Remote work has just as many issues as in person.

But perhaps a lot of the issues are the employers problem more than the employees. Hence the shift and the tension

it's definitely a situation with no one coming out looking good. employees should be honest, but bad companies really screwed the pooch being hawks trying to preside over every minute of their lives. messaging them in dead hours of the night, micromanaging breaks, being worried when they leave about "leaking secrets", pressure to work overtime (e.g. stealing their time for no extra pay). There's no way in high hell I'd tell my workplace anything happening outside of it unless it involves extended leave.

But I do think either way that's it's unacceptable to have two "full time jobs" with shared hours, unless all 3 parties agree to it. I have some long term freelance work I'd continue on the side, but that's specifically because the hours are low and I can fit them into evenings after conventional work hours.

However it's also easier for a bad, micromanaging managers to make their team appears low performant. That's basically the trade off.

Moreover if you ask those 20 people during performance review, it'll clear as day.

* The impact is actually much smaller than you initially think

* You're not vocal enough about that, or that's just one-off thing (high performers usually pretty consistent)

* You're in a bad environment where good work isn't getting recognized

I've did exactly that and my coworkers keep know how that benefits them, so it's not impossible. Anyway, being vocal on what you're doing or achieve in remote work is also crucial, if the environment cannot discover your achievement easily.

Sure, it'll be somewhere. Will a manager bother looking around for that when it comes time to layoff? Do they even care about that to begin with? Are they even close enough to the product where they bother to look at something like a commit log? Half may not even look at the dang Jira points they keep forcing teams to keep up with.

It comes down to care, and to be frank (in my experiences) almost no manager cares enough to take that time. They have a lot of other stuff on their plate, after all. They aren't rewarded for retention, they don't necessarily get punished if the companies underperforms as long as they can rationalize a scapegoat. why try to retain these low key "glues"?

>if you ask those 20 people during performance review, it'll clear as day.

My performance reviews tended to be personal, in my experience. a skip manager/director may ask about my direct lead, but other than that I can't recall ever calling someone out (good or bad) during one.

It comes down to the same metric, are those managers/directors going to take the time to ask everone about who they think is an unsung hero?

That said,

> You can get more out of an office worker who lacks intrinsic motivation than a similar remote worker.

Is this because for an office worker it's harder to disguise the lack of motivation? Or are they pressured into going through the motions even if they don't feel like it? I wonder if this is a good thing at all.

Let me explain: as a fully remote worker, there are days I don't feel like working. On those days, I'll slack off. My work won't suffer because on the longer term I'll achieve my objectives; I'm just not wasting time pretending to work when I don't feel like it. My mental health is better as a result. This wouldn't be possible if I was at the office, because this isn't a socially acceptable mode of working.

None of this work really matters in the end, so no point in getting too bent out of shape about it. The work needs to get done to a defined standard, but overly focusing on high levels of consistent "engagement"? I don't drink the koolaid and neither should the folks who report to me. We show up, we grind, we go home. And that's fine, that's what the money is for.

I look forward to this not being true

If you die tomorrow, are fired, or laid off, you will be replaced. If your company fails, you will move on to the next job. Per the US BLS, approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. Broadly speaking, ~90% of startups fail. So, I also wish you luck.

Very few of us are saving or improving actual lives or legitimately changing the world for the better (deep gratitude to those folks). The rest of us are not. I am sorry to be the messenger.

Even highly motivated workers are going to have off days that are less productive, but the average level of output will be higher.

Low performing / marginal workers, in my experience, tend to do their best work when they feel like they are being observed. Providing that sort of motivation is more difficult when they are remote.

Office environments can take some of those reasons (e.g. certain distractions) away.

I also agree with you that people in the office are more susceptible to straining themselves due to social pressure.

I'm not sure how these two balance out. It probably depends on the specific people.

As a personal example, it's the latter for me. If I'm having an off day WFH, it's a lot easier to delay meetings or shuffle things around than in an office. I've pushed some meetings back, slept in a few more hours and make up that time either later in the evening or on some other day. Or on the other end may cancel later meetings to just relax later on if my brain is scambled. A lot harder to justify in person. You're there, why can't we meet? why are you nodding off? etc.

