I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why:
1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections.
2. Managers like to be able to watch their direct reports because it makes them feel more in control than they are
3. The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding.
4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home.
To truly work from home 100% of the time you have to be a master at controlling yourself and your ability to be distracted. Most people don't have this control and need a framework to insert themselves into. Add to that the contextual dimension of an "other" place that is a world apart from your home life and you have something that allows for a depressurization for most people.
This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The unfortunate K-12 and college students are learning this the hard way.
Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.
I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me.
If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen in person.
I spent the first 10 years of my working life focused on get myself into a position where I could do exactly that. As soon as it was even a little bit feasible to do so, I made the jump and haven't looked back.
It's interesting watching the entire software world get handed young Me's dream on a plate, and seeing so many people wanting their cubicles back.
I went to a German university and fortunately most universities here still believe that their job is to enable learning and that university is as much about learning to learn and learning to live than it is about the content. In contrast to school this means the motivation has to come from the students and there is no mandatory attendance.
I for one was glad that I didn't have to sit in lectures that I can learn in less than half the time on my own. That I could structure my learning the way it best fits me. This however requires that materials are available in sufficient quality remotely.
Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.
Your comment reads like attending in person is the only right way, while I think accepting individualism and providing choice is much better. So if after covid there is the option to work/study in person or from home, whatever fits the individual that day, that would be awesome.
Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time.
I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sacrificed at the altar of NIMBYism in order to make existing homeowners/landowners wealthier. People are wasting away commuting hours a day. Folks have been getting crammed into denser and denser open floorplans and bullpens for years.
People are willing to put up with these things when they don't have any other options. But when other companies are investing in supporting hybrid environments and you're stuck still requiring people to relocate to San Francisco permanently, you're going to start losing talent. Not supporting some kind of hybrid remote policy is going to become a serious competitive disadvantage in the talent market. You can still maintain your trendy urban office space to attract the college graduates who want that lifestyle.
this is spoken like it is true for everyone, which is not accurate. I would have loved to be fully remote in my early 20s, free to travel and not focus purely on work. sure it was great for my career, but work isn't living.
sure, a ton of people hate working from home. some personalities and roles require in-person interaction. most people never considered wfh when choosing their apartment or house and don't have good setups. meanwhile, there are also a ton of people, like me, who have always _hated_ going into the office. being constantly distracted by coworkers, dealing with long commutes, and putting up with uncomfortable and loud offices.
yes, people need social interaction, but that doesn't have to come from coworkers. it is a very SF mindset to build your entire life around your work.. being in the office all day and most of your "friends" are coworkers.
When I was young and starting college, I was poor and lived in a semi-rural area. So getting back and forth to all the classes was very difficult. Not to mention I had to work two jobs to support myself at the time.
I would have fucking loved to be able to do my classwork remotely and just hung out with other students as my schedule allowed. Of course it was not an option back then.
I have recently went back to university to advance my degree and it has nearly all been online. Much better! Frankly I met many more people than I did back in the day through the online tools and the fact that the classwork can be flexible around my life, versus the other way around was very convenient!
I can see how this might not work for labs, but for most other classes it seems to be a very viable alternative.
Also, I think you might be surprised about how much value people of any age put on being near other people at the time of learning. It obviously is very valuable to you, but I would expect you will find just as many that couldn't care less about that aspect of it.
> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.
This seems silly. Why would any company prefer workers with less experience.
If anything, I think you’ve got the causation backwards. Hot startups are full of young engineers, because they need to be located in dense metro hubs of talent. These areas heavily skew young, because people with families flee HCoL areas. The competitive advantage of a 25 year old is their willingness to live in a studio apartment.
Now that the we’ve built the technology and culture for fully remote companies, this calculus no longer applies. You can assemble a team of people on a globally unconstrained talent pool. Frankly, there’s no reason to expect a startup filled with 25 year olds to outcompete one with ten times the cumulative experience.
I think it is in some shape or form and it will only increase, because it's a more sustainable way of life to not have to travel every day. Remote work means less strain on cities, less traffic on roads, less inflated housing prices in metropolitan areas and so on.
> but it cannot be replaced by remote
In many areas in can be replaced and therefore it will.
> Humans just aren't robots and they need community
Before open plan office jobs in skyscrapers became fashionable people had for thousands of years their community at home, their street or village. You don't have to be a suit wearing slave to make some friends.
> To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need
Agreed. Remote studying is literally just reading a book on your own. Every successful self taught person has gone through that, but because they are intelligent they didn't have to take a student loan for it. They only paid a few quid to Amazon to buy a bunch of books.
University is massively overrated anyways. It's not needed for the vast majority of bullshit jobs nowadays. It just serves as a mean of class segregation to identify rich people from poor when giving them a job.
> Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
You can do this anywhere. I have worked remotely for a while now and I visit a lot of co-working spaces which are closer located to where I live. I don't have to slave myself through the rush hour commute into a densely overpopulated crammed city centre to please a master. I can get to a nice co-working space close to home at a leisurely pace without stress and still meet people, have interesting chats over lunch and make friends, be productive and get motivated in an environment. But I choose when to go there based on my personal needs. Some days I want to WFH because I need more headspace, or because I'm tired from a long day before and needed that extra half an hour sleep, or because I want to sort out an errand during the day without having to stress myself. Remote is the future for all jobs which can.
I this is highly subjective and depends on how social you are, how much of an outlier you are in cognitive ability or interest and on what kind of social environments you have physical access to. If you are “middle of the pack” in all these aspects then sure, remote first doesn’t make sense.
On the other take me as an example: I enjoy working with other people face to face, but I’m extremely picky in terms of sparring partners. Most people just slow me down. Some are even offended, probably because they feel a bit intellectually inferior when I get going, leading to unnecessary conflict. I’ve been looking for people with similar cognitive style and interests in my physical surroundings for 20 years, and I’ve only found a handful. They are eccentrics, often in high demand and not easy to collaborate with.
There are of course physical environments where I would not be an outlier, or where I would even struggle to keep up. I’m not Terrence Tao. But I don’t have access to those environments.
From this perspective remote first makes a lot of sense. And while I am a bit older now I don’t think it would have been much different in my 20-ties.
It's not coming from Stanford. It's coming from three economists -- Barrero, Bloom, and Davis -- only one of whom is at Stanford, Bloom. Barrero is at ITAM in Mexico, and Davis is at Chicago (he does have an affiliation with Hoover).
It should go without saying that a single professor does not speak for Stanford, or vice versa. For all we know everyone else at Stanford thinks Bloom is an idiot.
I've been almost permanently WFH since April, with a few weeks back in the office during summer when the incidence rate was lower, then back to WFH when the second wave hit.
I enjoy not having to commute, but I absolutely miss the banter across the desks and lunch conversations.
I would absolutely like to keep 2-3 weekly WFH days in the future, which would also give me more flexibility in where I choose to live, I really want to move farther from the city and closer to nature. A longer commute would be acceptable if I didn't have to do it every day.
I don't think lumping together university/college education with professional setup will yield useful results. Everything about them are vastly different. Situations in life, demography, support system, primary goals, to name a few.
Just to pick on one aspect; tools. Remote work tools are geared towards many-to-many collaborative activities. Whereas remote learning is primarily a one-to-many activity. Of course you have supporting TAs but still, it's about a very small set of people dispensing information/learning to a very large group students.
At the campus, the physical presence naturally fosters a whole range of interactions besides classroom learning, as you rightly pointed out. Replicating that is just impossible online.
Professional activities, however, is comparatively easier to replicate online, going by the evidence of how companies were able to go full remote just with a few day's notice. Uber, for instance, went full with just one day's notice. I was expecting a massive productivity drop. To my surprise, my team (I was a manager there) actually began shipping more features during full remote. Sure, it took ~2 weeks for us to find a rhythm but that's to be expected.
All this to say, I completely agree with you w.r.t. online education. It's been a shitshow. Education is so much more than just learning. But please don't extend that argument to the professional life. From what I've seen, remote work is here to stay, at least I hope it does. People in India have been working from their home towns instead of being stuck in expensive and shitty urban jungles. It'll spur the much needed growth of tier-2/3 cities in India.
> Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
I dont if you have ever been in uni but in my time it was all about putting 200 students in huge amphitheaters with one lecturer not caring at all about their audience. It has to be the worst way to learn anything.
Is so wrong as "Remote working isn't a thing and never will be"
There are a lot of people that are interested in Remote studing. Sure it's not for everyone, sure not always 100% of the time, but I guess it would work pretty well and I personally would love to see "Remote college" becoming a thing.
It hard to see the greatness in having someone else impose who your friends should be and where you should sit for about 50% of your awaken hours.
Then we have the added stress from places with open space/cubicle with poor sound isolation, people walking behind you, and constant interruption for which you have zero control over. Young 20-something Me could only really manage that with a corner chair and with headphones that blasted music so loud that people on the other side of the room complained.
I could however imagine a situation where I would enjoy the situation if given enough changes. If I were the group leader and decided who I worked with then the first problem goes mostly away. If the work I did was mostly social then the problem of noises and interruptions goes mostly away, and I might even want it to be a open space plan so I can walk around and stand behind my employees and check what they are doing. Doing that remotely would be much harder.
Being locked down and not about to go out and working remotely are two different things. They just happen to be coincident at this time.
Also, I am sure that Stanford online is disappointing compared to in person. But there are ways to improve the social aspects with software. The particular configuration of the software and how it's used will make a huge difference in the types or amount of online social interactions.
For example, if you want you can create a virtual dorm room in Gary's Mod or Rec Room VR and get your friends to log into it at lunch and dinner. But the fact that they aren't forced to interact with you because they are physically in the same space does not seem like it should be the only factor.
Maybe good idea would be to have a community decoupled from business?
In any case, you could still have offices as a place for people meeting face2face and do the most "thinking" or "creative" work at home, it's not mutually exclusive.
