We (I squarely place myself in this group) kind of are pushing office workers to adjust how they do things though. If you've got a few remote attendees in a meeting then you're running a remote meeting, for it to be effective for everyone you can't do things like scribbling on whiteboards, and you have to run it from a space where video calling actually works.
Post-pandemic I worked with a few project managers who hated this, and would constantly complain about people not coming into the office for meetings because now they had to actually plan things, rather than just finding a random corner and talking things over. I even kind of get it, semi-remote meetings are the worst of both worlds, with the people in a meeting room wanting to draw on a whiteboard, and the people who are remote often struggling with audio from whatever crap microphones are in the room.
I suspect, after another few years of having this same discussion every few weeks, things will eventually settle down with some companies choosing to be co-located companies, and others choosing to be fully remote. Similarly to how you might select which company you work for based on what they do, or the personality of the people you interviewed with, people will also take into consideration how they want to work. I very much doubt there'll be many companies which routinely have both remote and co-located employees.
It’s a thing pre-pandemic for larger teams anyway. You often have someone in a different timezone / office maybe in another department and remote or not, it’s a video call.
If the problem as you say is that managers are too lazy to plan then they should do their job instead of making it worse for everyone.
Unplanned meetings are the worst because you get forced into decisions no 1 has thought over. The managers assume we’re good because they don’t understand the implications.
I think its unfair to characterise these managers as too lazy to plan, more that previously they could often resolve things by quickly grabbing a few people and talking things over, and now that involves a game of calendar Tetris to get the necessary people on a call at the same time. At least in the case I'm thinking of this was more a corporate failure to adjust to remote work, instead of introducing a culture of asynchronous communication what used to happen in the office just got transplanted into MS Teams, resulting in everyone being almost permanently on video calls.
Previously I could dig the ground and find gold too. And previously people would come out with a leaf around their private parts. If the manager can come into the offices with just leaves I'd be happy to accept that it's not their issue.
Startup founders originally don't have to manage. Do they get the blame when things go wrong when the company gets bigger? Hint: yes. i.e. we're all forced to adapt. It's not only the managers.
> At least in the case I'm thinking of this was more a corporate failure to adjust to remote work
That's correct - the corporate includes the managers though - as many chains up as needed.
Most of the teams I have worked on for the last decade have been spread across multiple offices which lead to going into a small office for a dozen people to be on different teleconferences in large open areas disrupting everyone. We started working from home naturally pre-pandemic at one of these jobs because it didn't make sense to come in and struggle to hear and communicate for no good reason.
> We (I squarely place myself in this group) kind of are pushing office workers to adjust how they do things though.
Well, sure. We're asking that our reasonable desire to work remotely be accommodated.
Some are perfectly willing to be flexible.
Others are absolutely livid that you would dare to ask them to change how they do things to accommodate anyone else in any way.
I honestly have very little sympathy for that type of person. The "everything was just fine before, just shut up and go back to how it always was" attitude completely ignores the fact that for many, many people, things were not fine before, and WFH has been a godsend for so many.
It's really not a simple live and let live situation especially if some people on a team aren't local at all so they can't drop in one day per week or whatever for meetings. I'm in a very distributed group at a large company so I have no skin in this game. But if you have a largely co-located team with a few remote members, those who are co-located probably really do need to change their work practices to accommodate those who are remote--and those who are remote may have to accept that they'll probably end up not fully participating in their team's activities and decision-making and will have to decide if that works for them.
True, but how often is whiteboard work a shared activity? At least in my experience, that's vanishingly rare. It's almost always just a visual aid for one person communicating with a bunch of others.
I have never seen a remote worker trying to push an office worker to work from home because it's more efficient. I have seen plenty of office workers trying to push remote workers into the office because of synergies and "water cooler chat". It's not the same thing.
Remote workers do not push coworkers to work from home but they do push them to spend their workday in video conferencing software.
You many not feel like this is a substantial imposition, but many people feel that it is easier to have discussions in a physical room with things like physical whiteboards and eye contact. Using digital analogues can be nearly as effective, but it requires everyone adopt new processes.
I worked with teams pre-pandemic which had rules to the effect of if anyone was on a video call, everyone should be on an individual video call, which I'd argue is really the only way to have the remote people be 100% participants. So, yeah, if 75% of people on a team are in an office they're forced to work as if they were remote to a significant degree whether they like it or not.
Yeah. I vividly remember how it felt to drive all the way to the office one day only to spend my day in video calls. It was essentially like working from home with a longer drive and worse lighting.
I never mentioned efficiency or any other justification for remote/hybrid work. We’re talking personal preference here.
If someone’s preference is to work in a company where 100% of the employees are in office, then someone at that same company who pushes for remote work or hybrid work is pushing their preference on someone else.
But that is 100% fine. Just as it’s fine for someone to advocate against remote or hybrid work. Neither are right or wrong.
I think there is a big difference advocating for what's best for you and letting everyone else do their thing, and trying to control other people to please you better.
Yes, it’s true that those are different things. But the remote vs. in-office argument isn’t as simple as “do your own thing.” Sure, it can be made that simple, but it doesn’t represent the situation well.
Some subset of people who want to work in an office want to do so only with people who only work in an office as well. For these people, “everyone do your own thing” is not a satisfying solution. And it doesn’t have to be! Work doesn’t have to satisfy everyone.
