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I’m in a hybrid senior engineer / project lead role with no direct people management responsibility. I’ve enjoyed working remotely as my wife & I each have spac

I’m in a hybrid senior engineer / project lead role with no direct people management responsibility. I’ve enjoyed working remotely as my wife & I each have space for our own offices. I save 90min commuting, plus have quick access to food/coffee/restroom unlike in my crowded office which is in an upscale food dessert despite being Manhattan. There’s been a lot of managerial meeting bloat which has only been tolerable because of savings on above time sucks and really being able to multi task through BS during zoom calls you cannot in a conference room. I find zoom has also been a great leveler as 30% of the team works in other countries. So pre-covid 70% of us would be in a conference room the other 30% were dialed in through zoom and not participating nearly as much. The issue is clear at the middle management level. Firms are making broad vague commitments to not forcing anyone back to office anytime soon. Senior leaders themselves seem to be enjoying the benefits of working from their vacation homes instead of their pied-a-terre. More family time, no commute time. Sadly some middle management layers above me have willingly gone back into basically empty (10% capacity) offices for no reason. Sick of their kids & face time & workaholics basically. One team lead has actually bought a home closer to office while 15% of his team has actually gone the other direction and moved further away. If you are already in an organization doing daily stand ups, bi-weekly sprints/closing/retro/planning, project backlog reviews, post mortems, (easily 10+ hours/week total).. plus tracking everything in Jira, with multiple active & lively Slack channels .. it’s unclear to me how middle management can’t do their job at home. They probably feel unable to APPEAR to be doing their job to the same extent, however as you can’t see them huffing&puffing across the floor from one conference room to another back to back to back..... Anyway I like it enough that if the pendulum swings all the way back at the end of 2021 to year-round, 5-day/week in-office 100% then I’ll answer some of those recruiter emails that have been piling up.

BlargMcLarg 6y ago
Dare I say it: maybe many of these managers just don't have enough potential work outside meetings and are unable or unwilling to pivot into a different type of work, therefore insisting on pushing meetings on meetings on meetings to the point of micromanagement and will prefer going back to the office to appear busy once more, as you put it? I always figured this was an extremely obvious weakness we took for granted. Full-time managers who either won't or can't do anything but manage. Which eventually yields different problems (once the work is gone they become overhead, and if they manage too many teams they'll spread too thin to follow everything). Comparatively, hybrid leads still getting their own hands dirty seem much stronger and desirable.

BlargMcLarg 6y ago

Dare I say it: maybe many of these managers just don't have enough potential work outside meetings and are unable or unwilling to pivot into a different type of work, therefore insisting on pushing meetings on meetings on meetings to the point of micromanagement and will prefer going back to the office to appear busy once more, as you put it? I always figured this was an extremely obvious weakness we took for granted. Full-time managers who either won't or can't do anything but manage. Which eventually yields different problems (once the work is gone they become overhead, and if they manage too many teams they'll spread too thin to follow everything). Comparatively, hybrid leads still getting their own hands dirty seem much stronger and desirable.