This isn’t “coming from Stanford”. It’s a paper written by three researchers, one of whom is on the faculty at Stanford. But that person doesn’t speak for Stanford and has nothing to do with Stanford’s policies in re COVID.
If I was a college student during covid, I would opt for that year off. I totally agree with you that college is a social experience.
In terms of work, however, I think it depends on the organization and people's stage of life. If you already have a family, then WFH is much better to me and worth the tradeoff. Imagine being able to spend 2-3 hours with your young kid everyday at the cost of less face time with your coworkers.
I learned more about working independently from reading linux manuals and irc chats after high school than in 12 years of school or 5 years of college.
I think the headline on this link is misleading. It only says that people will now work from home 25 % of the time instead of 5 %. A pretty uncontroversial view imo. It’s not talking about full remote.
Indeed, cubicles make no sense. Being able to work remotely is a competitive advantage and those for whom the physical office is a must will have to fight hard for it.
I'm a little disappointed at the percentage of comments which extrapolate personal anecdotes into societal behavior, and without addressing the data in this study - even to poke holes in the methodology, which is totally fair game (though IMO quite good, especially for what they had to work with).
The whole point of a 15,000-person survey like this is so that we're not all stuck guessing based on our own experiences. Obviously one can argue that what employers were telling employees they would do post-COVID as of October 2020 is not what employers will actually do (and give reasons why!), but it's still likely to be more accurate than any individual's speculation (including mine!).
In particular, the survey addressed 2 topics that a lot of comments seem to not incorporate:
1. At population, employer, and individual level, it's not either/or. The paper title doesn't do a good job of conveying this. All 3 entities seem open to everything on the continuum, based on their employees, work type, and so on.
Statements like "I promise that it won't stick for the broader society" imply a more binary outcome than the survey results predict (and maybe than anything predicts). The survey concludes that, of the roughly 50% of employees who can work from home, they'll average 2 days per week (or 23% of total hours worked). IOW, WFH doesn't need to move everyone all the time in order to have massive effects. Some people changing some of the time is enough.
2. Employer plans vs. employee desires. Lots of commenters state their preferences and then try to generalize from that, but.. the survey captured that too. To just skim those results, scroll to page 60 for employee-desired vs. employer-planned % of working days. Gist: if WFH is roughly the same productivity, employers plan ~22% of days and employees desire ~45% of days to be WFH. In all productivity cases, employees preferred a higher % of days to be WFH than employers.
Page 43 shows answers to the pay raise or cut employees would take in order to work from home 2-3 days per week.
It also breaks down the change in perception about WFH by demographic cohort on page 55. For example, those with no children and those with children at home both had significant improvements in their perception of WFH. Those with children had more improvement in perception than those without children. As the study wrote: "This 23 percent figure [post-COVID WFH as a % of full time days] is almost five times larger than in the pre-pandemic time use data, but still half as large as what workers want in a post-pandemic world."
Of course, there's a place for speculation and anecdotes. This paper - and hopefully soon, more studies like it - should let us evolve from speculating based on only our personal experience to thinking about its methodology and results.
Everyone seems to forget the most important factor in this whole debate: we aren't in a "mass social experiment in working from home", we're in a "mass social experiment in working in isolation during a pandemic".
They're very much not the same thing, for a whole host of reasons.
Just a few examples of how they differ:
* higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary.
* having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it
* childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal
* consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously).
* no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business)
To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.
Many of these debates about work from home remind me of the arguments about “online banking” or “e-commerce” in the early internet days. One side argues that the interpersonal relationships are critical and can never be replicated fully online. The other points at the convenience factor and claims a higher productivity for all involved.
The truth as always is somewhere in the middle. I do most of my banking online, but still visit financial institutions for important events (mortgages, large checks, etc.)
It does seem to me slightly odd that some people working in “tech”, aka an industry built on disruption, are adamant that WFH can never work. If anything,
remote employees are a goldmine of valuable data that can be tracked. Wondering if a meeting is valuable? In person you have to gauge people’s thoughts or rely on surveys. For online meetings just see (anonymously) in real time who’s firing up their slack or multitasking.
Obviously there’s a extensive employee privacy issues, but the bottom line is that we have all the fundamental technologies needed to provide as much data on remote employees as we do in the office.
While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach)
Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a substitute for them browsing internet all day and just weren’t busy.
But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm.
Maintaining network and IP security is harder in many sectors. Just look at the SW breaches where m365 tenants seem to be vector. Look at the vectors cropping up. Huge rashes of phishing, people loading up corporate email on personal equipment. Rdp dos and the multiple flaws etc. and even if you have the hardware on lock, home networks are a cesspool.
Support teams are getting pinged at all sorts of hours because people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal)
I see more cultures being more amenable to wfh or flex schedules. But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types
Maybe those that haven’t been remote never saw this side of businesses, but as someone that will only work remotely, the options pre-Covid were exceedingly thin.
Almost no public companies allowed 100% remote work. Almost none. Honestly I can’t even name a single company that did, but I’m sure there is at least one right?
