With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't seem right. Of course you could argue that if some people work from home, the WFO people arent happy, but thats not because they lacked choice, whereas with the alternative, thats exactly the reason.
I don't want that to come across as aggressive or anything, that just the way I see it, and I think thats why its sometimes met badly. If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well.
Not sure I agree - the hybrid model where some are in office and some on video is unfair to the remote folks. Watching coworkers whiteboard from a zoom call makes it much harder to collaborate as the remote employee. It’s also harder to get a turn to speak when you are a face on the camera vs in the room. For these reasons I’ve insisted that in hybrid meetings, everyone dials in individually and whiteboards on a virtual whiteboard even if they are in the room. This is effectively demanding “all remote” from the in-office crowd and taking away their face to face interaction.
> This is effectively demanding “all remote” from the in-office crowd and taking away their face to face interaction.
How is this at all a good thing?
It's basically saying: "I've got a limitation because of my choice of working environment, therefore to make life "fair" — which it isn't at all ironically — I'm going to impose my limitation artificially on the rest of the group."
Because I can't play with that toy, no one else can.
To be fair, audio quality and the ability to communicate with remote people goes up much more when everyone dials in. You can still look at each other in the room and whiteboard just fine.
It is my opinion that the extra inconvenience that in-person folks have to do it dial into a meeting and use a virtual whiteboard is worth it to allow remote folks to fully participate. But ultimately it comes down to how strongly a company supports a remote culture. I’ve worked for 100% distributed companies, and I’ve also worked for places where remote was an afterthought. I imagine at some companies it’s harder to get promoted if someone doesn’t physically see you in all 3 dimensions every day.
As a remote employee I will always try to gravitate towards companies that accommodate me best, but I’m not opposed to the idea that some companies want to be in-person and don’t want to deal with remote. I just chose not to work for those companies.
You can literally flip the O and H and change the “what makes me happy” part to get the opposite side’s point of view.
But in liberalism my wish to not be in another individual's company strongly trumps their desire to be in my company
But as I said, its about choice.
The WFH crowd are unhappy if they don't get a choice in where they work. The WFO crowd are unhappy if others DO get a choice of where they work.
Or to put it another way, one side are unhappy if they're forced to do something they don't want to, the other is unhappy if the first are not forced to do something they don't want to do.
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That's not the be-all, end-all. A previously WFO-only team must make various adjustments to become a successful hybrid team, so even just one WFH team-member will be unhappy if the entire rest of the team doesn't change their behavior in pertain ways (e.g. renouncing ad-hoc team meetings over coffee, or in-person whiteboarding).
> You can literally flip the O and H and change the “what makes me happy” part to get the opposite side’s point of view.
No. The points of view are not equal and opposite.
Some people who advocate WFO do so because they just want to work in an office (for various reaons) and they don't care how many co-workers do the same. But others want other people to also be present in the office to create the environment that they desire. People who advocate WFH have similarly varied motivations, but none of their motivations require other people to change their behaviour.
I'm on a team that has a mandatory "in-person" day twice a month. This seems to be the best balance for everyone as it's just infrequent enough to not feel like a grind but frequent enough to keep everyone moving in the same direction.
Given the choice, I'd never take a hybrid role. It means I still need to keep the "infrastructure" needed to get to the office (eg a car, public transport around me is terrible), but it sits unused 90% of the time. I can't get properly comfortable working at home or in the office because I'm constantly in between the two. Its just not for me.
I think there are many “subcultures” (for lack of better description) within WFH and WFO. You’re describing two of them, but there’s also a group of WFH’ers that believes the whole organization should be remote as to standardize the processes to be asynchronous, and there are WFO’ers that still like to work from home one or two days a week.
There’s also WFH but within the same country, WFH globally across all timezones, etc etc etc.
As such, I personally consider it more of a company culture thing rather than WFO vs WFH. Where does the company fit in these philosophies.
There’s definitely no such thing as the WFO’er that wants to force their preferences upon others any more than there are WFH’ers doing the same thing.
Absolutely, there are always going to be subcultures within this kind of thing, but I highly doubt the majority of those want to force their preference to others, certainly for the WFH crowd and to be fair I'd assume from the WFO crowd either, at least not consciously.
