The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature.
The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages.
I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ.
For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people that work in the opposite way. Their house offer many distractions from laundry to videogames. Some people require micro management and constant oversight some tilt in such environments.
Some teams require a lot of meaningful in-person interactions, brainstorming sessions or work chats around the coffee machine. Some teams thrive with good central top/down planning and workload splitting where syncing isn't very important.
At the end of the day the decision C-suite have to make when planning projects is not remote vs non-remote and apply blindly rather in forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided.
I would add one major change that the work from home experiment has achieved - its made the opportunity cost of the work commute clear. This is a time cost paid for by the worker.
As you stated, this is variable.
If you have a short commute, or you like it, or you get some exercise - office is great.
If you hate your commute, if its 3 hours in pollution and traffic - not so much.
Earlier the position was that WFH was not possible. Now we know it is, and I hazard that this change isn't factored in job postings.
Considering what an hour of time means in this era, its not a trivial cost. This means an hour which could be spent just unwinding, studying, on hobbies, procrastinating, whatever.
If you have any drive, or strong interests, thats time you would want to spend on something other than a commute.
During my last job change I gave concrete numbers to recruiters on what getting me into an office would cost.
In the end I ended up working remote, which is what I preferred, which wasn't surprising given how much the commuting time was worth to me.
For me it was:
Pay is the same.
lol I imagine that Company A will find some sucker, but instead of getting A+ workers that can realize company B> company A, they are going to get the leftover workers, their second choice. To be fair, leftover workers seem to stick around at a company for 10-20 years.
Why call people suckers? Maybe they don't mind commuting? Maybe their commute is only 15 minutes, and not 2.5 hours?
Even if they were "leftovers", their value to the company they know in and out after 10 to 20 years and their productivity skyrockets compared to the A+ rock stars that left the company after one year.
I think they would be referred to as 'suckers' because they are spending time for their employer for which they are not compensated in that scenario (two options, both pay the same, but one requires you to sacrifice significant portions of your day for no compensation).
Bill might like a long commute as much as Gladys likes to work from home. Hard to call Bill a sucker in that case.
The only reason I can imagine that somebody would genuinely like a long commute would be if they hate their home life and are trying to escape from it. They'd probably be better off just getting a divorce instead.
My commute is about 40 minutes each way by bus, plus a 5 minute walk on both ends. I love it. I get outdoors for a short walk four times a day, I read books and magazines on the bus, see what's being built or new businesses opening around town, sometimes I get to meet neighbors and other commuters, or help out random strangers with directions or whatever. My commute to work is definitely a benefit to my life.
If you had a remote job, would you take a 40-minute round-trip bus ride twice a day just for the enjoyment of it?
No.
During the summer when I work from home I take a 20 minute walk at 8:30 (and water my tomatoes) and a 20 minute walk at 12:00 before settling back into my home office with lunch.
If I’m feeling up to it, I get another 30-40 minute walk in once it cools off in the evening.
I don’t mind driving in during the winter though, because then I don’t have to pay to heat my house (beyond 15C for the cat) for the day.
The human brain is incredible at rationalization.
I had a bike / ferry / bike commute a couple days a week for a while. It was nice to get that exercise in, and I enjoy ferry rides too.
Reading on a long buss/train ride can be inherently pleasant. Similarly not all car commutes are stuck alone in traffic, I rather enjoyed commuting with my dad.
Gladys can drive around for hours at will, while Bill has no choice. Bill is still a sucker.
There can actually be significant value to limiting optionality. This is the solution to "the paradox of choice"; sometimes it's actually better to have fewer choices!
I find this very unintuitive and even mentally rebel at the idea when I think about it, but I still think it's true.
But for example, consider three scenarios:
1. Work from home, with a consistent habit of going on a ten minute walk and reading for half an hour before and after work. 2. Commute with a ten minute walk and half hour train ride, with a consistent habit of reading on the train. 3. Same as (1), but family responsibilities and other distractions end the moment work begins and begin the moment work ends. 4. Same as (2), but spend the train ride doom scrolling.
For me (1) is best but also unlikely because there are too many other "choices" of what to do before and after work, so in practice I end up doing (3).
But option (2) of commuting by train would actually be better than (3) despite having less optionality! I would have more wind-up and -down time each day, and get more reading done.
But the risk of option (2) is that there is still too much optionality; instead of reading, I could scroll crap on my phone. Removing that optionality somehow - by getting a dumb phone or some other solution to keep myself from this bad habit - would be another improvement.
Clearly it would be better to make better choices without limiting options, but human nature being what it is, it often turns out better in practice to not have the other options at all.
I've been WFH for 15 years and love it. My wife has been WFH for 3 years. While I do prefer WFH, I think there were benefits to us being apart during the work day and then catching up at dinner/evening. There are some downsides to being together 24/7, even in a good relationship.
15 minutes is not significant.
15 * 2 minutes a day 5 times a week is 100h+ by the end of the year
It's 1.4% of the year (assuming that 130 hours a year is correct I didn't check it). That's less than two ounces out of a gallon of liquid or less than half a centimeter out of a foot.
In what other things is 1.4% considered "significant?"
Taxes jump to mind. COL adjustments vs inflation for the past few years also comes to mind. Beating some measurable world record by 1.4% is probably a big deal. I'm sure there are more examples if you look for them.
You can read 10 books during that time. It's not like you need to sit there, do nothing and intensively hate your life 2 * 15 minutes a day.
