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WFH is fantastic for ICs and misery for decision makers. You’re seeing pro-office bias from the latter because humans are optimised for building alignment when

WFH is fantastic for ICs and misery for decision makers. You’re seeing pro-office bias from the latter because humans are optimised for building alignment when they meet in person. If you’re an IC that doesn’t need to build influence then, indeed, WFH is bliss. Not all tech work is about sitting in front of a glowing screen, writing code. It’s about achieving a business goal that brings in revenue, and all the alignment throughout the org that’s needed to get that done. Repository layout, test framework changes, factoring out core components to make a long term stable branch, persuading teams to collaborate at their bleeding edges rather than by internal releases, how to ship auto formatting code with the lowest negative impact on everyone else… Decision making, even on technical topics, is a people-centric skill.

wfh_forever 5y ago
Every single engineering items were resolved by a well written design doc (ERD). 2-3 Google hangouts were enough to get alignment across team members.
dleslie 5y ago
None of what you've described is impossible, or less effective, when performed over digital communication. If anything, digital is better for that coordination and influence gathering due to its recorded nature. Better still, because the digital communication is more time flexible the stakeholders and clients you need to coordinate have the ability to consume and process it at a rate that best suits them, rather than feign interest in yet another meeting packed with forgettable information that should have been an email.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  It feels like you are thinking of all the times it works well with people who engage positively and I am thinking of all the times it doesn’t with people who don’t. Like all of us here, I have had plenty of successful online and async collaborations to know it is possible and should work well. Not everything is perfect though. The problem areas — and the reason you’ve basically all got to be in the office at some point — are decision making ones where a group of two or more people fervently believe in two or more mutually exclusive ways forward. Even when I worked remote for a company multiple timezones away, I would be in the office one week every quarter to first build social capital and later to cash it in when building consensus. I also think back to one of my stakeholders was an underperforming SWE intern. The rate of online engagement that best suited them was zero, and yet — as with any intern — it was crucial to us that they left feeling positive about their time here. That stuff is really hard over the phone.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    Collaborative online digital tools aren't simply adequate, they are vastly superior to analog alternatives. It is less effective, less efficient, to meet in person. Making in-person a requirement limits your access to talent, by excluding those in other time zones and those with differences in ability; and it isn't recorded, cannot be referenced or edited, cannot be a living document, and cannot easily include rich multimedia without finicking with AV gear. And you force everyone to commute into the office. I've been working remotely for 6y; we have multiple external business partners, and a team of over 50. We have team members and business partners in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany, UK, France, NYC, BC, Cali, Japan, and elsewhere; we operate without core hours. I, personally, regularly interact with people in all those listed locations every day. Never once has there ever been a need for an in-person meeting. Never.
- la64710 5y ago
  Exactly this! I would also argue that an all digital communication channel leads to better (more objective) decisions simply because the communication channel is not “contaminated” with useless body language , posturing , height and weight differences , race difference and variety of things that introduces biases.
Asooka 5y ago
All the things you listed were already done over email, slack, etc. even before the pandemic. The moment I have to involve a second team, I have to do it over email, doing it in person is too disruptive to work.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  Don’t you find though that people will eventually bring emotion / drama to a discussion on email, which immediately gets blown out of all proportion because email? Those kinds of situations are much easier to keep on track in a call / video conference, and easiest in person, when you can have ad hoc conversations after the meeting has ended. (Video conference products I have used — all the standard ones — don’t really have a way of ending a meeting other than hard-stop-return-to-isolation for all participants, whereas in real life it’s much smoother and more continuous than that.)
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
We do all that, we do all of it remote and we wouldn't go back to the office (it is now impossible)

wfh_forever 5y ago

Every single engineering items were resolved by a well written design doc (ERD). 2-3 Google hangouts were enough to get alignment across team members.

dleslie 5y ago

None of what you've described is impossible, or less effective, when performed over digital communication. If anything, digital is better for that coordination and influence gathering due to its recorded nature. Better still, because the digital communication is more time flexible the stakeholders and clients you need to coordinate have the ability to consume and process it at a rate that best suits them, rather than feign interest in yet another meeting packed with forgettable information that should have been an email.

gorgoiler 5y ago
It feels like you are thinking of all the times it works well with people who engage positively and I am thinking of all the times it doesn’t with people who don’t. Like all of us here, I have had plenty of successful online and async collaborations to know it is possible and should work well. Not everything is perfect though. The problem areas — and the reason you’ve basically all got to be in the office at some point — are decision making ones where a group of two or more people fervently believe in two or more mutually exclusive ways forward. Even when I worked remote for a company multiple timezones away, I would be in the office one week every quarter to first build social capital and later to cash it in when building consensus. I also think back to one of my stakeholders was an underperforming SWE intern. The rate of online engagement that best suited them was zero, and yet — as with any intern — it was crucial to us that they left feeling positive about their time here. That stuff is really hard over the phone.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Collaborative online digital tools aren't simply adequate, they are vastly superior to analog alternatives. It is less effective, less efficient, to meet in person. Making in-person a requirement limits your access to talent, by excluding those in other time zones and those with differences in ability; and it isn't recorded, cannot be referenced or edited, cannot be a living document, and cannot easily include rich multimedia without finicking with AV gear. And you force everyone to commute into the office. I've been working remotely for 6y; we have multiple external business partners, and a team of over 50. We have team members and business partners in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany, UK, France, NYC, BC, Cali, Japan, and elsewhere; we operate without core hours. I, personally, regularly interact with people in all those listed locations every day. Never once has there ever been a need for an in-person meeting. Never.
la64710 5y ago
Exactly this! I would also argue that an all digital communication channel leads to better (more objective) decisions simply because the communication channel is not “contaminated” with useless body language , posturing , height and weight differences , race difference and variety of things that introduces biases.

Asooka 5y ago

All the things you listed were already done over email, slack, etc. even before the pandemic. The moment I have to involve a second team, I have to do it over email, doing it in person is too disruptive to work.

gorgoiler 5y ago
Don’t you find though that people will eventually bring emotion / drama to a discussion on email, which immediately gets blown out of all proportion because email? Those kinds of situations are much easier to keep on track in a call / video conference, and easiest in person, when you can have ad hoc conversations after the meeting has ended. (Video conference products I have used — all the standard ones — don’t really have a way of ending a meeting other than hard-stop-return-to-isolation for all participants, whereas in real life it’s much smoother and more continuous than that.)

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

We do all that, we do all of it remote and we wouldn't go back to the office (it is now impossible)