4 ms·

This argument has really become "what will a workplace do to accommodate/help people one way or the other". For instance, I personally prefer going to the offi

This argument has really become "what will a workplace do to accommodate/help people one way or the other". For instance, I personally prefer going to the office at least sometimes. My job satisfaction went down considerably staying at home for nearly 2 years. The fact my job had travel pre-COVID also likely had something to do with that. I enjoyed being around people, getting out of the house, etc. I'm also a huge gamer, and am constantly on Discord or some type of in-game chat. So it's not like I didn't have people to talk to or wasn't getting any interaction. My company is currently "Hybrid", so most who are near an office go 2-3 days a week. We're also pretty nationally and internationally distributed, so we're going to the office to be on a bunch of phone calls. The people I see at the office are my direct manager and a few cross functional co-workers. It's nice to be able to talk to them in person. Now recently on a company town hall, the question came up, and our President said basically "We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks". From experience, he's not wrong, but that sent me down another line of thinking: - Are we willing to fly these people around to be in that room? - If no, we should make it easier to do that. - What resources do we provide to make at-home lives easier (monitors, webcams, better headset/speakerphone). - What learning and/or help do we give to make people "better" at WFH or Office? The last unique thing I'll say about me, I live 10 minutes or less from my office. That's a HUGE privilege, and one that has probably kept me here longer simply because I don't get stressed out over commute changes from weather, etc. I can't imagine what it would be like if I lived 45 minutes or an hour or more from work.

strgcmc 4y ago
> "We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks". I know you probably know this, but I hope your company leadership isn't falling victim to bias here, because a singular take like this implies that they think it's always better to get folks into a room... what if there is a person that, regardless of room, that your company never would've been able to hire in the first place, because you didn't support remote work? Even if I accept a hypothetical ding to their effectiveness, I'd rather have a stellar hire working at 90% impact in a remote environment, vs not being able to hire that person at all... and of course, maybe that stellar hire actually creates 110% impact while remote, and 90% in-person, who knows? Of course the obvious assumption is, that there are fewer stellar hires who are actively turned off by remote work, vs those that would be turned off/rejected by mandating RTO or banning remote work. That's a bet I'm willing to take, "going with the times."
marcosdumay 4y ago
> We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks Have you tried getting those people in a virtual room together? We did a lot of getting people in a room together at my work. We changed into virtual rooms during the pandemic and they showed themselves superior in almost every way. People have decent IO devices on virtual room, as an opposition to a random laptop on the real meeting; there is no software misconfiguration stopping the work; we can do the meetings on a shorter notice (no need to travel or even book rooms); people get less tired and zoom-out less, because they are in a familiar comfortable environment, instead of shoved into an improper room without sufficient ventilation. There is a large downside in that only one conversation line is possible for each room. That is a serious tooling drawback, but AFAIK every tool has it.

strgcmc 4y ago

> "We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks". I know you probably know this, but I hope your company leadership isn't falling victim to bias here, because a singular take like this implies that they think it's always better to get folks into a room... what if there is a person that, regardless of room, that your company never would've been able to hire in the first place, because you didn't support remote work? Even if I accept a hypothetical ding to their effectiveness, I'd rather have a stellar hire working at 90% impact in a remote environment, vs not being able to hire that person at all... and of course, maybe that stellar hire actually creates 110% impact while remote, and 90% in-person, who knows? Of course the obvious assumption is, that there are fewer stellar hires who are actively turned off by remote work, vs those that would be turned off/rejected by mandating RTO or banning remote work. That's a bet I'm willing to take, "going with the times."

marcosdumay 4y ago

> We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks Have you tried getting those people in a virtual room together? We did a lot of getting people in a room together at my work. We changed into virtual rooms during the pandemic and they showed themselves superior in almost every way. People have decent IO devices on virtual room, as an opposition to a random laptop on the real meeting; there is no software misconfiguration stopping the work; we can do the meetings on a shorter notice (no need to travel or even book rooms); people get less tired and zoom-out less, because they are in a familiar comfortable environment, instead of shoved into an improper room without sufficient ventilation. There is a large downside in that only one conversation line is possible for each room. That is a serious tooling drawback, but AFAIK every tool has it.