14 votes

The hybrid workplace probably won’t last

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12 comments

  1. Gaywallet
    Link
    This article is everything that's wrong with old mentalities and confirmation bias. This thing reads like every 70 year old CFO who's been pushing for a return to office wrote it. This thing is...
    • Exemplary

    This article is everything that's wrong with old mentalities and confirmation bias. This thing reads like every 70 year old CFO who's been pushing for a return to office wrote it. This thing is toxic and wrong in so many ways it's hard to unpack it all.

    The Allen curve was written by a management professor, not a psychologist. This guy had a hypothesis that he was biased towards and tested it without appropriate control. Of course a building in the 70s where everyone works in person is going to be designed so that teams that need to work together will be placed next to each other. Congratulations, you just confirmed that office planning exists and that your management isn't incompetent. Perhaps you shouldn't read into that to confirm your own biases, Dr. Allen.

    The section on trust dynamics hits on an important point, but it is not an issue of trust - it's an issue of people forming bonds over their hobbies and their interactions. If you don't have a water cooler to talk around, you won't have these kinds of vulnerable moments as often and you may struggle to connect with people over the latest episode of insert popular and socially relevant tv series here. But the author is showing his absolute lack of social understanding by not realizing that nearly all virtual workplaces spontaneously create this through one medium or another. People direct message each other and create private groups on slack, teams, jabber, etc. Meme sharing channels, general chat channels, random channels, emailing pictures from the weekend and all other forms of virtual watercooler talk all spontaneously are generated in the virtual world, so long as you know where to look for them.

    The section on conveniences reads like someone who is a workaholic who doesn't understand how to structure their life in a way where work does not dominate their focus. Has this last year increased the number of individuals who have let their work life balance slip? Absolutely. But this has almost nothing to do with convenience, and everything to do with structure and appropriate boundaries. I don't need a 2 hour commute to think things over if I now have 2 hours to go for a hike or play sports with my friends or take a long hot bath. A problem with work life boundaries exists whether there is an office or not, as I've seen many escape their relationship and family by staying long hours at the office and going to offsite events. This is not a unique problem of remote or hybrid work.

    Social ties are formed fundamentally differently online than they are in person, and some people respond and create better ties in person than online. However, the converse is also true. To imply that you cannot form strong social bonds over long distances shows nothing other than you happen to be someone who doesn't participate in this behavior and a complete lack of recognition for the kinds of people who do. How many stories can we all recall where someone met someone online and became great friends with them? In fact, I would be surprised if the majority of us don't have someone we would consider an online friend (which perhaps we have since met in person since meeting them online), including many of our older peers. Again, the idea that you need in person comes from a personality not suited for online interactions and while that is valid and okay, stop making inferences about humanity and publishing garbage articles about how in person is better to confirm your own biases. Instead, perhaps, look to actual science to confirm or deny these hypotheses. 😩

    Most of what I've put forth here is available in psychology literature and modern behavioral economics studies - in particular many of the articles highlighting why some modern companies which promote hybrid work are very successful. A good deal of these same faulty premises have been used to argue for open offices for decades, despite the real motivator behind it being that it is in the financial interest of a company to minimize footprint and maximize space use. Nearly all studies of psychological nature show that these kinds of mentalities are harmful to workers and result in decreased satisfaction at work and decreased output.

    11 votes
  2. [8]
    joplin
    Link
    I wouldn't be surprised if the author is correct, but did not like some things in the article: I do. A whole lot has changed since 2006. But even then, there were people I mainly communicated with...

    I wouldn't be surprised if the author is correct, but did not like some things in the article:

    Allen wrote in 2006, “We do not keep separate sets of people, some of whom we communicate with by one medium and some by another."

