I guess this whole time I was a small minority - enjoying working in person
I’m a software engineer. Any time this topic comes up it’s clear I’m the odd one out. Recruiters will tell me “don’t worry, we’re fully remote!” but that’s not what I want to hear. Co-workers that are mandated to return to office go on a quiet rebellion to stay at home (and to be clear, I love that they are displaying the power that laborers have even without a union). But for me the quality of the work is lower when remote. Video calls suck and are emotionally draining. Collaboration is core to doing work for me. Sure I can close tickets just fine from home. But what if I’m there to wrap my head around the entire system and all of the people involved in it?
A few things I’m aware of that influence my opinion here:
- I don’t have kids
- I am comfortable asserting my free time. I take plenty of time off and typically work six hour days, never with any push back from anyone. I can usually get much more done in six hours than is asked of me
- Programming is my dream job
Thankfully I am still able to find fully in-person opportunities around me. So this is really just a matter of understanding the rest of the labor market. I don’t need to or want to change anyone’s mind here.
I'm Senior Leadership in data. I've been running teams of anywhere between 50 & 150 for the past... however long I've been in my career.
My personal take is that the office is there as a collaboration space, not as a code-monkey space... UNLESS, you want that. I've got engineers who I see every month or two who come in, shoot the breeze and then head to the pub at 1600 for 'collaboration', I've got others who are in with me once a week to do some brainstorming and thinking around architecture. Then I've got engineers who prefer to be in 4 out of 5 days because they need that mental seperation. I don't push anyone to do anything, other than to collab as much as possible in person and make those days you're in efficient for everyone.
I'm a people person, I need to see people at least 'every so often' otherwise I do lose the plot a little bit, so I do one day a week in the office. My new role has the Head office nearly 250 miles away, I'll be heading there every two or three weeks and I'll stay over for a night or two... just because it's needed for me. But that's for me, not for Tech Leads or Engineers.
There's all sorts of weird notions coming out that Directors and C-Suite'ers are throwing down at the moment to try and push people back to the office via guilt;
"Juniors won't learn by osmosis!" - Nonsense, I've had grads in my teams for three years and they've done fantastically well. Gen Z is resilient and learns really well from themselves and communicates exceptionally well digitally in groups and individually.
"You won't get paid as much" - Yeah, best of luck with that in technology.
"You'll get passed up for promotion" - Lol, if I want one of those... I'll get a new job. Thanks for showing me what loyalty means.
A leader needs to allow a team / department / chapter to develop a culture that works. That involves true flexibility to how people need to work. It's an endless conversation that will constantly come up because corporates want it to, if you like WFO mate then do so.
You don't hear much about good bosses. They're pretty invisible because if a boss is doing their job well you shouldn't really notice.
It's why bad middle management is such a death knell to even smaller organizations. Middle managers are the ones that should be getting their teams the things that they need to do their jobs and getting the fuck out of the way, but lots of dumb leadership courses teach people lies about how to manage people.
Yeah, a lot of people at the top want change but are often too bought into a firm to be able to push for it. The reality is that most senior leadership doesn't really do much compared to the grafters, so our job should be to make their lives as comfy as possible.
I hear you, I've done it a lot in my career. Stick to a simple rule with leaders, "Watch what they do, not what they say." whilst I work in Tech, there are kids now who run rings around me... I don't dictate how code should be structured to them simply because I'm out of sorts with that now, so I try and ensure that we collectively work better and more sensible. We each have a part to play, but if we walk the talk then we're quids in.
Trust me, as a cigar smoker... The stereotype lives large in London haha. Thank you mate, I appreciate it.
Oh yea, the 'no kids' thing definitely is skewing your judgement. :)
I actually find video calls much less draining simply because I find them:
Maybe it's just cause I already spent my entire 20 years building up a solid wall between 'professional' and 'personal'. I have 0 emotional attachment to my coworkers, and will happily abandon them at a moment's notice for a 30% pay increase. Remote makes it even easier.
I feel similar. If I have made any friends at work I’ll simply continue to see them virtually or in person after quitting. I’m pretty good at quitting jobs and making big moves.
