Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)
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One thing I will admit: It is harder, as a remote manager, to manage low performers or people who show signs of disengagement. You can get more out of an office worker who lacks intrinsic motivation than a similar remote worker.
But that's not a knock on remote work itself. You just have to have the right people on the team, just as in any other circumstance.
Remote work has just as many issues as in person.
But perhaps a lot of the issues are the employers problem more than the employees. Hence the shift and the tension
it's definitely a situation with no one coming out looking good. employees should be honest, but bad companies really screwed the pooch being hawks trying to preside over every minute of their lives. messaging them in dead hours of the night, micromanaging breaks, being worried when they leave about "leaking secrets", pressure to work overtime (e.g. stealing their time for no extra pay). There's no way in high hell I'd tell my workplace anything happening outside of it unless it involves extended leave.
But I do think either way that's it's unacceptable to have two "full time jobs" with shared hours, unless all 3 parties agree to it. I have some long term freelance work I'd continue on the side, but that's specifically because the hours are low and I can fit them into evenings after conventional work hours.
However it's also easier for a bad, micromanaging managers to make their team appears low performant. That's basically the trade off.
Moreover if you ask those 20 people during performance review, it'll clear as day.
* The impact is actually much smaller than you initially think
* You're not vocal enough about that, or that's just one-off thing (high performers usually pretty consistent)
* You're in a bad environment where good work isn't getting recognized
I've did exactly that and my coworkers keep know how that benefits them, so it's not impossible. Anyway, being vocal on what you're doing or achieve in remote work is also crucial, if the environment cannot discover your achievement easily.
Sure, it'll be somewhere. Will a manager bother looking around for that when it comes time to layoff? Do they even care about that to begin with? Are they even close enough to the product where they bother to look at something like a commit log? Half may not even look at the dang Jira points they keep forcing teams to keep up with.
It comes down to care, and to be frank (in my experiences) almost no manager cares enough to take that time. They have a lot of other stuff on their plate, after all. They aren't rewarded for retention, they don't necessarily get punished if the companies underperforms as long as they can rationalize a scapegoat. why try to retain these low key "glues"?
>if you ask those 20 people during performance review, it'll clear as day.
My performance reviews tended to be personal, in my experience. a skip manager/director may ask about my direct lead, but other than that I can't recall ever calling someone out (good or bad) during one.
It comes down to the same metric, are those managers/directors going to take the time to ask everone about who they think is an unsung hero?
That said,
> You can get more out of an office worker who lacks intrinsic motivation than a similar remote worker.
Is this because for an office worker it's harder to disguise the lack of motivation? Or are they pressured into going through the motions even if they don't feel like it? I wonder if this is a good thing at all.
Let me explain: as a fully remote worker, there are days I don't feel like working. On those days, I'll slack off. My work won't suffer because on the longer term I'll achieve my objectives; I'm just not wasting time pretending to work when I don't feel like it. My mental health is better as a result. This wouldn't be possible if I was at the office, because this isn't a socially acceptable mode of working.
I also agree with you that people in the office are more susceptible to straining themselves due to social pressure.
I'm not sure how these two balance out. It probably depends on the specific people.
None of this work really matters in the end, so no point in getting too bent out of shape about it. The work needs to get done to a defined standard, but overly focusing on high levels of consistent "engagement"? I don't drink the koolaid and neither should the folks who report to me. We show up, we grind, we go home. And that's fine, that's what the money is for.
I look forward to this not being true
If you die tomorrow, are fired, or laid off, you will be replaced. If your company fails, you will move on to the next job. Per the US BLS, approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. Broadly speaking, ~90% of startups fail. So, I also wish you luck.
Very few of us are saving or improving actual lives or legitimately changing the world for the better (deep gratitude to those folks). The rest of us are not. I am sorry to be the messenger.
Even highly motivated workers are going to have off days that are less productive, but the average level of output will be higher.
Low performing / marginal workers, in my experience, tend to do their best work when they feel like they are being observed. Providing that sort of motivation is more difficult when they are remote.
Office environments can take some of those reasons (e.g. certain distractions) away.