>I wonder if this is a good thing at all.

Probably not, but modern work places aren't really designed around "what's good long term for employees". Especially not the US where we barely have vacation days, a lot of passive (or active) aggression around the recent-ish ma/paternity leaves, complaints of burnout are seen as a weakness instead of a proper problem to resolve.

They are fine churning through you in 2 years, laying you off, and training fresh talent later. Even if that approach is horribly unsustainable for building talent and increasing efficiency.

No, you will have them sitting at their desk.

That's not work.

That's the appearance of work.

Unfortunately, that's enough for bad managers.

It's indeed true you probably can't get someone who's completely disengaged to be particularly productive. They'll do the bare minimum to make you go away but mostly just phone it in. These people probably should be encouraged to leave anyway, if nothing else for their own sake. Odds are they're in a late stage Office Space-type burn out and could really do with a change of scenery.

That said, there are personalities who genuinely benefit from hands-on management. Some just don't have a lot of initiative and will just do nothing until they're told what to do next.

Absolutely.

But you don't need physical handholding for that.

Until we have 40% unemployment, these people are working under certain CEOs. After some easy deduction, lots of CEOs have to decrease/kill the Home Office for these people if this is true what parent commenter wrote.

If the top performer is getting a 3 percent raise this year, the "slacker" is probably higher paid on a per hour basis considering they work less.

When the top performers start buying vacation homes and sports cars as a reward for being one, I'd wager the unmotivated might start moving.

All to often there are invisible "heroes" who quietly fix issues, prevent bugs and makes sure everything runs smoothly. They are simply not as visible as someone who creates high profile features and firefight bugs introduced by their coding. From the management point of view they are hard workers that work late fixing issues.

Management can only recognize what they can see. The quiet dev who just makes things work is a huge value to the company, while the "bro" that master the political game gets all the recognition.

What metrics can they use that are not quickly gamed?

I argue that it's management's job to know what's going on well enough that "invisible heros" don't exist. If they can't, what exactly are they managing?

I've been in the situation you describe and I just find another job, what may be invisible to your current manager may be obvious to your future one.

*Bonus content: I suspect most of the time the reason people don't "see things" is for political/human reasons more so than they are blind. You probably didn't seem as interested in your bosses new Tesla as he would've liked or something.

You're right, goodheart's law. But I do think the current metrics can definitely be improved.

We can definitely identify "quiet heroes", but people look towards others like them. For management, that's exactly those "high visibility", constantly reporting hype men (who can be high or low performers). Introverted IC's can still perform miracles, an introverted manager who spends most of their times in meeting would definitely struggle. Even if those skills are not necessarily what is needed to perform optimally at some roles, that is what managers seek out of everyone. Because that's how they got to where they were, after all.

There are ideas out there, but ultimately nothing will change until we can at least admit these biases first.

Pretty atrocious policy when disability, mental health and trauma can come into play. It essentially relies on inducing despair. I know for a fact much of big tech is like this. Atlassian has been called out for it.

Perhaps you work for a small-to-midsize company.

I assume “point in career” you mean “around the block for a while”. My kid graduated and considered only remote jobs, and after a couple of years when the big-company employer tried Return to Office he jumped to a startup. That’s just an n of one, but these days anybody can consider it.

My company is not 100% remote, but that’s only because we have a chem lab with some special instruments and other equipment. But if/when you don’t need to be in the lab, remote is the default.

you put it nicely, the flip side is most of companies/teams may not have the luxury to have all 100% right people, they may get disengaged and some of them may come back engaged again. the challenge here is remote work makes it relatively harder to get some of them back on track.

So perhaps one way to express my position is that when it comes to remote work, you almost have to treat yourself as an independent contractor or consultant, even if you're technically an employee.

But when many companies barely respect the employees to begin with, they shouldn't be surprised when the employee disengages and always has an eye on the next opportunity. There will always be other semi-unavoidable issues like pay, location, and personal passions that get in the way, but having some intention to retain and nurture your talent will go a long way. Something that has very clearly shown to NOT be the case these last 18 months or so.