Also, it should be noted that when I say remote I mean they allow anyone, literally anyone that works at the company to work from Home. Not some one off anomaly for high performers (which I know companies like Google or Microsoft have allowed under certain circumstances).
Why companies have, and I think will continue to be , anti-remote and anti-worker is because of nepotism, elitism, and an over reliance on physical queues for communication.
It’s similar to how Silicon Valley is becoming Wall Street, with pay (often in clout) to play apps (ex: Clubhouse, which feels more like Harvard than an early social network - it’s also painfully uncool) and how they mirror closed minded and closed off business operations — these businesses and their yuppy middle managers rely on a physical presence to coerce employees into drinking the kool aid.
My hope is that employees start to reject these practices and instead force employers to accept remote work, but I’m doubtful since the leverage is mostly in the hands of business - think of the power FAANG companies have. Once they go back to forced commute work, everyone else will see it as an opportunity to do the same.
I think they’re missing the point that remote work is just another step in the direction of a massive trend toward distributed work. If you work for a big global megacorp, your entire life is passive online meetings with way too many people invited from across the world and across the hall. You go into work just to sit in a conference room with one other person or fight for a private phone booth by yourself, but inevitably take calls at your desk and annoy everybody else around you. You have an advanced degree in whatever, but your workplace resembles a multilingual call center and you’ve never spoken to your cubicle neighbors. There are social spaces to make the place look hip, but the latest trend is always social avoidance. They’ll allow 1 or 2 days per week remote and people will make is 4 or 5. The effect of the pandemic is to normalize remote, but more importantly, scatter all teams so that in-person is impossible. I don’t think productivity is measurable in an environment of massive economic chaostimulus, but commercial real estate costs are, and now you have high-salary workers arguing against their own best defense from offshore outsourcing. Now that offshore workers can join any team directly, managers will dedicate their budgets to packing their org charts with cheap workers to justify promotion to second level. I expect a lot of visa workers will return with their higher-salary jobs secured remotely, and engineering will gradually shift to asian hours. So this all just looks like acceleration to me, nothing new.
I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention:
All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.
All of the tech CEOs I talk to have plans to downsize their offices. All of them. Employee surveys strongly indicate a desire to work remotely as a permanent option, with the office being for meetings.
The OpEx on office space is significant - 10-15% of salary costs. So getting rid of the office or reducing its size and cost is like cutting pay by perhaps 5-7%. That’s a big deal.
If my employer tries to remain 100% remote I will leave and go somewhere with an office. I find working from home too lonely, and I detest spending hours of every day on video calls. Of course, I'm just a single data point, and perhaps not representative, but I'm also generally less social than other people, so I find it hard to believe there won't be a lot of people feeling the same.
I'm sure that there will be a much greater prevalence and acceptable of working from home after the pandemic, but I'm equally sure that there will be a gradual but significant shift back to large numbers of people working in offices. The only way this won't happen is if there genuinely is a major uplift in productivity from remote work, and I'm incredibly sceptical about that. Self-reported improvements in productivity are worthless, IMO.
I really hope it doesn’t. I miss the office. Workplace environments prevent myself from socially isolating beyond weekends at best — I know I’m not alone in that.
Funnily enough, I started to notice the sentiment of wanting to go back to the office this month with friends.
When I started working from home
a few years pre-covid, I also had the loneley-blues after a year or so. It's wasn't nice and, in fact, lead me to try working from an office again.
And what can I say. While yes, when I moved back in the office I loved socializing more, I soon became miserable again.
See, suddenly I couldn't lie down on my couch anymore for a quick rest. I couldn't "let my self go". Meditate. I had much more fast food and started to feel stressed and sick.
So I went back to home office.
And indeed it's true what another commentor said here: WFH during covid is much different from WFH in normal times as me and other WFH friends made it a habbit of working together. You can visit cafe, work from park benches or convert your parent's place into your mega office while they're on vacation.
Ultimately, I ended up renting a room for myself. Now, you say it's an office. I say it's a cosy room that's 10min bike ride away from my home... I wouldn't call it office, but also not home.
I really miss the daily commute which counts as physical exercise, a mental switch from family mode to work mode, and a work environment where like minded people get together in physical space, able to share and communicate easily.
While I'm sure some work and some appointments can (and remain) be done remotely, and I am glad its good for the environment, the current way of life (although it is necessary) is not my cup of tea.
I think WFH continues until a company misses financial numbers for a quarter, or a competitor brings their people back into the office, or performance slips. This won't last beyond that.
I think it lasts until a startup (not necessarily in tech) dethrones an incumbent because working in-person helped with vision, alignment, and performance. My hunch is that WFH projects are less ambitious and have less collaboration.
Absolutely. I remember doing a project sometime back for a whole year entirely out of a war room. I'd imagine it would take 2.5+ years without that sort of close collaboration.
WFH ends the day your competitions beats you a few years/month in 'Time to market'.
