Okay, so why do you think that will get better in person? Just curious. Why is "lets meet in person" the go to solution? Look, the RTO people are LOUDER. Period.
They will win this fight if the Remote or Die crew doesn't get loud.
They will win this fight if the Remote or Die crew doesn't get loud.
It also, separately, masks it—people working in-person, but hobbled by bad communication patterns, at least look productive.
I’m not claiming this is good, mind you, but that it’s made me understand at least one (I suspect large) segment of the “remote can’t be as good as in-person” side of the argument. If this is how they think “serious business” should or must function, no wonder they’re skeptical of remote work. Meanwhile they’re actually just organizationally bad at communication, in general.
In-office had a long time to evolve (half a century I'd say). Remote work kind of only had the COVID years. It's a baby in an incubator. The RTO stuff is kind of like infanticide. So while I understand your perspective, from a war point of view, we have no choice but to protect this baby. They want to cut this experiment off asap. Every little anecdote, every little corporate RTO plan, every little CEO saying shit, is just chipping away at such an infant life.
Give it the same chance the office bullshit had, which was decades. I kind of have to be militant about this. Thanks for the other side, but this baby gotta be kept alive.
If your team sucks, your team sucks. Doesn't matter if you're in office, or out of office.
[edit] to explain, I’m using this information to push the organization toward improvements that I can sell without mentioning remote work, but which, if adopted, will surely cause people here to notice a smaller difference between WFH days and in-office days. It may take a while, but this should reduce reluctance to allow long stretches of, or indefinite, remote work.
Covid is over, so unless we start fighting better about this, they are absolutely going to chip away at this.