Re:Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting l...
by cblconfederate on Thursday April 01, 2021 @05:43AM
(#26658385)
I believe it still is in its infancy. Cities and societies have not adapted for remote workers yet, at all. OTOH the office has a whole ecosystem of transportation, real estate, cafeterias, cleaning etc that is adapted to it.
Sure, being in the same space is a different kind of connection, the question is which part of that connection is needed for work. I 'd personally rather share a cowork space with my friends rather than whoever the company chooses for me, and i think that's going to be a trend in places that house lots of remote workers. There are in fact cities being redesigned around remote workers like Madeira. I think the actual problem that people complain about is not the lack of physical bodies at work, but the lack of physical bodies in general. That needs to change if people are going to work remote in large percentages, people will need to either find more friendly neighbors or just start talking to their neighbors , like people did a few decades ago.
And then we haven't even began to scratch the surface of ways to connect with coworkers. I find that sharing a gaming environment (like e.g. secondlife) gives a sense of presence, space, and connection and takes away that lingering anxiety of "where is everybody?" that I get when i work at home. Slack also does that to a small extent.
Ultimately, remote work is objectively giving people more options, and that is a measure of progress, so I see the transition as inevitable. I think people are being held back by the current designs of modern big cities, which have been entirely shaped around the home-work routine. In fact, large parts of the rewards of "real life" (e.g. making new friends) has been moved to the office for purely logistical reasons (other places of congregation stopped existing). This isn't inevitable, remote workers will develop new habits in a few years. Historically it's the cities that changed to adapt to work conditions, not the other way around , and now a critical mass of workers is ready for the change (In fact, the switch to remote was possible years earlier, COVID just accelerated it).
Sure, being in the same space is a different kind of connection, the question is which part of that connection is needed for work. I 'd personally rather share a cowork space with my friends rather than whoever the company chooses for me, and i think that's going to be a trend in places that house lots of remote workers. There are in fact cities being redesigned around remote workers like Madeira. I think the actual problem that people complain about is not the lack of physical bodies at work, but the lack of physical bodies in general. That needs to change if people are going to work remote in large percentages, people will need to either find more friendly neighbors or just start talking to their neighbors , like people did a few decades ago.
And then we haven't even began to scratch the surface of ways to connect with coworkers. I find that sharing a gaming environment (like e.g. secondlife) gives a sense of presence, space, and connection and takes away that lingering anxiety of "where is everybody?" that I get when i work at home. Slack also does that to a small extent.
Ultimately, remote work is objectively giving people more options, and that is a measure of progress, so I see the transition as inevitable. I think people are being held back by the current designs of modern big cities, which have been entirely shaped around the home-work routine. In fact, large parts of the rewards of "real life" (e.g. making new friends) has been moved to the office for purely logistical reasons (other places of congregation stopped existing). This isn't inevitable, remote workers will develop new habits in a few years. Historically it's the cities that changed to adapt to work conditions, not the other way around , and now a critical mass of workers is ready for the change (In fact, the switch to remote was possible years earlier, COVID just accelerated it).