To those who prefer returning to office due to feeling isolated. Do you think your preferences could be influenced by the pandemic as well? Have you thought about how WFH could feel different with normal freedoms that come with a world without COVID-19?
Work from home for people living by themselves away from family (separated by countries) gets depressing and will most likely impact productivity at work.
For me, the issue is not black and white: it's not "we're all gonna work from home" / "we're all gonna work from the office"... it's being given the choice based on my circumstances.
If I was king of the world I'd tell businesses (where feasible - warehouses still need people to be onsite, small businesses may not have the money for the tools for example) that they need to be able to offer home working for those that want/need it and office working for those that want/need it.
With that comes the correct tools and equipment, e.g. video conferencing, desktop sharing, telepresence, laptops, whatever.
I have been working remotely for several years with only occasional visits to an office and it works for me. I would hate to have to travel every day to an office but I like the occasional visit.
I get enough interaction with my family and friends (current COVID restrictions not withstanding ofc) but I have a separate room upstairs where I work so I don't have to sit in the kitchen.
It's horses for courses imo... the future needs to be flexibility-based.
Whether it’s healthy or not teams and slack are just fine for socializing to me. I’ve been wfh 100% for about 6 years now. I’m as productive as I’ve ever been if not more so. Lunch is walking to the kitchen and back not an hour long ordeal.
It kind of boggles my mind to think about driving somewhere to do the same thing but in a different place.
Working from home will stick FOR SOME... but not for others.
I have a long commute and don't miss it... i do miss the books/podcasts and I miss the office. I hope we go to a 3 day home, 2 day office but we'll see.
Managers like having butts in seats. we'll see how it goes long term
So true. The big (top 5) global bank I worked for loved butts-in-seats. I've finally arrived at a place where I refuse anything that requires more than 3 days in-office.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|5 years ago|reply
1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections.
2. Managers like to be able to watch their direct reports because it makes them feel more in control than they are
3. The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding.
4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home.
To truly work from home 100% of the time you have to be a master at controlling yourself and your ability to be distracted. Most people don't have this control and need a framework to insert themselves into. Add to that the contextual dimension of an "other" place that is a world apart from your home life and you have something that allows for a depressurization for most people.
[+] [-] anonytrary|5 years ago|reply
Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.
This whole thing makes no sense.
[+] [-] jasonkester|5 years ago|reply
If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen in person.
I spent the first 10 years of my working life focused on get myself into a position where I could do exactly that. As soon as it was even a little bit feasible to do so, I made the jump and haven't looked back.
It's interesting watching the entire software world get handed young Me's dream on a plate, and seeing so many people wanting their cubicles back.
[+] [-] ascar|5 years ago|reply
I for one was glad that I didn't have to sit in lectures that I can learn in less than half the time on my own. That I could structure my learning the way it best fits me. This however requires that materials are available in sufficient quality remotely.
Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.
Your comment reads like attending in person is the only right way, while I think accepting individualism and providing choice is much better. So if after covid there is the option to work/study in person or from home, whatever fits the individual that day, that would be awesome.
[+] [-] nilkn|5 years ago|reply
Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time.
I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sacrificed at the altar of NIMBYism in order to make existing homeowners/landowners wealthier. People are wasting away commuting hours a day. Folks have been getting crammed into denser and denser open floorplans and bullpens for years.
People are willing to put up with these things when they don't have any other options. But when other companies are investing in supporting hybrid environments and you're stuck still requiring people to relocate to San Francisco permanently, you're going to start losing talent. Not supporting some kind of hybrid remote policy is going to become a serious competitive disadvantage in the talent market. You can still maintain your trendy urban office space to attract the college graduates who want that lifestyle.
[+] [-] apahwa|5 years ago|reply
sure, a ton of people hate working from home. some personalities and roles require in-person interaction. most people never considered wfh when choosing their apartment or house and don't have good setups. meanwhile, there are also a ton of people, like me, who have always _hated_ going into the office. being constantly distracted by coworkers, dealing with long commutes, and putting up with uncomfortable and loud offices.
yes, people need social interaction, but that doesn't have to come from coworkers. it is a very SF mindset to build your entire life around your work.. being in the office all day and most of your "friends" are coworkers.
[+] [-] mhuffman|5 years ago|reply
When I was young and starting college, I was poor and lived in a semi-rural area. So getting back and forth to all the classes was very difficult. Not to mention I had to work two jobs to support myself at the time.
I would have fucking loved to be able to do my classwork remotely and just hung out with other students as my schedule allowed. Of course it was not an option back then.
I have recently went back to university to advance my degree and it has nearly all been online. Much better! Frankly I met many more people than I did back in the day through the online tools and the fact that the classwork can be flexible around my life, versus the other way around was very convenient!
I can see how this might not work for labs, but for most other classes it seems to be a very viable alternative.
Also, I think you might be surprised about how much value people of any age put on being near other people at the time of learning. It obviously is very valuable to you, but I would expect you will find just as many that couldn't care less about that aspect of it.
