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Back to the Office Soon?
Apr. 5th, 2021 11:50 amIt's been in the news recently that big tech companies are talking about when they'll ask employees to come back to the office. In some cases it's not ask but tell: some companies will require employees who've been working remotely for the past year to work in offices at least a few days a week. What's my take on it?
My employer has yet to announce reopening offices, even with a tentative date months away. (Some big tech companies are giving timeframes like "September" right now.) Even if they do, it's unlikely I'm going to return to an office. I was working remotely before Coronavirus closures kicked in13 months ago. Officially I was a remote employee for over a year before that, and as a practical matter I've been able to work remotely most of the past 8 years.
I could see some people in my company being asked to return to offices. Before Coronavirus my company backtracked on its long-held distributed workforce policy and started hiring developer staff with a preference toward new hires who could work in one of a handful of offices worldwide.
There is some validity to having developers co-locate. Anytime you have a team doing creative work it is vital to give that team as close to zero barriers to collaboration as possible. Everyone sitting in the same room (or suite, pod, etc.) is close to zero barriers. (It's not actually zero as people still have reluctance to interrupt others.) Putting people in different locations hundreds of miles apart introduces communication barriers. Even the best current interactivity tools (chat, web conference, Google docs, etc.) leave lots of barriers. And having people distribution across timezones is a much higher barrier to collaboration.
I'm not a developer, though. My technical peers are already distributed around the US and the world as a function of how we do our jobs in technical sales. And while my sales counterparts live primarily in the same metro region as I do, they tend not to work in company offices, anyway, as their work is largely individual.
Still, there is some value to us sales types sharing time in the office. It enables collaboration on ideas and approaches. And the value is not just low barriers when you want to communicate but also the existence of valuable unplanned communication. Cross-pollination is a great byproduct of having people working on adjacent things physically adjacent in the office.
A compromise between remote work and office work my regional sales team tried before Coronavirus was "Take Ourselves To Work Day". (The name was a gag on "Take Our Sons/Daughters To Work Day" programs that have been around for many years.) With TOTWD we decided we'd all work in the office one day a week, on Thursdays. It was a decent idea but it fell apart even before Coronavirus came around for lack of critical mass. In sales too many of us see huge productivity gains from not trekking into an office each day to believe there's more value available in unmeasurable collaboration gains.
My employer has yet to announce reopening offices, even with a tentative date months away. (Some big tech companies are giving timeframes like "September" right now.) Even if they do, it's unlikely I'm going to return to an office. I was working remotely before Coronavirus closures kicked in13 months ago. Officially I was a remote employee for over a year before that, and as a practical matter I've been able to work remotely most of the past 8 years.
I could see some people in my company being asked to return to offices. Before Coronavirus my company backtracked on its long-held distributed workforce policy and started hiring developer staff with a preference toward new hires who could work in one of a handful of offices worldwide.
There is some validity to having developers co-locate. Anytime you have a team doing creative work it is vital to give that team as close to zero barriers to collaboration as possible. Everyone sitting in the same room (or suite, pod, etc.) is close to zero barriers. (It's not actually zero as people still have reluctance to interrupt others.) Putting people in different locations hundreds of miles apart introduces communication barriers. Even the best current interactivity tools (chat, web conference, Google docs, etc.) leave lots of barriers. And having people distribution across timezones is a much higher barrier to collaboration.
I'm not a developer, though. My technical peers are already distributed around the US and the world as a function of how we do our jobs in technical sales. And while my sales counterparts live primarily in the same metro region as I do, they tend not to work in company offices, anyway, as their work is largely individual.
Still, there is some value to us sales types sharing time in the office. It enables collaboration on ideas and approaches. And the value is not just low barriers when you want to communicate but also the existence of valuable unplanned communication. Cross-pollination is a great byproduct of having people working on adjacent things physically adjacent in the office.
A compromise between remote work and office work my regional sales team tried before Coronavirus was "Take Ourselves To Work Day". (The name was a gag on "Take Our Sons/Daughters To Work Day" programs that have been around for many years.) With TOTWD we decided we'd all work in the office one day a week, on Thursdays. It was a decent idea but it fell apart even before Coronavirus came around for lack of critical mass. In sales too many of us see huge productivity gains from not trekking into an office each day to believe there's more value available in unmeasurable collaboration gains.
