing whoever to do whatever, the other is infringing on one population to support the social needs of another. That doesn’t seem right for Pete’s sake.
Ultimately, between a person’s ability to get easy access to a pub in light of the above, vs the resulting damage on employees who just want to work via the internet connection in their homes vs the one in the office and as a result see their kids grow up and get to know their spouses outside of pre-8am and post-7pm… that seems like a clear greater good to orient around and to be aware of one’s views’ impacts. It’s more than just pub nights involved.
I will continue to argue against any government regulations forcing the issue one way or another. But if companies start demanding workers return and the pool of jobs available to you shrinks, that's not my problem.
To be clear, I oppose Mayor Adams's (and anyone else's) inept efforts to distort the labor market in favor of in-person working, even if it's towards something I personally prefer. Government should play no role in remote vs in-person.
The market might solve it via PwC tanking over 10 yrs due to talent, but in the meantime that’s 10 yrs of people who deserve to see their families more too and can’t.
You could argue they should just be good enough at their jobs and/or choose the right career as to get remote options. Fair enough and this is what I’ve done.
But the implied primitive that the market decides who gets more family time, especially when it’s almost as simple as internet at the office or internet at home, seems very socially wrong to me.
My friends don't share my work context, nor do I want to have them hear about it endlessly. Getting a drink with friendly coworkers is a good way to have a conversation with that shared context.
Also, note that neither of these activities involve colleagues, who I'd usually only socialise with post-work once a week (typically Fridays).
I feel like people get this or not. The relationships at work are more for career advancement than friendship (or I’m a sociopath). This has been a thing forever, Office Space was a hit for a reason.
No, I'm looking for companies that fit my preferences. Which is making my job search much harder, but I know what I need.
If your experiences are different, I'm sorry for that, the last thing I want portray remote as an invalid preference. But when the topic comes up, I'm not going to sit on mute if it feels like my preference isn't getting any airtime.
What I’m referring to is this. I’ve worked at a few places that maintain an in-person office option for employees like you to support hybrid offices. These offices are frequently libraries though. Nobody is there. So the following happens.
If it’s a disciplined, remote-first place, this is accepted and ok. The subset of companies that can support this is small IMO.
For most others, they look at the empty office, hear preferences like yours that want in-personal back via appeals for community, at the extensive and the loud culture of OpEds in the Wall Street Journal/NYT by Peggy Noonan or Malcolm Gladwell about how remote work is critical for national and personal meaning, and then the return to office discussions start b/c employees support it as do thought leaders, the media, and politicians, and the nearly-empty office is expensive.
To be sure, there might be work places that stay totally in-person and you’re free to work there.
But the other issue is a lot of people don’t want work friends as their friends. This is loose scientific evidence, but Office Space is a very popular movie in the US and the Office in UK/US for this reason, for example.
So calls for return to office means, imo, a lot of people who would also love to be remote but can’t bc they’re not software engineers or wherever get swept back in. So your personal needs harm that greater good as I see it.
2. Sign-up to a local coworking space in Central London and make a habit to go there every day. Try to make friends with people there and go out with them every now and then. Many coworking spaces even try to facilitate community building by organising events, etc.
3. Profit.
Socializing doesn't need to happen at work.
Also, keep in mind not all coworkings are made equal. It might take trying a few before you find one that suits you well.
In my experience small, local coworkings are best for building relationships. Big, chain coworkings like WeWork are the worst. Everyone just minds their own business there.
Good times.
The polarisation of this debate is quite weird to watch. I get why people who prefer remote feel they have to fight for it now that it has become a common thing, but it's weird to deny that other people might have other preferences and there is room for both.
Funny, because before COVID, like 90% of the IT companies out there were using a "one-size fits all" solution (i.e., 100% office-based work).
It did involve flights and hotels for the around 10 weeks a year I was working in more of a lab situation, which I can see not wanting to do for 300 people instead of a few dozen.
Remote doesn't specify where you work, though. In my 20 years of working remotely, I've worked from home, from cars, hotels, cafes, offices, out in the middle of a field, you name it I've probably done it. 100% remote working conditions can mean working in an office environment every single day, if that's your preference. Remote is a euphemism for "work wherever you please".
The actual differentiation here is whether or not an employer dictates a working location. Are you, perhaps, suggesting that there is strong overlap between those who prefer working in offices (which does no preclude 100% remote) and having a controlling power dictate how they live?
There is an implication as well, though, that there is an additional self-selection towards having dictation on how to live your life from a greater power among those who prefer working in offices, seeing those people self-select businesses that have mandated location requirements. That is what we are exploring here.
This, right here, explains the pushback against those who favor in-office work; it's not that they simply want to be in the office, but they want their colleagues to make the commute to join them in the office and chat with them.
Conversely, remote workers do not place any such requirements on where their colleagues work. They aren't requiring that anyone else be in a specific location at a specific time, hence why it is better and more accommodating to others.
No thanks. I get paid the same if it takes me 4 hours or 8 hours to complete my work. I'll take 4 hours and spend the rest of the day doing what I want.
People can be productive or slackers. And they can be social or antisocial. You personally noticed the social slackers. But I doubt you noticed the antisocial ones, because they're not visibly doing nothing; they're distracting themselves in quieter ways.
I know plenty of people who are both productive and social. Indeed, given that both software and business are mostly team sports, some of the most productive people I know are very social.
This. working remotely you have the HUGE advantage of being able to work enough and spend the rest of your working time as you prefer, rather than waste it. Even if you deeply love your teammates, having more time for yourself is priceless, especially in a society where you're supposed to spend the most and the best of your life working.