    I do. A whole lot has changed since 2006. But even then, there were people I mainly communicated with via email. Now in addition to email there's (several) chat apps, the web, social media, etc. I very much keep separate sets of people and communicate with them differently. In fact, my workplace has forced it on us by mandating that we use Slack for some things. I work on a team that is split between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles (with a few individuals in other parts of the world). They took away our desk phones and gave us "virtual" phones which everyone I know immediately turned off and set to email them any voicemails they get. In the past 2 years, I've gotten maybe 4 voicemails, all of them spam.

    Trust. As distance increases, teams need higher levels of trust to function. And trust is traditionally created through little actions that are more fluid in person.

    These dynamics are so powerful that behavioral scientists have names for them like the “IKEA effect” — which is our propensity to care more about anyone or anything we put effort into, like the flat-pack furniture we assemble

    Ugh. After my 5th crappy bookshelf broke down I swore I would never buy anything from IKEA again. I don't care if I built it, it's still crap.

    I do have some problems with the people who work in the other office, in that they seem to have a collective attitude that it's their job to deflect any work we send their way. But it doesn't really have anything to do with them being far away. It has to do with how they act and how their managers act. They could be in the same building, and I'd have the same trust issues.

    To accomplish this in a meaningful way at a distance requires significantly more planning, and a weekly Zoom happy hour where the extroverts talk over everyone won’t cut it.

    Well at least we agree on something!

    Working from home can be too convenient.

    Yep, some people can't handle the responsibility of running their own job. I am not one of those people. None of the people I work with have seemed to have that problem, as far as I can see. The other thing is that the main complaint I heard from the (few) people who didn't like working from home was that their kids and spouse were the main distraction. But once the kids are back in school, and the spouse is potentially back in their office, those distractions will go away.

    Belonging. One of the greatest predictors of our longevity is whether we have close social ties. It is clear that we are not designed to be alone.

    I'll be honest, I'm starting to think that feeling like you "belong" at work is toxic. I need to feel like I'm capable of doing my job, and that my manager has my back and will help me accomplish it, but I don't need (or even want) to feel like my work team is a "family" or whatever. I do like seeing one or two of them outside of work on occasion, but I want my life to be defined by more than just work and the people I work with.

    10 votes
    1. vord
      Link Parent
      What I've noticed is that it's not that (on average) anybody is less productive working from home, but rather that the deadweights are more apparent. My workplace has been 100% remote for over a...

      Yep, some people can't handle the responsibility of running their own job. I am not one of those people. None of the people I work with have seemed to have that problem, as far as I can see.

      What I've noticed is that it's not that (on average) anybody is less productive working from home, but rather that the deadweights are more apparent.

      My workplace has been 100% remote for over a year now. The managers complaining loudest about needing their teams to be onsite have the most deadweight.

      Deadweight is easily identified: Who comes to who to solve problems that come up. I've got a shortlist in each area, and we could probably fire everyone not on that shortlist and everything woulld be fine within 2-3 months after a few rehires and firefighting. OTOH fire that entire shortlist and the org will collapse in short order.

      7 votes
    2. [2]
      JXM
      Link Parent
      Exactly. Work is just that...work. I don't work to find a family. I work because I have my own family at home to support. I'm friends with all of my coworkers but we aren't a family. And that...

      I'll be honest, I'm starting to think that feeling like you "belong" at work is toxic. I need to feel like I'm capable of doing my job, and that my manager has my back and will help me accomplish it, but I don't need (or even want) to feel like my work team is a "family" or whatever.

      Exactly. Work is just that...work. I don't work to find a family. I work because I have my own family at home to support. I'm friends with all of my coworkers but we aren't a family.

      And that sense of "belonging" is a dangerous trap. It makes you think going above and beyond for your employer is a normal and expected thing because you don't want to let your family down. But that's not a two way street. Once a company reaches a certain size, you're just a number to them.

      6 votes
      1. stu2b50
        Link Parent
        Eh, I think there is middle ground. There's a difference between trying to treat your work as family, and being if not friends then good acquaintances with your coworkers and enjoying that...

