7 ms·

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. A year

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. A year ago, I remotely onboarded for a new position and recently I can head back into the office, and there's a massive difference for me between the virtual relationships I built and the in-person ones. I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. Also having a dedicated workspace and a mental break between home & work has increased my productivity.

munk-a 5y ago
One thing that I've expressed to my company and coworkers is that I'd like to see full remote become more of a norm but I'd also love to see team building events remain as well. If there are a few times a year where everyone congregates in one location (probably at less expense than actually keeping an office set aside for them for the year mind you) and has a picnic or hackday that sounds awesome to me. The pandemic made in person social interaction impossible (mostly, at least really difficult and uncomfortable) but that will pass. We can be full time remote but still occasionally grab a coffee with coworkers if that's convenient for folks. I'm a bit behind most of you (Canada is still mostly shut down thankfully) but I suspect that daily social interactions will start to increase rapidly as second doses start rolling out. Very few people actually want to be locked away at home all day, I think most folks just hate the idea of commuting and being a butt-in-chair again.
- losteric 5y ago
  > We can be full time remote but still occasionally grab a coffee with coworkers if that's convenient for folks. +1 this sentence; personally, I'm not interested in the fully distributed model espoused by some evangelists. I still desire physical proximity, with just-enough/just-in-time physical interactions as determined by myself (and relevant coworkers). I would love working for a business that offers something like an internal WeWork - reservable low-density dedicated workspaces, near social venues and transportation.
  - jarcoal 5y ago
    Yep, I’ve been referring to this as “work locally”, and I also feel this is an ideal balance, although it does limit your access to talent.
    - WJW 5y ago
      Maybe it limits your access to talent, but it will surely expand your access to experienced employees.
treis 5y ago
There's definitely a social part of work that, IMHO, waxes and wanes as you go through life. In your 20s and pre-family it's a significant aspect of your social life. Then I think it wanes as you have a family and kids when you don't have enough time for everything and work socialization is a chore. Then I think once again after the kids move out work socialization becomes more important again. Of course thats just a generalization.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  I find my older coworkers have more friends at work, simply because its the people outside thier family they see every day. I am friends with zero coworkers but also can spend my evenings out with friends - I don't have familial duties
paulryanrogers 5y ago
The team I was on had never met in person. I think fully remote can work for a large portion of the population, once the same effort and resources are provided to them as in office workers.
disposedtrolley 5y ago
> how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. This is going to be the big struggle for teams who formed in person but are now hiring remote. I joined my current company about six months prior to the pandemic and had ample time to get to know my colleagues face-to-face, making the transition to remote working very pleasant. I'm not sure if the experience has been the same for people we've onboarded remotely; they're productive but I'm unsure if it'll be easy for them to build up the same kinds of relationships. You also tend to get into situations where there's a social divide between a subset of the team who have constantly worked together synchronously in the past and new starters who only appear in 2D on Zoom. This may not be a problem for some people, but it's a concern for someone like me who gets a lot of their daily social interactions via work.
cromka 5y ago
> I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. One thing I thought of that could alleviate this would be the team work getaways. Think 2 weeks away, 3-4 times a year. Obviously not everyone can every join all of them, but I'd imagine most still would do 2. Ideally the families should also be invited. I am sure it would still come out cheaper than maintaining office space and build stronger relationships than the mere coffee break talk.
- nanidin 5y ago
  I worked remote for 5 years before COVID. I was somewhere around 10% travel to customer locations, and about 1 week per year to HQ overseas. It was a great balance. I’m not sure how that would scale to an entire company though as one week of travel expenses worked out to around $2000 for domestic travel within the US. Does the cost of carrying office space work out to more or less than $8k per person per year? COVID style isolated WFH ruined WFH for me and contributed to burnout.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Renting a hotel for a week is probably way cheaper than $8k per person. Your costs were large in part because of the small scale that is done.
    - treis 5y ago
      You're not including airfare, food, and meeting space. It might not quite reach $2k but pretty close. But that's likely still cheaper than office space. That ranges anywhere from $20-$70+ per square foot depending on city and how nice it is. So even a tiny desk space is 500-2k a month.
      - cromka 5y ago
        Still, you guys assume this would be within the US, only. Excuse me for saying that, but that's some typical, US-centric kind of thinking. There's really whole world out there. If you're going to go for 2 weeks, go to Asia, South America or Central/South Europe and pay a third of the costs. Heck, do you know how cheap country side airbnbs in Portugal or Italy are? THAT'S how you build lasting memories.
Avalaxy 5y ago
> My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. None. I started 3 different consulting jobs during the pandemic and always felt very productive and very connected to my colleagues, even though I never met them.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  After working remote for ten+ years I disagree. There are things one can better understand about a person in a face to face meeting. When discussions become differently casual. Also some discussions are simpler in a completely informal circumstance ("random" meeting at the watercooler) than a virtual meeting of any kind. Of course ymmv but blunt "None" isn't right.
