Remote startups will win the war for top talent

I look at the people on my social media that I actively follow, and they are in three groups: friends from High School, friends from college, friends from work. None of those groups are growing. The first two for obvious reasons, but last one is the concern. I think back to the last time I worked in an office.

My path to the bathroom happened to go past a bunch of people I never worked with for my job, but I'm still friends with a lot of them a decade later. People who I would just start random conversations with on the way to and from the bathroom. And I'm still friends with a lot of my old coworkers who I last worked with a decade ago (the last time I worked in an office). In part because we hung out a lot outside of work, going to lunch, dinner, bars, shows, etc.

But after that? My rate of making new work friends went way down. The chances for socializing are very small. The closest friends I've made in the last few years are all parents from my kids' schools, because we have constant in person interactions.

My old work friendships are not only important to my psychological well being, but also in finding new work. When I need a new job I go to those friends first. I'm lucky that I already have that network, but people who are new to work life won't have that chance.

Which leads to the other problem I see -- the juniors of today are the seniors of tomorrow. But the juniors of today are losing out on a lot of chances for mentorship with remote work.

Remote work is great for mid to senior level people, who already have some experience and know what they are doing. But it's not great for junior employees. They need those random interactions, randomly overhearing shop talk, being in the hallway and getting pulled into a meeting "because you really should be learning this". All things that happened to me when I was a junior engineer, and helped me immensely.

We try to replicate that with remote work, but it's just not nearly as effective.

So either we'll have a tier of in person companies where all the junior employees will work with the few senior people who like being in the office, or we're going to have a big problem in a few years when there are a bunch of junior people who we can't promote because they didn't get the mentorship they need to move up.

We need to solve the mentorship problem and the (human) network building in a remote world.

- Lost my amazing bike commute. It's infinitely harder to motivate myself to bike for 30 mins in the morning and afternoon now, so I don't do it.

- No lunch reset. I still take an extended lunch because I need it to break up my day, but now it's just me depressingly eating by myself.

- Not in an open-desk office where I get to interact with people regularly. Being by myself all the time makes focusing pretty much impossible.

- Meetings seem mostly the same to me, except that people are way less engaged.

- Really easy to do non-work stuff instead of working, so I often find myself doing that instead.

- Output remains impossible to measure. Building relationships is now extra difficult, so the people who have them have an even bigger leg up.

And finally, reduced my connection to my peers and my org which drastically reduces my engagement and job satisfaction.

I'm trying to get back to the office ASAP, and basically coming to terms with the fact that I'm probably going to need to switch industries because of this.

I hate commuting, I hate shitty office lunches and interruptions totally ruin my focus. The things that people like about the office (long lunches with coworkers, spontaneous events, fun conversations) are literally my bane.

Absolutely agree with productivity, partially agree with socializing. Socializing is still possible, but you lose out on things like impromptu conversations at the coffee maker and such. Also, if there's a big meeting, there can be one speaker at a time. In person, 60 people can be having 30 conversations in smaller groups. It's hard to pull off virtually.

The latter point is something the company I work for has been experimenting with lately (not development wise, just how we can emulate that within). Tandem offers an "overhear" option in their Tables feature, which is alright. More distracting for some reason than in real life though. Break out rooms are okay, but have more of a barrier than turning to your left.

Overall though, remote work rules and I don't think I'll ever go back.