Or, you know, it's 15min exercise which you need just the same :)
130h a year, assuming you work 5 days every week and that every commute is exactly 15min.
You negotiate compensation before accepting the job and generally have the option to move.
If anything it’s people failing to consider commute times when looking for work that’s the issue not company’s requirements. Going they will pay me 10k more per year but I’ll spend X more hours a week commuting is effectively being paid to commute.
Wow, just wow. Calling someone a sucker for taking a job, without considering anything else.
What about the top of the crop who live around the corner and prefer office over WFH for a clear separation between work and personal life?
Tech is full of people like OP. You got good paying job (because profession is hot) so you’re obviously smarter than everyone else, and your way of thinking and living is only right one.
‘Smarter’ or just ‘different’…?
Would I be a sucker if I have a 12 minute commute and prefer going into the office with my teammates?
No one lives 12 minutes away from this place. They picked the 'Ohio' of our state to build their HQ. Cheap land.
Once you add those numbers, the total is usually insane. While I do miss being in the office sometimes (mostly for the social life), it's just too expensive for me as a worker right now. It's not just the time spent on commute, it's also the money that you have to spend to stay within a commutable distance from the office.
Also, my profession is being a Software Engineer, not a train passenger.
I made a calculator for this a while ago: https://flat.social/blog/get-a-remote-team-back-in-the-offic... (scroll a bit down for the inputs).
Yep, I prefer the office.
... but not even close to enough to car-commute more than about 10 minutes to it, given the option. That's roughly the cut-off. Under 1.5 bikeable miles (that's ideal!) or maybe 5 miles by car.
And to get that short a commute, I'd need all kinds of other compromises in most cities. Worse schools, more expensive and smaller housing.
Is my preference for the office worth hundreds of hours a year lost commuting, thousands of dollars a year in transportation costs, and all the extra micromorts from the commute? LOL. LMFAO. God no, it's not even close. No typical commute is a low enough cost that I'd pay it to be in the office. It's way off.
So, though I do in fact prefer working in the office... nah.
Kind of wish I hadn't looked... :(
IMO, an hour spent commuting is an hour stolen from one’s children.
I am starting to use coworking spaces now because WFH has something of a toll on my family, primarily because kids are loud, and it can be frustrating to work while your loud kid is screaming in the next room without enough of a sound barrier to prevent you from hearing it. I'm not angry at my child, but sometimes I get upset with my wife for not preventing this, or for telling me it's not that loud when it is impossible to escape the noise.
(And when they're not being loud, they're being cute, and it's a tempting and easy distraction to go spend some time with them in the middle of a work day.)
In this sort of dynamic, I see working at an office as a fairly healthy option. I know it's a bit of an outlier (SAH mother + WFH father), but I'm definitely more productive and less stressed out working from an office.
I agree with this to an extent. Our kiddos are old enough to be in school. But if someone is home sick, I have to take the day off because it’s hard to get anything done.
A reply to you mentioned noise-canceling headphones. That doesn’t work for me, because the kids want to engage and play with the parents when they’re at home. It’s not just a matter of noise.
That said! I still agree with OP’s sentiment. I find that I’m much more relaxed without having to worry about the commute. More time to help the kids get ready and just enjoy the moment. More time to walk them to school.
Before, I would be a ball of stress trying to get people out the door in the morning so I could catch one of only two buses that could take me across the bay to work.
Same thing in the evenings. More time to pick them up, walk home, take serendipitous side adventures and help foster their curiosity. I love it.
Yep, I strongly dislike working from home on days that the kids are home. But I also highly value the flexibility.
In Sweden, you have legally mandated days to take off specifically for kid related reasons, such as illness, which is quite neat :)
Not much of an outlier.
In this economy? Maybe not in your income bracket.
I've bought 28sqm apartment to be my office, few mins by foot from our apartment when the kid arrived. It is just better to split work hours and family hours better at that point. Better for everybody. If the main apartment/house is big enough I would not have felt the need to do it probably.
I would still not accept working from office jobs though.
What is your office like? The ones I've had dubious honor to work in is like you describe, but with dozens of noisy adult children in the same room with me, not the next one.
Noise cancelling head phones and some soft music cuts out any kid noise completely for me.
Hyperbole and language like this is exactly why it's so hard to have this debate in any rational way. The onsite crowd says that all their WFH colleagues are playing video games and doing laundry all day while the WFH crowd says employers are stealing from their employees' children.
I don't think the WFH crowd minds others going into the office. The pro onsite crowd on the other hand wants others forced into the office because their choice is unsupportable if people are given a free choice.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/remote-work-statisti...
If 1/3 of your workforce meets 2 days a week your average utilization is about 14%. The logical conclusion is a ghost town that goes away as soon as your employer cuts the building off like a diseased hand.
That's a good point. All that fancy real estate and coffee machines start to look like a wasted investment when they're used 14% of the time.
Is this also true of an hour spent winding up or down by going on a walk or reading a book or some other adult hobby?
Personally, I don't believe I must either be working or spending time with my children every moment they are awake. I'm a person too, not just a worker and parent, and need to have my own time.
Wait until you hear about construction and physical labor jobs. All run by child abusers.
At my last job, my manager was being flown in every week. He was in the office for three days a week and stayed at a hotel. His kids were apparently furious. The company was really committed to being in the office, but kept hiring people from different cities. It felt very destructive.