[+] [-] dcolkitt|5 years ago|reply
This seems silly. Why would any company prefer workers with less experience.
If anything, I think you’ve got the causation backwards. Hot startups are full of young engineers, because they need to be located in dense metro hubs of talent. These areas heavily skew young, because people with families flee HCoL areas. The competitive advantage of a 25 year old is their willingness to live in a studio apartment.
Now that the we’ve built the technology and culture for fully remote companies, this calculus no longer applies. You can assemble a team of people on a globally unconstrained talent pool. Frankly, there’s no reason to expect a startup filled with 25 year olds to outcompete one with ten times the cumulative experience.
[+] [-] dustinmoris|5 years ago|reply
I think it is in some shape or form and it will only increase, because it's a more sustainable way of life to not have to travel every day. Remote work means less strain on cities, less traffic on roads, less inflated housing prices in metropolitan areas and so on.
> but it cannot be replaced by remote
In many areas in can be replaced and therefore it will.
> Humans just aren't robots and they need community
Before open plan office jobs in skyscrapers became fashionable people had for thousands of years their community at home, their street or village. You don't have to be a suit wearing slave to make some friends.
> To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need
Agreed. Remote studying is literally just reading a book on your own. Every successful self taught person has gone through that, but because they are intelligent they didn't have to take a student loan for it. They only paid a few quid to Amazon to buy a bunch of books.
University is massively overrated anyways. It's not needed for the vast majority of bullshit jobs nowadays. It just serves as a mean of class segregation to identify rich people from poor when giving them a job.
> Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
You can do this anywhere. I have worked remotely for a while now and I visit a lot of co-working spaces which are closer located to where I live. I don't have to slave myself through the rush hour commute into a densely overpopulated crammed city centre to please a master. I can get to a nice co-working space close to home at a leisurely pace without stress and still meet people, have interesting chats over lunch and make friends, be productive and get motivated in an environment. But I choose when to go there based on my personal needs. Some days I want to WFH because I need more headspace, or because I'm tired from a long day before and needed that extra half an hour sleep, or because I want to sort out an errand during the day without having to stress myself. Remote is the future for all jobs which can.
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent?
Skill isn’t age specific.
[+] [-] bjornsing|5 years ago|reply
I this is highly subjective and depends on how social you are, how much of an outlier you are in cognitive ability or interest and on what kind of social environments you have physical access to. If you are “middle of the pack” in all these aspects then sure, remote first doesn’t make sense.
On the other take me as an example: I enjoy working with other people face to face, but I’m extremely picky in terms of sparring partners. Most people just slow me down. Some are even offended, probably because they feel a bit intellectually inferior when I get going, leading to unnecessary conflict. I’ve been looking for people with similar cognitive style and interests in my physical surroundings for 20 years, and I’ve only found a handful. They are eccentrics, often in high demand and not easy to collaborate with.
There are of course physical environments where I would not be an outlier, or where I would even struggle to keep up. I’m not Terrence Tao. But I don’t have access to those environments.
From this perspective remote first makes a lot of sense. And while I am a bit older now I don’t think it would have been much different in my 20-ties.
[+] [-] QuesnayJr|5 years ago|reply
It should go without saying that a single professor does not speak for Stanford, or vice versa. For all we know everyone else at Stanford thinks Bloom is an idiot.
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|5 years ago|reply
I enjoy not having to commute, but I absolutely miss the banter across the desks and lunch conversations.
I would absolutely like to keep 2-3 weekly WFH days in the future, which would also give me more flexibility in where I choose to live, I really want to move farther from the city and closer to nature. A longer commute would be acceptable if I didn't have to do it every day.
[+] [-] vishnugupta|5 years ago|reply
Just to pick on one aspect; tools. Remote work tools are geared towards many-to-many collaborative activities. Whereas remote learning is primarily a one-to-many activity. Of course you have supporting TAs but still, it's about a very small set of people dispensing information/learning to a very large group students.
At the campus, the physical presence naturally fosters a whole range of interactions besides classroom learning, as you rightly pointed out. Replicating that is just impossible online.
Professional activities, however, is comparatively easier to replicate online, going by the evidence of how companies were able to go full remote just with a few day's notice. Uber, for instance, went full with just one day's notice. I was expecting a massive productivity drop. To my surprise, my team (I was a manager there) actually began shipping more features during full remote. Sure, it took ~2 weeks for us to find a rhythm but that's to be expected.
All this to say, I completely agree with you w.r.t. online education. It's been a shitshow. Education is so much more than just learning. But please don't extend that argument to the professional life. From what I've seen, remote work is here to stay, at least I hope it does. People in India have been working from their home towns instead of being stuck in expensive and shitty urban jungles. It'll spur the much needed growth of tier-2/3 cities in India.
[+] [-] ithkuil|5 years ago|reply
Mixing remote and non-remote cultures is hard but if done right it will outperform any of the two extremes you pick.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
I dont if you have ever been in uni but in my time it was all about putting 200 students in huge amphitheaters with one lecturer not caring at all about their audience. It has to be the worst way to learn anything.
