I have worked remotely for 7 years and in a few different companies in that time.
In my experience the companies that struggle with remote work are the ones the manage via attendance. One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out.
Managers that have enough domain expertise to manage via outcomes however thrive in remote environments. But, this is harder to do than taking headcount.
Remote working environments require different approaches than in person or hybrid. Change is hard and all that.
> One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out.
But this is ideal right? Their culture is asking "how's it going" throughout the day and it's not a culture you wanted to be part of so you left.
Asking "how's it going?" throughout the day isn't objectively good or bad – it's just not for everyone.
> Asking "how's it going?" throughout the day isn't objectively good or bad
Most of the time, this simple innocent question is an introduction to a work related question. It is, and has always been for me, a massive waste of time. You lose your focus, you stop working while waiting for the coworker to decide whether or not he will ask you the real question in the next 10 minutes.
I approximately lose 1 hour every day due to this behavior and it's really annoying.
Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it.
It might be wrong for you, so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.
"How's it going" from your co-worker is obviously different from HR or your CEO or someone X levels above you.
As a long-time WFH person I always assume I am big-time socially inept (and I definitely am) but apparently office-dwellers (you) are even worse!
To me it is clear that Bill-From-This-Mornings-Standup saying "Hey, what's up" is different from Emily-Director-Of-HR saying "Hey, how's it going today?" is different from "Kim-your-bosses-bosses-boss" saying "Good morning. Got a minute?"
There are common etiquettes across cultures that transcend age/location/rank, etc.
Wasting people's time is objectively, universally bad. Even if it wasn't universally bad, it would be at least overwhelmingly bad in the context of a productive enterprise, which most workplaces are.
It’s 100% fine to be someone who doesn’t want to be asked randomly by coworkers, “How’s it going?”
It’s less fine to be that person and work somewhere where the culture values being asked randomly by coworkers, “How’s it going?” But it might be something you can live with.
It might be a conscious choice to trade off short-term productivity in favor of long-term balance. It might be a way to weed out anti-social people who they don’t want working there.
I've worked remotely for about 9 years now. At the start of the pandemic I'd argue there's a wide gulf between those who knew how to work remotely because they've done it for years, and those forced into it and still figuring it out.
We spent 3 years in pandemic mode working from home for everyone. We've all figured it out by now. Go into the office if you'd like, but don't force everyone back to it.
The problem is we haven’t all figured it out. I have some coworkers who absolutely need to be in the office. Unfortunately they don’t have the self awareness to realize that, and they heavily believe the only benefit to in office work is making middle management happy. They’re good developers, but they have a bad habit of getting sucked into rabbit holes. Left to their own devices, they’re highly likely to disappear for hours and come back with an architecture astronauts dream that technically does what they’ve been assigned but also does it in ${newest language or framework} with ${unsupported dependency} and insufficient tooling to actually deploy it into production.
When they’re in the office 3 things work to prevent that:
1) yes they are supervised. More senior devs and also management can keep an eye on them
2) They’re more likely to just randomly ask a question or ponder aloud than they are to write something in slack, so it’s more likely someone can catch them going off the rails and re-direct
3) They’re more plugged into what everyone else is doing, so more likely to keep “coming up for air” and keeping their mind focused on the main goal and not the rabbit hole.
Again, these are perfectly fine junior devs with perfectly fine skills, and even their tendency to get enthusiastically lost is just more junior dev stuff.
But they don’t know how to work remotely, they’re not self aware enough to know they need to learn, they don’t take the feedback on it very well either (again see “it’s only because management wants butts in seats”)
So the options for this are mandate them to the office or eventually fire them for being more dead weight remotely than they’re worth.
And between those who don’t want remote work. Who enjoy building real relationships with people and brain storming ideas on a whiteboard. Remote work feels like contracting, and when everyone is a contractor is it really a cohesive company?
You need to build rituals to recapture that cohesion; do things online or offline that are not just about work. It is a good idea even if your company is not remote.
The population before Covid were often highly experienced, disciplined, and proven workers.
The population after Covid, was well, everyone who worked with a laptop.
Not everyone is cut for working remotely.
In addition, there’s a difference between 1 out 20 people working remotely full time and 20 out of 20.