If you work with people like this and say, “just do your own thing, it works for me” then you are trying to control other people because it pleases you better.
And again, there is nothing wrong with this. You are looking out for yourself, which is fine. It’s then up to your employer to make a decision on policy and then the employees decide if that’s a policy they want to work under.
No, I am not controlling anyone in that case. I am treating other people as professionals and letting them structure their work the way they think is best. Maybe it would be even better for me if they all worked from home, but I am not telling them to. I am questioning why the office workers try to make other people return to office with bad faith arguments (water cooler talk and synergies), when remote workers seem just happy to be working from home, without pressuring office workers to come and join them.
> I am treating other people as professionals and letting them structure their work the way they think is best
Again, you're ignoring that the office workers preference isn't simply to work in an office. It's often to work in an office (only or primarily) with other people also in that office.
> I am questioning why the office workers try to make other people return to office with bad faith arguments (water cooler talk and synergies), when remote workers seem just happy to be working from home, without pressuring office workers to come and join them.
You're making the bad-faith argument that a person in the office and a person working at home is a win-win situation. The remote workers may be just as happy, but those in the office are not just as happy.
I get it. People like remote work. People want to protect their right to work remotely. But at least acknowledge that some people are negatively affected by the push for remote work.
The situation doesn't need to be a win-win! Somebody can lose out on what they think is best for them. That's 100% fine. It's up to the company to make a decision and then up to the employees to decide how they'll react to that decision.
They have plenty of other office workers to talk to. For some reason, that is not enough, and the office workers need a better argument than "real product development happens at the water cooler". For the employer to make an informed decision it's better if the arguments are honest.
It can be a large win-small loss situation too. Remote workers gain two hours of commute back and forty hours of focused work. Office workers lose the open floor plan vibe (it's called back to office but tech workers don't have offices) and ability to push around their colleagues, or whichever the actual reason is. I don't understand it fully. It doesn't seem morally justifiable to me, and they encroach more on the professional autonomy on the remote worker than the remote worker does to them. The office workers wouldn't like it if they were being coerced to work from home for some BS reason.
> For some reason, that is not enough, and the office workers need a better argument than "real product development happens at the water cooler".
Here's the thing: they don't need a better argument. They don't need an argument at all. It's their preference.
> I don't understand it fully. It doesn't seem morally justifiable to me, and they encroach more on the professional autonomy on the remote worker than the remote worker does to them.
Here's the thing: it doesn't need to be morally justifiable to you or anyone else. It's a preference for working in-office with other people in-office.
I think you do understand this it's just that you don't like it because you have your own preference.
You don't need an argument for a preference. If you try to coerce other people according to your preference, you need an argument, as you would in any other context. For some reason, the RTO arguments are very bad. Is there some part the proponents can't say out loud?
No. It's possible my stock options would be worth more if the office workers adopted the more efficient form of work from home. Maybe the hybrid meetings would be more enjoyable fully remote. I still wouldn't think about trying to coerce them into that with talk about synergy or the online version of water coolers. That's a bad thing to do. Let them enjoy the office, and others remote.
> If you try to coerce other people according to your preference, you need an argument, as you would in any other context.
You may think you're more likely to get your way if you have a compelling argument but history has proven that's not always true.
The argument is, "I would like this better."
> For reason, the RTO arguments are very bad. Is there some part the proponents can't say out loud?
No, I believe the part being said out loud is, "We prefer to work at a company where all employees are in office." That's all you need to say. The only people I've ever heard talk about water coolers are the dismissive WFH people.
They exist: a managing director and an executive director at my last place of employment used the words "water cooler" on all-hands meetings among their justifications for RTO. "Coffee machine" was another variation. Swiss financial institution. I no longer work there, because I don't need to waste 2 hours/day on trains and buses just to spend my entire day on video calls with other international management. I'd rather raise chickens.
It has nothing to do with getting your way but working efficiently and with respect for the autonomy of your colleagues.
That's a bad argument. Sounds like we should not work from the office then. What comes after the "I like making others work in the office, because"? That's the quiet part not being said out loud. I'm interested.
That's not what I'm hearing or what you would read in an announcement for one the partial RTOs that have happened at some tech companies.
> If you work with people like this and say, “just do your own thing, it works for me” then you are trying to control other people because it pleases you better.
No you explicitly aren't. Not bending to someone else's preference is not "controlling" them.
This is correct only if you also believe that a company mandating RTO is not controlling their employees because they are not bending to someone else's preferences.
Not really. Giving employees the choice to work from home or not is the opposite of controlling them. Just like giving employees the option to work only forty hours a week is not controlling them but giving them liberty. It's such a good thing it's law in many countries.
No, because the company is requiring the employee to do something. The employee refusing to return to the office is not mandating action from anyone else. The company requiring RTO is requiring a specific action. The company is asserting control over the employee.
Control in and of itself is not a bad thing, the employer/employee relationship is about exchanging money for control of ones time, but it's still control.
But refusing to return to the office because your co-worker prefers to work in a full office? That's only control in the same sense that my refusing to let someone stab me in the chest is a limitation of their freedom of movement. Sure, if you want to really twist your perspective you can get there, but it's not a useful definition.
Cynical take, but to me the only preference the WFH people are putting on the in officers is the WFH's preference not to be made the source of socialization and entertainment for the in officers.
