Really enjoyed this. I share your skepticism about the permanence of the remote work shift. I see a lot of hot-take types on Twitter who sound convinced remote work will remain the norm even post-pandemic. Why? Why would most companies allow their employees to never come back to the office, simply because remote work went all right during the pandemic when there was no other option? I think a lot of people who are enjoying remote work and thinking this is their new normal might be in for a rude awakening (even if it doesn't come until... summer 2021?) when their employer tells them, "Ok, come back to the office now."
* The loss of "work friends." We have no ability to just "hang out" and all meetings have fixed purpose. Multiple people have lamented that they have zero new friendships formed in the last year from work.
* We don't know how tall each other are (via one of my team members, who pointed this out).
* New employees feel very isolated. There's no "casual" way to ask for help at the end of a meeting.
* There's no good way to read body language for things like "sitting at the back of the room" next to a friend in a meeting. Where you sit actually signals a lot -- it signals comrade in arms.
* Days feel more "tiring". I think it's because you sit closer to the vc screen at home and can't easily do things like take a walk together.
* Time zones are more fractured as people have spread out remotely.
* I ran an offsite with +1's. Outside the introductions that everyone made, there was no good way to pair off and chat during the activity, so the "meeting" of significant others felt very surface-level.
This is a great list. And a lot of these are just unconventional instances of the lower bandwidth of remote work. Perhaps it is more understandable if we translate lower signal into "higher friction," both for communication but also for social bonding and trust building. A world of complete remote work feels like some dystopic vision of the future, where everyone is a mercenary for hire.
Since I'm outside it right now, I'm fascinated in this mass experiment of Coase's Theory of the Firm.
Really enjoyed this. I share your skepticism about the permanence of the remote work shift. I see a lot of hot-take types on Twitter who sound convinced remote work will remain the norm even post-pandemic. Why? Why would most companies allow their employees to never come back to the office, simply because remote work went all right during the pandemic when there was no other option? I think a lot of people who are enjoying remote work and thinking this is their new normal might be in for a rude awakening (even if it doesn't come until... summer 2021?) when their employer tells them, "Ok, come back to the office now."
> I remain skeptical.
Noticed effects, in arbitrary order:
* The loss of "work friends." We have no ability to just "hang out" and all meetings have fixed purpose. Multiple people have lamented that they have zero new friendships formed in the last year from work.
* We don't know how tall each other are (via one of my team members, who pointed this out).
* New employees feel very isolated. There's no "casual" way to ask for help at the end of a meeting.
* There's no good way to read body language for things like "sitting at the back of the room" next to a friend in a meeting. Where you sit actually signals a lot -- it signals comrade in arms.
* Days feel more "tiring". I think it's because you sit closer to the vc screen at home and can't easily do things like take a walk together.
* Time zones are more fractured as people have spread out remotely.
* I ran an offsite with +1's. Outside the introductions that everyone made, there was no good way to pair off and chat during the activity, so the "meeting" of significant others felt very surface-level.
This is a great list. And a lot of these are just unconventional instances of the lower bandwidth of remote work. Perhaps it is more understandable if we translate lower signal into "higher friction," both for communication but also for social bonding and trust building. A world of complete remote work feels like some dystopic vision of the future, where everyone is a mercenary for hire.
Since I'm outside it right now, I'm fascinated in this mass experiment of Coase's Theory of the Firm.