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Is it possible for someone to 1. Be a really good 'in person' manager (able to foster a good in-office culture, motivate and coach people effectively in real time). 2. Be a really bad 'remote' manager. Not saying RTO mandates are a good idea, but to say it's masking poor management as a black and white statement lacks nuance.
I left Amazon a month ago (voluntarily) for a fully remote role because they asked me to move to Seattle/Arlington. When I joined them, I was already in a different state because of my wife's work. So I told them, I cannot join if they don't give me remote exception; it took them ~4-5 weeks to get the sign off for remote exception from the VP. I took the job and 9 months in, Jassy decided to force everyone back to th…
> "Since the RTO, a lot of my colleagues have started working at 9 am and log out at 5pm pronto" In office workers have more defined working schedules? Is that what this means? That seems healthy for the worker. -- UPDATE -- Must consider the commute factor for time-demand on employee.
Also, this is tangential but I would be interested in what proportion of employees actually have a good home workplace set up, because it seems highly dependent on income and many (including myself) aren't generally equipped to make it as complete and focused as an office.
I think it is retaliation. Employees started pushing for WFH, raises, better work/life balance. Employers (especially bad ones) like to have control and so this is to get employees back in line.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What tools are needed for better remote management?
a videoconfering system that is reliable and easy to use is essential to remote management. You need to have as little friction as possible to propose a 1-1 or a 15 min roundtable to quickly brainstorm something orally. Then you need remote "telemetry", meaning access either to chat messages, email, tickets, etc. and a way to process it at scale (without reading everything) in order to defuse sticky situations based…
Basically industry standard
I left Amazon a month ago (voluntarily) for a fully remote role because they asked me to move to Seattle/Arlington. When I joined them, I was already in a different state because of my wife's work. So I told them, I cannot join if they don't give me remote exception; it took them ~4-5 weeks to get the sign off for remote exception from the VP. I took the job and 9 months in, Jassy decided to force everyone back to th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% Also, the tools a manager needs for 'remote management' is very different than what's needed for in-person. It's also very possible managers are not given the tools needed to manage a remote workforce.
What tools are needed for better remote management?
> 1. They have daily check-in meetings with everyone on the team to make up for the lack of impromptu chats in the office
> 2. Collaboration is harder over email than in-person. As an example, they have to produce reports for stakeholders regularly, which requires input from several people. They sync their work by frequently emailing each other changes to the document
> 3. Socializing with coworkers is more difficult, which results in less social capital for people to advance their careers with
For each point, the author pointed out that there are simple technological and management solutions for each:
> 1. Stop doing daily check-ins and trust your reports to do their jobs on their own time table. You didn't do daily check-ins in the office, so don't do them now
> 2. Stop using email. It's the worst format of online communication. Slack, MS Teams, etc. have been around for a while. Use them and the features available to you to collaborate. Additionally, use document editing software like MS Word or Google Docs to edit the same document within a cloud account simultaneously instead of sending files to each other. This tech has existed for sooooo long that it should be considered a bit of an embarrassment if a manager in 2024 doesn't know about it yet
> 3. Work socialization must become intentional, and opportunities for advancement should be based off of merit and output instead of personal relationships
But it seems pretty clear that companies which mandate RTO are simply not equipped, technologically or intellectually, to run such an organization. It's not that remote work is inherently less productive, it's that managers are unable or unwilling to adapt their processes and communication to make it work.
Final note: it seems like another big problem with managers is they find they have little work to do if they are not monitoring people all the time and dragging them into unnecessary meetings. I think they feel threatened by the fact that their jobs are being automated away by software
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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/10/hybrid-wo...
Is it possible for someone to 1. Be a really good 'in person' manager (able to foster a good in-office culture, motivate and coach people effectively in real time). 2. Be a really bad 'remote' manager. Not saying RTO mandates are a good idea, but to say it's masking poor management as a black and white statement lacks nuance.
In a lot of ways RTO has put working conditions in a worse spot than they were pre-pandemic. In the Before Times occasional remoting was informal and casual - if you had a doctor's appointment at an odd time, you'd remote for the day, with no formal approval nor teeth-gnashing. Now even small everyday things like this are fraught. There are often formal approval chains now for what used to be entirely between you and…
Wish I could give this more upvotes. I was fully remote for more than a decade before COVID, but now I’m seeing all the same things you’ve written about here. It’s a huge regression.