> There’s definitely no such thing as the WFO’er that wants to force their preferences upon others any more than there are WFH’ers doing the same thing.
I can only go anecdotally on this but that certainly hasn't been my experience. I assume there are some WFH'ers who want to force their preference, but I've never seen any of them. However, I've encounter it many times from the reverse. I am pro-WFH, which might explain why, but again all I can go off is personal experience here.
I've had a job where I was the only remote developer, and the experience was terrible. I was excluded from or forgotten for lots of important meetings and social events.
I personally wouldn't want to force everyone to WFH, but I'll never willingly repeat that experience either.
This is the best way to think about it imo, there are all kinds. I'm lucky enough to be able to comfortably bike to work. Unsurprisingly; I like to go in a few times a week for a change of scenary (and to still keep a big screen. A number of my teamates aggressively defend their right to 'never come in ever again' up to and including shaming those who like the option of WFO.
I think we're at an odd almost feverish inflection point right now. I say this typing on my (giant) home monitor.
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I'd also add that comments like this:
> Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
Are remarkably condescending.
Folks opting for a better work-life balance, who might not like to commute, or who prefer to socialize in other settings, "do not care to invest themselves"?
Maybe it's not the OP's opinions that are controversial, but rather the implicit judgment that comes along with it.
Work is a third of our life, and it seems reasonable that many people would want social interaction during that time. Further, at least in the workplace I had before Covid, people could work from home as needed, or even part time, depending on their management. Granted this was for IT, not for the whole company though.
You think WFH is every individuals choice in this new world. It isn’t.
The last place I worked had 25,000 people on its main campus. Three gyms, three coffee shops, four cafeterias and more square footage than the pentagon.
When every person chooses, in a fit of glee, to WFH all the time, that community dies. Maybe in a generation, the world will adapt, but I look back on the mid 2010s as what will possibly have been the best part of my lifelong career due to the energy, the learning, the comraderie, and the amenities of my tech job.
WFH is a group decision. Don’t think it’s morally superior to choose WFH.
I’m like OP, I see many benefits in terms of living flexibility and people caring for dependents. But it will have profound negative consequences on professional development and social development for workers going forward.
> The last place I worked had 25,000 people on its main campus. Three gyms, three coffee shops, four cafeterias and more square footage than the pentagon.
I interviewed at a place like this, with all the in-site amenities. They were particularly proud of offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day to the staff. As I finished my last round of interviews, it became obvious that they offered this because they expected everyone to be there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.
I did not accept the offer, and I have no regrets.
work trying to compensate life is insane. I don't want to spend all my time there and have dinner with you guys, no offense.
In the end, they will fire you if their numbers don't align in your favor, but hey, they fed you.
> Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy.
I partially disagree. Such hybrid situations often end up being office-first, meaning that WFH folks have a harder time i.e. participating in meetings.
That said, if the company is remote-first but also has offices, then that is optimal, should make everybody comfortable, and allows everybody to pick their choice.
I agree with your first point about remote workers in an office-first org, but I disagree with this:
> That said, if the company is remote-first but also has offices, then that is optimal, should make everybody comfortable, and allows everybody to pick their choice.
Those who want WFO are really asking for consistent in person work and collaboration. If you're going to an office, and there's few people there, and every meeting is a video call, and your team's work style is async then you are not getting an office experience- you are doing remote work from somewhere that isn't your house.
I just see the only satisfying outcome here being one in which there are some remote orgs and some office based orgs, and they largely don't mix. Structured hybrid models also make sense, but only if they are quite formalized (eg: in office M-W).
WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company.
Personally, I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes. Companies are collaborative human endeavors. Most WFH arguments I hear are related to personal fulfillment: more time with kids, less time commuting, more time for hobbies, etc. Those are all great things, but have little to do with productivity. The closest work-related argument I've heard is that some people work better when they're free of distractions at the office. That takes us back to companies being collaborative human endeavors. One may feel they work better in isolation, but part of ones job is to interact with others, even if that's not fun.
I don't want this to sound judgemental. There is no requirement that people organize their life around what's best for the company they work for. It's totally fine to enjoy working from home. But I don't see the argument that WFH is better than WFO for most companies, even if it's often better for the individual employees at those companies.