[+] [-] pelasaco|5 years ago|reply
Is so wrong as "Remote working isn't a thing and never will be"
There are a lot of people that are interested in Remote studing. Sure it's not for everyone, sure not always 100% of the time, but I guess it would work pretty well and I personally would love to see "Remote college" becoming a thing.
[+] [-] belorn|5 years ago|reply
Then we have the added stress from places with open space/cubicle with poor sound isolation, people walking behind you, and constant interruption for which you have zero control over. Young 20-something Me could only really manage that with a corner chair and with headphones that blasted music so loud that people on the other side of the room complained.
I could however imagine a situation where I would enjoy the situation if given enough changes. If I were the group leader and decided who I worked with then the first problem goes mostly away. If the work I did was mostly social then the problem of noises and interruptions goes mostly away, and I might even want it to be a open space plan so I can walk around and stand behind my employees and check what they are doing. Doing that remotely would be much harder.
[+] [-] ilaksh|5 years ago|reply
Also, I am sure that Stanford online is disappointing compared to in person. But there are ways to improve the social aspects with software. The particular configuration of the software and how it's used will make a huge difference in the types or amount of online social interactions.
For example, if you want you can create a virtual dorm room in Gary's Mod or Rec Room VR and get your friends to log into it at lunch and dinner. But the fact that they aren't forced to interact with you because they are physically in the same space does not seem like it should be the only factor.
[+] [-] js8|5 years ago|reply
In any case, you could still have offices as a place for people meeting face2face and do the most "thinking" or "creative" work at home, it's not mutually exclusive.
[+] [-] skywhopper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llaolleh|5 years ago|reply
In terms of work, however, I think it depends on the organization and people's stage of life. If you already have a family, then WFH is much better to me and worth the tradeoff. Imagine being able to spend 2-3 hours with your young kid everyday at the cost of less face time with your coworkers.
[+] [-] pts_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewarrior|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yarky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hshshs2|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] troydavis|5 years ago|reply
The whole point of a 15,000-person survey like this is so that we're not all stuck guessing based on our own experiences. Obviously one can argue that what employers were telling employees they would do post-COVID as of October 2020 is not what employers will actually do (and give reasons why!), but it's still likely to be more accurate than any individual's speculation (including mine!).
In particular, the survey addressed 2 topics that a lot of comments seem to not incorporate:
1. At population, employer, and individual level, it's not either/or. The paper title doesn't do a good job of conveying this. All 3 entities seem open to everything on the continuum, based on their employees, work type, and so on.
Statements like "I promise that it won't stick for the broader society" imply a more binary outcome than the survey results predict (and maybe than anything predicts). The survey concludes that, of the roughly 50% of employees who can work from home, they'll average 2 days per week (or 23% of total hours worked). IOW, WFH doesn't need to move everyone all the time in order to have massive effects. Some people changing some of the time is enough.
2. Employer plans vs. employee desires. Lots of commenters state their preferences and then try to generalize from that, but.. the survey captured that too. To just skim those results, scroll to page 60 for employee-desired vs. employer-planned % of working days. Gist: if WFH is roughly the same productivity, employers plan ~22% of days and employees desire ~45% of days to be WFH. In all productivity cases, employees preferred a higher % of days to be WFH than employers.
Page 43 shows answers to the pay raise or cut employees would take in order to work from home 2-3 days per week.
It also breaks down the change in perception about WFH by demographic cohort on page 55. For example, those with no children and those with children at home both had significant improvements in their perception of WFH. Those with children had more improvement in perception than those without children. As the study wrote: "This 23 percent figure [post-COVID WFH as a % of full time days] is almost five times larger than in the pre-pandemic time use data, but still half as large as what workers want in a post-pandemic world."
Of course, there's a place for speculation and anecdotes. This paper - and hopefully soon, more studies like it - should let us evolve from speculating based on only our personal experience to thinking about its methodology and results.
[+] [-] user3939382|5 years ago|reply
Thanks for the quality analysis.
[+] [-] throwaway2245|5 years ago|reply
What I found surprising about this survey is that most people wanted to split their week between the home and the office (according to Figure 3).
Only 24% wanted to work never or rarely at home; 27% wanted to work always at home; and 49% wanted to work a split week.
That's very different from what most people appear to comment.
[+] [-] jo23562|5 years ago|reply
Just a few examples of how they differ:
* higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary.
* having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it
* childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal
* consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously).
* no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business)
To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.
[+] [-] cooleddy89|5 years ago|reply
The truth as always is somewhere in the middle. I do most of my banking online, but still visit financial institutions for important events (mortgages, large checks, etc.)
It does seem to me slightly odd that some people working in “tech”, aka an industry built on disruption, are adamant that WFH can never work. If anything, remote employees are a goldmine of valuable data that can be tracked. Wondering if a meeting is valuable? In person you have to gauge people’s thoughts or rely on surveys. For online meetings just see (anonymously) in real time who’s firing up their slack or multitasking.
