Here’s the actual study if anyone cares to read it.
Skimming it, a couple things I noticed: This was a study of over 7,000 people across all departments at a large healthcare system. They found on-site workers skewed younger with shorter tenure and remote workers skewed older with longer tenure.
One potential pitfall: They didn’t control in any way for department or role, and so floor nurses and housekeeping staff who must work fully on-site are being compared to tenured nurses working utilization review or revenue cycle staff whose job is billing/coding and who don’t have to interact with anyone in their roles. In-person and remote jobs in healthcare tend to be very different jobs. I don’t know how well this study could be generalized to other types of job settings based on this info
I can’t believe how much more I get done when I’m left alone and focused on the task at hand.
I don’t feel particularly isolated. Everybody is different but a once-week team chat and seasonal social lunches fill my cup.
Turns out when you can do errands and meet non-work friends for coffee as you please you don’t need to lean on your office family so much for connection and purpose.
When we got a new CEO one of the first things he mandated was RTO. He said the alternative was to shut the office down, and that he was fine with that (I highly doubt that) but a decision had to be made. And so RTO it was, because that had better vibes or something. It’s fascinating, the leadership has during several meetings mentioned how much nicer it is now that people are in the office, but none of the “grunts” I’ve spoken to like it.
Our CEO started talking of RTO while he himself was at home, not even a Teams background to try and hide it. Haven’t seen him in any office during any of the subsequent townhall meetings either. He’s just one twunt in a massive circlejerk
RTO work often is about control and not about cost or efficiency.
Also because commercial landlords demanded it. In Canada the biggest push for it was from Oxford Properties. They even managed to get the Mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, who is about as liberal as we’re gonna get up here to push for it. Never voting for that corporate shill again.
Or encouraging people to quit on their own. It’s a lot cheaper than firing people.
Quit my last job over being asked in once a week. It was the commute rather than the office that I really wanted to avoid but it was also an awful open plan hotdesk office for a company of hundreds of people I didn’t know or care about.
New role is office based but I don’t need to drive or take public transport and teams have their own rooms to work in. Much smaller company too, under 30 people. Banter is far better here and that helps quite a bit.
I only work 25 hours a week, was that part of the study?
Awesome, now all I need is a (remote) job…
Turns out the commute, fluorescent lighting, constant interruptions and performative desk sitting weren’t secretly essential ingredients for human happiness after all. Shocking. Next study: 7,700 managers discover that seeing someone in a chair is not actually a productivity metric.
I’m about to support a satellite launch later this month. Guess what, I have supported the development from my house for the last 5 years. Surprise surprise, butts in seats aren’t necessary.
Performative desk sitting is the worst. Got nothing to do so I have to just click on things.
And 7,600 of them discover that aside from micromanaging and degrading the well-being of their employees, they have no other substantive job duties, and their employment is completely pointless.
I became a manager about a year ago. Now that I’m part of the “inner circle”, I can see firsthand what I suspected for the past 20 years.
There are 2 types of managers.
There are cunts bosses who treat their employees as property for their personal gain and advancement. They demand productivity at all costs (see: LLM-cogsuckers), punish for mistakes and pressure people into responsibilities they should take. They are the ones who want RTO to exert control on their employees. They are the ones who “joke” you must take a half-day leave if you need to go before 6PM. They are the ones who openly shit on their employees (or other teams employees FWIW) because they’re not benefiting them enough. They are not part of the team, they feel and act above everyone in it.
The second type, which I strive to be and most of my closest “manager friend” are, are servant-leaders. They want to get shit done by easing roadblocks and making technologically informed decisions. They understand that productivity is a consequence of a functional team and happy employees. They take on responsibility for mistakes and push the team towards finding solutions to prevent them. They understand that LifeTM is more important than work. They are an integral part of the team, they’re not the boss but a full member with a different role and different responsibilities, like a PO or a data analyst.
As a tech lead first and a trained Scrum Master second, I feel much more comfortable in the second role. I help the team internally and report and manage external roadblocks with other teams. It’s what I already know. I hate the hierarchical part of the job.
I had 2 such 2nd type bosses in over 20 years.
You really notice they’re how you described when they’re gone - the deluge of shit begins almost immediately.This guy manages and gets it.
Most of my managers have been the second type, although how effective they are at it has varied a lot. Some are very passive and that has been good and bad, being left alone is great when things are going well. But when you need help they are useless.
The best have been the ones that know a decent amount about the job, they can either help you directly or know exactly where to point you for it. That or they understand the pain and you can both cry together for 4 days with a SQL database and increasingly vague error messages.
I’m all for as much remote work as possible, but I would love a study to include commute length and mode of transport. When I lived a 20 min walk from my office it was great and didn’t mind being at the office full time.
I moved away and it’s now a 30 min car drive which I really hate, a 1 hr bus journey, or 45 min bike ride.
I wouldn’t mind the bus journey so much, as I can read a book on my way, but the unreliability makes it feel so much worse.
And despite being longer than the drive, I much prefer to cycle into work, and I’ll usually do extra days in the office during the summer as an “excuse” to be on the bike.
I‘ve read a study somewhere that compared car and bike commutes. I turned out that people were much happier riding bike and have real life interactions with people at the streets than sitting alone in an iron box and drive a car.
Despite this, having the same times as you, I enjoy riding bike more because the commute time is always the same. Nobody can stop you on a bike. No traffic jams, no accidents that blocks a road, no rush hour stress.
A couple of important caveats:
Still, Johnson said face-to-face interaction can play an important role in helping coworkers build relationships, especially if they are just starting out in their careers.
“Remote works better after you know people,” she said. “So there is still a benefit of having some face time.”
So, it does rather beg the question, what should one do if someone is joining an existing team?
Based on two decades of experience: As a general rule, there should be regular in-person team events (around two a year and just for fun). In addition, there should be joint training sessions (also around two a year). New staff members require a great deal of attention from their team, both at these events and when working remotely, particularly at the outset.
A step further it should be more than twice a year I would say once a quarter would be more preferable. There should also be one day a week everyone on the team should be expected to be in the office. Beyond that max 3 days a week none of this minimum bullshit.
Also if there’s an option to go to the office, that works too. I’d like to have an office to go to once a month or less, just for the social, meet people irl, etc, but wouldn’t give up remote work for it.
In your experience, have any online social things worked well? We’re always looking out for stuff where I am.
Cooking together is brilliant: just yesterday we held our summer strategy meeting at a cookery school, where we cooked and enjoyed a three-course meal together. Basically, anything that encourages plenty of interaction and offers a completely different setting to the usual one is ideal.
it does rather beg the question
Nope. It just raises the question.
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Stop this bullshit, if you want me to work from home you have to considerably increase my salary so that I can rent a place with an office and setup the office.
For all the gas money I’ve saved, I invested in my own WFH setup. Not having a dedicated space would make it a challenge
Wat? Are you for real or bad sarcasm?
In other news, the university behind this report has been implicated in corporate funded studies. Read more here.
That single example happened when Obama was president. Got anything more recent?
I mean… how else do they get funded? Someones payin’ for those studies.