I think we'll get more conclusive data when WFH is and is not appropriate.
Came exactly here to say this. Because of WFH im able to have a awesome job and see my family living in other countries and also my parents at home much more frequently now.
If you want to work in an office you can do that it’s your choice. Many people also have young kids and two working parents making the WFH flexibility ideal. Lots of reasons for WFH exist but they don’t matter. If you do your job and the company is happy why do we even need to have this discussion?
The issue is that I don't just want to work from the office, I want to work from the office along with my coworkers. Sitting there alone is only marginally better than work from home. In the end we just need to self select into companies that follow our desired "work from" policies, it's just tough now since the pandemic made every company temporarily WFH so some workers need to swap as companies change back.
Thats great then find one of the companies that forces people to work from the office.
Don’t be upset when you have trouble finding talent unless you are paying out amazing salaries though.
This to me just gets into people trying to control other people. You have your preferences and thats fine but forcing it on others always causes problems.
If you start your job search with this requirement in mind though i don’t think people should have issues. I look for my jobs based on being listed as fully remote and the rest of the company being largely remote as well. As long as you aren’t at a company trying to force everyone back in the office I think its all good.
I do know my last company of size 1000+ has been trying to force people back slowly. 50% of my team left and now that they are pushing harder i am having people reach out to me every week about openings.
So that's fine and all, but the problem is that large corporations impose top-down one-size-fits-all policies -- a lot of us work for large corporations. If the Dems lose the next election, corporations will probably continue to consolidate down to an ever-smaller set with more employees each. A large corporation mandating only one policy for the entire bazillion-employee set doesn't make sense. We need per-team flexibility, and most of the billionaire CEO's don't seem to want to allow that.
If everyone else works remote then what is the point of going to the office?
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> If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well.
I really hate zoom meetings. Unfortunately if everyone just does whatever they want, then even the in-person meetings get dragged onto zoom because there’s at least a few people who are remote and need to dial in. Early on as we returned to office we even wound up taking a lot of meetings in the office over zoom from our individual desks because there was so little point getting into a room together with so many others online.
“Everyone do whatever you want” as a WFH/WFO policy is kinda like “everyone do whatever you want” as a “no peeing in the swimming pool” policy.
> Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy.
It’s pointless weighing my hate of zoom against your hate of commuting or general WFO, but it’s definitely not the case that WFH crowd just wants everyone to be happy while the WFO crowd wants to strong-arm everyone. On the contrary, as my preference is for hybrid flexibility it often seems like the most vocal WFH proponents would like to strong-arm every business to be full-WFH.
I kinda like my company the way it is—and that won’t work for everyone, but maybe it doesn’t have to, right? The full WFH folks can look for companies that do that; the WFO folks can look for that; and the hybrid folks can look for that. And everyone is free to compromise based on the other aspects of the job.
Exactly! The team has to be aligned, because if a critical mass of people are working remotely, the office ceases to offer any advantage. It's okay to prefer working from home—but you should find a team that also prefers working from home, so people who prefer the office have that option too.
Alternately find a company that supports a mix of in person and remote work and provides the tools to do "in person" things like white-boarding and the culture to provide "coffee chats" and other camaraderie building events.
I think that a lot of people who dislike WFH are missing the sense of community more than are actually missing talking with someone face to face with a cup of coffee in their hand. Not always the case, but I think those are two separate audiences that get clumped together in these conversations.
He's asking why you prefer WFH and you didn't answer him.
Unless everyone on a single team chooses to work either from home or the office, communication will suffer for the people working from home, since it's just far easier to talk to people in the same room than it is to type stuff.
Personally, I find working in an office to be borderline unbearable unless I'm participating in making all the noise that's being generated around me.
This is the crux for me. It's not that I find the opinions of the office fans offensive, it's that their ideal situation changes mine. They don't just want to be in the office, they want ME there too. They drag us into their problem. Where I work the office people pushed to get back into the office, now they're there and nobody else is and their new quest is "how to get more people in the office." You don't. We don't work in the office. You do.
Optional remote work _is_ mandatory remote work even if you have the option to work remotely from the office. This is especially true if WFH is conflated with the loss of core hours and the enforcement of async comms.
