It only seems ridiculous now because it turns out neckties weren’t really required. But we could look back with the same incredulity on spending $80k/mo for an office that the entire workforce commuted 30 mins to and from every day.
Although I am a huge proponent of WFH, I had found it very hard to build relationships during the beginning years of the pandemic, and it wasn't until travel has opened up and I met in-person many of the people who I've only ever met over Zoom that I was able to start building relationships, which noticeably accelerated a lot of the work that I do that relied on other people. It's just so much easier to break the ice with someone when meeting face to face. Also, people will tell you things when meeting 1-on-1 in person over a beer that they will never tell you in Zoom, and this applies to customers and vendors as well as co-workers, and is extremely useful to understanding the hidden forces which is sometimes crucial in doing your job well.
As they should. Zoom is monitored. Beer is not.
- A remote-only job, with no requirement to ever come in to "the office" to work (particularly not to do regular work, as opposed to a meeting), and
- The situation we had during the pandemic, when all jobs that could be had to be as remote as possible for safety, most socialization was severely curtailed, and travel was dangerous at best
I don't think it's at all out of the question for a "remote-only" WFH job to include travel, provided it's a) disclosed up front, and b) paid for in full by the company. This can even include occasional mandatory meetings with colleagues, either at some company-owned property or elsewhere.
Personally, I find that the best way to get those kinds of less-formal getting-to-know-you interactions with people you don't see physically face-to-face is by having an open text chat system—something like Slack, Discord, IRC, etc. I've got friends I met online a decade or more ago who I only know through such chats, but would feel very comfortable working "side by side" with digitally (if it were ever to come up) because of the rapport we've built over the years.
We parted ways about 9 months into the job when we both realised this wasn’t working.
My impression is that remote work for new employees needs a lot of explicit relationship and trust building that we get for free when we interact with people in an office.
Remote requires personal responsibility as well. From everybody
Remote first is a spectrum and dismissing lived experiences as “oh, you just haven’t experienced the right kind of remote first” helps no one.
What makes you think documenting everything exhaustively is a panacea? What if the quality of documentation sucks? Will your argument change to “you have to document everything to a certain level of quality otherwise you aren’t remote first enough”?
Please don’t feel I’m attacking you. I was a big remote first proponent before experiencing the difficulties of integrating with teams who didn’t know me except as a voice on a call.
After this, I’m more sympathetic to execs demanding RTO for culture reasons.
Companies that have gone fully remote, also quickly discover how much of their company knowledge is in one person's head, or whether it's well documented, which helps with the onboarding too.
Some companies have definitely moved to remote working better than others.
How would you demonstrate this?
I’m with a funded SV startup that’s been remote-only since its founding, a few years before covid. We have staff in at least five countries, and in the US, in at least five states (just based on the people I can think of offhand.)
The company is the leader in its field, which involves significant real innovation, and has many major enterprise customers.
I’ve helped onboard many employees, and I’ve managed one of the key product teams.
When I hear people talk about all the disadvantages of remote work, I just internally roll my eyes. As you say, they’re plugging their own personal preference. But that seems to be exactly what you’re doing with the quote above.