Not all job roles are the same and communication can be required for many. Building good rapport can help reduce tensions as well and being in person can help that.
“People that like social interaction are average performers” is such a wild take to me. I’ve worked with incredibly talented people in the past, where we’d go for lunch beers, travel together, come back to the office, finish up pretty complicated features. I don’t consider myself a “top performer”, but those people certainly were, and downplaying their talent and abilities just because they enjoy the company of other people is just… not nice.
This whole debate of “remote only” vs “fully back to office” is extremely subjective. Some people love one, some people enjoy the other. I’ll be happy as long as both of the options stay competitive enough where people get a choice.
Edit: Find more work or help the rest of the team out.
As one advisor put it: researchers who prefer to keep their door closed often publish more papers over the course of a year, but researchers who keep their door open often publish more impactful research over the course of their lifetime.
(My prior job was the first time I've worked in an open plan office so one of my hard requirements in my prior job search was no open plan offices.)
I've been working remotely for years with in-person visits on a monthly to quarterly basis. Brain-storming and planning in person definitely create value, but getting the work done is a different story. 10% inspiration (in person, maybe) and 90% perspiration (where they don't have to watch you sweat).
I've also worked with engineers who completely discounted the importance of the social aspect of their work. Frequently even their strongest work had minimal impact on the organization.
Make performance scale better and the problem stops. There aren't enough jobs willing to do so.
That’s the nonsensical aspect of all this. Everyone mentioning that the office was a key community or some higher ideal to spend time on for meaning forget that you can have that socialization and significantly more intrinsically valuable meaning-making with (a) family, (b) friends outside of work, (c) community involvement. All of which don’t require commutes, work lunches, losing family time for something that doesn’t matter in the long run. Instead, let’s hang out and support the extroverts who somehow don’t know how to make friends outside of those they helped launch a product with? Totally nonsensical.
Edit: I’m at a negative downvote and dropping fast, so fwiw one day everyone gets families of some kind and also stops working, even if that’s not understood now. what connections are left over after work stops are what will power you, and most people understand that eventually.
As an introvert, I welcome the reversal. Deal with it.
Yes and no.
There's the people personalities that affect the end result, but sometimes the company is the one setting hurdles that make everything hard.
"There's no free interaction, like at the coffee machine." but don't offer spaces (or time) for people to relax online and/or connect.
"You don't have the immediate help of others that are around you." others that can distract you sometimes, and meanwhile you want to even deduct the bathroom break's time from remote workers.
"I need some socialization." do your time, then find another outlet of socialization.
Some companies are not embracing remote working. Some might have valid reasons (most of the staff is local and we want the ones that could remote to have heavy interaction) or non-valid ones (I'm the boss and I want to see everyone at the office). Of course, for these companies, remote will be hard. They are making it so.
I see older people in management who can't deal with remote and younger people who are eager to work from wherever.
To be more open-minded: If you work in a place where (old/er) management is intolerant of diverse working styles... well, f-ck them! Please kindly find a better place to work! :-)
What? Nuanced thinking? No, we need a million click bait articles and BS business books about how going remote will help you win at everything no matter who you are or what your business is. Then when problems arise we can get another million click bait articles and BS business books about how remote is terrible and doesn't work... again no matter who you are or what you're doing.
How else will a generation of consultants make a living helping guide "remote transformations" and then another generation of consultants make a living doing the opposite?
The very best teams have highly levels of adapability -- whatever comes we can adapt, but continue to be high functioning!
Personally, I really like WFO. Why? I like the pressure to wake up early, dress well (suit and tie!), ride the metro/subway, and perform at the office. However, I never pressure my teammates to do the same. I tell all new joiners: You can wear hoodie and jeans everyday, but please don't take away my necktie! Yes, I know that I am the cultural equivalent of an office / cultural dinosaur in 2022!
In my team, people that WFH more often have measurably lower rates of collaboration versus those who work-from-office (WFO). To be clear, the most advanced sales teams literally measure everything regarding collaberation or client contact. (I have seen custom built software at multiple companies that try to exactly measure this!) It does not mean that WFH is less productive or less collaborative. Instead, it means that each team is different.
A "WFH zealot" on my team was adamant that their previous boss who commuted by high speed rail twice per week more than 500km away was a "good situation". There is no limit for the zealots (on both sides: office vs home). It could be working from the moon (WFH -- new SpaceX colony!) or everyone sleeps in the office 7 days a week (ramen profitable / office uber-zealot). Both sides are simultaneously correct (with perfect fit team) or wrong (with terrible fit team).
This whole silly "argument" feels like the anti-vaxxer equivalent of WFH vs WFO. I am tired of it.
What is a good reply to this post? Talk about when/where you were wrong / learned something new (!). "Oh, I was WFH zealot, but then I was forced to WFO and was suddenly much higher collab and connected with my teammates." (Or the exact opposite -- "I am tired of annoying sales people asking me to fix their broken mouse!".) Please don't reply to this post if you are the anti-vaxxer equiv of WFH/WFO. You add nothing new to the debate.
Last: This whole debate feels eerily simliar to the mid-2000s argument about (only) "hire old/experienced" vs "hire young/inexperienced". Both sides were correct and wrong at the same time. The same old anti-vaxxer crowd argument again! The ultimate team had energetic people of all ages / genders / experience / ethnicity / religion. Hey... Looks the same in 2022!
The best team I ever worked on had wild variety in experience. All the way from "I-Am-Old-Get-Off-My-Lawn" to "17-year-old-summer-intern". Amazingly, people were open-minded and tolerant. As a result, we worked at a furious pace and team meetings were amazing.