BTW this is where commute by public transport shines. My 30 minutes to the office are my dedicated reading time, an hour a day. If instead I had to drive, that would be lost time, because paying enough attention to the book distracts enough from driving to add unnecessary risk.
Shines where it can, doesn't work in most of the US.
Public transit use:
https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st...
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-tran...
Population density:
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/28/americans-moving-map-2022-f...
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-tren...
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/where-america-stands
Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally.
You need to get out of your bubble. After having traveled to more than 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica), I can assure you that a majority of humans do not have good reliable public transport. It is a luxury that only some parts of the world have.
Just as an example, right now I am in an Indian city where there is some minimal public transport but a majority of people need their own vehicle to commute for most of their journeys. And it is not an unusual scenario for India, which contains more population than Europe and North America combined.
Why would you think comparing the developing world with the USA makes in any way sense - do you actually think the US is at the developmental level of India?
When comparing similarly wealthy countries the US is absolutely an outlier in this.
Because you said - "Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally." "Globally" implies the entire world. Now why are you moving the goalposts? If you wanted to confine the discussion to the developed world, just call out US being an outlier in the developed world.
You're being silly. The majority of the world also doesn't have access to airplanes, but that doesn't mean they don't work. OP is certainly not in the ridiculous bubble you're describing.
OP's words: "Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally."
I don't think OP understands the meaning of the word globally
I do not think that it is valid to compare a developing country that can't provide even proper sanitation to US.
We can compare US to Japan, to Europe, perhaps to some parts of China but certainly not to India - it would be too much apples to cucumbers comparison.
I agree. Then let's say "developed world". Saying US is a global outlier is silly when much of the globe is underdeveloped.
I enjoy my commute as well but no amount of justifiying it changes the fact I’d be much better off with either a shorter commute or none whatsoever by going fully remote. I’d even be okay with hybrid. Wasted time on commute ads up to a minilifetime that could be used in different ways
And then there are the people who want to visit family far away from their home and still be able to work. That’s enabled by remote work.
It depends. In my case the commute is a (seriously) bumpy bus ride that takes 2-3 times more than by car (the bus has stops and it takes a longer route and I have to change the bus at least once, that adds extra latency). Fortunately the bus is relatively empty in my stop so I don't have to stand.
This means that I couldn't read anything. Shaking of the bus also gives me time to time a mild headache. Now if the ride was smoother (like a train or a tram) and I still could sit and read then indeed I would agree with you.
Fortunately I don't have to commute very often so I can tolerate this to a degree but if I had to commute every day then it would add considerable extra strain into my life.
Normally the day should be divided into 3 equal parts: 1 sleep time, 2 work time, 3 personal time.
Commute time effectively steals from either personal time or from sleep time and this comes on top of getting ready for work that is also a major waste of time in the mornings.
When for many years I had a long commute into London I appreciated I was lucky that it was on a train line without any train changes required. So that was a calm productive "me time" on the train for over an hour each way. Usually do some work on my laptop, some hacking on hobby apps, some film watching etc. Also a lot of snoozing.
But I also self-selected roles closer to the end station in London so the commute at the other end was short-ish.
Whenever I had to do any other commute: by car, bus, multiple changes, etc it was always a grind and shortlived.
However, I was able to stop even the not-so-bad commute long before COVID as I wanted to be at home when the kids came back from school as they are only young once and briefly so. Though I miss the "me-time".
I definitely agree here. For most of my career I was fortunate enough to not have a "real" commute. at most a 20 min walk to the office. The worse commute is when it was raining or snowing.
The problem becomes now my home is tied to my work place. If the company moves or I change companies, I have move or stress at a new commute. I did move once during a job change, and it didn't last long.
Another compounding issue is that I like to stay at companies for a long time, 10 years. This is frequently becoming difficult for a number of reasons not entirely in my control.
I wonder if others are in the same situation.
I wouldn’t call 2.5% of the day (including night) nothing. 20 minutes is way past the upper bound of a daily commute I would consider reasonable!
I wouldn’t call it nothing either. I’d call it “actually getting a decent amount of exercise,” something many struggle with.
That sounds like a self-discipline problem.
What’s wrong with incorporating exercise into one’s lifestyle, without dedicated exercise time? It’s convenient and sustainable. Sure, it’s not as good as dedicated exercise time in terms of the adaptations one would get, but it’s much better than the adaptations they’d get on their couch.
Nothing is wrong with that - it's the issue of attempting to impose it on others which is objectionable.
point me to where they tried to "impose" this on others...
People think youre a pussy thats why you got downvoted. but I agree with your spirit though. We should minimize commute time.
I too prefer a voluntary 20 minute walk over a mandatory one. Then my brain can be aimed at what I value, not work.
If you take a 1 hour commute (30 min each way)
It’s waking time, not sleeping time, which is out of a 16 hour waking day.
5 hours a week makes about 20 hours a month roughly, which is about half an extra work week to live that you miss out on.
Multiply that 30 minute commute each way by 12 months and it’s close to 260 hours a year.
160 hours a month of work so you get back about 1.6 working months to put into something else.
I had a few minute commute for 10 years. It was an unfair advantage.
I cant find a company that doesnt implode in less than a year.
Edit: Subcontractor at bp. Opec crunch. entire floor fired. Hardware startup, unexpected giant bill overnight. Layoffs. Fullstack webshop, sales didnt land. Crypto finance gig, asset prices crashed, clients all went broke instantly.
