Why do you need them so highly available? Why can't you figure out what you need on your own by default without ruining the productivity of others? Encourage good documentation, ask fewer and more deliberate questions, etc.
What matters is that employees get their work done on schedule, attend and contribute what's necessary to meetings, and don't struggle to communicate well. It was never easy to get a hold of someone in the office either and you even had to waste time walking around to find out. Nothing has really changed except a lot of good for those who prefer wfh.
Why? I'm a software engineer working in an agency and I work exactly like you're describing. If I feel like going on a run, I'll mark myself as AFK and go on a run. If I feel like closing my laptop at 3 and go shopping, I'll work later in the day when I'm not busy.
I still deliver on my deadlines and contribute more to the company than most colleagues. If you ping me on my phone I'll probably reply at any given time, and I put emphasis on written communication about issues I'm handling. Ideally, I've already written down all of the information you'd want to talk to me about.
This "style" works really well for me.
I am sure as a dev, with sufficiently large work packages, WFH is just a breeze. But not in my job.
"remote but still sync" feels like a major failure mode of being remote to me. Being able to work and communicate async is important for productivity in a remote environment.
Someone clicking and talking through a question or process at the time that works best so a meeting isn’t needed unless there’s disagreement.
It’s amazing.
Second, people in office can be just as unavailable or unproductive as from home. There are a million ways to slack off or be intermittently absent.
Third, it's a matter of gender equality too. If the childcare is split 50% then one simply cannot work like someone without kids, or one needs someone else to take care of the kids. If it's not split then 99% it's the women who stay at home while the men build their careers.
Your first two points are both ireelevant to me, because "can be" doesn't help in my daily work. All that counts, in this subjective report of mine, is my experience. And I tell you, WFH is less productive when it comes to working in a team, period.
Put it the other way around: gender inequality of someone having a stay-at-home-wife is not reason enough for everyone else to be working the same. Having a stay-at-home-wife can't be the only way to equalize to childless workers.
> All that counts, in this subjective report of mine, is my experience.
My personal experience is the opposite. Office-goers perform worse, are the lesser talent left behind by those that can afford to leave for full WFH jobs, and try to compensate by putting in more office-chair-time and office politics, which just compounds to more problems for those that actually work.
There you go.
Daycare is a possibility instead of having one parent takes care of kids. If that’s not an option there are other creative child care options emerging that can work.
As for not working like someone without kids.. maybe I could learn to be twice as effective with half the time at work like having to be as a parent. Sometimes we can’t reframe work to work harder than we feel we should have to.
The bottom lines is off the life we want is uncommon it might take an uncommon approach and balance.
Many childless people are very inefficient with their time too as contrast.
Managing interruptions and organizing projects into very small steps to better be able to use tiny pockets of time after proving to be critical and a super power.
in austria/germany kindergarten and school traditionally is half day. afternoon childcare is considered special and very expensive, if you can even find a place. finding a space in kindergarten can be a problem too.
many parents want to send their children to childcare but they simply can't
bad quality daycare, lack of motherly sensitivity, spending more than 20 hours a week in daycare, daycare before 2 years of age.
that report also claims that daycare generally affects the socioemotional competence of children, and that 25% of children that received full day daycare by age of 4 show significant problematic behavior even if the daycare is of good quality.
the quality of parental care is the strongest factor for the development of social and cognitive development.
another article claims that kindergarten does not have a positive effect before age 4.
on the other hand another article claims that children that receive some (but it doesn't say how much) external care in the first two years of life are less likely to later have psychological illnesses, and children that start kindergarten only at 4 are twice as likely to get sick. (personally i doubt that, but there it is, research is conflicting, and the jury is still out). but that same article also claims that things have improved over time. before the 90s, early daycare had a negative effect while after the effect became positive.
i am not saying that there is only one truth, but as a supporter of the attachment theory of parenting, i tend to side with the idea of keeping kids at home early, and only introducing daycare very gradually and i can also confirm some of this with my own experience.
so they didn't have any serious work assigned to them, and you wonder why they have the day free for themselves?
they are subtly unavailable during work time
when i am focusing on coding i am also unavailable. please don't expect me to be available any time you shout. i am not your personal assistant.
Why should someone without a family invest more at work just because you consider work a secondary thing?
It is.
> Why should someone without a family invest more at work just because you consider work a secondary thing?
This is a weird take.
Do you get mad at your coworkers when they take time off?
But dont forget that family is an optional thing, that you decided to go for. Your coworkers without a family actually dont care how you spend your spare time. But if you are using your family as an excuse at work, we start to care, and see that you are trying to enforce unfairness.
Its your family, deal with it as you like, but dont take it with you to work.
You sound like those American walmart managers that tried to set up in Germany and got BTFO because spineless business worship is not entertained.
Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
This is not acceptable, even though I totally understand these people like that.
Some even have a 40 h job and admit openly that since they are doing WFH, they effectively have the whole day for their personal endeavors. Although in the story I am thinking about, there were no children involved. To the contrary, it is about a person 5 years away from retirement, and their boss has apparently given up wanting to legally fire them and trying to make them do meaningful work. So the solution was to push them off to WFH, and not think about the topic anymore.