Obviously there’s a extensive employee privacy issues, but the bottom line is that we have all the fundamental technologies needed to provide as much data on remote employees as we do in the office.
[+] [-] croutonwagon|5 years ago|reply
While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach)
Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a substitute for them browsing internet all day and just weren’t busy.
But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm.
Maintaining network and IP security is harder in many sectors. Just look at the SW breaches where m365 tenants seem to be vector. Look at the vectors cropping up. Huge rashes of phishing, people loading up corporate email on personal equipment. Rdp dos and the multiple flaws etc. and even if you have the hardware on lock, home networks are a cesspool.
Support teams are getting pinged at all sorts of hours because people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal)
I see more cultures being more amenable to wfh or flex schedules. But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types
[+] [-] ryanSrich|5 years ago|reply
Maybe those that haven’t been remote never saw this side of businesses, but as someone that will only work remotely, the options pre-Covid were exceedingly thin.
Almost no public companies allowed 100% remote work. Almost none. Honestly I can’t even name a single company that did, but I’m sure there is at least one right?
Also, it should be noted that when I say remote I mean they allow anyone, literally anyone that works at the company to work from Home. Not some one off anomaly for high performers (which I know companies like Google or Microsoft have allowed under certain circumstances).
Why companies have, and I think will continue to be , anti-remote and anti-worker is because of nepotism, elitism, and an over reliance on physical queues for communication.
It’s similar to how Silicon Valley is becoming Wall Street, with pay (often in clout) to play apps (ex: Clubhouse, which feels more like Harvard than an early social network - it’s also painfully uncool) and how they mirror closed minded and closed off business operations — these businesses and their yuppy middle managers rely on a physical presence to coerce employees into drinking the kool aid.
My hope is that employees start to reject these practices and instead force employers to accept remote work, but I’m doubtful since the leverage is mostly in the hands of business - think of the power FAANG companies have. Once they go back to forced commute work, everyone else will see it as an opportunity to do the same.
[+] [-] jl2718|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterGR|5 years ago|reply
All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.
[+] [-] ttul|5 years ago|reply
The OpEx on office space is significant - 10-15% of salary costs. So getting rid of the office or reducing its size and cost is like cutting pay by perhaps 5-7%. That’s a big deal.
[+] [-] stupidcar|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure that there will be a much greater prevalence and acceptable of working from home after the pandemic, but I'm equally sure that there will be a gradual but significant shift back to large numbers of people working in offices. The only way this won't happen is if there genuinely is a major uplift in productivity from remote work, and I'm incredibly sceptical about that. Self-reported improvements in productivity are worthless, IMO.
[+] [-] NestedLoopGoBrr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdaub|5 years ago|reply
When I started working from home a few years pre-covid, I also had the loneley-blues after a year or so. It's wasn't nice and, in fact, lead me to try working from an office again.
And what can I say. While yes, when I moved back in the office I loved socializing more, I soon became miserable again.
See, suddenly I couldn't lie down on my couch anymore for a quick rest. I couldn't "let my self go". Meditate. I had much more fast food and started to feel stressed and sick.
So I went back to home office. And indeed it's true what another commentor said here: WFH during covid is much different from WFH in normal times as me and other WFH friends made it a habbit of working together. You can visit cafe, work from park benches or convert your parent's place into your mega office while they're on vacation.
Ultimately, I ended up renting a room for myself. Now, you say it's an office. I say it's a cosy room that's 10min bike ride away from my home... I wouldn't call it office, but also not home.
PS:
Maybe it's what some people call an Attelier.
[+] [-] Fnoord|5 years ago|reply
While I'm sure some work and some appointments can (and remain) be done remotely, and I am glad its good for the environment, the current way of life (although it is necessary) is not my cup of tea.
[+] [-] sputknick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|5 years ago|reply
WFH ends the day your competitions beats you a few years/month in 'Time to market'.
[+] [-] terrencewells|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usremane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Understated_|5 years ago|reply
If I was king of the world I'd tell businesses (where feasible - warehouses still need people to be onsite, small businesses may not have the money for the tools for example) that they need to be able to offer home working for those that want/need it and office working for those that want/need it.
With that comes the correct tools and equipment, e.g. video conferencing, desktop sharing, telepresence, laptops, whatever.
I have been working remotely for several years with only occasional visits to an office and it works for me. I would hate to have to travel every day to an office but I like the occasional visit.
I get enough interaction with my family and friends (current COVID restrictions not withstanding ofc) but I have a separate room upstairs where I work so I don't have to sit in the kitchen.
It's horses for courses imo... the future needs to be flexibility-based.
[+] [-] chasd00|5 years ago|reply
It kind of boggles my mind to think about driving somewhere to do the same thing but in a different place.
[+] [-] wernercd|5 years ago|reply
I have a long commute and don't miss it... i do miss the books/podcasts and I miss the office. I hope we go to a 3 day home, 2 day office but we'll see.
Managers like having butts in seats. we'll see how it goes long term
[+] [-] altgeek|5 years ago|reply