Sometimes thats just how it is.
The solution to that problem is to count the travel time and any required breaks as part of work hours while also reimbursing all travel expenses. That would require employers to pay the full cost of unnecessary in-person work on both ends and would strongly disincentivize them from doing it.
Employers reimbursing your travel expenses if they need you to travel to a conference on the other side of the country is already the norm so why shouldn't they reimburse your travel expenses if they want you to travel somewhere in the same geographic area?
Not quite comparable though I would say, given that you know what you're signing up for when applying for a job. Travelling to a conference is a one-off whereas you'd be expecting to come to your job everyday (given the contract states this). You wouldn't accept a job in another country and turn round expecting them to pay for your flights, hotel etc. to be in the area during the work week
Aside from being compensated directly for daily commutes (on which we could reasonably disagree), there’s also an issue around liability: if someone crashes going to work and the other side wants to sue, should the company be liable, the employee, or both? Being “on-the-clock” makes it more likely the company would bear responsibility, as opposed to being “off-the clock”. Company cars seem to be less common now than they were even 10 years ago. A personal injury lawsuit could easily bankrupt a household, but is much less likely to bankrupt a mid-sized or large company.
One twist on your idea: why not give the employers some incentives to spread out more? For example, if they want you to live in a city center Monday through Friday, they should have to pay for your city housing. (If you want to own a house and go there on weekends, you can buy one independent of the employer.) This would cause employers to rethink the idea that they should be locating themselves in places like San Francisco or New York.
If people stay in terrible working conditions to maintain health insurance, I can't imagine the kinds of pressures involved when your home is tied to changing jobs.
It makes perfect sense to you, and me, but unfortunately, in America at least, the upper hand is very much with employers. I could be semi-OK with non-reimbursement for salaried workers if daily travel was factored in, but for those on hourly wages it’s immoral to have commuting expenses (time __and__ money) eat significantly into wages.
We actually deal with this nonsense in our household; my wife is hourly and between the commute, parking, and walking to/from her workplace she loses about 20-25% compared to the time she actually gets paid for. We also spend a lot on gas, and have been putting ridiculous miles on her daily driver. Not to mention physical fatigue and emotional stress; she talks about quitting at least once a week. All for a mediocre wage (I would have said it’s garbage if she was our sole earner - my compensation is about double hers and I WFH).
Edit: also, I remember company cars being a thing not too long ago. I don’t hear about them as much as I used to.
I would argue this is implicitly paid in salary differences
Wouldn't this subsidize other's to live further away from work? I think this might have up having unintended negative externalities. It doesn't seem "fair", because I could get paid more for living further away (assuming I'm compensated for commuting time beyond just the cost of depreciation, gas, and maintenance).
I've generally had a 30-40min commute most of my career, but also generally had a flexible enough start time that exact to the minute arrival at my desk was not performance impacting.
Unfortunately a lot of things conflate over time as you become more senior to generally make your commute worse.
For me - my last 2 roles have earlier required start time, with a hard start (morning meeting / standup / L3 support presence), company office locations got a little further, and trains got a little less reliable.
Fortunately I am remote since COVID, but when I was going in / or have to go in now.. I need to bake in 45-60min depending on how much I'm willing to risk being late that day.
For me I'd rather work 11-12 hours/day at home then go into office for 10 hours & spend 1.5-2 hours on the commute. Company is getting 10-20% more time out of me, and I at least save the money & "commute prep time".
Why are you working at all during what was your commuting time? You weren’t getting paid for those 7.5-10 hours before, so you’re in a worse position now unless your pay increased commensurate with the extra hours. That should have translated into more personal hours, not more working hours.
I took on a role with earlier/longer expected hours, but with the agreement I would do it remotely. And yes it's for a lot more money, not just an extra 10-20% for the extra 10-20% hours.
Ah, good on ya!
To be fair though, my previous role I found the day got longer during/post COVID because senior managers suddenly felt empowered to schedule meetings earlier and later.
In some cases, it was getting brought into more senior manager meetings I previously wasn't privy to, that had always been too early (7-8am).
In other cases, it was moving those same managers goal posts because they'd always been online early and hey if you want access to them, the only place to find time on their calendar was like 8am or 5pm.
I know A LOT of senior IC / team lead people who fell into this trap during COVID.
How sustainable is to work 11-12 hours a day though? If we do 5 hours of intense work and the rest is spent in meetings or other overhead activities make 8 hours just enough to make it sustainable over long periods of time…
Let's put it this way. I'm expected to be readily accessible for 9-10 hours/day, and reachable for some hours outside of that. I have some operational responsibilities in the morning, maybe 1~3 hours of meetings and fully understood we get in far less than 5 hours of intense work. People are generally cool with me being totally away from desk for lunch.
How I spend the time in between in terms of doing research/reading/etc is up to me. If I had to do this in an office setting it would suck to be stuck there when stuff does come up.
I absolutely let my employer pay for my commute. Indirectly of course, but my income requirements are dependent on how much hours I have to put into work, which includes my overall time investment. Same with all other costs I have because of work.
That said, time is important to me and I have a 5min commute, 20min if I walk. For that reason I do prefer the office. Better meals and better coffee and nice colleagues.
If employers want to force people into offices, maybe pay them a bonus.
Better coffee is definitely situational, especially if your employer buys over roasted beans.
