My current company is hybrid, and I haven’t found this to be true. But, it’s majority remote - maybe 1/3 of employees actually live elsewhere, and of the 2/3 who live in the same city as the office, most just don’t come in to the office super frequently.
I think this notion is built on pre-pandemic reality, when it was like 95% in office, 5% remote. Then remote was a 2nd class citizen, in-person conversations reigned, and remote ppl were fairly out of the loop. But when 50% or more of people are remote, everything is “remote first”, basically all communication happening in Slack (or at least being summarized online), and I just haven’t seen this happen.
We are still in the “pandemic reality” and just starting to transition out of it. If/when the majority of that 2/3 of people go back to the same office, remote employees will go back to being second class citizens.
Basically, I agree that your company is currently remote-first, even if they have offices and most people are in one location, but only time will tell if it stays that way after coming out of the pandemic (strongly depends on company culture and their policies).
Yeah, I agree that for companies that go back to ~95% in-person, remote will be a 2nd class citizen. But I think hybrid can totally work, as it’s currently working well at a tonne of companies. Remote has to be common, and the company has to be legitimately cool with in-person or remote, but if that’s all true, hybrid works great IMO.
It does need to be a culture of “remote first” communication, with the office primarily being a place for people who want a more social work experience. But I suspect this will be a lasting, common setup for many tech companies, that works well.
I think this notion is built on pre-pandemic reality, when it was like 95% in office, 5% remote. Then remote was a 2nd class citizen, in-person conversations reigned, and remote ppl were fairly out of the loop. But when 50% or more of people are remote, everything is “remote first”, basically all communication happening in Slack (or at least being summarized online), and I just haven’t seen this happen.