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As a remote, older professional now, my career nevertheless supports the premise of this article: in-office was beneficial when I started out. My first job had

As a remote, older professional now, my career nevertheless supports the premise of this article: in-office was beneficial when I started out. My first job had a strong lunch culture, providing an environment for serendipitous conversations, daily. Over time, I bumped into folks I never would have met in the normal scope of my role, across finance, legal, SRE, support, sales, data science, etc. In turn, as a young professional, I was able to develop a mental model for how businesses "work", why they're organized how they are, and how (good) culture can bind everyone together towards a profitable outcome. I made some friends and acquaintances that I'm still in touch with to this day. As a remote, older professional now, I don't necessarily "need" these serendipitous conversations anymore, although I miss the general socialization. But I do feel like they're an essential "ladder" that every subsequent generation of professionals should be able to access, and that it's a moral obligation for me to "pay it forward". For remote work to be "fair" to young professionals, its systems should facilitate the same career benefits, with the same effort.

o_nate 3y ago
I'm an older professional now working in a hybrid arrangement, but I very much concur with the parent comment. I can't imagine how my early career would have gone without being able to put in the time in the office. Its a cliche, but work culture really does exist, and it's about social cues and rules of courtesy. These mores are not taught in school but are absolutely essential to working effectively in an office. I would suspect this socialization is even more important for people who perhaps come from families where no parent was a white-collar office worker. I was lucky to start out at places where it was common for teams to eat lunch together. These unofficial interactions were just as important as regular work interactions in helping me to understand the psychology of my more experienced colleagues, what was polite, and what was taboo.
shmatt 3y ago
I think leadership at many of these companies have their wires crossed in terms of messaging but also expectations and ideas about what they want to extract out of employees They always start with return to office = productivity, which people push back on, because the office is full of 2 hour lunch breaks and water cooler discussions about fantasy football. Then discourse gets worse when CEOs talk about the "overemployed" and people running errands during a work day. If we're talking lines of codes written nothing beats working at home for most But you're right, there is a ton to learn during those 2 hour lunches, pulling people in to impromptu meetings, and socializing as a whole The messaging needs to be fixed, expectations adjusted, people should be empowered to both work heads down at home, and do less head down work at the office
- mulmen 3y ago
  There's another problem in that the modern office is not optimized for the really valuable interactions. There is some idea way up in the clouds about free communication and sharing ideas that manifests as open floor plans. What we really need are small quiet areas to focus and do work and separate large areas for socialization and collaboration. The modern office doesn't actually facilitate any of this. When I was a newbie I sat in a cube across the hall from my boss' private office and next to the kitchen. It was actually really nice. I was in a quiet corner of the office and had full height cube walls with bookshelves and a big whiteboard all to myself. But I could turn around and ask my boss a question or walk less than 30 feet to talk to any of the senior engineers, who all had private offices which doubled as collaboration spaces. The spontaneous interactions happened around the espresso machine. In hindsight it was wonderful but if you looked at that building from the outside you might think it was an outdated dump. We got bought out by a company in silicon valley and they moved us to a new building with an open floorplan and sat us next to the sales team. It was big and bright but we lost all our collaboration space.
