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There are (at least) two powerful forces that will make "hybrid work" evolve into "WFH" at many offices. What I saw at Mozilla with a remote-heavy workforce is
by roca 4y ago
There are (at least) two powerful forces that will make "hybrid work" evolve into "WFH" at many offices.
What I saw at Mozilla with a remote-heavy workforce is that declining office attendance is a vicious cycle. The fewer people there are in the office on any given day, the less incentive there is for those people to keep showing up.
You can mitigate that to some extent by requiring people to be in the office on a few specific days (as many "hybrid work" programs are trying to do). The problem then is the company has a lot of expensive real estate that's only being used 3 days a week. That seems wasteful. I predict that as leases come up for renewal, and as they get more used to remote work, a lot of companies are going to look at their office investments and downsize or eliminate them. The super-rich Big Tech companies and the like will continue to spend eye-watering amounts of money on lightly used office space and services, because they can, but I don't see how that's going to work for normal companies.
- mwcampbell 4y ago> What I saw at Mozilla with a remote-heavy workforce is that declining office attendance is a vicious cycle. Just curious, are you implying that you think declining office attendance is a bad thing, or just writing from the point of view of someone who does?
- usrn 4y agoVicious cycle is just dynamic systems jargon. It means something is going to naturally shrink if it gets small.
- ghaff 4y agoWhich is something a lot of people said was going to happen. Unless companies/teams put structures in place to synchronize in-person work, the natural outcome will be that people who would rather come into an office if their teammates and others are there will quickly conclude that it's never going to be like pre-pandemic--and they'll increasingly norm just staying home. There is some subset who really do want to be in another place for work and they may be fine coming in even if it's subdued and most people they work with aren't there. But, at that point, it almost might as well be a co-working space.
- roca 4y agoI'm just saying that declining office attendance is self-reinforcing, not making a judgment whether it's good or bad. FWIW I think remote work has many good effects. It's let me live in New Zealand and do interesting work, for example. I think it's good for communities. I'm generally very pleased by the explosion in remote working. But after working from home exclusively for six years I'm enjoying being in an office.
- mwcampbell 4y agoThanks for that answer. So for me the big question is how we can satisfy the people who enjoy working in an office, while still providing the benefits of remote work for people who want or need it, and while not treating the remote workers as second-class. I'm particularly concerned about this because I believe remote work is more inclusive, particularly for disabled people. But working in an office also has undeniable advantages for some people.