Re:Silicon Valley firms in no hurry to open up offices despi...
by l72 on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @06:04PM
(#26573584)
You cannot have a mixed environment unless the company is a "remote-first" company. A remote-first company means that all policy is designed for remote work, but still has open office space for anyone who wants to come in.
Remote-first companies have specific policies about meetings and unscheduled conversations. For example, all meetings must be announced, available over video, recorded, with a write up at the end. All spontaneous chats happen over email, slack, or a wiki to make sure they are documented.
This levels the playing field for anyone working remote, so that they aren't completely isolated or left out of important decisions by those in the office.
Re:Silicon Valley firms in no hurry to open up offices despi...
by flukus on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @09:41PM
(#26575608)
> All spontaneous chats happen over email, slack, or a wiki to make sure they are documented.
That's just anti-human. I'm all for working from home but people in the office are going to chat just as the people working from home are going too. The bitch sessions about the boss just happen in the 1 on 1 video calls.
Mixed environments are significantly more difficult to sustain. FTF discussions are such big wins when it comes to volume of information shared and ability to quickly redirect to other topics as needed, that the employees who are remote will often find themselves cut out of the loop entirely.
So, given the choice, I'd much rather work for a remote-only company than be left out of the important conversations. It's not a deliberate decision to exclude the remote workers, it just happens naturally.
(As I said elsewhere, it's possible that will change post-pandemic, but I think that it's mostly an inevitable outcome of the typical office dynamics.)