I do know of a couple of people that appreciate having an office to go to to physically separate themselves from their children (and not because they don’t like their kids) for at least a few hours.
Oh man it's totally necessary sometimes for sure! My kids were getting so loud in their toddler years that I installed a shed-turned-office in my backyard and wired it up with internet and electricity. I wanted that extra time with my kids while supporting my wife when she needed it and have the quiet and solitude I need to write code effectively. Which is also why I never enjoyed working in an office. The obsession with open floor offices drove me up a wall. That being said, I do occasionally wish I had the option to work in an office for the occasional collaborating and socializing, but the nearest one is 5+ hours away, so that's a no-go.
I'm not so sure you're a minority. My gut feeling is that it's more like 60-40 at most. Location matters a lot as well - I know everyone who worked at the NYC office for my company was dying to get back to the office. They lived in Manhattan not for work, but because they want to live the Manhattan life, so moving to middle-of-nowhere suburbia wasn't in the cards. Much nicer to get out of your small apartment and into a nice office space with free food and a gym that you didn't have to pay for.
For what it's worth, I don't think you'll have a hard time finding in-person focused workplaces for a long time.
While I don't know how much of this is true, my wife's job was hybrid and she said the word from her leadership was always that their offices in big cities (DC, NYC, and Chicago) had a much higher number of people working from the office than her two other smaller offices (Richmond, Virginia and Santa Fe, NM).
Which explains your point that people live in big cities for a reason, not necessarily so they can work from their home and stay in their home all day and night.
Exactly. Sleeping, eating, working, and relaxing in one place is miserably depressing.
I love remote work. I find working in person (particularly with a long commute) depressing; I just go home after work and then do nothing because I'm too tired or it's too late in the evening. That gives the feeling you're describing: of spending all my life in one place and not really having an existence outside of that space.
Remote works affords me more time and energy, which means I go more places and do more things. I enjoy a more active social life, more hobbies, more outings, etc. I feel much more active and fulfilled this way.
There are a few things that probably contribute to my positive experiences with remote work:
For someone who is extraverted, who doesn't like where they live or otherwise can't make good use of their free time, or who really gets something deeply meaningful out of their job, I can see how remote work would be depressing, however.
Commuting is such a big factor for me. If could walk from my bed to the office in less than three minutes, I might prefer a more in-office heavy hybrid model. As it is, any time that I'm commuting is time I'm not being paid for, not checking off work tasks, but it still doesn't really belong to me.
Yea this is part of why I'm torn as well. I do typically enjoy going into an office but I moved to a busier city for new work near the end of the pandemic and my commute got a bit worse. Sometimes it's a super simple 20 minute commute and sometimes it doubles or more for no discernible reason. Then there's the cost of gas coupled with the fact that a lot of other coworkers aren't going into the office either and it becomes harder for me to justify it each morning. It's just so much easier to hop right online after my morning routine, which means I can get off earlier and have more free time. Conflicted.
You reminded me that for most people I’ll find online, “commute” means being a driver, and I completely agree that sucks.
I’m not a huge fan of the time it takes, but my commute is about 40 minutes to work, 50 minutes to home — but on a lovely modern train in a fairly reliable network. On the train, I can just pop in headphones and listen to my favourite podcast or music, while I’m wandering through the internet or playing games or catching up on Tildes.
If I was spending that amount of time driving every day, I’d get so sick of it — not because I dislike driving (I enjoy driving the vast majority of the time!), but because I can’t do anything else. It really does feel like a waste of time.
I am strongly of the opinion that hybrid is the way to go, but enforced scheduled hybrid is nonsense.
I say that, because there are absolutely meetings that suck to do over phone calls. For any projects of scale, I want everyone of consequence in a room making damn sure that they are paying attention so that there are no questions as to the scope and requirements of the project. This can happen over a video call, but the fact that we had a thread on this site recently discussing good games to play during meetings shows that it might be optimistic to get the same level of engagement over calls. One or two hours, get it over with, on with the day.
If I am going over a design pattern at a conceptual level with a junior colleague, it often helps to have a literal whiteboard if they are struggling to grasp the pattern's point through code samples. This is less common, but I have made it a point to start doing the occasional in person "class" for an hour (open to whoever wants to come) to explain whatever design pattern and have had a fair amount of engagement. This is a combination of me not being a teacher by trade and people learning differently.
