Why are companies so hellbent on asking their workers to waste hours in commute? WFH hurts people with “soft” skills the most. MBA types.
>Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly.
>The contracts were crafted in a pre-pandemic era, at a time when commutes to the office were a given. Now governments are deciding whether to crack down or rewrite the rules entirely. In some states and cities, policy changes have already been proposed to account for the new reality of hybrid work.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...
It's reasonable for cities to be concerned. Empty offices take a lot of supporting businesses with them. And, absent a need to go into an office, a lot of people will (and have) decide that the tradeoffs of urban life aren't for them--especially when their favorite restaurants or coffeeshops go out of business and friends move out.
In the US, many cities have had significant downcycles before. There's no law of nature that it can't happen again.
https://kpmg.com/xx/en/home/media/press-releases/2023/09/ceo...
But things really aren't that simple. I work for a company that was pretty remote-friendly before and is quite heavily remote now to the point of closing down some major offices (mostly big suburban ones, not urban--which are mostly fairly small).
I think most people would agree that things have mostly gone "OK" but that forming new relationships has been harder, onboarding and mentoring new people has been more difficult, etc.--as well as softer things around engagement, connection, etc.
I've effectively worked mostly remote for many years but it's not all goodness.
I’ll reframe the argument to “can a company be 100% remote (where possible) without affecting profitability and productivity?” Anecdotally, I think the answer is yes.
Culture does take a hit. Can be harder for more inexperienced team members to quickly integrate. It also takes longer to develop bonds with colleagues and “enjoy” work in the same way as being in-office. In other words, working remotely takes all the fun out of office work. But in return, you gain an unthinkable level of flexibility. This is a big deal for anyone who likes to travel/live outside the city/has a family.
So to leaders who say remote work isn’t the same quality, etc. - that’s pure BS. What they really want is to get 8+ hrs from you. They belong to the school of thought “if we can keep our employees in the campus longer, more work gets done”.
That might be true to a degree. Remote work removes most serendipitous moments from work. You won’t accidentally bump into a colleague from a previous team, brainstorm crazy ideas together in your lunch break and create something magical. Which means innovation needs to be more intentional. The culture has to evolve and promote some free learning time and non-roadmap/exploratory work (such as a hackathon).
Anyway, this has been my personal experience working in both styles on both sides (engineer + leader). I don’t believe everyone will agree with me, and that’s fine. However it is safe to generalize that a significant % of people have been very successful at remote work, and aren’t buying the pseudo reasons against it.
>It also takes longer to develop bonds with colleagues
I wonder to what degree bonds that developed in-person inevitably decay over time as people leave the company or switch roles, if the primarily virtually-developed bonds will be as strong or effective. I expect not. Off-sites can probably help (though some of the stronger remote proponents object to those as well) but that assumes companies budget for travel and time away from the day-to-day.
Executives at different companies do communicate with each other, and recieve a similar "news feed." And in that pseudo social group, bringing workers back in became a popular self perpetuating topic. Its a thing others are doing, so they should do it too.
There are many other factors, but it has to be more than practicality and ego when Meta and Zoom are bringing employees in. Peer pressure is a great way to make smart humans do irrational things.
Software is, AFAIK, the only wildly demanding field where senior leaders who can’t even remotely do the thing is considered normal.
For what it's worth: just because you're the top dog in your field that doesn't mean you're a good manager.
We should actually insist on rolling out separate management and career tracks because either require completely different skillsets.
At my company, a Director and a Principal eng are same level, but Principal eng are people with industry renown. There are twice as many Directors than PENG, but you can keep climbing to SR Director, VP, SVP.
But actually there’s a ton of micromanagement in medicine too. It’s equally insane there though and transparently driven by profit motives over patient wellbeing.
only in the US, mon ami.