  - sefrost 3y ago
    I would love a private office. It wouldn't need to be very big - and it wouldn't even need a door. Just a door frame without a door on it would be fine. I guess it's not even private in that sense, I just don't like people standing behind me. Quite often in online discussions I notice people mention the move to open plan offices. I'm 31 and I've never known anything but open plan offices (apart from WFH). When did the switch to open plan offices happen? Did people have private offices before that or was it only cubicles?
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      From 1993-1994 and 1997-2002, I had private offices, one person [a few doubles] with a real, solid door. I’m class of ‘93, so this was most of my first decade with everyone having them. I then went back to private offices for most of 2009-2016, but that was as a Director/plus with devs in cubes. After 2016, even VPs went into cubes, which I hated.
dfxm12 3y ago
Managing remote workers is a skill that many managers are finding out they don't have right now. I wasn't in the same office as my manager when I started out. I was lucky to have good managers over time who were able to foster these types of discussions you're talking about, without ever being collocated with everyone involved. It's kinda sad, because this isn't a new problem. Whether you're remote because you're working from home, or you're remote because you're in Belgium and the rest of your team is in North Carolina, the managerial issues are roughly the same, but we've had multinational companies for a while now...
- iso1631 3y ago
  Managing any workers is a skill that many managers have never had, especially in companies where the only way to progress (in terms of salary and status) is to become a team manager.
tkiolp4 3y ago
But there exists 100% remote companies, even before Covid. In such companies this “lunch culture” doesn’t exist (never existed). We should learn from such companies because I think remote work is more about finally putting more emphasis on the “life” part of “work-life balance”
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  I’ve worked at many styles of company, including 2 that were fully remote pre-Covid. The secret to success is, we have like a 8-1 senior to junior ratio. That’s the only way they get enough specific attention to stay effective, not get lost in the shuffle, get the training they need. The company that I worked at which transitioned to remote during Covid… didn’t go so well
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    This is what I have observed when I was looking for remote jobs before covid. They all had extremely high standards and wanted people who could just work solo without any learning required.
- throwaway987655 3y ago
  I work for a (pre-covid) 100% remote company with a decent company culture. What worked for us is two whole-company meetups per year plus some smaller trips for teams and departments. It really boosts the team spirit to spend a week somewhere nice with plenty of time to just chat to mates and random people that I wouldn't otherwise meet. We also have some online social activities during the year but it doesn't work as well. The participation is low. Teams have regular online (paid-for) lunches together which is nice but a bit awkward. People generally prefer to focus on getting the job done and having a good work-life balance. This works as long as we get to see each other in person a couple of times a year. That said, with the recent economic down-turn, the company meetups got put on hold. The company grew and it's now very expensive to organise transport and accommodation for everyone. I can already see the negative effects of the decision.
  - 3y ago
xiphias2 3y ago
,,For remote work to be "fair" to young professionals, its systems should facilitate the same career benefits, with the same effort.'' If you are older and more experienced, you should know that life isn't fair. But at the same time I see lot of young people want to start working remotely and want to do software development _because_ it can be done remotely, but fail to understand that it's an advantage for them. Sadly social media is full of good sounding bad advice for young people.
- black_13 3y ago
  [dead]