As a personal example, it's the latter for me. If I'm having an off day WFH, it's a lot easier to delay meetings or shuffle things around than in an office. I've pushed some meetings back, slept in a few more hours and make up that time either later in the evening or on some other day. Or on the other end may cancel later meetings to just relax later on if my brain is scambled. A lot harder to justify in person. You're there, why can't we meet? why are you nodding off? etc.
>I wonder if this is a good thing at all.
Probably not, but modern work places aren't really designed around "what's good long term for employees". Especially not the US where we barely have vacation days, a lot of passive (or active) aggression around the recent-ish ma/paternity leaves, complaints of burnout are seen as a weakness instead of a proper problem to resolve.
They are fine churning through you in 2 years, laying you off, and training fresh talent later. Even if that approach is horribly unsustainable for building talent and increasing efficiency.
No, you will have them sitting at their desk.
That's not work.
That's the appearance of work.
Unfortunately, that's enough for bad managers.
It's indeed true you probably can't get someone who's completely disengaged to be particularly productive. They'll do the bare minimum to make you go away but mostly just phone it in. These people probably should be encouraged to leave anyway, if nothing else for their own sake. Odds are they're in a late stage Office Space-type burn out and could really do with a change of scenery.
That said, there are personalities who genuinely benefit from hands-on management. Some just don't have a lot of initiative and will just do nothing until they're told what to do next.
Absolutely.
But you don't need physical handholding for that.
Until we have 40% unemployment, these people are working under certain CEOs. After some easy deduction, lots of CEOs have to decrease/kill the Home Office for these people if this is true what parent commenter wrote.
If the top performer is getting a 3 percent raise this year, the "slacker" is probably higher paid on a per hour basis considering they work less.
When the top performers start buying vacation homes and sports cars as a reward for being one, I'd wager the unmotivated might start moving.
All to often there are invisible "heroes" who quietly fix issues, prevent bugs and makes sure everything runs smoothly. They are simply not as visible as someone who creates high profile features and firefight bugs introduced by their coding. From the management point of view they are hard workers that work late fixing issues.
Management can only recognize what they can see. The quiet dev who just makes things work is a huge value to the company, while the "bro" that master the political game gets all the recognition.
What metrics can they use that are not quickly gamed?
I argue that it's management's job to know what's going on well enough that "invisible heros" don't exist. If they can't, what exactly are they managing?
I've been in the situation you describe and I just find another job, what may be invisible to your current manager may be obvious to your future one.
*Bonus content: I suspect most of the time the reason people don't "see things" is for political/human reasons more so than they are blind. You probably didn't seem as interested in your bosses new Tesla as he would've liked or something.
You're right, goodheart's law. But I do think the current metrics can definitely be improved.
We can definitely identify "quiet heroes", but people look towards others like them. For management, that's exactly those "high visibility", constantly reporting hype men (who can be high or low performers). Introverted IC's can still perform miracles, an introverted manager who spends most of their times in meeting would definitely struggle. Even if those skills are not necessarily what is needed to perform optimally at some roles, that is what managers seek out of everyone. Because that's how they got to where they were, after all.
There are ideas out there, but ultimately nothing will change until we can at least admit these biases first.
Pretty atrocious policy when disability, mental health and trauma can come into play. It essentially relies on inducing despair. I know for a fact much of big tech is like this. Atlassian has been called out for it.
Perhaps you work for a small-to-midsize company.
I assume “point in career” you mean “around the block for a while”. My kid graduated and considered only remote jobs, and after a couple of years when the big-company employer tried Return to Office he jumped to a startup. That’s just an n of one, but these days anybody can consider it.
My company is not 100% remote, but that’s only because we have a chem lab with some special instruments and other equipment. But if/when you don’t need to be in the lab, remote is the default.
you put it nicely, the flip side is most of companies/teams may not have the luxury to have all 100% right people, they may get disengaged and some of them may come back engaged again. the challenge here is remote work makes it relatively harder to get some of them back on track.
So perhaps one way to express my position is that when it comes to remote work, you almost have to treat yourself as an independent contractor or consultant, even if you're technically an employee.