I see a lot of micro aggressions in my day to day as a remote worker from some of my WFO colleagues. Part of management has become more bold in making remote workers feel terrible for not coming into the office for seemingly constant “meet your coworkers!” org meetings and “we highly recommend you come into the office to meet folks!” over and over again. It’s a constant stream of anxiety from these people and it’s all one way. I’m blown away by some of them being so excited to commute and return to a terrible open office plan, but hey to each their own I guess.
As part of the WFO crowd (I mean I live 10 min away from the office, it wasn't a hard choice to make), I'm happy to have colleagues around in the office, that's the whole point of the place. But I've never said that those part of the WFH group have to come too! Especially those who've moved 300 km away during the Covid.
And yes, you're coming as agressive, sorry.
I want to communicate with people in person. If I'm going to pair with someone, I want that to be at their desk. If I'm going to brainstorm with somebody or go over some complex math, I want to do that at a real physical whiteboard. I have yet to meet anybody who communicates better over slack or zoom than they do in person. So either I want you to be in the office for the greater communication bandwidth, or you want me to waste time trying to exchange ideas over sub-optimal channels. Either way, we're at an impasse.
Both sides have their points, but fundamentally, to me, it makes no sense to join a company with an office, and then fight to not go to that office.
Are you talking about management? I prefer to work in office and have no opinions on whether my teammates WFH or not. I do find remote meetings extremely unproductive though.
What I find annoying is all the reluctance to return to office, especially where companies are trying to compromise and only require a few days a week. If there was no COVID, people would be working in office as they've always done.
You were hired with the expectation of coming in the office. Either re-negotiate or quit.
We did re-negotiate, en masse. This is why the office is no longer an expectation.
I don't know about your org, but I had a conversation with my manager, and all my reports had a conversation with me about it.
This worked it's way up the org chart until the CEO understood what the new reality was.
> If there was no COVID, people would be working in office as they've always done.
If my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle. This is a useless counterfactual because what happened has changed the dynamic. We can't base anything on a counterfactual.
I spent the entire decade of the 2010's WFH, 1500 miles away from my company's HQ. I rose through the ranks (albeit more slowly than some of my peers), and left the company on good terms.
Thusly anecdotally armed, I can tell you that for cases towards the center of the bell curve, employees working in the office is better for the company and arguably better for the employee long-term. More shared vision, more opportunities for cross-pollination, more quick problem solving. All the usual arguments. It worked in my case, but productivity plummeted for the next guy who tried it, and we had to let him go.
It worked in my case because this was before the time when every kid expected to be able to work from home, and so I was terrified on a daily basis that out of sight would become out of mind. In the early days I made a point of traveling to HQ one week of every four, to meet the new folks and maintain relationships. I strove to overachieve so I didn't become redundant. Even so, by the end of the decade, with the growth of the company I was noticeably detached from the centers of power and the office culture, serving a role not much different from a contractor.
Not this specific post, which is reasonable and well-thought-out, but many rants I've heard by WFH proponents come across as myopic and naive. Yes, it can succeed sometimes, for some combinations of office culture and individual. Just based on my own experience, more often it doesn't.
> Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy.
Salaried employment in this business (at least in the US) is a contract between you and somebody who wants to give you a lot of money, with some expectations in return. The person offering the money has the right to set the terms of that contract, and you have the right to reject that contract and work somewhere else. I view this as the actual "choice of what makes that individual happy."
Finally, let's not forget that people working in group settings is what got us here. It gave us the airplane, modern medical care, and the internet. New is sometimes better, but sometimes it's not.
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Your co-workers know you and the position better than your managers. They might have insight into productivity that are uncomfortable...
When I talk to people about going back to the office so many are unreasonably strident that they never will, to the point it seems like a social anxiety instead of a time/productivity choice. They often say things which are obviously wrong such as "there's no difference in productivity" when that is clearly dependent on person, task, and team. Or maybe it's that they've retreated into depression during Covid and this is unconscious coping.
Anyways, teams are teams and if someone doesn't want to be part of one there are other classes of work where you produce alone and those are more appropriate to people who cannot or will not go to the office. The extreme WFH people should evaluate their positions and see if they're in their optimal role or if they're now blocking others and change their career to give them their preferences. (The rabid WHO people are also an issue from their side of course.)