I have good coffee at home but my boss is a fanatical addict that considers bad coffee a mortal sin.
It sounds like you're lucky to have that boss if you really enjoy coffee. I would wager most bosses are fanatical cheapskates that consider expensive coffee an unnecessary cost
It's not the financial cost of the time that's important it's the time itself - it's the requirement to completely go against my internal body clock to be at a location by a socially determined starting time - I start working at 10am usually - from home that means I can get up at 8.30 perhaps- to be in an office that means 6.30 am - I don't want to wake up at that time...
Disclaimer: not saying regular exercise isn't important...
There is a meme, or some "motivational" thing that floats around. "Exercise for an hour a day. It's less than 5% of your day - what's your excuse?"
Uhh... because, if I factor in: - 8 hours for sleeping
- 8 hours for working
- 1.5-2 hours for commuting
- 0.5-1 hour to get ready for work
- 1 hour to prepare and eat dinner
All of a sudden we are at 19-20 hours, and it's not less than 5% of my day, it's actually 25% of my day.
Usually office coffee sucks though. Do you have real manual espresso machine in the office and a person who is responsible for operating and regularly cleaning it? The automatic kind with "americano" and "espresso" buttons can't really make a good coffee.
I just commute during work hours. My boss is fine with this and I'm in the office around 6.5 hours per day.
Which is perfect. If that time is counted as part of work, thats a good deal. That is ideally what it should change to.
Not just time cost, but also monetary cost. At least in tech, most jobs exist in a small set of metro areas where housing prices are incredibly high. Pushing for more remote work enables more flexibility in where people live / can ease some of the housing pressure on these congested metros.
And the housing in those cities scales terribly when you have kids. What might’ve been doable with 1 or 2 people traps you into very high rent or mortgage (+ even worse commute) to have room for a family. I moved out of the west coast - which I really liked as a place - to be closer to family and to pay 1/3 to 1/2 for the housing
It’s really more than that. I live in the city, my office is 7 minutes away most mornings.
The transition time of arrival and departure is easily 30-45m daily, on my employers dime.
I do 50% and it works for me. End of the day most of the problems associated with this issue are workplace and cultural issues that come to a head with remote/hybrid. The only novel dysfunctions with employees that I see (and I’m an exec with about 900) are people doing things like secretly moving away and abusing medical accommodation. There’s also an issue where people build their life around remote and are disappointed when they miss opportunities, but are unwilling to meet in the middle.
End of the day. The lazy idiots are just as lazy, grinders grind, and smart people continue to be smart.
Exactly. For me, there's nothing better than 15 minute walking commute.
This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower.
Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is friction with top-down work-from-office mandates.
It's the point where you're no longer an individual contributor. Running a team and keeping people on target is difficult remotely. Consensus is difficult remotely. Feedback is difficult remotely.
Getting your head down and coding on your personal goal is easy remotely.
I think some ICs like that it's harder for people to say to them that they are driving in the wrong direction, even if it's still true.
I argue against this point. I believe it indicates a skill gap, not a physical law.
If you've played MMOs, been parts of raids, or been active in a guild - you figure out how to solve these problems.
I've been in a community management and moderation role entirely online - those interactions and issues were, by far, the most subjective and complex project discussions I have had to conduct.
I believe that there is an entire generation of workers AND managers, who will be entering the workforce with highly effective remote working habits.
The caveat is, that this applies to work that can be done online, where your product can be examined and verified online.
The MMO generation already entered the workforce a long time ago. Many of them are now middle-aged professionals. But because MMOs have always been a relatively niche hobby, with even the most popular games having only a few million daily players, their impact has not been that significant. They are a small minority in the overall workforce, and while they do have effective remote working habits, they have been self-selected for the ability and interest to form communities online.
I think that was the reminder that I am very much middle aged now.
You are right, however I would say that raids and coordinated e-sports were on the periphery when I was playing. I had to set up my own teams and lan tournaments.
Nice distinction to highlight though, thank you! The skill set would require specific coordination skills, not just being able to play team matches occasionally.
I suppose its proof that the skill exists, just not its distribution in the workforce.
It was certainly a learning experience to lead a fully remote team having only ever done so in an office, but I’m not convinced it’s explicitly more difficult on the whole.
Most offices I’ve been in have had deficient conference room setups and open floor plans, and I’ve come to enjoy the ease with which private conversations, pairing, and ad hoc meetings can happen without being disruptive to others or booking a room way in advance.
I do think that conversations have higher bandwidth in person, and I’ve really missed having a proper big whiteboard to gather around, but I’ve come to realize that this restriction can be a positive forcing function for organizations to write things out and maintain more organized planning documents, which is a desirable outcome.
I think this is extremely cynical. Feedback makes for good organizations, and when I built teams, anyone who doesn't value, actively solicit, and provide good feedback doesn't have a very long tenure.
There are many things which go into building this culture, but I think I've only had one or two cases where this led to negative career impact for individuals. Most people adopt to this very quickly, very well, and work well in high-feedback settings.
I've absolutely never had, nor could imagine having, this problem on teams I've led.
Much more, I find the limitation is on my end. Going for a walk-and-talk is relaxing. A Zoom meeting is tiring. 1-2 Zoom meetings per day is not a problem, but a day of Zoom meetings basically leaves me a zombie. Group meetings are also much more tiring online than 1:1s.
I'm a good in-person manager. I'm also a good remote IC. I not nearly as good with those flipped around.
