this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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I know some people like this too.
To be fair, a nontrivial number of them are middle/upper management, but it's not the entirety of the people I know who want this.
The answer isn't work-from-home, nor is it return-to-office. The answer is: give people a choice.
If you want to work from home, cool, we don't need to maintain your cubicle, and/or, we can hire more people without needing more office space. If you want to return to office, cool, your space is waiting for you.
A few will retain the ability to switch back and forth, but the majority of people I've talked to about it, either want office or home exclusively. Very few want hybrid.
I don't think these people are typically pro-choice.
Fair enough. All the business owners I've met have said something to the effect of "my way or the highway" about it. So I personally just aligned myself with a job where the bosses "my way" is the way I prefer.
In my case, work from home.
My current job doesn't even have a physical office. We're all work from home. I like it.
I'm a bit more pro hybrid but only because I feel new people need a steady mentor and training at the start of thier careers at the company. How do you training works for new people on full remote?
I'm not new in my career, when I started, my training was a couple of days on a full-day teams call with my direct manager, where he showed me the ropes of how we do what we do with the tools we have.
I think it was 3 or 4 days for me, until I had grasped enough of the basics to properly adapt to their way of doing things.
Within a week or so, I was pretty much up to speed. Like with any job, there's specifics that I learned as I went, but I got the broad strokes during the first week.
I imagine anyone that's green will need more mentorship that I did. I'm fairly senior in my position, so many times I'm on the other side of mentorship. It's been a while since I've been green.
Ah I remember needed 6 months of oversight. I guess full day teams calls would basically be the same.
I'm one that prefers being in the office. My productivity goes to shit when I'm at home because there's too much other stuff I can do. I also like talking to my coworkers face to face just in general because people are usually more empathetic in person. That being said I don't think it should be forced on anyone if it's not necessary to work in the office. The rest of my team works from home without issue as far as I can tell. We are fortunate in that our employer does not have an issue with WFH.
That's the only pinch as far as I can tell. Some of the people who prefer face-to-face communication, are the bosses. So they force everyone into return to office for their own comfort/convenience/preference....
Those that prefer WFH be damned I guess.
The problem is, you can't really say no to the boss, you either comply, or find a new job. Not everyone is in a position where they can quickly/easily find a new job that suits them better.
In my experience, the highly skilled long-tenured staff tend to lean towards WFH, but it's not an absolute. Plenty of skilled people who prefer in-office work.... My point is that a disproportionate number of long-tenured workers are finding new jobs when RTO policies are put in place. There's a lot of highly skilled workers in the market looking for WFH positions. Easy pickings for anyone wanting to hire for remote jobs.
Obviously a lot of the people who prefer in-office aren't really looking for anything right now, so the job market is kind of crazy. WFH jobs are snapped up and in-office jobs are posted for weeks or months... Simply by allowing people to WFH, a company can pick up some highly skilled talent pretty easily.
As an aside, WFH has saved me upwards of $5k/yr on gas, parking, wasted time on the road, maintenance on my vehicle..... It's quite remarkable.
I was a boss for a couple years. I didn't force anyone to come in but I did find that I got along better with the couple of people who worked out of the office just because it's easier to see someone as a person when you can sit near each other and BS all day as opposed to the ones who worked from home and I really only talked to when we were in meetings about work shit. I tried not to play favorites but that aspect did probably bleed into things a bit. We had a team chat going but only a few people used it (or they had one that I wasn't part of so they could talk without the boss looking over their shoulder, which is fine but it's hard to get comfortable with people you rarely interact with). I'm now on the other side of it with a boss who always works from home while I'm in the office and I'm struggling with that a little too because I have a hard time gauging if they're upset with me or if doing well when we only talk on the phone a few times a week.
My work does a weekly "meeting" that's specifically just a hangout for everyone in the company, just to hang out and talk about whatever.
It's like a social hour every week, so we can get to know the boss and eachother.
I've worked at the place less than a year and there's been two in person social events so far with everyone, and at least three with my team additional to that.
The culture of the company is clearly important for them, and I'm happy about it. They do what's needed, and losing an hour of productivity every week isn't as important as giving everyone the opportunity to connect with eachother.
Here’s the problem though. When everybody is allowed to choose what they want, people who prefer remote get remote. And people who prefer the office get a ghost town. So by definition, personal choice precludes one group from having access to the thing they would choose.
People who want to work in the office want to work with other people. It’s not just about having a desk in a high rise. People learn from other people and are energized by being around them. There are efficiencies to being able to talk without zoom lag and all. Someone else characterized this as extroverted people and their annoying needs. But I think it’s more than that. Working with others in person certainly has real benefits.
Remote work means no one gets those, ever.
I’m a remote guy myself and hope never to go back. But I can see another side to it.
I'm also a remote guy and I see both sides as well.
The critical assumption you've made in this example is that a large majority will choose to be remote, so there won't be anyone in the office for the in-office people to work with.
I don't believe that's as much of a problem as you seem to imply it will be. The problem with the argument is that it's all assumption and opinion based. To my understanding, there hasn't been any reliable data produced on what percentage of the population wants in-office and/or remote to be permanent.
Relative to that, you'd also have to take into consideration for populated the company is, and how many people would actually be in the office, before making a determination whether it would be a ghost town or not.
Additionally to that, not everyone wants in-office work for the social aspects of it. Some people's home life is too chaotic so they prefer in-office, to separate themselves from the chaos of home, and focus on work. It's not a desire to connect that drives them to the office (pun might be intended here), but rather a lack of outside distraction from their home life while they try to "earn a living".
There's also the consideration of who is at home all the time. A homebody spouse, such as a stay-at-home mom/dad, may appreciate having space from their spouse to get things done, as they appreciate the space away. Having such separations can be very healthy and beneficial for relationships, which can also play a role IMO.
The fact is, not everyone is doing it as a social and/or company culture thing. The percentages of people who want it for company culture vs the people who want to for personal reasons, is also an unknown metric.
So in all, at present, we don't know how many overall people want remote/in-office work, and we don't know what their motivations for making that choice are. Without that data, it's difficult to make a value proposition about a decision.
Company owners don't really care about the metrics, since, during COVID and mandatory isolation, everyone was WFH, and productivity was overall increased. Whether that was because people now had 24/7 access to their work systems, or because people were overall happier about it in average, and were simply more productive due to that, is anyone's guess.
I appreciate the comment, but there's a lot more in play than simply socializing and company culture.