This is such a great demonstration of the problem with "both-sidesing" things. You say all this as if "both sides" of this have equal power in the relationship, and this is something they can just politely disagree on and go on about their lives.
The reality is that if you need more flexible working arrangements, you are extremely subject to the whims of people who want offices to be the primary mode of work. If they don't want you to be remote, they don't need venom or arguments or to seem angry or even to seem to have much of an opinion at all. Simple inaction and lack of effort, followed by an "oh I'm sorry I forgot to tell you after we all got back from lunch" 3 weeks later is enough to make the remote person's situation untenable. Eventually the "oh I forgot you worked here. Just kidding hah hah hah" jokes kick in and then you know you're a couple months from being let go.
To have a successful working relationship with people who aren't in the office, work must be done by the people who are in the office to keep things working. Essentially, it can't work unless everyone adopts a remote-first approach where major discussions happen in writing out in the open.
The massive proliferation of slack and similar in the covid era certainly has and will continue to help establish this mode of working, but the people who don't want it because they feel uncomfortable when they don't see butts in seats 8 hours a day will likely put in a lot of passive-aggressive effort to bring things back to the old status quo.
> You say all this as if "both sides" of this have equal power.
No, I said I didnt understand the vehemence.
> The reality is that if you need more flexible working arrangements
Yes, I don't think I'm going ever really go back full time. Currently, I come in ~twice a week.
I've worked with remote singular and remote offices for years(10+) before covid. Its been part of tech for a long time. Even my dad has be doing remote since the early 90s (if not more)
If you have decent planning, ticketing and retros then you'll know if your remote(or any other) team are not performing well.
> Essentially, it can't work unless everyone adopts a remote-first approach where major discussions happen in writing out in the open.
I just don't think that's right. Sure people need to be included in the "room" to make the decision, but that's not the same a remote vs office. Decisions are only a tiny part, the rest is execution and unblocking.
don't get me wrong, you need to have a culture of respect and brining people up to speed, siloing doesn't work well.
In practice, even most office jobs are remote. Everyone is wearing headphones & don’t want to be disturbed, so you gotta Slack them. If even one person on the team is in another office or at home for the day, then the meeting is over Zoom. For any type of 100% onsite job, when is it even 50% onsite anymore?
I spent a few years in an office before going remote and this was 100% my experience.
The endlessly proclaimed, robotically repeated benefits of office work -- the vaunted "serendipitous encounters", "water-cooler conversations", and "impromptu lunchroom innovation sessions" -- they all involved nothing but small talk. All meetings were calls. No meaningful thinking or decisions occurred in-person.
When everyone joined me in working from home in 2020, the main thing I noticed was that people stopped trying to force down my throat all the mindless, unjustified, undocumented decisions they made in the office. I finally got a chance to use my voice to make the org stop being so dumb. And people were grateful.
I think people mostly make this "benefits of the office" stuff up to rationalize getting out of the house, away from their spouse and kids, and into the local urban center with all their favorite food trucks.
There are probably some industries where it has real benefit, like artistic ones, but for the most part I don't think SWE falls in that category.
In my experience there's a difference in the level you're operating at. What you've mentioned is familiar from IC level, whereas senior architect/tech director/cto roles many were done and made real progress through personal interactions. Often these things involve politics and personalities as much as situational specifics.
Haha, I can't help but find this humorous!
I genuinely can't take this perspective seriously.
What most people see is the 'architect' (read: [micro]manager) make 'important' interventions in others efforts...
I understand the role, I'm not ignorant of the purpose of these positions. But I'm painfully aware of how many people are b*llshitters and found their positions using these very office politics to get ahead. Their ultimate fear is being assessed on their own for their effort. Largely because they don't actually contribute much at all.
Fair enough, that kind of thing is toxic and I don't get involved with those kind of places.
Personally I moved back from Lead Architect/CTO roles to being a consultant mainly doing IC work where I deliver the entirety of a system myself. In other words I do deliver the goods technically, and happen to prefer that to working politically.
So it would seem my observation/perspective is coming from a different perspective than you were thinking of!
Everyone is wearing headphones & don’t want to be disturbed, so you gotta Slack them.
Or maybe don't interrupt the person who is deep in thought about a complex problem?