I also don't find any of these to be the case for me:
I can do all of those individually -- quite well -- remotely. I just can't do those for anywhere close to 8 hours per day.
To be very clear: That's me. I'm not speaking for you or for anyone else, and YMMV. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing other stories or contradictory opinions, and how things work for others.
This is it. Add to the fact that poor managers don't really understand or know what their staff are doing, it gives them anxiety. If the same poor manager is in an office with them and can see them at their desk then it alleviates that somewhat.
Managing people is really really hard, but we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly.
“Managing people is really really hard”
I like your reply, but for different reasons. I am a middle school teacher, and my day to day is managing people. It is tiring, decidedly so, and yet at the end of the day, management is rewarding for me for because it is relationship building through gaining individual understanding and building classroom consensus.
I love my job and am good at my job. But if I’m to step outside of my classroom your latter quote becomes far too truthful for me:
“we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly”
Your quote applies directly to my supposed superiors; assistant principals, principals, and higher ups in the school board. Most of the managerial class outside of a classroom is trash at their jobs. Their management style seems mostly morale busting and ego inflation at day’s end.
I agree with you, just from a different occupational domain.
Yep. It's the old "butts in seats" philosophy. The new one is "keep your Slack dot green" (or equivalent.) Many managers were always clueless what their staff are doing at the office. Many still are. It's incredible that we have all these tools (Jira, Asana, Github, Slack...) plus many are forced to give status updates in daily standups and other assorted "agile" nonsense, yet there are still those can't figure out what people are working on.
I agree with this
I have a lot of interpersonal work, with people all around the world. Going into the office just to talk on these people on Teams doesn't give a productivity boost. Being able to do this or not is a skill, just like coding is a skill. I try not to bog down my team if I'm deficient in some skill, instead, I work to improve it.
I think this is largely it - the whole maker vs. manager thing... when your job relies on focus, being in a situation where you can control distractions is a benefit. But when your job relies on getting others' attention it can clearly be a negative, esp. if the culture is not thoroughly supportive.
It also adds an extra hurdle for those who aren't particularly skilled at management.
Seems pretty obvious to me that this has always been the divide
Aside from having an actual assistant, is this just hypothetical or do you know someone that prefers being micromanaged?
Seems if you have staff that needs constant oversight and micromanagement, it's a waste of your own time. Do you really want to check someone 8 hours a day, 5 days per week to make sure they do what they are supposed to do?
I think in such cases it might be better to get rid of such staff, for your own sake and theirs.
I had to do something like this. Not every hour, but several times a day was needed to keep this person on track and productive. And no, I did not want to check on an otherwise-functional adult that frequently. Nor did anyone else, but circumstances led to them working on my team.
Yes, that was the best option and is ultimately what happened. Going through the required HR hoops was just as much effort as micromanaging, which is why no one bothered to do it for several years. It was easier to shuffle them off to another project and tell the lead "they're alright, they just need to work on communication".
Interns, new employees...
I have worked with people who needed explicit instructions for every step to perform, and if they complete what is assigned to them they will quietly sit and pass the time until they are explicitly told to do something.
This isn't an "oh it's 4:30 and I'm not going to start something new", it's "It's 11am, and everyone else is busy, I will play solitaire until my manager explicitly tells me which of the 45 tasks they want me to complete".
If you say "go into room X and fetch the Y to do Z", if Y isn't in the right place they will await further instruction. If challenged, they will say they need training on how to handle the situation, or that it's the managers job to ensure the process is right. If you give them the explicit instruciton to tell you when their task is complete, they will come to you and stand next to you until you give them something else to do.
However, if you give them a task like do X at 9:30 every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, it will be done, to spec, every time. People like me will occasionally miss it due to other asks, prioritisation,a perceived lack of value of the task, or an "I-know-that-this-isn't-important" mindset.
Part of management is identifying these behavioural differences, and utilising them effectively.
If you have a full team of people who need explicit instruction, your job will be shuffling tickets around. If you have a full team of people who look for improvements, and are constantly thinking ahead, your job will be trying to reign them in and keep them working on the right things. Neither is good, you want a mix of both.
It’s not a preference to be micromanaged.
It’s a preference to not execute two different skill sets when you lack one of them. That’s stressful.
You might be a good developer, but not great at talking to users and figuring out the priority and the solution and executing on that independently.
Or you might not be good at delivering eloquent speeches. Or whatever. Everyone lacks some skillset which they’d prefer someone more qualified handle for them.
I dont think this is about workers preference. People without oversight can get unsure about how to execute task and need validation, but when directly asked nobody will tell you they like micromanaged (seen this). Other thing I've seen is people without supervision producing less/lower quality results.
Yes. Like a thousand times yes. I learned this lesson as a manager very slowly because I hate being micromanaged.
It made me a bad manager to not have that in my tool kit. There are a lot of people who just want you to tell them exactly what to do.
Right, I think the important nuance is that "it depends" and therefore, top-down C-level suite dictates on Remote/Hybrid/In-office requirements are generally more punitive than useful.
If your team level management org cannot organically work out the right mix on a team/role basis, then you probably should look at what else they are doing poorly.
I think you’re touching on an important point though, mix of in person and in office is really challenging, because some people see each other all day while others are literally more disconnected. It creates a heterogeneous mix of work relationships, and I’m not so sure that handling mix WFH WFO is purely evident of poor team management, it’s just difficult to have a cohesive team when some are physically there and some arent
I don't know how important all this social science stuff is to be honest.
