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I've been with my current company now for a little under 7 years. I've been remote since day one, though I used to go to the home office multiple states away about 3-4 times a year. In these past 7 years I've been promoted 3 times, and I've seen the company change from one where most of the employees worked out of the office to one where, today, on a typical day, there are 8 people in the office, out of a company employing about 100. About 16 people report up through me, and it's a rare day if more than 2 of them are in the office. My company's attitude is that this is the way things are now, though we do want to get most people to show up at the home office for in person activities twice a year.

I think being essentially fully remote can be very alienating for some, and very liberating for others. The newer / younger people we've hired, the people who allegedly need to see how I walk down the corridor to understand how they fit in... some of them have done great, and others have struggled, and it's because PEOPLE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME, and the best managers and for that matter the best co-workers period are those who understand that basic fact and are at least empathetic to the reality. To a point Ed has made frequently, I think I'm pretty good at this point at managing most remote people, but I'm not as good at managing others. Specifically I'm not as good at managing people who themselves are not as good at managing their own time and their own priorities. This doesn't mean they might not be highly productive, even brilliant people. Some people, I believe, just work better when they have Very Highly Defined Roles, while others work better when they can freelance and define their own spaces. Since I'm in the latter category, I tend to be better at managing similarly inclined people. But I'm also cognizant that others have different needs, and have made decisions to try and help address how PEOPLE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.

Most of the anti-remote stuff seems to fall into one of two related traps. Either there's a failure to see workers as individuals, instead just seeing them as abstract resources (which lends itself to a management style that is based not on managing actual people but on managing abstractions); or, there's a tendency to see the people who need greater structure as the workers around which all decisions ought to be made (which lends itself to a management style which is much more micro-management oriented). At worst, the blend of these two things leads to a micro-management of abstractions, which is where I think we see waves and waves of incoherent middle managers all designated to provide some kind of Definition to what's going on, but whose very existence undermines any such Definition, because their very jobs hardly qualify as work at all.

All that being said: it is much harder to escape from work when work is in your home. This is a problem with work generally, but it's particularly a problem with certain types of remote work, where I think workers and companies alike have done very poor jobs of establishing proper boundaries.

Incidentally, you know who has traditionally done a pretty good job of establishing proper boundaries? Labor unions. And if there's one thing the pundits hate more than remote work, it's labor unions...

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I think this is particularly rich for the tech companies resisting remote work. Anyone in those innumerable tech pitches to companies in the ‘80s and ‘90s like I was? It was all about increased efficiency, mobile work, work from home utopia. They sold us on working like this. Now the tech they sold us is (finally) working (after a million upgrade rounds, also enriching them) and they want to put it back in the lamp? Another great post, Ed. Please don’t stop - your stuff is too much fun to read.

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Different people are good at different methods of communication. For example, I thrived in the early days of the internet because writing comes naturally to me, which made me a valued member of communities like email lists and BBSes. If I were coming of age now I would probably struggle because communication among young people has shifted to images (Instagram) and video (TikTok), neither of which I am as good at.

As for office communication, I can get by in Zoom, but I thrive in multi-way text chat -- a method that I love because its total communication bandwidth is HIGHER than voice chat because it can support multiple conversations simultaneously. Those of us who are good at text chat can sort out the conversations and follow and participate in more than one, something that is impossible in online voice chat or in person.

Remote work rewards different communications skills than working in the office does. The problem that managers face is that they are a group that was selected for their skills at working in the office, along with having a personality type that is suited to that environment. That often puts them at odds with the people they are managing, who thrive in a work-at-home setting more than they do in the office. Thus the pressure to return to the office... not because it suits the workers but because it suits the managers.

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Of all the stupid bullshit that has been written about remote work, the one that truly is the lamest is this "young workers are really missing out by not being at the office" line, just absolute nonsense on so many levels. Yes, some office environments are okay, but I would argue the vast majority will just grind you down to a pencil nub, young workers in particular are NOT missing much

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to steal a phrase from one of Thompson's other outlets, he's Dollar Store Gladwell

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If there’s any true in 3. I would assume it’s down to practice effect. We’re used to brainstorming in person more than remote. The more we practice doing it remote, the better we’ll be. When you take that lense of, it seems better because it ‘just happens’ when in person, it’s more true to say we’re good at it in person, because we’re practiced at in.

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Totally agree. Anti-remote pieces are entirely founded on beliefs, not evidence or data. Almost all the 'supporting' studies I've come across are flawed or, as is the case in the Microsoft one, claim the data shows something it evidently does not. The lack of precision in defining the terms they bandy around is infuriating, as is the false correlations that are liberally use (patents = innovation? Really? How about patents = size of legal department).

