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You've brought in "require" from nowhere. Neither the parent comment nor OP's article mentioned _requiring_ in-office attendance for everyone on earth. Many peo
by redhale 11mo ago
You've brought in "require" from nowhere. Neither the parent comment nor OP's article mentioned _requiring_ in-office attendance for everyone on earth. Many people make this leap, so I don't mean to single you out.
I think this is one reason this topic is so touchy -- it's hard to even express an opinion without someone assuming you mean to impose that opinion on everyone else (e.g. mandatory RTO), and then taking offense to that imagined imposition.
Perhaps in the long run we can self-organize into companies or groups within companies that universally prefer in-office or remote work.
I prefer at least some % (e.g. 50%) of my work to be in person. But I also don't like working with people who don't want to be there, or for whom being there is a huge burden. So I personally really hate RTO.
Instead, I'll choose a team or company that is open about requiring in-office time (and has been open about it for years), and is therefore staffed by people who also like that environment. It would be ludicrous to join a remote-first or remote-only company and then try to start imposing my in-person preference on others.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- saghm 11mo agoOP's article didn't explicitly state requiring, but it did claim make the claim that I'm objectively worse at my job by working remotely than I am in person: > Remote work eliminates a lot of problems with office work: commutes, inefficient use of real estate, and land value distortion. But software development is better when you breathe the same air as the folks you work with. Even with a camera-on policy, video calls are a low-bandwidth medium. You lose ambient awareness of coworkers’ problems, and asking for help is a bigger burden. Pair programming is less fruitful. Attempts to represent ideas spatially get mutilated by online whiteboard and sticky note software. Even conflict gets worse: it’s easy to form an enemy image of somebody at the end of video call, but difficult to keep that image when you share a room with them and sense their pain. None of that is phrased as personal opinion or their own subjective experience. I don't think it's hard to express an experience about personal preference, but it's hard to express an opinion about how other people's experiences without them having something to say about it if they disagree.
- redhale 11mo agoI see your point. But I guess this is a good example of default assumptions. When I read a personal blog, unless I see words like "objectively", or see explicit arguments stating that others should/must do X, I by default read it as the author expressing their personal opinion on X. But I can see it the other way too. I think it could be solved by the author using an "I" framing as they did in every other section.
- saghm 11mo ago> I think it could be solved by the author using an "I" framing as they did in every other section Yeah, this is probably what really confused me most about it. The tone felt remarkably different in that section than the others, and when it's also the topic that at least to me seems the most controversial, I can't help but wonder if it's representative in some way. It's not at all uncommon for people to dig in their heels more when presented with disagreement, so it's hard for me not to be concerned that the only reason this section is phrased differently is that this is the topic where they've received the most pushback on, which would be exactly what I'd expect even before accounting for the actual phrasing of their opinion.