These both work well (for me) because they are exceptions to the standard schedule. There is no value in being in-person for daily stand-up meetings. There is no value in having half of a team be in the office on Tuesdays and half of them being in office on Wednesday because the end result is still a phone call. There has to be a justification for the in-office visit that is agreed upon by all relevant parties.
Ha! Fair point.
Hybrid also alleviates the exploitation of essential onsite staff; while WFH is generally talked about by labor rights advocates as workers asserting themselves in a positive way (and it is generally a positive thing), the untalked about consequence off all those people demanding to stay home is that all their hands-on responsibilities get shifted to people who are onsite and already have full-time jobs of their own.
It's typically the workers on the lower rungs as well who get saddled with the extra work, so it translates to more work for the same pay, to do part of the job of someone getting paid more than you who works from home.
I guess it would depend on the specific job, but for many there really aren't any "onsite responsibilities" (there definitely aren't with my job). That's the whole reason for the big work from home push. It's not that we are saying "office bad, never use an office", it's moreso "don't force us to arbitrarily go into an office when our work can successfully be done remotely". I think the best one would be having the office available for those who want it, but not mandatory unless there's some actual specific reason they need to be in, such as projects that require in-person collaboration.
In your scenario above where there's are legitimate onsite responsibilities, sure, having a rotation of people coming in to do them could potentially make sense. But for many, their jobs can be 100% remote and it does not make sense to arbitrarily force them into an office.
I worked for myself, alone, at home, for 7 years. Now for the last almost 2 years I've been in an office and I really want to go back to remote work. I'm also a developer, and while I can admit in-office work occasionally has its benefits (collaborating with a coworker, pair programming, general bullshitting), the remote work benefits for me are far greater. All the prep in the morning to get ready instead of sitting down at my own (far nicer) home desk, making breakfast/lunch whenever I'm actually ready to eat, getting to take a quick nap in the mid-afternoon to get reenergized, just being able to get my work done on my schedule instead of a fake 9-5 schedule. The vast majority of my week at the office is sitting at my desk in earbuds, doing my work, not talking to anybody. It just doesn't make sense.
Some people at my job get to work from home, but not the developers and it's only because my boss doesn't like working from home. I know it's because he's a terrible manager (often taking weeks to put feature tickets in for me to do), can't figure his own time out, and he has three kids and a wife at home that make it even harder for him to work. We're constantly losing good people (I'm next) because of his inflexibility, both because he refuses work from home and he's extremely resistant to the good, modern ideas of others. He's in his early 30s and already like this. It's a sinking ship.
I have a full social life, no kids, and I don't need to be sitting next to my team to forge a good relationship with them. When your job is just you and a computer, solving puzzles alone, lost in logic, the bullshitting at an office is an impediment to getting good work done in a timely matter.
I was also in a mis-managed organization recently and I had to quit. Most people were remote. It was miserable, mostly due to a toxic environment but my dislike of remote meetings played a factor. I've done in-person work under great management with no obligation whatsoever to do 9-5 and it was the best work environment I've ever had.
I don't think I've ever worked somewhere that was well-managed. When I was a consultant, my bosses were awesome but so flighty and disorganized, but it didn't really matter because I had my own clients I was responsible for and I was often in their offices. Our office was really just a place to meet, bullshit, party, whatever. That was one of those golden handcuff jobs because of the insane benefits... expensed lunches every day, company card I could buy whatever I wanted on, a selection of bourbons on my desk, a big couch I could pass out on in the afternoon when my work was over. But that was a work hard, play hard job, and that catches up with you and by the end I was going absolutely crazy. I've got a buddy still there, making six-figures working 20 hours a week. He wants out, but it's hard to argue with that setup.
Now that I'm older, I just want to do good work on my own time, in my own space. I really don't need to be managed much. Tell me what you need and I'm on it.
Same for me, but I think the commute is the deal breaker here. It takes me half an hour on a bike to get to work. It's great exercise, and no traffic. But if I had an hour commute each way on a car, I'd feel differently.
