Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

Well, I refuse to work for anyone else unless it’s remote. Every single colleague I’ve talked to said the same. I’ve been in the professional working world for 22 years across many companies ...I have many colleagues.

Re: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

#6

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

mderazon wrote: post #4

We're in the middle of a world health and financial crisis so productivity naturally goes down. Also a lot of people have little kids at home, hard to get work done like that. These are not normal times, WFH has nothing to do with it

Exactly! This isn’t WFH. This is “attempt to work as a global pandemic rages.”

Re: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

#7

Post by protomok » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 11:59 PM UTC

  "One benefit of working together in person, many
  executives said, is the potential for spontaneous 
  interactions. 
  ...
  She noticed that she was soon having conversations 
  with peers that wouldn’t have happened in a remote 
  set up—a discussion sparked by a passing question 
  in the hall"

I can relate to this. I miss the impromptu conversation about idea -> whiteboarding session -> JIRAs -> new features, new design, etc.

WFH was great for the first month or so but at this point I find myself missing going into the office. Once the vaccine arrives I plan to switch to around 4 days on site / 1 day WFH.

Re: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

#8

Post by x87678r » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 12:44 AM UTC

Some people in my team are doing barely anything.

Re: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

#9

Post by ABoldGambit » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

Lots of anecdotal experiences with no empirical data. I’m gonna chalk this one up to clickbait.

Re: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

#10

Post by miga » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 7:34 AM UTC

Some managers find that their goals are reached fasters, some find that they stop seeing certain kinds of issues.

Maybe we should rather say that some managers are skilled at managing all kinds of teams, and some stop getting results with remote teams. Or that some managers find themselves less lazy when communicating with people in person. After all we rely on productivity as reported by managers, not an objective measure per se. So managers must be skilled at measuring productivity in this particular environment.

That may be a common thing: how much of the communication in any team is that of coordination, and how much of it is that of maintaining status?

Also one cannot discard a totally different explanation: maybe it was the _change_ in the mode of work that made people more efficient, instead of remote work by itself. If it was true, then coming back from remote would also increase efficiency for a short time.