  - wokwokwok 5y ago
    People talk online too; it’s different for people who grew up using text messages and social media where they’re accustomed to building and maintaining online relationships. I’m old, so don’t look at me, but when you look at the cohort of folk who are dealing with wfh successfully and productively, it’s, in my direct observation, younger folk. None is perhaps true for more people than you think. The ones who are struggling are the people who don’t “do chat” (ie the “oh no! I despise slack” group and the “let’s have a call to discuss that” group) and managers. ...and to be fair, it’s a lot harder to be a manager remotely; I can’t deny that. ...but people can build meaningful relationships online; it’s just different, and that’s hard for older people, in general.
    - caturopath 5y ago
      Many of my best friendships were forged online, often in groups collaborating on doing real work. I have not been able to get any such spontaneity during remote work with my group or division at a large tech company with mostly young coworkers. I haven't been able to figure out why. > the “oh no! I despise slack” group Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture. I don't know what the tools are to turn chat into a value-adding thing, but I don't think they're in place yet. It pains me to see the number of people who reply quickly to chat messages all day in order to show they're 'working' rather than doing their jobs.
rtpg 5y ago
This conversation, when I've had it with people, usually ends up with the same conclusions: people would like to see their coworkers face-to-face like.... a couple times a month. People have deep relationships with others without needing to see them 5 times a day, after all! I think the difficulties around relationship building in this time are deeply linked to whether you are able to socialize "through a computer" well or not. I'm not really talking about Zoom etc so much as just text chat or the like. There are definitely people more and less comfortable at it.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  It is an interesting question. I have two new team members we added 2 months ago. Neither is very technical and, admittedly, it can get challenging sometimes, because pre-WFH, I could have just showed them what to do instead of spending 20 minutes trying to explain what I want them to do. I could technically grab a screen, but.. apparently, neither learns well that way and just yesterday I had some really odd issues with sound and MS Teams screen sharing. Anyway, as much as I love remote, in person has its benefits.. like being able to strangle someone when needed.
  - raywu 5y ago
    Unrelated: how do you remember your username?
    - AndrewDucker 5y ago
      My guess would be that that's a phrase.
    - warkdarrior 5y ago
      That's the sound his co-workers make when he strangles them!
    - square_usual 5y ago
      Not OP, but as someone who's used such handles in the past, using a password manager.
strobe 5y ago
I feel in opposite way and my experience including few years of pre pandemic remote working. At office you can work together with same peoples over years but not get any real clue about who they are truly, because lot of politics, pretending and fears included in office life. On remote work peoples usually more open, honest and direct, in most cases it easiest for them to share stuff that they have passion about or describe real issues in life (But I think that also not true if your work required to do lot of short projects with different peoples). Also, if you already work with someone for a long time remotely it always nice to meet him in real life and get to know little more.
elwesties 5y ago
Personally, I have joined a company and scaled the team from 12-52 engineers over the pandemic. Our productivity is through the roof and everyone is getting really well and forming good connections.
flukus 5y ago
> how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. IME these relationships are a function of how much time you spend talking with people and not of physical proximity. At my last job the person I was closest too was on another continent. We worked quite closely so I spent way more time talking with them then some people that sat a few feet away from me. We knew each others lunch and break schedules better than the people we ate lunch with. There is a tendency to talk more with people next to you and only zoom someone for direct work discussion, but in both scenarios there's room to force some socialization. In our line of work we even have tools like pair programming to enforce these relationships.
dboreham 5y ago
I've now spent decades working with people I never met.
- oblio 5y ago
  If you've been working remotely for decades, you: A) Have a totally different work experience than 99.99% of folks out there B) Might have different personality type than a huge chunk of people out there (hard to quantify, a guesstimate of mine would be at least 60%)
  - dboreham 5y ago
    Perhaps. I note that when I worked in the bosom of the valley long ago (Netscape campus on Ellis), often I was working with others in the organization who were in different buildings and I never met them. Working with others in different countries has also been the norm for me for decades, predating my own remove move.
sinstein 5y ago
This rings true for me. I was in a very hectic workplace when the pandemic began and was able to function pretty much as effectively as I would in office. Then I made a switch to a different company towards the end of last year and I do not yet feel a part of the team as I would normally. This is despite having a friend in the team. New relationships have been very hard to build with completely remote onboarding.
madcaptenor 5y ago
I was a good bit more productive over the first few months of the pandemic than since then, and I attribute some of that (though not all) to the fact that most of the work I was doing in March to June of 2020 was on projects that had been originated back when we were in the office, while the projects I've worked on since then were originated after we went remote. This isn't quite about relationships because I knew the people involved before; it's more about not having information that you tend to get just from being around the office. I'm not saying this is an argument for going back into the office so much as being mindful about communication.

