Ok folks, get the pitchforks out. I’m going to express some skepticism about the tech industry’s new love affair: remote work. (thread)
For all its many virtues, the remote movement could be making light of human development in the workplace. Does it impede your growth in management skills? Is it preventing the formation of career-lasting connections? Is it creating organizational "bubbles" akin to social media?
To clarify, I'm not referring to flexible work-from-home arrangements. This is about full-remote, i.e. you don't get to share a room with others ever, or you do so infrequently during company retreats and such.
I'm not entirely convinced you can replace the social and interpersonal cues you get in a shared workspace with video and emoticons, no matter how good the tech has become. Getting to know and understand people is a big part of management. The tech is not lossless here.
Maybe experienced managers can somehow overcome this by simulating good habits they picked up years ago. But are we undermining the chances of a high-potential junior to grow into a good manager by letting them work remotely?
Orgs that scale beyond a dozen or so people rely on serendipity and natural socialization to widen people's lens about what's going on. Lunchtime conversation, work-related or not, may be the most unappreciated management tool we have. Remote makes you blind to this.
Tools facilitating informal/transitory socialization exist. HR tech will evolve to support high-five, show-and-tell and such types or "peripheral vision" interactions. Slack (for all its discontents) is loved by remote workers, precisely because of their visceral need to connect.
I'm skeptical about the inherent structure of workplace socialization tech. Its makers have incentives that don't always align with the people and companies using them. We've seen this story before with social media. What drives engagement is not always what's good for us.
The most valuable part of workplace relationships extends past a single employment cycle. My co-founder, some of my best colleagues, mentors, friends, social connections, are people I've met in a previous job. Are we willing to trade this for the convenience of not commuting?
Truly remote orgs will tend to be geographically spread - or else, what's the point? This is not incompatible with the modern business, but real life is very geographically driven. Are we sacrificing the opportunity to form lifelong friends and intellectual partners?
I struggle to articulate the last point. I can't help feel there's a certain naïveté in thinking that an organization can be reduced to process and structured touchpoints. Maybe for some types of projects, but humans tend to resist the objectification that comes with it.
There’s an ideological underpinning to this trend. Corporations put results in a pedestal. Meritocracy advocates insist to focus on "pure skill", looking at personal relationships and human dynamics with some suspicion. Skeptics like me are seen as "touchy-feely" and parochial.
Is this an inadvertent return to Taylor and the dehumanization of the workplace? The advocacy certainly does bring up some memories of 90ies business process consultancy bullshit - at least in it's simplistic depiction of organization in boxes and processes. There's more to it.
So, can remote work be part of an organization? Absolutely. Can you build long-lasting organizations primarily on remote? It has been done but it may be situational, or limiting in some ways; one has to be very conscious about what they’re giving up.
I'm not just an old fart, just a bit skeptical. I enjoy work from home. I often produce my best work this way. I love how it forces people to put extra structure in their work. I run a transatlantic company. I'm not a stranger to multinational teams.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we don’t know enough about remote and its long term effects on people and organizations. Companies taking a cautious stance are not “backwards” or parochial - perhaps they are just very thoughtful about breaking things we don't understand.
I know successful companies built on remote. I admire them. I notice they put a lot of effort to make it work and often remote is a flagship part of their corporate culture. I don't deny their success. On the contrary, I don't assume that their achievement is easily replicable.