One of the favourite arguments is about proximity. When I looked at the research, the original study was done in the 1960s. Before computers, the internet, mobile phones, digital platforms ... when the only two forms of communication were face to face or by letter. But, yeah, that must show proximity is important...

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I'm gonna be the unpopular penguin here while still not trying to waste too much of your time or mine, especially since it seems we're both pretty, er, firm in our take on this topic :D

> middle-of-the-road anti-remote pieces knowing that they

> are simply just the whining of bosses that are terrified of

> not owning people

Speaking on behalf of myself at least, I respectfully note that:

- I am deeply skeptical about remote-first in general

- I believe weekly-hybrid work (some days in office per week) is generally the best for most companies or teams that depend upon creative thinking and collaboration

- I'm not a boss, nor am I whining, nor am I "terrified of not owning people." I mean, come on, Ed, isn't that at least just a bit histrionic?

I have pretty extensive personal experience as someone who worked for a remote-only company for years, for a big tech company pre-COVID (and pre-hybrid), and now for the same big company that has largely embraced hybrid (but enabled many/most employees to work full-remote if they want).

And my staunch belief that hybrid is best (given the constraints mentioned earlier) largely come from my role as a program manager, where I'm only successful if my team is productive and happy (really! mobility -- especially amongst engineers -- is really high, so if they feel unproductive or frustrated, they can generally quite easily change teams or companies)

And now with decades of work experience and having worked with many teams, it's been very, very, VERY clear to me that our brainstorming, our strategy/OKR planning, our retrospectives/post-mortems... all of this and more have been gobsmackingly better with many or most folks meeting in person. Same with 1:1 walk-'n'-talks, spontaneous whiteboardings, and so on. The latency in even the BEST video-conferencing scenarios just doesn't lend itself to as fluid and comfortable of conversation (not to mention how mentally/emotionally exhausting it is staring at faces on video for hours)

So no, Ed, it's not just insecure, cruel bosses that are pushing the Evil Anti-Remote agenda and assaulting grandmothers and stealing candy from babies simultaneously. People like me (and many of my friends and colleagues) just find working face-to-face with others on a regular (at least weekly) basis is the best way to get shit done.

P.S. -- Ah, almost forgot. I also co-lead the onboarding and offboarding programs for my group, and now I've been able to see well things work for newcomers both pre-RTO and post-RTO. Again, no contest. Despite vigorous efforts (multiple buddies, frequent virtual checkins, etc.) during the all-remote era, the onboarders have been much happier and clearly more productive when being onboarded in person.

(How do I know? Duh, I've ASKED them, for starters! And, often, their managers.)

D'oh, sorry, I guess this wasn't that succinct afterall :(

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“and less likely to have serendipitous conversations that could lead to knowledge sharing.”

So how did MSFT baseline the “normal” number of conversations and the amount of knowledge sharing pre-remote? I know there’s probably some survey, but I find it hard to swallow.

I work with people located all over the US and my job pre-pandemic was *exactly* the same except I’m doing it at home now. (Plus my company consolidated real estate during pandemic so I have an hour commute to my physical office vs 15 minute before. I honestly don’t know why I have an office after the move other than my manager needing to ensure his department had it’s fair share of square feet. I’d be happy to hot desk when I needed to come in bc that’s what I’m doing now carrying everything back and forth.)

I’d be interested in how and in what way Thompson serendipitously knowledge-shared with his coworkers as he was writing this piece and how he think it changed it. My bet would be zero/none.

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I've started pushing the "don't show me content from xxxxx" site button on my phone when these get published now.

It's not that I'm closed to a different view. It's more that the view has revealed itself to be a signal for near total bullshit with misguided, if not willfully ignorant, intent.

It isn't lost on me that there are worthwhile financial motives for wanting to keep people moving back and forth all the time. Supermarkets have long been well aware. That's why for a 10 item shopping list, you'll need to be hitting about 10 aisles. Part of this is the same, just on the scale of a city/town instead of a grocery store.

If you don't have to fight traffic for 2+ hours a day, you probably don't listen to much radio. You definitely don't go to the gas station as much, and all those places you could be spending the money you're travelling to earn aren't tempting you to pull in and spend it while you're travelling to get more of it.

It's pretty transparent that these anti-remote articles are almost exactly like many of the overblown anti-crypto ones. There are those with deep pockets looking to deepen them and they all have a vested interest in using the biggest bullhorns they can buy to combat a threat to the status quo.

For now, at least you can use these articles as a filter. If folks are publishing them with a straight face, you can kind of be sure that a bunch of other crap they are putting out there is just that. You can get generally higher quality content just by chucking the lot of them out the window.

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