I've worked with clients who are fully on board with Slack (or Teams or whatever) and their culture doesn't really do email or phone so the most effective way to communicate with them remotely ends up being to join whatever channels the people you need to work with are on. If you all get along well it can be fun in the same way as any social network. But it can also be toxic to productivity because of the constant interruptions and if anything that effect is worse when everyone gets along because it's like everyone is in permanent water cooler mode as well.
This is the case for software development, but I doubt that procedures like that are widespread in other areas. From anecdotes, people in remote positions are often just left out.
I liked most of your comment until this last part:
> but the people who don't want it because they feel uncomfortable when they don't see butts in seats 8 hours a day will likely put in a lot of passive-aggressive effort to bring things back to the old status quo.
That is, in the first part of your comment basically says "Remote work isn't tenable unless in-office workers put in a significant amount of additional effort (e.g. always using written communication, impromptu conversations are verboten because you might be leaving a remote worker out, etc.)", but then you complain in-office workers just want to see "butts in seats" and are being "passive aggressive" if they don't put in the extra effort to make remote work tenable.
It could just (fairly) be the case that in-office workers don't want to put in the extra effort. I mean, a big reason many execs want people to be in office is because they see the efficiency in impromptu and verbal communication, and your post concedes that point by my reading of it.
> a big reason many execs want people to be in office is because they see the efficiency in impromptu and verbal communication,
Perceived efficiency. Like everyone is saying; for some jobs and some people it is apparently efficient (I have not seen this in practice much outside having a whiteboard with all in the room for brainstorming or solving a harder problem, but that really doesn’t happen that often and we can do that now with miro and/or VR), but for many it is just wasting time and annoying. I don’t mind hybrid if your team is all remote and the other teams are not; if you are part of a team that is hybrid, I don’t think it is very good in any case.
> impromptu conversations are verboten because you might be leaving a remote worker out
Most people on your team aren't listening to every conversation everyone else ever has. You should be documenting all meaningful communication for your project, regardless of remote availability.
I recently reluctantly went back to the office and it was better than I had expected. Having that separation of work vs home was huge for me. I left work at work and didn't give it a second thought once I was home. I hadn't realized how much I was still in "work mode" while remote, even after working hours. It was hard to disconnect and clearly a source of stress that I couldn't really see.
Yeah, I don't like commuting, paying for gas, parking, and other stuff that comes with the office, but for me personally I think it's going to be good.
I agree, the best companies will let people choose to work the way they do best. Getting that right isn't easy.
The biggest hazards lie in the grey area between extremes. If everyone is remote always, everyone is on equal footing. Same can be said if everyone simply has to show up at the office every day.
Maybe the whole org doesn't have to be all on way or all the other, but you should at least be consistent within the teams that work closely together every day.
> To have a successful working relationship with people who aren't in the office, work must be done by the people who are in the office to keep things working.
This is a massively underrated comment that needs to be highlighted.
> you are extremely subject to the whims of people who want offices to be the primary mode of work.
The idea behind working for a boss is that they can tell you what to do and how and where to do it. And if you don’t like it, you can go work for yourself or for another boss.
I would never work for someone with the mindset you espouse here. There's a lot that can be said about the role of management, but I think fundamentally I seek out and believe management should be facilitators. We all have work that needs to get done, managers are accountable for their team getting that work done. So their place is to provide workers with the resources they need to do that.
The reality is that if you need more flexible working arrangements, you are extremely subject to the whims of people who want offices to be the primary mode of work. If they don't want you to be remote, they don't need venom or arguments or to seem angry or even to seem to have much of an opinion at all. Simple inaction and lack of effort, followed by an "oh I'm sorry I forgot to tell you after we all got back from lunch" 3 weeks later is enough to make the remote person's situation untenable. Eventually the "oh I forgot you worked here. Just kidding hah hah hah" jokes kick in and then you know you're a couple months from being let go.
To have a successful working relationship with people who aren't in the office, work must be done by the people who are in the office to keep things working. Essentially, it can't work unless everyone adopts a remote-first approach where major discussions happen in writing out in the open.
The massive proliferation of slack and similar in the covid era certainly has and will continue to help establish this mode of working, but the people who don't want it because they feel uncomfortable when they don't see butts in seats 8 hours a day will likely put in a lot of passive-aggressive effort to bring things back to the old status quo.