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The most undeniable examples were when we worked at a company that had offices, but allowed people to work remote at their discretion. The people who were burn
by Aurornis 2mo ago
The most undeniable examples were when we worked at a company that had offices, but allowed people to work remote at their discretion.
The people who were burning out at home would become revived and re-energized when they came into the office for something and would stay that way for a week or two.
Then they would slide back into burnout and social problems (assuming benign interactions were hostile in Slack or that people were backstabbing the. was common) the longer they were away from the office.
Some people had the self-awareness to start bringing themselves back to the office for a few days each week and would directly admit they struggled to work from home.
It’s really not uncommon and readily acknowledged in every offline remote work environment I’ve been in. It’s only on social media where you run into claims that remote works well for everyone.
- jambalaya8 2mo agoThank you. This. The backstabbing and passive aggression are so much more trenchant.
- shigawire 2mo agoIt strikes me how broad the range in work experiences are. I have never had coworkers who cared about anything besides getting the work done. The idea of politics in the workplace is foreign to me, but I know it is common.
- jambalaya8 2mo agoI had a lot more of that experience before the first dotcom bubble burst. Harder and harder to not know your coworkers political beliefs even if they do not talk about them at work now.
- vector_spaces 2mo agoLikewise online you run into claims that full remote or hybrid can't and doesn't work for anyone, and we all interpret observed dynamics at work to construct theories supportive of whichever configuration is our favorite (WFH/Hybrid/In Office) or as evidence the one we dislike is worse. In reality the situation is messy and complicated and heavily circumstantial, depending on team/company culture and dynamics and working styles. For instance, I've observed dynamics like what you describe at various orgs, and what they had in common was a lack of psychological safety. If people are responding defensively to benign messages then it tends to mean they have a reason to expect hostile messages. Hostile messages are not a given. One common way this arises: a company ostensibly offers flexible remote work, but in practice strongly prefers in-office work, and enforces this via social pressure. Remote work has a small social cost that accumulates each full day that one works remotely. These remote-oriented workers then have to periodically show up at the office primarily to ingratiate themselves to management and their peers. This is incredibly common, and might even be the default configuration for an org that permits flexible WFH. I don't think this is intentionally malicious, BTW. It's simply what happens when you make a policy shift without considering your team culture as well so that both working styles are supported as first-class citizens.