Is Remote Work Dead?
Like many others, I started working fully remotely during the pandemic. I remember how strange it felt at the time to never be in an office and only to be able to connect with teammates over video calls. Fast forward to today and I’m still working remotely.
Personally, I love it — so much so that I sometimes wonder how I ever worked in an office five days a week. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be back in an office. Through the years, I’ve found that working remotely fits very well with my schedule and lifestyle. I find that I have the best of both worlds especially since I’m lucky enough to be able to visit my team in California a few times a year.
While working remotely isn’t for everyone, here’s what I’ve deduced. Working in person with other teammates is essential in a couple of scenarios:
When you’re green — when you’re new to software engineering I believe that being in person with others is essential to expedite your learning and ensure your questions are answered promptly. While it’s not impossible to be effective remotely, I believe it’s beneficial to spend time in person with your team to learn the ropes before sitting elsewhere.
When you’re working at a small startup — startups need to move fast in order to survive. Because of this, working together in an office is most conducive to delivering work quickly. I’ve found that when working at smaller companies there’s a larger chance that most people are working on the same project. Because of this, it’s easier to coordinate in person and remove blockers as they arrive. Furthermore, being colocated in an office also removes other difficulties that larger or distributed companies will face such as working across timezones, competing priorities, differing holiday schedules, etc.
Outside of these examples, I don’t personally feel that being colocated with your team is necessary to succeed as a software engineer or as a company. Sure, there are tradeoffs to being remote, but I think the pandemic was a great forcing function to prove that companies can make it work whether they wanted to or not.
While it seems that most tech companies have swung back to preferring in-office work, I’m still bullish on remote work and the opportunities it will provide for people around the world. So long as you’re delivering your work on time and at high quality, I don’t believe when or where you choose to do so should matter to your employer.
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I am not sure I agree with you. I used to, but not anymore. We are social animals, and if we want to change the world for good, we need to connect with our colleagues in person, especially if you work at places like Google, where working from home can disconnect you from the impact your work has on the world and end up hurting users or lives, potentially, or lead to stagnation and crappy products.
However, it is important to have honest conversations about personalities, egos, and mental burdens in the form of team-building exercises while maintaining a sense of professionalism and decorum. In this way, cohesion is achieved and the team feels comfortable with each other.
Like everyone else, I have worked in places where jealousy of each other's work or an uncomfortably competitive environment (or lack of collaboration) made it hard to succeed.
In many cases, some people need to accept that others are simply smarter or more competent than they are, or do more work, and these people should be praised and appreciated rather than undermined and sabotaged or rejected. In other cases, the smarter people need to learn not to hurt the egos of their partners or colleagues.
It's a balance, and given the typical above-average intelligence (and therefore ego) of the tech industry, people prefer to work from home because they're afraid to show who they are as people for fear of being judged or hurting others.
However, honest interactions, consideration, and acceptance are critical to building cohesive teams. Not everyone needs to be best friends, but everyone should be aware of how others feel and think (to some degree) in order for the team and the organization to succeed.
We need to fight against culture destroyers who have written books about persuasion, power dynamics, and success. They are the ones who, to some extent, have had a terrible impact on the tech industry (and others) by creating professionals with completely inflated egos and no consideration for others (your stereotypical techbro or finance douche).
We need to get back to basics. Either you are kind or you are tough (neither is inherently better), but you are real, and you are respectful (or you learn to be respectful, if you are neurodivergent or extremely intelligent and do not understand social clues as well), honest, but you still accept that some people are smarter than you, and at the same time, for those who are smarter, you accept and work on how your actions or words hurt other people's egos and make them tired. Honesty is the key. We have lost honesty because of these "gurus" and "influencers" and "coaches" of power dynamics and success and all this bullshit that has created a toxic culture and that is why no one wants to work in the office. We have to make people feel good and accept them, know them, to create the new office environment. We have to work on the new leadership methods of tomorrow.
My advice to the new leaders of tomorrow is to stay away from people and topics like Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power" (I haven't read it, but based on what I've read in reviews and summaries) and similar bullshit. It encourages sociopathic and psychopathic Wall Street and Silicon Valley type behavior that no one wants or likes and that has destroyed the office environment.
We need to create the new culture that feels right, not based on the advice of the boomers (sorry boomers, it's not your time anymore), what they created (which arguably destroyed the planet and led it to the chaos it is today).
Personally, I will be moving to Silicon Valley this year, and one of my tenants, in addition to doing amazing work, is to work to change its toxic culture (wherever I work and advocate for change in other places), whether people reading this laugh about it or not, I will do it. Change starts with you.
Great article Kevin. People like to say the remote work has only advantages, but as you mentioned - there are definitely benefits in in-office work.
As a manager in a small startup, I feel that being together in the office is critical for us, at least part of the time. imo the hybrid approach works best - we have 3 days from the office, and 2 from home.
I also can’t imagine going back to being in the office 5 days a week :)