But when many companies barely respect the employees to begin with, they shouldn't be surprised when the employee disengages and always has an eye on the next opportunity. There will always be other semi-unavoidable issues like pay, location, and personal passions that get in the way, but having some intention to retain and nurture your talent will go a long way. Something that has very clearly shown to NOT be the case these last 18 months or so.
The solution to all this is very simple. Management needs to hold everyone, including other managers, accountable for measurable output. These are usually based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and are semi-standard in many industries these days. From there, you don't have to care how, when, or why anyone does anything, just as long as they hit the target.
This also has reaching ramifications for everything. People are no longer stressed out by working under ill-defined objectives or nebulous directives. Remote work is now palatable, since things are now results-focused rather than means-focused. Under-performing employees are now easier to discharge with cause, and identifying top performers is dead-simple. Reports are now easy to generate, sometimes without human involvement, so nobody can fib to the CEO. And all that applies to managers too, which I think we can all appreciate.
In contrast, a workplace that runs on vibes and gut-checks will have the drama cited in the article. The whole org relies on a near co-dependent level of trust, leading managers to have anxiety attacks when they can't put eyes on things. Accountability is less about facts and more about feelings. Nobody has a firm grasp on how the company will make that quarterly objective, but we're all going to "work hard" and "do what it takes" anyway. It's all well and good for a startup of 20 people, but it's miserable for an army of 200 or 2000.
Even in-office, we shouldn't be conducting performance reviews on a gut check or how happy you make your boss. It should be down to setting measurable goals, gathering supporting data through the year, and assessing the results at regular intervals.
...it's important to remember that:
a) People who are bad at creating KPIs can absolutely still make them ill-defined and nebulous.
b) KPIs do not always measure the things that actually matter.
c) Indeed, it's (unfortunately) all too common to have KPIs measure only the things that matter to the people making the KPIs, and not the things that will actually make the organization successful. (For instance, making the stock price a KPI, whether directly or indirectly, through targeting specific visible results that are likely to improve the stock price while having disproportionately low benefits for the actual core business.)
d) Even if the nature of the KPIs are chosen well (ie, they're measuring the right things), the numbers being targeted for them can still be wildly unrealistic and lead to unnecessary stress.
e) Goodhart's Law[0] applies whenever you're creating metrics. You may need to either actively combat efforts to game the metrics, or rotate the precise things being measured periodically to ensure no one has the opportunity to optimize their output too well for a specific metric to the detriment of actual productive output.
TL;DR: KPIs and other ways of clearly communicating and measuring success are a necessary but insufficient component of a healthy workplace.
we may start seeing that next decade with all the hype tech is trying to inject into AI. It'd be some nice schadenfreude to have the people replacing workers with these machines have themselves replaced by fancy programs that can generate metric reports faster and with less (but far from zero) bias.
Man alive, no, hard no. Laughably, no.
It was eye opening for me. Not a single living soul at BigCorp was measuring anything and all of them were too jaded to even think that if they did measure anything, that it would make any material difference. Every single person was faking it.
You can "easily" assign KPIs to the company as a whole or to business units (and hopefully you pick the right ones, as other commenters pointed out). But the more granular you get, the harder it is.
How do you assign KPIs to an individual person? Sales sounds easy. But what about finance roles? Software developers? The cleaning staff? Office administrators? Then you need to make it really specific for each person. Should the KPIs for a Junior Frontend Dev be different to those of a Mid or Senior? What about a Data Engineer? And MLOps Engineer? DevOps? How do you measure the exact output of a Creative Designer? And UI UX designer?
Its VERY hard to do what you suggest, and the typical result is that people mend up being measured not on what really matters but only.on what could be quantified easily for a spreadsheet.
Chat isn't soulless.
Chat being async has benefits over conference calls.
> Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt.
Work lacks cheap interrupts, which is not a remote-only problem.
In my most recent position, when working from home, I've made a habit of writing to people on chat if I can bother them for 5-20 minutes. It works great. I have typically interacted with at least one customer and 2-3 colleagues during a day at home.
But I can only interrupt certain people. Having sat in the office with them before, we have built a relationship.
