>I often see great remote employees, I just think it's important to note that we often view things in too binary a way. As in remote = good and we should hate everyone who doesn't allow it.
I think this is a very fair point to make.
>Not everything is so black and white and I honestly think in tech there are many roles that would suffer without the collaboration of an office environment.
This one too, but I think there's a big caveat there - these are roles that would suffer if the company doesn't adapt.
I can't speak for every company, but the ones I've seen & have experience with that have adopted some form of pro-"work from home" policy all fall into two groups: companies that adopt the policy in order to save money on infrastructure, and companies that want to encourage employee flexibility.
I've never seen the first group try to adapt: meetings are still held in conference rooms between the hours of 9:30 and 4:30, most discussion happens in hallways, managers judge employees on presence...
I think it's very possible for companies to design roles to encourage collaboration outside of offices; that said it's not necessarily easy or inexpensive. There are absolutely trade-offs that must be made.
But I fear that if you look at remote work only through the lens of saving money on office space -- or attracting top talent -- your company probably won't be one of the ones that does it well.
I think this is a very fair point to make.
>Not everything is so black and white and I honestly think in tech there are many roles that would suffer without the collaboration of an office environment.
This one too, but I think there's a big caveat there - these are roles that would suffer if the company doesn't adapt.
I can't speak for every company, but the ones I've seen & have experience with that have adopted some form of pro-"work from home" policy all fall into two groups: companies that adopt the policy in order to save money on infrastructure, and companies that want to encourage employee flexibility.
I've never seen the first group try to adapt: meetings are still held in conference rooms between the hours of 9:30 and 4:30, most discussion happens in hallways, managers judge employees on presence...
I think it's very possible for companies to design roles to encourage collaboration outside of offices; that said it's not necessarily easy or inexpensive. There are absolutely trade-offs that must be made.
But I fear that if you look at remote work only through the lens of saving money on office space -- or attracting top talent -- your company probably won't be one of the ones that does it well.