I've worked for 20 years in global teams, and written communication is very important. Having US/UK/Ireland/HK/Singapore split team isn't much different from remote. Over the years I've worked in smaller orgs with a higher % of local people.
What I can tell you is that the amount of chatter grew exponentially. One place I used to call it "bilateral communication" because A-B would side-talk then A-C, then A-D, then B-C, then B-D.. all in-person. Tremendous games of telephone constantly.
Remote is a forcing function on better written communication.
It's funny that half this site is people working on various SaaS tools that are supposed to make work collaboration better, but somehow we need to sit next to each other to be productive?
Oh and to be clear I’m less commenting on productivity, more on the soft stuff like sense of belonging to the org, enjoying time at work, and building real relationships. These things are strictly local, no one expects to form relationships with the accounting team in Ireland, and having an explicit process for interacting with them is probably more important than an explicit process for interacting with your manager.
How important is that stuff, I have no idea, but if half the team are friends at work and the rest can only be reached over slack, that doesn’t sound like much of a team
I mean I get the intention of this stuff, but some of it skates dangerously close to accidental discrimination. I am not accusing you of this, but just saying people should be mindful it can accidentally lead you down the wrong path.
Places that are very focussed on "culture fit" or if they'd "have a beer" with the person they are interviewing.. leaves a lot of people behind. Women / non native speakers / older folks generally fail these types of implicit or explicit screens.
Building a development team is something like building a baseball team. A bunch of specialists, a few generalists, and the ability to get along. Whether they'd grab a pint after a game isn't really important.
I certainly have and maintain friendships at work, some of them from before remote, some of them from after. Some of them are people whom I've never lived in the same continent or city as.
In my experience, remote takes already-inefficient and error-prone workplace communication cultures that manage to muddle by with in-office workers at "merely" a significant productivity cost, and makes it totally unworkable.
The obvious solution is to fix your very-noticeably fucked up communication culture, since that would also improve in-person work.
Some orgs and managers seem to have decided, comically incorrectly, that WFH is the problem element in the above scenario, however.
IMHO, each team does something poorly, and it doesn't mean you go on a fishing expedition to find everything else they're doing poorly. Rather, you focus on what they're doing great, and incentivize/reward them for that. As a manager this has what has worked for me over the years, but YMMV.
I'd argue this shouldn't be a top-down decision - you can just let teams and individuals decide what works best for them, then that can be communicated upwards so the company can plan office space/resource allocation
'place of work' is usually (here in Czechia) defined in a labor contract. So that cannot change because 'team decided'. I have contract with my employer, not with my team.
I can't imagine a C-suite determining literally anything about my team beyond allowing it to exist in the budget.
I worked at way too many startups where the CEO was far too involved with day to day minutiae.
Finding this many self-motivated conscientious employees is uncommon. Consider yourself lucky. This has never been a winning strategy that I've seen anywhere.
I hope it's OK to dissent here since all the other comments agree with you anyway. Regarding this:
If statistics is invalid, then how do you propose companies decide, based on a reasonable and empirical estimate of reality, on what work arrangement to implement? Do you believe that it is not expensive and disruptive to introduce as many variations of work setups as there are people in a company? What if the people deciding company policy simply prefer and believe in the advantages of onsite, which they have the freedom and right to believe---so why do people who prefer remote force themselves in such places?
As Einstein said, you should make every problem as simple as possible, but no more simple.
The problem we're describing cannot be reduced to few simple statistics, it's exactly making the problem simpler than it is.
Not only just the task of measuring productivity of knowledge workers is extremely difficult if not impossible, but getting any statistic across a wide variety of different factors makes it even more pointless.
In fact, the problem shouldn't be approached from a macro, but microscopic level. Start from the basics.
There's knowledge workers that don't do anything from home. There's knowledge workers that won't achieve anything at the office. There's gargantuan projects like operating systems or databases developed fully remotely and asynchronously. There's projects that barely move without lots of synchronous, meaningful in-person interactions and there's environments like early stage startups that desperately need this kind of situation (albeit I'm sure there's many exceptions).
In professional sports it is very well understood that slightly different formulas work differently for different teams and players. Some needs to be fast and lean to be effective. Some need to put up muscle and weight. Many need both. Some need lots of cardio, some need more skills training. And all of that has to interact and mesh together and face different challenges.
Yet you want to complex systems like business projects/teams built around few statistics? Ignoring the wide variety of factors and humans that will end up there?
I'm not saying that building teams like that is an easy task, sometimes you just need to make work whatever team you're given, and you will have to decide a setup and give the right structure incentives to everyone to make it work.
But even if tomorrow a stat told us that there's proof that statistically remote is better for 60% of the teams (or the opposite) that really won't help much.
I am 100% in the remote work camp, but I agree with you. Every company has the right to make the choice that works for them... whether empirically driven or not, it is their prerogative to choose. But they do then need to hire the people for whom that choice works. And as people looking for work, we need to accept that some companies are non-viable for us because of the choices they make.
The friction we're seeing now is that we're still recovering from a pandemic that forced everyone remote whether it works for them or not. So this idea of remote vs. office being a core strategic decision as a company grows is fairly new. We are all still learning how to navigate the options.