I've tried doing audio messages before but i find it unbearable - both to listen to them and record them. I just love async text; i want nothing more than email/github
It feels like a simple gesture, but it solved many issues at once:
- unless something urgent was scheduled over it, it was a period where you'd be sure you wouldn't be interrupting the lead, and are free to ask questions. You never felt like you were wasting their time, it's already baked into the schedule.
- There's a lot less friction just unmuting a mic and talking to a group than pinging a channel or sending a DM, but also a larger guaranteed of a prompt reply.
- it was an informal meeting half the time, so it was a good way to semi-organically team bond compared to leaving a huge paper trail of sports discussion in a team channel. It also means it's very easy to invite others in if their help is needed. A few times, it'd be a "talk" period where we'd invite another team and they use the time to share knowledge of what they are working on.
- even if you had nothing to help or help out with, it was a great way to shadow the work of others and get a feel for how the team overall is doing. The most underrated aspect of an office space is hearing all this tribal knowledge in the background as you work, or during a break. This helped a bit to bring that back.
- Breakout rooms. If there was 2-3 parallel discussions forming, we can simply divide the meeting up instead of going through that weird song and dance of prioritizing discussions (hopefully not dropping it entierly) or booking another room.
Some companies went the complete opposite extreme and more or less made it an obligation to stay on such a "meeting".
Text can solve some of these issues, but if the walky-talky was anything similar to our office hours, I can see the appeal. It could be a generational issue, but you just don't get much "idle chatter" in formal chatrooms in my experience. Some people absolutely love that and lets them work more focused. Others can start to feel isolated from the team and the mission, so that socialization can help break the ice.
1. this was completely optional. it was a daily timeslot but we didn't go every day. We were more than free to schedule other meetings over it as it was the lowest priority.
2. Timezones will always be weird, but fwiw ours was at 3pm and slotted for an hour. Usually we could go over if there was a particularly thorny task but we respected everyone's time. Towards the end of the day but not quite around the point where we started to check out for the day.
3. The time should hopefully feel productive in some way. We never did any kind of "team bonding exercise" that'd fit more into some party icebreaker. we were professionals, and outside of some very specific hobbies members shared (e.g. half the team loved music production and would occasionally talk about sound design topics) I'd say 80% of the "active" hours were focused more on getting unblocked from some tasks. I think that's why it was important to frame it as "office hours" and not "social time".
4. It was absolutely okay to have quieter days. There was no pressure to speak out or pretend to be engaged or whatnot. After the first few weeks we'd normally just start with no video on and it'd be a small voice chat. There were days where 1 or more members just cut out early (and since it was a 4-6 person team, if half or more weren't engaged and the rest weren't stuck, we'd just not do it). There were others where it was just maybe 5 minutes of small talk and people just stayed in the ambience. It was common for at least one person at any time to be muted, so again: no pressure to engage. It was time for us to utilize.
Maybe it simply doesn't work for you, but I wouldn't cast off the entire idea just yet.
I have a ton of chats in game groups, but I've never had it feel active in a formal setting. If you're not in a specific feature channel talking with veterans about issues they can at least start poking at, it's pretty dead. There are times I want to help but am clearly out of my wheelhouse. And then when things do get deeper it usually turns into a DM and that channel goes quiet again.
"noise" on such a chat is much more persistant than in an office, so people tend to not make small talk on such channels, except in off-topic channels. But if I'm being honest I don't wanna browse an off-topic channel at work. I got work to do. That's where the soul starts to leave. The way a company slack works is just very different from some informal (or even formal, non-company) discords.
>Chat being async has benefits over conference calls.
Sure. a paper trail and seachability on slack has saved me many an problem that I couldn't just google. Sometimes without pinging anyone. Sometimes by pinging someone I'd never otherwise meet to say "hey I hit the same issue, is there any progress/workarounds on this issue?" Threads are really nifty ways compartmentalize tangential discussons. Some people (especially tech workers) much prefer to think and write up their suggestion than try and speak it out on the fly.
But I also get that these async benefits ultimately cost more time. A quick 1:1 will always be faster through speech than text, even for someone that can type 200+ WPM (I'm maybe 100, albiet very inaccurate). larger groups is where chats devolve into chaos and noise, and that's when a proctor for a call/live meeting helps coordinate/drive discussion. And as mentioned, tone/body language is absent. They are both just tools, no better than each other as a fork is better than a spoon.