o_nate 3y ago

I'm an older professional now working in a hybrid arrangement, but I very much concur with the parent comment. I can't imagine how my early career would have gone without being able to put in the time in the office. Its a cliche, but work culture really does exist, and it's about social cues and rules of courtesy. These mores are not taught in school but are absolutely essential to working effectively in an office. I would suspect this socialization is even more important for people who perhaps come from families where no parent was a white-collar office worker. I was lucky to start out at places where it was common for teams to eat lunch together. These unofficial interactions were just as important as regular work interactions in helping me to understand the psychology of my more experienced colleagues, what was polite, and what was taboo.

shmatt 3y ago

I think leadership at many of these companies have their wires crossed in terms of messaging but also expectations and ideas about what they want to extract out of employees They always start with return to office = productivity, which people push back on, because the office is full of 2 hour lunch breaks and water cooler discussions about fantasy football. Then discourse gets worse when CEOs talk about the "overemployed" and people running errands during a work day. If we're talking lines of codes written nothing beats working at home for most But you're right, there is a ton to learn during those 2 hour lunches, pulling people in to impromptu meetings, and socializing as a whole The messaging needs to be fixed, expectations adjusted, people should be empowered to both work heads down at home, and do less head down work at the office

mulmen 3y ago
There's another problem in that the modern office is not optimized for the really valuable interactions. There is some idea way up in the clouds about free communication and sharing ideas that manifests as open floor plans. What we really need are small quiet areas to focus and do work and separate large areas for socialization and collaboration. The modern office doesn't actually facilitate any of this. When I was a newbie I sat in a cube across the hall from my boss' private office and next to the kitchen. It was actually really nice. I was in a quiet corner of the office and had full height cube walls with bookshelves and a big whiteboard all to myself. But I could turn around and ask my boss a question or walk less than 30 feet to talk to any of the senior engineers, who all had private offices which doubled as collaboration spaces. The spontaneous interactions happened around the espresso machine. In hindsight it was wonderful but if you looked at that building from the outside you might think it was an outdated dump. We got bought out by a company in silicon valley and they moved us to a new building with an open floorplan and sat us next to the sales team. It was big and bright but we lost all our collaboration space.
- sefrost 3y ago
  I would love a private office. It wouldn't need to be very big - and it wouldn't even need a door. Just a door frame without a door on it would be fine. I guess it's not even private in that sense, I just don't like people standing behind me. Quite often in online discussions I notice people mention the move to open plan offices. I'm 31 and I've never known anything but open plan offices (apart from WFH). When did the switch to open plan offices happen? Did people have private offices before that or was it only cubicles?
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    From 1993-1994 and 1997-2002, I had private offices, one person [a few doubles] with a real, solid door. I’m class of ‘93, so this was most of my first decade with everyone having them. I then went back to private offices for most of 2009-2016, but that was as a Director/plus with devs in cubes. After 2016, even VPs went into cubes, which I hated.

dfxm12 3y ago

Managing remote workers is a skill that many managers are finding out they don't have right now. I wasn't in the same office as my manager when I started out. I was lucky to have good managers over time who were able to foster these types of discussions you're talking about, without ever being collocated with everyone involved. It's kinda sad, because this isn't a new problem. Whether you're remote because you're working from home, or you're remote because you're in Belgium and the rest of your team is in North Carolina, the managerial issues are roughly the same, but we've had multinational companies for a while now...

iso1631 3y ago
Managing any workers is a skill that many managers have never had, especially in companies where the only way to progress (in terms of salary and status) is to become a team manager.

tkiolp4 3y ago

But there exists 100% remote companies, even before Covid. In such companies this “lunch culture” doesn’t exist (never existed). We should learn from such companies because I think remote work is more about finally putting more emphasis on the “life” part of “work-life balance”

flappyeagle 3y ago
I’ve worked at many styles of company, including 2 that were fully remote pre-Covid. The secret to success is, we have like a 8-1 senior to junior ratio. That’s the only way they get enough specific attention to stay effective, not get lost in the shuffle, get the training they need. The company that I worked at which transitioned to remote during Covid… didn’t go so well
- Gigachad 3y ago
  This is what I have observed when I was looking for remote jobs before covid. They all had extremely high standards and wanted people who could just work solo without any learning required.
throwaway987655 3y ago
I work for a (pre-covid) 100% remote company with a decent company culture. What worked for us is two whole-company meetups per year plus some smaller trips for teams and departments. It really boosts the team spirit to spend a week somewhere nice with plenty of time to just chat to mates and random people that I wouldn't otherwise meet. We also have some online social activities during the year but it doesn't work as well. The participation is low. Teams have regular online (paid-for) lunches together which is nice but a bit awkward. People generally prefer to focus on getting the job done and having a good work-life balance. This works as long as we get to see each other in person a couple of times a year. That said, with the recent economic down-turn, the company meetups got put on hold. The company grew and it's now very expensive to organise transport and accommodation for everyone. I can already see the negative effects of the decision.
- 3y ago

xiphias2 3y ago

,,For remote work to be "fair" to young professionals, its systems should facilitate the same career benefits, with the same effort.'' If you are older and more experienced, you should know that life isn't fair. But at the same time I see lot of young people want to start working remotely and want to do software development _because_ it can be done remotely, but fail to understand that it's an advantage for them. Sadly social media is full of good sounding bad advice for young people.

black_13 3y ago
[dead]