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>Converting an in-person culture to a remote culture can be hard and many companies haven't done a good job. The crux of it seems to be an inability to adapt t

>Converting an in-person culture to a remote culture can be hard and many companies haven't done a good job. The crux of it seems to be an inability to adapt then. Excuses or no excuse, that is the problem. Why are rewarding companies that aren't adapting? >And onboarding and training new people is much harder remotely ... if you don't actually have an onboarding process. you hit the nail on the head here. This means investing in your employees and taking training / onboarding seriously. Companies got too used to this being done by osmosis and effectively not having to pay for it. Again, seems like failure to adapt is at fault. >And third, it is that is much harder to gain visibility and micromanage a remote team. Last thing in the world any good worker wants its to be micromanaged. To be honest, I ask, why do we want this? >New playbook, avoid or have an awkward conversation over a 30 minute 1:1 zoom, where you could be being recorded so nothing of consequence is said. If you can't say anything on the record of consequence I suspect whatever it is you're saying shouldn't be said at all. How is this bad? What on earth could be said before that can't be said now? >New playbook: review salesforce data that you know is bullshit and are frustrated you can't figure out why things aren't like they used to be. Is it because all the new hires we brought on don't seem to be productive? Did remote kill everyone's mojo? Are my middle managers able to hold their team to account? you're measuring the wrong thing or otherwise not going about this productively to begin with. It seems like there is a lot of ineffective management going on here. Good vibes are meaningless, they simply make someone feel better perhaps, but you really think because some sales people are having a good time it means sales are good? I don't think I'd rely on that, feels like a recipe for bad surprises. Also, you could just talk to people, like before. There's no rule against talking to people who work from home. These examples all seem outdated on both sides, and not realistic to me. Seems like asking management to adapt is the real sin. Yet these same management types decry so much about everyone else getting accommodated. I remember a time when people said 'businesses adapt or die'. Yet changing tides of the workforce, businesses don't want to adapt, and are leveraging any power dynamic they have over labor to make sure they don't have to.

jacobr1 2y ago
To be clear, the examples I gave aren't those of what I think effective management should, but rather an amalgamation of the though processes I've observed. > These examples all seem outdated on both sides, and not realistic to me They are indeed outdated ... but I think common, and help explain some of the management/IC disconnect here at the companies struggling to adapt. There are plenty of shitty companies out there will middle management operating on inertia. It is one of the (many) reasons working on startups can be so rewarding. There are great remote companies, in-person companies, hybrid companies. There are companies great as some aspects and not others. The trend I think for the companies doing it well, is intentional process and culture design. And importantly regular iteration to improve. At it only gets harder at scale.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  you're bypassing the thing I'm saying though, in that all the examples, real or perceived, are limitations of the person thinking of them, but not actual limitations of the medium of which work is done. You can hand wave away the conversation a bit more with what you're saying at the end, but that doesn't really get to the core of the issue here.
  - jacobr1 2y ago
    > limitations of the person thinking of them, but not actual limitations of the medium of which work is done. I think we are agreeing here. That was the point of my examples, demonstrating limited thinking from the execs demanding RTO. I was trying to show it wasn't just them being totally dumb, they have valid reasons ... but their narrowness in conceiving of the solution is driving them to do things they way the've done them before. And in many cases that might even be the (local maxima) rational thing, under the assumption they don't have a good mechanism to change the organization dynamics. That overall is a tragedy and lack of leadership. But I think the core issue is exactly that: the limitation in thought of how to structure a group of people to do work. That there are organizations that do it well, seems to me to be an existence proof that it can be done much better and the leaders in organizations going back to RTO should be trying harder to adapt rather than fight remote work. One example of why it often is so naive and wasteful is because the assumptions of teams working together in the same space is often wrong at bigger companies. Plenty of people go to office just to spend all day in zoom meetings talking to colleagues spread out in different offices - that has all the disadvantages of remote work ... but none of the benefits! It isn't even doing office work right, which can have its own advantages too, it just is a total leadership failure.

jacobr1 2y ago

To be clear, the examples I gave aren't those of what I think effective management should, but rather an amalgamation of the though processes I've observed. > These examples all seem outdated on both sides, and not realistic to me They are indeed outdated ... but I think common, and help explain some of the management/IC disconnect here at the companies struggling to adapt. There are plenty of shitty companies out there will middle management operating on inertia. It is one of the (many) reasons working on startups can be so rewarding. There are great remote companies, in-person companies, hybrid companies. There are companies great as some aspects and not others. The trend I think for the companies doing it well, is intentional process and culture design. And importantly regular iteration to improve. At it only gets harder at scale.

no_wizard 2y ago
you're bypassing the thing I'm saying though, in that all the examples, real or perceived, are limitations of the person thinking of them, but not actual limitations of the medium of which work is done. You can hand wave away the conversation a bit more with what you're saying at the end, but that doesn't really get to the core of the issue here.
- jacobr1 2y ago
  > limitations of the person thinking of them, but not actual limitations of the medium of which work is done. I think we are agreeing here. That was the point of my examples, demonstrating limited thinking from the execs demanding RTO. I was trying to show it wasn't just them being totally dumb, they have valid reasons ... but their narrowness in conceiving of the solution is driving them to do things they way the've done them before. And in many cases that might even be the (local maxima) rational thing, under the assumption they don't have a good mechanism to change the organization dynamics. That overall is a tragedy and lack of leadership. But I think the core issue is exactly that: the limitation in thought of how to structure a group of people to do work. That there are organizations that do it well, seems to me to be an existence proof that it can be done much better and the leaders in organizations going back to RTO should be trying harder to adapt rather than fight remote work. One example of why it often is so naive and wasteful is because the assumptions of teams working together in the same space is often wrong at bigger companies. Plenty of people go to office just to spend all day in zoom meetings talking to colleagues spread out in different offices - that has all the disadvantages of remote work ... but none of the benefits! It isn't even doing office work right, which can have its own advantages too, it just is a total leadership failure.