munk-a 5y ago

One thing that I've expressed to my company and coworkers is that I'd like to see full remote become more of a norm but I'd also love to see team building events remain as well. If there are a few times a year where everyone congregates in one location (probably at less expense than actually keeping an office set aside for them for the year mind you) and has a picnic or hackday that sounds awesome to me. The pandemic made in person social interaction impossible (mostly, at least really difficult and uncomfortable) but that will pass. We can be full time remote but still occasionally grab a coffee with coworkers if that's convenient for folks. I'm a bit behind most of you (Canada is still mostly shut down thankfully) but I suspect that daily social interactions will start to increase rapidly as second doses start rolling out. Very few people actually want to be locked away at home all day, I think most folks just hate the idea of commuting and being a butt-in-chair again.

losteric 5y ago
> We can be full time remote but still occasionally grab a coffee with coworkers if that's convenient for folks. +1 this sentence; personally, I'm not interested in the fully distributed model espoused by some evangelists. I still desire physical proximity, with just-enough/just-in-time physical interactions as determined by myself (and relevant coworkers). I would love working for a business that offers something like an internal WeWork - reservable low-density dedicated workspaces, near social venues and transportation.
- jarcoal 5y ago
  Yep, I’ve been referring to this as “work locally”, and I also feel this is an ideal balance, although it does limit your access to talent.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Maybe it limits your access to talent, but it will surely expand your access to experienced employees.

treis 5y ago

There's definitely a social part of work that, IMHO, waxes and wanes as you go through life. In your 20s and pre-family it's a significant aspect of your social life. Then I think it wanes as you have a family and kids when you don't have enough time for everything and work socialization is a chore. Then I think once again after the kids move out work socialization becomes more important again. Of course thats just a generalization.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
calvinmorrison 5y ago
I find my older coworkers have more friends at work, simply because its the people outside thier family they see every day. I am friends with zero coworkers but also can spend my evenings out with friends - I don't have familial duties

paulryanrogers 5y ago

The team I was on had never met in person. I think fully remote can work for a large portion of the population, once the same effort and resources are provided to them as in office workers.

disposedtrolley 5y ago

> how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. This is going to be the big struggle for teams who formed in person but are now hiring remote. I joined my current company about six months prior to the pandemic and had ample time to get to know my colleagues face-to-face, making the transition to remote working very pleasant. I'm not sure if the experience has been the same for people we've onboarded remotely; they're productive but I'm unsure if it'll be easy for them to build up the same kinds of relationships. You also tend to get into situations where there's a social divide between a subset of the team who have constantly worked together synchronously in the past and new starters who only appear in 2D on Zoom. This may not be a problem for some people, but it's a concern for someone like me who gets a lot of their daily social interactions via work.

cromka 5y ago

> I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. One thing I thought of that could alleviate this would be the team work getaways. Think 2 weeks away, 3-4 times a year. Obviously not everyone can every join all of them, but I'd imagine most still would do 2. Ideally the families should also be invited. I am sure it would still come out cheaper than maintaining office space and build stronger relationships than the mere coffee break talk.

nanidin 5y ago
I worked remote for 5 years before COVID. I was somewhere around 10% travel to customer locations, and about 1 week per year to HQ overseas. It was a great balance. I’m not sure how that would scale to an entire company though as one week of travel expenses worked out to around $2000 for domestic travel within the US. Does the cost of carrying office space work out to more or less than $8k per person per year? COVID style isolated WFH ruined WFH for me and contributed to burnout.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Renting a hotel for a week is probably way cheaper than $8k per person. Your costs were large in part because of the small scale that is done.
  - treis 5y ago
    You're not including airfare, food, and meeting space. It might not quite reach $2k but pretty close. But that's likely still cheaper than office space. That ranges anywhere from $20-$70+ per square foot depending on city and how nice it is. So even a tiny desk space is 500-2k a month.
    - cromka 5y ago
      Still, you guys assume this would be within the US, only. Excuse me for saying that, but that's some typical, US-centric kind of thinking. There's really whole world out there. If you're going to go for 2 weeks, go to Asia, South America or Central/South Europe and pay a third of the costs. Heck, do you know how cheap country side airbnbs in Portugal or Italy are? THAT'S how you build lasting memories.

