I think it's increasingly clear that blanket policies and one-size-fits-all WFH plans are just not going to work. People may gripe, but it seems like WFH is not going to be for everybody, in every position, at every stage in their careers. Hell, it might not even be feasible depending on the project you're working on this year.
In my experience - heavily relying on relationships built before is how a lot of things are actually get done. While my company closed its offices in March - I see people getting `socially distanced` coffee with their co-workers more and more.
I think there are tasks / kind of work, that requires minimal communication or relationship building, and it's possible to optimize WFH setup to be very productive at it (way more productive than in the office). A lot of comments on HN are alluding to that some people figured that out and are good at it.
There are also tasks that are hard or borderline impossible to do remote. Relationships are harder. Negotiations are harder. Random lunch conversations don't happen anymore, the serendipity of new learnings is lost.
And yes, I can't wait to go back to the office.
Has anyone figured this one out? It’s inhibiting hiring quite significantly at our firm. I can’t imagine we’re the only ones.
We rotate between the senior members for each new hire, where it makes sense. The senior member in return receives a $ bonus during this time, and their effort also contributes towards their performance review. I've also noticed it helps the new hire integrate with our culture.
For the 2-5 yr expirence: x1 checkin daily for the first month
For the 5+ yr experience engineer: x1 checkin daily first week.
For all: reduce checkins as appropriate for each, case-by-case.
Also given most managers schedules are packed, I’m not sure how feasible this advice is. Especially if they onboard 2 or 3 new hires.
People don’t understand the massive amount of time new hires can spend stuck (be it HR, software license issues, unfamiliarity with the process, etc).
PS: The second bit is surprisingly effective. I have created a few bare bones documents that ended up becoming very fleshed out in a year+ when some sends it back to me.
Nothing magical here, the culture shift will/should happen exactly because remote work is now the default.
The same way companies adopted Internet and digitized their workflows.
However, this is likely a problem that will get worse, not better, over time. The early WFH experience was able to cruise on the office connections, cross-training, personal knowledge, team-building, etc. that had happened previously. The longer people are away from the office, the more that hard-to-quantify stuff will decay. Plus, onboarding a new college grad has got to be challenging when there's not a group of experienced team members around them to be able to see when they're struggling or headed off the wrong path without realizing it.
All of these problems can be mitigated, but they won't be eliminated. There will always be some positions and employees where WFH makes sense; as I said, it has often worked for me. But the idea that half or even a quarter of employees would become permanently WFH, is fantasy. It's kind of like having a long-distance relationship. You can do it for a while, but the penalty mounts over time in ways that are hard to quantify, but real nonetheless.