This is the strongest reason why I work remotely as well, though I think housing is the root issue for me: I live in the USA, and I simply can't find a (developer-ish) job:
I have been trying to find a solution to this problem for like 5 years now, since before covid. Used to live in NYC, which comes the closest in the USA, but I'm just not as "high key" as that city. I really wish I could find a walkable smaller city in the USA with an in-person job and rent prices that aren't totally crazy. I'm not sure I would work in person every day, but I would easily do 2-3 days a week just to get out of the house!
The thing for me is that working in the office usually entails being in an open office environment, which depending on the day can be massively detrimental to my ability to focus/concentrate. Some days I just distract more easily than others, and some days for whatever reason coworkers would endlessly buzz around me like bees which is incredibly distracting even with noise canceling headphones. If I had my own office or heck even a cubicle to myself, that'd improve the situation quite a lot.
The other big thing is the commute. I used to live on the outskirts of SF and commute to/from the office downtown, during which traffic would often stretch the time required out to in excess of an hour, which is ridiculous considering the distance was only 6 miles, plus that's a lot of time tied up doing nothing (which when working from home can put towards things like chores). With that in mind, I can only see myself returning to office if I'm working where public transit is fast, timely, and has great coverage or if it's within walking distance of my home. Long commutes are soul sucking.
I was just about to say that distance seems perfect for cycling, but maybe you don’t have decent/safe bike paths between you and your workplace, which definitely puts a damper on things
I also find video calls draining-- there's too much unnatural eye contact, too little body language, too much lag, and you can really only have one person talking, you can't easily have "side conversations" in a natural way. It can be awkward figuring out whose turn it is to speak, so it's better to have a moderator for group calls (even for non-work social video calls). It's more like a talk show than a group conversation.
That said, I would still rather do video calls than go through the commuting hell that is Metro Manila. Public transport is overcrowded, unreliable, and unsafe. Driving is stressful and roads are confusing. Weather generally isn't conducive for biking. Roads in many areas aren't designed for walking, either. Unfortunately many employers are requiring people to go back to the office because... the decisionmakers are people who who have luxury cars and drivers (and sometimes even choppers) at their disposal. They simply don't understand why the people who have to spend 1-2 unpleasant hours in traffic (one way) don't want to go back to work 😂 And it's important to note that it's 1-2 unpleasant hours, because it's not like a train ride with a scenic mountain view. Metro Manila roads are generally an assault on the senses.
But yeah if I had a pleasant office space, one that has both spaces for collaboration and spaces for working distraction-free, and this office were within walking distance (or if Metro Manila had a much better public transport system), I'd be ok with working there.
I agree. Naturally, of course, to each their own and I do not feel like jobs that can be done from home with the same level of quality should enforce a strict "work-from-office" policy, but I enjoy working in person.
Not only from a productivity standpoint, I enjoy talking to my colleagues, and above all, I think it creates a sense of "community" (not trying to use buzzwords here) that lends itself to the creation of strong unions, workplace discussions about working rights and cooperation.
It simply does not feel natural going for a "virtual coffee break" or checking out projects/implementation details through the internet. Besides, I work in a campus that includes not only the facility I work in, but many others, and I get to visit them in person, either for work or socialising in general, which makes it all feel "connected" and part of a much larger effort. I get to see exactly who and what my work is affecting, in real time.
When working from home, I feel isolated, and limited, resource-wise. I genuinely like my job, and in a previous job that I liked just as much, I had to work from home for the better part of the pandemic, and it was easily one of the most mentally draining things during that period, even though I woke up at 0500 and came back at 1800 when working in person and working from home allowed me to wake up 2 hours later.
I dread working from home, and I would avoid it as much as possible given the chance.
I appreciate that you acknowledge that just because you want to go back to the office doesn't automatically imply that everyone should. Clearly people are in all kinds of different situations where one of office/hybrid/remote works best for them.
For me the real killer is the commute. I live out in the suburbs (not exactly a unique situation) and with zero traffic, driving to the office would take about 35 minutes. Of course, there is never zero traffic unless it's the middle of the night, so the actual commute is about an hour each way, which zaps a ton of my energy for the day.