>Work lacks cheap interrupts
Lot to break down here that I won't go into, but yes I fundamentally agree. There is no such thing as a "cheap interrupt" for a creative worker (and yes, tech is a creative process in many ways). You always need to understand that an unplanned interruption is likely costing an hour of creative thinking and consider that before doing so. Many people don't. This is more or less (should be) built into a lead's time when assigning their workload.
With all that said: there are sometimes truly urgent matters where a prompt response is needed. That is definitely where office works shines unless the worker is out for lunch. you never know if a worker who "ignores" a message didn't see it, had their phone die, has chat off/muted, etc. But that's probably a factor a lot of director+ levels face regularly, so it's a mentality passed down to the workers who rarely need to be called on a dime
Their website is now focused on technicians with a copilot for manuals, but they started as a pure voice/text push to talk / walkie talkie app
My teams were always remote but I found the social aspects to be beneficial.
Yeah, but did you use those "office days" for work, really? Or for socialising?
(Not saying socialising is unnecessary in a good team)
I'm sure I might have some undiagnosed attention issues but it became supremely hard to concentrate once at the office because of the open office plan and people constantly distracting me with questions or requests (I don't begrudge them this though). I had to essentially monopolise one of the office mini conference rooms to actually do any work. It got to the point of 3 days of the week essentially being close to useless because I'd get more done once I was back home. Not helped by the company hiring across the country and not having all the staff at office which meant we were still teleconferencing all the time
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)
That’s a sign of either a shit manager, over hiring, or bullshit jobs (jobs that you think you need but you don’t).
It still happens in an office except instead of baking or lounging they are fucking off on the Internet or creating make work to look busy but not actually creating value.
I wish bad managers would understand.
interesting, so many of my peers are full on the remote train. I guess it depends on the age of the workers? I know for sure I haven't heard any one of my coworkers > 35 ever preferring hybrid to WFH.
Having a thriving office has been a breath of fresh air for when I want to see people. The key is it being optional and up to employees to decide what's best for them.
So if you have a manager that really manages your in-office experience, hybrid is seen as preferred by my peers.
Agree.
My issue is not about remote, hybrid or onsite, but more about some management mandating one way of working for everyone.
That being said, working it out "per team" is generally reasonable. I've had hybrid stints, and I always coordinated with my team so that we all came in on the same day. Then we could do the social thing together at the office.
The last 10 years or so I have been working on teams splitted in 3 to 5 different countries, and now in 3 different continents. In that case you are effectively working remotely even when your are working in a company's office.
Unfortunately, employees choosing their preferred mode means more headaches for employers ( they want to track it somehow ).
I know what I prefer. I know what is possible. As humans, we do not agree on what is the 'right' way. And in US, employers used to hold all the cards ( which is part of the reason they are praying for a recession ).
It's almost always deserted. Some people go some days, mostly to socialize.
So I don't trust those who claim people prefer returning to the office.
I also see news of companies forcing employees to return and laying off those who won't. Doesn't seem to me people prefer the office...
The company I work for now is fully remote and has been since it started. We have two to three meetups per year. Project leaders and CEO do roughly as many trips to customers and prospects per year.
When we hire and bring in consultants this is one deciding factor, that people are willing and able to work remotely.
To me, if I were to demand that someone spends time on a commute, then I'd also want to pay for this time. I much prefer that they don't commute and I instead get work out of it, and that they have a short distance between work and family or hobbies.
Within my social group I don't know anyone that agrees with this that isnt working a job that already could not be remote so this never affected them.
Personally, I like the idea of Hybrid but I don't need it by any means. I do it at my current job because we have an office but if we did not have one I would not miss it.
I go in one day a week, but that was also my choice. I was not told I had to do it, if I wanted to stop going in I am still classified as a remote employee.
The fact is, I am more productive at home than in the office. I have less distractions talking to coworkers, I am comfortable in my space, I am less incentivized to want to leave because I need account for the trip home.
When I WFH I will hop on later in the day to check in on something, I am online more hours, and just the week by week output is higher.