I’ve seen team managers blame design work being poor or unproductive on having remote workers when most of the team isn’t. And then when everyone is flown in they claim a great victory when the output is the same or worse. I think many managers with poor performing teams are using the opportunity to blame poor performance on remote with zero data to back that up. It’s simply a useful group to blame for all your problems often due to hiring a team of less experienced people so you can pay them less.
Pretty much agree, but ultimately the onus on hiring the right people is on the hiring manager. The pattern here is management blaming their own incompetence on anything that doesn't lead back to themselves, such as WFH. Then you have higher level leadership eating this up because of their own laziness and incompetence. Incompetence all the way up.
"Some people require micro management and constant oversight"
In my experience these people don't thrive in the office either. For software engineering in particular, these people are not useful employees.
But they exist, have jobs, and are producing things of value for other companies. You still have to deal with them.
It is not realistic to fire people who don't align with someone's preferred management style.
So offering people remote work for a 20% TC reduction?
Not across the board, no.
Most companies do this by using a cost of labor index for areas. NYC/SF/Seattle being the highest, and then smaller reductions outside.
Basically you don't want to be in a HCOL (High Cost of Living) remote area with a LCOL (Low cost of Labor)
Good take!
What the comments also show is that people willingly bring themselves in a situation of 3h of commute and then complain. That's not something you'd ever widely see in Europe imho. 3h is insane. I have < 20 minutes and love the reading time, as I travel by public transport. If I'd have a farther commute I would just move. Baffles me that someone would accept this. Maybe your public transport/zoning is fucked up, not your remote/not remote thing?
It's absolutely true that the real problem in the US is our public transit (and by extension basically all post-WW2 buildings and infrastructure) situation, but if I'm just a guy running a software company, there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. Hence all the hand-wringing about remote work.
I work VERY remote (my employer is in Austin, I live in Michigan), so public transit isn't really an option for that arrangement, but if I'm honest the only real reason I'm doing it is because of Austin housing prices -- I'd much rather live in an urban core within walking distance of work, but that lifestyle is unimaginably expensive in all the places where jobs exist. Instead, I have an aging 1940s tract home in a city 2k miles from work.
The housing crisis is also a transit crisis. We built most of our homes and businesses around the cheap automobile and infinite petro-energy, with the predictable result that we can barely afford to live near the places we work.
Is it though? My last employer (a FAANG) did publish (questionable) numbers suggesting WFH being more efficient when the lockdowns started. When RTO started they flatly refused to back it up with any numbers whatsoever.
I think at the end of the day the C-suite has no idea whether WFH is better or worse. Middle management will come out and blame any lack of progress/productivity on literally anything that's not directly related to their own performance, so WFH is a natural scapegoat for incompetent management.
I agree in general except on this
I'm not convinced that remote means syncing is harder. There is a case to be made that: it's easier because it compels teams to have a structure for syncing, and structured syncing may be more efficient than ad hoc. Put another way, you potentially lose the crutch and end up stronger as a result.
This isn't a whimsical theory either- structured business processes are often missing and causing hidden costs and inefficiencies.
The debate is dramatically simplified when you take into account the gargantuan environmental impact of maintaining massive 24/7 climate-controlled office spaces that are vacant other than 40 hours a week (vacant for 75% of the week) and having people commute 15 minutes to 1.5 hours a day to and from these office spaces in motor vehicles, versus simply not leaving your house and re-purposing these sky-scrapers for societal goods like cheap/free high quality public housing, etc.
You can't justify the environmental destruction of working in an office just because you like the aesthetic or it makes you feel better. These are not apples and oranges that can be compared like two sides of an equally unproblematic coin, and it makes me sick that people equivocate and make it seem otherwise.
This kind of nuance is also brought up in sister comments, but you probably explained it best. With the caveat that C-suite mandates should not be the only determinant; let teams have some degree of autonomy and self-organization, and be able to advocate for what works best for them.
It’s unfortunate that there’s now very little nuance in American discourse especially, whether that’s in business, politics, economics, or society. Everything is an ideological “cause” worth fighting for, with an inverted bell curve showing lots of people at the extremes, and precious few in the middle.
It doesn’t bode well. I fear America is devolving toward a 1980s Lebanon-style civil war, with everyone fighting against everyone at least at one point or another. The military could step in, but then we’d essentially have martial law which isn’t much better. It may seem silly to bring this up in a thread about remote work, but it’s really a microcosm for how polarized we’ve become.
You used "some" in a lot of your sentences and that sums it up perfectly. Some people work better at home, some people work better in an office. Some jobs require more collaboration than others. I am the first to admit that meetings are usually a tad more productive in person but arbitrary "two days at office" policies make no sense, especially if there is not a policy where everybody has to go in on the same day(s).
Office mandates are dumb and it should be left up to individual team leaders.
Or in some specific countries and company cultures...
Totally agree, since the individual's situation varies so much (both intra-team, in their personal life, and across time) the only conclusion that can be said at a c-suite level is that nothing should be broadly mandated and that teams should have the option to decide on their own about office vs remote.
I hypothesize, however, that a lot of these decisions at a c-suite level have more to do with other considerations, like property investments, headcount, salaries, or (worst of all) egos.
Strong agree.
Unfortunately, it's really difficult to run HR for any company of significant size, that accounts for individual differences.
My personal management style was about treating each employee as an individual, but I was also fortunate to have a small team of high-performing, mature, dedicated professionals. My technique would not work on many of the teams that I see out there, these days.