I've been in the tech industry for 15 years now--early on I was the typical bright-eyed young programmer who wanted to climb the professional ladder. Now that I'm standing near the top of the IC pyramid with little desire to go into management, my priorities have shifted. I still enjoy programming, and I still want to do good work, but it's definitely a less important part of my personality than it once was.
I did a lot of wfh during the pandemic, but it was with teams that had been largely established working in person. As we had turnover and the team became mostly people who hd always been remote, I liked it less. The catch was that with no one coming to the office, it was just a wasted commute to go sit in a conference room and have a worse remote meeting experience than the people who were remote at their desk.
I do think the remote meetings are more efficient from a time point of view. It's easier to get from one meeting to the next. It's easier to take a bathroom break any time you want. It's easier to multitask, or even just hide with the camera off if I'm having a bad day (hello, depression). But the running everything on a tight agenda is a double-edged sword because there's never any space for chitchat, which if a feedback loop that pushes everyone to much less human connection with their coworkers.
I think an interesting compromise would be (remote) coffee hours where work talk is banned. They have to be accounted for in your 40 hours and management has to set the expectation that people should attend. Maybe set up virtual breakout rooms so that people are chatting in smaller groups. But I think you'd have to work hard to normalize it.
Interestingly I was at a conference a few weeks ago where we discussed this. It was interesting to see the reactions - most of the extraverted managers thought it was a good idea; most of the intraverted managers were horrified at the prospect. As a quote from the latter group, "why on earth should I have to come to a forced social event if I'm getting my work done?"
Personally I think there are quite a few benefits - the "why should I have to get along with my coworkers" crowd often underestimates the value of social bonding, in my experience - but it was very interesting to see the divide there.
I suspect that over time companies' work-forces will end up to some extent self-selecting (where management aren't prescribing one path anyway).
People who want people in the office don't want to work with people who are never in - it harms the atmosphere of an otherwise intimate team to have perennial ghosts along for the ride.
Home-preferers don't want to be held hostage by requirements they don't themselves get anything out of.
These groups ought to find each-other. That seems the most synergistic setup we can achieve.
It isn't different from that.
For some people that kind of distribution - as a rule rather than an exception in their pattern of work - would be something they'd choose to avoid.
In my own ongoing hunt for a new job, I discount anywhere that is fully remote, or where the team I'm working with day-in-day-out is not co-located. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying it's not for me.
You probably don't want me on your team - I'll be miserable if everyone is remote - and vice-versa, you'll be miserable if I insist you're in 3 days a week. We'll both find teams that work for us, it just won't be the same teams, as the things we're looking for in a role are wildly different.
As an introvert who does not view work as a social gathering and just wants to be able to get my work done during the day, that remote coffee hours sounds like my nightmare. There's nothing that irks me more at work than non-work related meetings eating away at the valuable time I need to actually complete the work I need to do. I've never found forced social interaction, especially in work settings, ever to be meaningful or productive. The best teams I've ever worked for with coworkers whom I've had the best camaraderie were fully remote teams where we were all in different states. The big reason was because our conversations came up organically and we bonded through our work related discussions, not forced upon us through mandatory "social gatherings" or "fun activities".
Yeah, I agree about the negatives of "mandatory fun". Maybe this is not the right strategy. I was focusing more on the importance of leadership making space in the actual workday for social time.
Pre-pandemic, I really enjoyed my commute and the social aspect of going to the office. But, I was fortunate enough then to live a pleasant walk/quick bike-ride away. My living sitch changed during the pandemic, and now I can't afford to live an easy commute to my current work or, likely, most work in the same field, since jobs tend to be concentrated in large (expensive) cities.
Additionally, since (very sporadically) returning to the office (mostly still wfh), I've also come around to another HUGE benefit: when I work remote, I no longer feel the time-strain of the "makeup tax", since no one on my team cares about going on video for calls.