        Eh, I think there is middle ground. There's a difference between trying to treat your work as family, and being if not friends then good acquaintances with your coworkers and enjoying that interaction.

        It's nice to be able to go on a coffee break and hang out by a coworker's desk for a bit. Or get lunch with other people. It's not the same with friends - those are deeper relationships, that also require more effort, since they usually have lives of their own. It's just a very different thing to make plans with friends than to opportunistically talk to someone in the office - neither is better or worse. It's nice to have both.

        That is something that all WFH lacks. For some people, they don't need those micro interactions - perhaps they are settled with a family, and that's enough interactions for them.

        But it's not good to paint the social interactions at an office as a toxic trap. That's oversimplifying things.

        3 votes
    3. [3]
      zptc
      Link Parent
      What is a virtual phone?

      What is a virtual phone?

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        joplin
        Link Parent
        It's an app you run on your desktop or cell phone that receives calls over IP. Some server somewhere is connected to the phone network and when it receives a call to your assigned number, it...

        It's an app you run on your desktop or cell phone that receives calls over IP. Some server somewhere is connected to the phone network and when it receives a call to your assigned number, it contacts your virtual phone app and routes audio between the app and the telephone network. So it's basically VOIP where instead of a hardware phone, your "phone" is an app you run.

        4 votes
        1. zptc
          Link Parent
          Thanks for the explanation.

          Thanks for the explanation.

          1 vote
    4. Omnicrola
      Link Parent
      I'll disagree with this, though I understand what you're getting at here. I also don't think that my coworkers need to be like family. Family occupy a special level of trust and are people I'm...

      I'll be honest, I'm starting to think that feeling like you "belong" at work is toxic. I need to feel like I'm capable of doing my job, and that my manager has my back and will help me accomplish it, but I don't need (or even want) to feel like my work team is a "family" or whatever.

      I'll disagree with this, though I understand what you're getting at here.

      I also don't think that my coworkers need to be like family. Family occupy a special level of trust and are people I'm likely to give 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th chances if they screw up (up to a point). Coworkers don't get that, I don't owe them that, and they don't owe me.

      However. I do desire a group of coworkers I respect, that respect me, and that I know well enough to understand and anticipate. I know that Bob is good at X and weak at Y, and Sue is weak at X but fantastic at X. I want to know that John is sometimes late on Tuesdays because he takes his kids to school. I want to feel connected to people. I don't want to be their family, but I also don't want to look at other people as faceless cogs in the same machine as me.

      I think it's relatively easy to fall into the trap, as @JXM mentions below, because humans are wired to be a part of a tribe. For a lot of human history, family and tribe where synonymous. The difference now is, it's entirely possible to have a completely separate home tribe and work tribe. Offending one doesn't automatically get you kicked out of the village to fend for yourself. But sometimes it feels like that.*

      *then again, I have my own struggles with codependency

      1 vote
  3. [3]
    HotPants
    Link
    I've hired remotely for over ten years. It's not easy, but it vastly increases the quality of candidates you can consider. I think companies like Google are going to be at a competitive...

    I've hired remotely for over ten years.

    It's not easy, but it vastly increases the quality of candidates you can consider.

    I think companies like Google are going to be at a competitive disadvantage at some point.

    8 votes
    1. [2]
      JXM
      Link Parent
      At some point, maybe. But they have enough cash to throw around to entice people to come work for them in person for a long time.

      At some point, maybe. But they have enough cash to throw around to entice people to come work for them in person for a long time.

      1 vote
      1. HotPants
        Link Parent
        Yes, I also thought programming would eventually be a defunct profession once advanced computer applications removed the need for custom computer programs and the real money would be in applying...

        Yes, I also thought programming would eventually be a defunct profession once advanced computer applications removed the need for custom computer programs and the real money would be in applying applications to business problems. This was three decades ago, back when COBOL & BASIC & Sun OS were a thing.

        3 votes