Avalaxy 5y ago

> My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. None. I started 3 different consulting jobs during the pandemic and always felt very productive and very connected to my colleagues, even though I never met them.

johannes1234321 5y ago
After working remote for ten+ years I disagree. There are things one can better understand about a person in a face to face meeting. When discussions become differently casual. Also some discussions are simpler in a completely informal circumstance ("random" meeting at the watercooler) than a virtual meeting of any kind. Of course ymmv but blunt "None" isn't right.
- wokwokwok 5y ago
  People talk online too; it’s different for people who grew up using text messages and social media where they’re accustomed to building and maintaining online relationships. I’m old, so don’t look at me, but when you look at the cohort of folk who are dealing with wfh successfully and productively, it’s, in my direct observation, younger folk. None is perhaps true for more people than you think. The ones who are struggling are the people who don’t “do chat” (ie the “oh no! I despise slack” group and the “let’s have a call to discuss that” group) and managers. ...and to be fair, it’s a lot harder to be a manager remotely; I can’t deny that. ...but people can build meaningful relationships online; it’s just different, and that’s hard for older people, in general.
  - caturopath 5y ago
    Many of my best friendships were forged online, often in groups collaborating on doing real work. I have not been able to get any such spontaneity during remote work with my group or division at a large tech company with mostly young coworkers. I haven't been able to figure out why. > the “oh no! I despise slack” group Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture. I don't know what the tools are to turn chat into a value-adding thing, but I don't think they're in place yet. It pains me to see the number of people who reply quickly to chat messages all day in order to show they're 'working' rather than doing their jobs.

rtpg 5y ago

This conversation, when I've had it with people, usually ends up with the same conclusions: people would like to see their coworkers face-to-face like.... a couple times a month. People have deep relationships with others without needing to see them 5 times a day, after all! I think the difficulties around relationship building in this time are deeply linked to whether you are able to socialize "through a computer" well or not. I'm not really talking about Zoom etc so much as just text chat or the like. There are definitely people more and less comfortable at it.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
It is an interesting question. I have two new team members we added 2 months ago. Neither is very technical and, admittedly, it can get challenging sometimes, because pre-WFH, I could have just showed them what to do instead of spending 20 minutes trying to explain what I want them to do. I could technically grab a screen, but.. apparently, neither learns well that way and just yesterday I had some really odd issues with sound and MS Teams screen sharing. Anyway, as much as I love remote, in person has its benefits.. like being able to strangle someone when needed.
- raywu 5y ago
  Unrelated: how do you remember your username?
  - AndrewDucker 5y ago
    My guess would be that that's a phrase.
  - warkdarrior 5y ago
    That's the sound his co-workers make when he strangles them!
  - square_usual 5y ago
    Not OP, but as someone who's used such handles in the past, using a password manager.

strobe 5y ago

I feel in opposite way and my experience including few years of pre pandemic remote working. At office you can work together with same peoples over years but not get any real clue about who they are truly, because lot of politics, pretending and fears included in office life. On remote work peoples usually more open, honest and direct, in most cases it easiest for them to share stuff that they have passion about or describe real issues in life (But I think that also not true if your work required to do lot of short projects with different peoples). Also, if you already work with someone for a long time remotely it always nice to meet him in real life and get to know little more.

elwesties 5y ago

Personally, I have joined a company and scaled the team from 12-52 engineers over the pandemic. Our productivity is through the roof and everyone is getting really well and forming good connections.

flukus 5y ago

> how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. IME these relationships are a function of how much time you spend talking with people and not of physical proximity. At my last job the person I was closest too was on another continent. We worked quite closely so I spent way more time talking with them then some people that sat a few feet away from me. We knew each others lunch and break schedules better than the people we ate lunch with. There is a tendency to talk more with people next to you and only zoom someone for direct work discussion, but in both scenarios there's room to force some socialization. In our line of work we even have tools like pair programming to enforce these relationships.

dboreham 5y ago

I've now spent decades working with people I never met.

oblio 5y ago
If you've been working remotely for decades, you: A) Have a totally different work experience than 99.99% of folks out there B) Might have different personality type than a huge chunk of people out there (hard to quantify, a guesstimate of mine would be at least 60%)
- dboreham 5y ago
  Perhaps. I note that when I worked in the bosom of the valley long ago (Netscape campus on Ellis), often I was working with others in the organization who were in different buildings and I never met them. Working with others in different countries has also been the norm for me for decades, predating my own remove move.

sinstein 5y ago

This rings true for me. I was in a very hectic workplace when the pandemic began and was able to function pretty much as effectively as I would in office. Then I made a switch to a different company towards the end of last year and I do not yet feel a part of the team as I would normally. This is despite having a friend in the team. New relationships have been very hard to build with completely remote onboarding.

madcaptenor 5y ago

I was a good bit more productive over the first few months of the pandemic than since then, and I attribute some of that (though not all) to the fact that most of the work I was doing in March to June of 2020 was on projects that had been originated back when we were in the office, while the projects I've worked on since then were originated after we went remote. This isn't quite about relationships because I knew the people involved before; it's more about not having information that you tend to get just from being around the office. I'm not saying this is an argument for going back into the office so much as being mindful about communication.