I love being able to roll out of bed and simply start working, without worrying if I look 'presentable' or 'nice' or whatever; without needing to have a varied array of current, stylish clothing for every day of the week. As someone who genuinely enjoys putting some effort into her appearance: it's so freeing not to need to.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I need hybrid work for my role. I started 100% remote during the pandemic lockdowns. It was fine, my spouse and I had separate office spaces, we could make lunches, hang out with our pets, hit the elliptical trainer or go for walks when we needed breaks, etc. Collaboration with co-workers through Slack or Teams worked well enough, and it's normal for us to do quite a bit of remote installation work anyway.
The past year, all workers within 40 miles were asked to come in 3 days/week, which was a big improvement for my work. It's been invaluable to get my hands on our hardware instead of working with photos, to have over-the-wall chatter among teammates about our respective problems, to be able to model installations in our demo environment, and occasionally sit down to lunch together.
We're now expected in the office 4 days a week (which will almost certainly turn into 5), and that chafes. Having two days a week for uninterrupted focus was really essential. I'm blessed with a short commute, but it still feels like the company is stealing time and money from me. I have to work more hours to make up for all the extra meetings, social interruptions, and manufactured team-building activities which somehow weren't necessary before. Spouse and I also have to look at purchasing a second car, since we can't timeshare one vehicle effectively anymore and there's no good public transit or ride-sharing option. It's nowhere near enough to make me quit, but it will come up in future pay discussions.
It would be nice if the remote/hybrid/in office discussion allowed for the flexibility to meet individual needs. Yet I can just see HR and executive management giving a blanket response to avoid any hint of favoritism or tolerance of extra costs for different accommodations.
I strongly prefer working from home and will never go back to the office full time. 1 day a week at the office is my maximum.
After working in the office full time for 13 years and then going to working from home full time for the past 3.5 years I cannot and will not go back to the office full time. It took a while to get used to working from home but it made me realize how much time is wasted by going to the office and working in the office. You waste time commuting to get there and you waste a lot of time with useless ad hoc meetings and with socializing. Don't get me wrong, I like my coworkers and everything but talking to everyone and hearing everyone else talking just drains my social battery. I've always had problems focusing while working at the office and that only got worse when all the offices switched to open office concept... I miss the days when I had my own little office space for myself or shared with one other coworker... These days I have to work on a large floor shared with 20 other people. I hate it.
When working from home I can get my work done quickly and without hassle and not be mentally drained by the end of the day. I can get something to eat or take a walk outside whenever I want to, it's great. My work environment is much better than at the office too. I have proper climate control, a better desk (sitting/standing desk), a better chair and a way better computer with a multi-monitor setup. The one office day per week is used to do meetings that “have to be done in person” (according to some older coworkers) and to socialize with everybody.
Fortunately for me, most of my coworkers agree. There was some push to increase the amount of office days to three per week (three out of five) but we banded together and told our employer we weren't going to do that. We're lucky to be in a position where we're not easily replaced.
I also strongly prefer office. I think there are a lot of policies which can make offices much nicer
A few thoughts on design:
I became a software engineer three years ago and have never had a non-remote role so I don't really know what I'm missing I guess. I would love to hear people that do work in the office what I'm actually missing. I don't think collaboration is an issue where I work but maybe I'm missing some aspect of non-remote-work I haven't thought of. If I have a question on something, I don't find it particularly difficult to message someone on teams about it, or even make a new chatroom with multiple people that may have input. People are generally responsive. I've not really wrapped my head around any benefits of being somewhere in-person. I did see the actual office when I first joined for in-processing and it was cubicle after cubicle in a huuuge room, I can't even imagine being productive there with people always popping in and out, walking around, etc.. and it would probably be terrible for my anxiety and I have a stutter that isn't much of a problem when working remote but definitely gets worse in-person.
I think it depends on the company. I worked somewhere that was started in the pandemic, so the whole company was built specifically for remote work. Collaboration wasn't bad and we got a lot of work done. It still wasn't ideal for me but there weren't any in-person options anyway, so I made it work.
I also worked at a company that went remote during the pandemic and then went to hybrid with no pressure to return to the office. Most team members were remote. It was a mess. Lots of unnecessary meetings with people that didn't need to be there. The office was a ghost town. Communication was poor from some, good from others. This company was just fundamentally more dysfunctional. I think if everyone was in the same room it would have operated much more smoothly, but there was no way they'd get everyone back.