Why bother with offsites when video conferencing is ubiquitous?
After working in an extremely remote friendly workplace prior to the pandemic, and then with everyone working remotely for two years, I think the results of the natural experiment is in. There's zero benefit to being physically together in the 2020s.
Even when I've been offsite before, it's just a waste money. Sit in a room with my laptop? Uh... I was already doing that. Look at this person's screen? Already can did that. Go out and get Thai food and cocktails on corporate account? Well, I couldn't do that.
I joined a company and worked remotely for about a year before meeting anyone I worked with (in person). We eventually did all meet up and it was great.
There is just enough latency in video conferencing that people start talking at the same time a lot. This is fine in short meetings. But when we wanted to discuss larger structural changes for longer periods of time, it was exhausting. It worked much better in person.
> Go out and get Thai food and cocktails on corporate account? Well, I couldn't do that.
That also provides lots of value in my book. People talk about random shit and sometimes that creates good ideas. Also it's just nice to actually meet the people you work with.
I'm not saying you need constant off-sites, but meeting up sometimes is great.
You’re going to have to do better than simply stating that somewhere someone might possibly benefit and therefore everyone has to change their life to accommodate.
Me and most of coworkers in my org of 50 people fully voluntary come to the office, as being together in person increases our productivity, that was down during COVID.
Meanwhile you claim that because it works for you, it becomes a dogma that people shouldn't work together in person?
