I agree and disagree: certainly I think the idea of a "workplace" where you go for 8 hours to give your time away to your employer is something from a industrial revolution workhouse (although such jobs do necessarily still exist - security guard, factory line worker, but not in software).
On the other hand, I think for many jobs, office dynamics have more than zero value. The ability to meet and collaborate spontaneously (which I think can to a large extent be recreated remotely), but also the fact that some part of many roles is actually some kind of "support" - whether helping peers learn something or secretarial or office help, a lot of it does get lost in remote work.
Overall, I think remote work can be great, but I've personally seen many who see it as an excuse to drop the useful interpersonal interactions and just do "their work", often in less time than would have been budgeted in person. If that's how some employees work best, ok, but I think the workload has to be revisited to account for what time people have available and what they are not doing but being remote. It can't just be a have your cake and eat it too situation.
> Overall, I think remote work can be great, but I've personally seen many who see it as an excuse to drop the useful interpersonal interactions and just do "their work", often in less time than would have been budgeted in person. If that's how some employees work best, ok, but I think the workload has to be revisited to account for what time people have available and what they are not doing but being remote. It can't just be a have your cake and eat it too situation.
I do not understand what you're trying to say with your "have your cake and eat it too". It reads like you frown upon people being more productive when working at homes and thus you somehow think it's a good idea to punish them for it.
You're missing that part where soft contribution is dropped. It's doing less work because the person aren't sharing skills and knowledge with the wider organization. That is valued work.
> You're missing that part where soft contribution is dropped.
Is it really, though?
Chatting over Slack can help everyone involved as it cuts down on meetings or even the need to focus synchronously on someone else's issue, and you can create group meetings with a couple of clicks. It's also trivial to setup an internal wiki.
It sounds like you're up selling in-person meetings while completely ignoring how everyone has been working for two years now.
Right. Purposeful knowledge sharing isn't really impacted by remote work, only casual and incidental sharing is (eg. the kind of knowledge you pick up from overhearing a conversation or a rant).
Frankly, relying on knowledge sharing being a deliberate practice seems like a good tradeoff if what is lost is the random osmosis facilitated by overhearing highly distracting conversations, which is even less reliable than rumor.
There is some truth to what you're saying, but why should one not be rewarded for doing things in less time than it would take in office? Is it not a literal advantage?
On the other hand, I think for many jobs, office dynamics have more than zero value. The ability to meet and collaborate spontaneously (which I think can to a large extent be recreated remotely), but also the fact that some part of many roles is actually some kind of "support" - whether helping peers learn something or secretarial or office help, a lot of it does get lost in remote work.
Overall, I think remote work can be great, but I've personally seen many who see it as an excuse to drop the useful interpersonal interactions and just do "their work", often in less time than would have been budgeted in person. If that's how some employees work best, ok, but I think the workload has to be revisited to account for what time people have available and what they are not doing but being remote. It can't just be a have your cake and eat it too situation.