Sure I have the distractions of home stuff, but again more hours. If I need to take a break I can go play a game for a few minutes and feel far more refreshed than I would in the office. I don't feel drained by the end of the day.
There is value in being seen by colleagues, but that is something that can be addressed virtually and there are full remote companies that find solutions to this.
Side Note: My cat deciding to come and sit on my lap while working is a pretty good motivator to get some work done.
The upside of this is that if you are such a person, as an employee you’ll be amply rewarded. I’ve worked with a number of such people at several of the big tech firms and they are recognized and compensated like the unicorns they are (such people could easily go start their own businesses if they wanted to be entrepreneurs, so they have to be rewarded lavishly to keep them as employees).
But most people aren’t Elon Musks or Jeff Bezoses or the like. Most of the people I have worked with are talented and motivated but not nearly so far out on the right hand long tail.
And motivation waxes and wanes for most people; most people have balanced lives that include lots of time spent not working for someone else.
When I see pathologies such as RTO (which is always combines with making the offices more shitty with hoteling and such), and performance management practices reminiscent of Roman decimations, I see wunderkinds who are unable to accept that most people aren’t like them.
No. This just is false and extremely lazy thinking. CEOs do not "fear change" or "resist progress", these are absurd motivations to ascribe to thousands of people you have never met and it goes counter to what actually happens. CEOs change things, they like to change things a lot, they also love "progress" as progress is the only way to expand.
What CEOs fear isn't "change", they fear that if employees aren't physically tied to an office, they aren't mentally tied to it during work. They fear that employees will neglect their duties and communication will get harder. Whether they are wrong or right is irrelevant. But if you aren't even willing to ascribe to someone the ability to think deeper than "change bad", then all your arguments are irrelevant as you are arguing against a man made of pure straw.
tie the performance to rewards monthly, no more stable monthly salary other than some base salary, you get paid each month based on your results, the manager can focus on how to itemize the tasks and set expectations, instead of how to watch out low performers.
the better you perform, the more you earn, if the produce is not good for a while, you're let go so you can focus on your other freelance jobs.
yeah this is rare a common approach, but something needs to be changed to cope with remote jobs.
This is not a particularly nuanced position either.
If you suck at your job you should be afraid of working remotely and working in an office.
Why would they be afraid if management can't wrap their heads around it.
But, and I may have mentioned this on this very forum, that is a management failure.
Okay, calling CEOs that demand a return "bad" and "fearful" is a provocative take, but the article doesn't back up these assumptions. Much less does it actually explain the reason why bad, and only bad, CEOs "fear" remote work.
With, for example, Apple enacting RTO, one has to wonder whether the author would go so far as to say that Tim Cook is a "bad" CEO who "fears" remote work.
Still, the author isn't saying "A CEO is bad if and only if they hate remote work". Being bad is the premise.
On another note. With EU countries being so loud about green transitions I would have thought encouraging WFH would have enormous environmental benefits.
There is a plethora of green fees on every single transportation fuel source that we have come to depend on.
Whats greener than not clogging up the roads at all ?
Wonder why EU simply does not ban mandatory in office attendance for work that can be done from home, unless you can show that it is detrimental. WFH school teachers for example. Remote learning for children was a catastrophe.
Imagine the tonnes of CO2 saved.
It's really fucking hard to make a sustainable profit in business. Most businesses fail.
Yet HN turns around and says - no, management are clueless, I, the worker, know all.
If you're taking advice on how to run a business from someone who doesn't run a business, that's your choice, it wouldn't be mine.
Those that lack internal motivation/sense of urgency might perform better on-site, but you as a manager might need to micro manage them. Is it worth it? I’m not sure. The employee and manager will most likely not enjoy the situation, esp if it goes on for a while.
For everyone else that has a bad commute and wants to be home, they should consider retiring or get one of the jobs above.
If people can't don't 5 days in office, they should move to a 4 day work week and get 80% of pay.
I can be reductive as well!
Do I just have to sacrifice 5% of my lifetime to corporate gods? Because I gladly sacrifice more, and there is an opportunity to negotiate for better mutual terms.