Of course we shouldn't drag you into the office just to appease us, but the experience of working together is effectively not available right now.
For someone working remotely, a meeting with someone remote or in an office is irrelevant.
For someone working in an office, it makes their “in the office” experience irrelevant and meaningless.
It is not controversial because of the people who like working remotely; it’s controversial because of the people who dont, because they force their choice on other people.
You know how many people have to work remotely before it has to be a zoom meeting to be inclusive?
1.
So, in order for you in office preference to be meaningful, it has to apply to everyone.
No one likes having their choice overridden by someone else’s preference.
Thus; controversial.
When you say “I want that old school in office experience…” what it means is “I want you not to have that flexibility”, “what I want is more important than what you want”.
That might not be the intent, but let’s be blunt and realistic:
The blue sky dream of that in office experience doesn’t exist any more.
It can only exist if everyone is in the office at the same time.
Personally, I think the cat is out of the bag now. What are the chances that everyone will go back into the office full time? Not big.
That means the blue sky dream of the in office experience is probably gone forever.
It’s probably time to start trying to figure out an alternative set of practices and social outlets for people who like in office work.
My point was that the 2019 style office experience is not available (or much harder to find) even if we want it.
>1.
People on site are together in conf room with lap on table so remote person can hear?
Finding the right company culture for you is often overlooked in favor of things like the right tech stack.
But there's still plenty of people WFH, and plenty of people who couldn't come into the office if it was suddenly mandated (which it hasn't been yet, just encouraged), because they live several states away.
I'm almost certainly giving up a better bonus and performance review by not going into the office regularly and playing office politics, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I shouldn't have to make that sacrifice, but I never really played the office politics game even when I did go into the office every day, so not a big change there.
But 30+ people should be enough to get that "in-office watercooler" experience for those who like to work in the office.
Regardless, having a good brainstorming session in person and actually building a strong sense of community and shared responsibility with a team you're on is so much better in real-life than remote for me.
Another thing is that finding an office space was really hard and we got extremely lucky. Try finding a payable office space in a capital city is not an "easy alternative" for the regular Joe I would say.
But you're ignoring your own responses too, if office space in a CapCit was so expensive and impossible for you, what do you think a business is spending per year on it. You could have an office, or 5 more virtual employees.
Software companies having offices in big cities make as much sense as a manufacturing company having a production building downtown. Maybe it made sense in 1850s but doesn't make sense in the 2020s.
There is no solution for the office crowd except an office based org. It's time for us as an industry to acknowledge that, and to have remote orgs and office orgs separate.
For at least 15 years leading up to covid I worked in satellite branches of large corporations and had to spend the day on zoom calls with coworkers in remote offices anyway.
But the upsides, coffee, lunch, dinner random conversations can be achieved if you work out of any co-working space or a park bench.
It works great. If I wanted to work in person I know a dozen companies that want that are willing to offer than. Just like I know a dozen companies that offer a slew of other factors I may or may not care for.