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Why does it have to be because some want to go in an office so we all do?

If you want to work in an office go work in one. Join a co-working space or if there is sufficient momentum have everyone who wants an office join the same one in your area.

But don’t force it on everyone. Let people choose. That’s the thing I hate about these conversations is it should just be personal choice for the individual. Make async practices and communication better and re-tool the culture if need be, but remote first thinking benefits office workers too.

That argument works the other way around too, either way you are asking others to accommodate your preference.

I think “let people choose” is the right idea at the “choose your job” or sometimes “choose your team” level.

There's objectively practices of team building, communication, knowledge sharing, collaboration (and other attributes of a positive work place) that work for both remote or in office folks equally well and drive a net benefit.

Some of them are

- Async communication. Embracing long form writing is huge here, as is dropping the expectation of "now" in regards to getting responses.

- Holistic documentation & discussions. Processes, cultural values (and what they really mean and are expected to be followed specifically) and really just about anything meant to be repeated over and over should be documented at length, and reviewed consistently. This useful to everyone and has the added benefit of storing historical context and discussion

- Work in the open, whenever appropriate. If people can see whats going on, they can see things that traditionally are the "in between" things. Engineers already do this (PRs come to mind) in alot of ways, but this should extend to decision making as well, whenever reasonably possible. This facilitates the above points too.

- For socialization, its important that people have several avenues to get to know their co-workers. I think this one is possibly the least understand part of it, but its more than just "random lunch with co-workers if you join this channel!" there are ways to do remote team building exercises, to setup meaningful interactions between teams and departments etc. For instance, a positive thing I've seen people do with remote first around this is having product and engineering have Q&A with each other once every 2 weeks to just talk about stuff, it doesn't have to be related to what is going on right now. It can even be non work related if that is fitting to the people at the time, but it exists to just share things with each other, talk through ideas etc.

Unfortunately, these are things that aren't common in the work place currently. Most companies that have remote workers right now haven't moved beyond the "message eagerly or start a call" phase.

It's perfectly reasonable to want a co-located team that you collaborate with/are social with/etc.

But if that's not the situation at the team/company level, you need to either figure out some compromise approach (like getting a co-working space or even just picking up some non-work social activities) or move on to an environment more in keeping with your preferences. At some point, if a situation just isn't to your liking, you should probably stop hitting your head against the wall.

I think that's what I was suggesting.

During the Covid lockdowns and everybody was forced to work from home, the single people in the team seemed to be the most depressed about the situation. Some of them were really eager to get to the office as soon as possible. The people with families were stressed if they suddenly had to homeschool their kids, but otherwise they were fine.

Of course if your spouse also works from home, it's important to have a home with more than a single room. Not everybody has that luxury.

There are more conditions that pertain

Remote Work is better if

1. You prefer remote work

This always gets to be such a dogmatic discussion that will to someone claiming anyone who likes working in an office has no social life.

It’s just a preference. Remote work is not overall objectively better than office work (but you can create a set of goals for which this is true). Office work is not the right choice (but you can create a set of goals for which this is true).

For an autonomous IC who does not need to lead or contribute to thinks like whiteboarding, strategy discussions, client visits, etc, that is true.

There are jobs where in-person is just better, full stop. Remote can be accommodated, but it is not always exclusively about what the employee prefers.

> There are jobs where in-person is just better, full stop

Well yeah a surgeon should be working in person, you got me there.

#1 can be solved by renting a co-working space if troubles at home are really that severe. I doubt that #2 is really any different than if you are unmotivated while in the office. If anything, one unmotivated employee in the office can more easily spread that lack of motivation to their co-workers.

Why would you spend your own money renting office space somewhere and commuting there when you have a perfectly good office your company will pay for?

Because your rented coworking space could be closer to home for instance

>I doubt that #2 is really any different than if you are unmotivated while in the office

ok but I know from my own experience that #2 can be really different. And really I don't understand how anyone could doubt it - in the office if you are unmotivated you have a limited range of things you can do to pass the time. at home there is no limitation.

At some point in the office it becomes reasonable to just do the work and get it over with.

> You do not have home problems that you will end up focusing on when you are there

Not sure why this needs to be repeatedly brought up.. I mean it is called "home office" for a reason. If you don't have a real one, remote can suffer.. no surprise.

>Not sure why this needs to be repeatedly brought up

Not sure why you think a home office is going to solve marital problems or other issues that going into an office and being around other people might allow you to not focus on.

Aside from that then we can add inability to get a home office made to the list of things that can affect whether or not remote work is a good solution

Cos definition of of "home office" for me is a place where I can work reasonably and with focus.

Yes, even in "work office" that focus is not guaranteed, but even there martial problems or other issues will hit me. So yeah, still not sure why we need to bring this explicitly up again in discussion after discussion. You need a reasonable office to work, offices can suck - orthogonal to if home/remote/company.

> add inability to get a home office made to the list of things that can affect whether or not remote work is a good solution

Again, no-brainer, no home office no good solution? shrug

> So yeah, still not sure why we need to bring this explicitly up again in discussion after discussion.

Probably because the reality of remote working was set by the pandemic, which forced a huge number of people to switch to remote work. Remote workers with a proper home office suddenly were, and I think continue to be, a minority.

FWIW, my wife takes our home office and I work from the main room or our screened in porch, but she often will work alongside me. It’s not really a problem.

I’m much more productive working from home; my only qualms are that team cohesion and sense of shared mission seems lower than it has at in-person jobs I’ve had. That may not even be causal.