A reflection on the rise and partial fall of remote work
A reflection on the tech industry evolution from 2012-2022 with respect to remote work. Being on the job hunt and between companies provides a unique opportunity to expound on trends in the industry, the advances, the failures, the forward thinkers and the holdouts. This will be a short look into the evolution of remote work through the lens of companies I have worked for and interacted with and the trends that have occurred in my network. The rise of the ability to work fully effectively remotely, the technical advances that allowed it and the social changes that accepted it. There will be a look too at who are pushing back and why, and frankly why I believe they are in most cases wrong. It will break into four phases: the technical evolution, the social evolution, the pandemic effect, and the ‘correction’ for lack of a better word.
Turning back the clock to a decade ago we quickly find a very different working environment. At the start of 2012 I was working at an engineering firm that provided me not with a laptop but with a desktop. I travelled weekly and ended up using my personal computer for most work. The company had an aging email server, that as the resident ‘millennial’ I had to convert to a set of Gmail business addresses, no support ticketing system and absolutely no video conferencing technology. It was an office with computers as an accessory. Now that is an extreme example but even when I moved later that year to a larger company the systems all had their roots in 90s era solutions to 90s era problems. I worked significantly with the UK office at that time and over the next 4 years my only interactions with my primary teammates were phone and physical visits to the outskirts of London twice a year.
Five years ago, I worked at Akamai, now if anyone can do interconnected workforce its them, they are the original content delivery network so you would hope so! There I had my first real experiences with connected work from home. I was able to do a day here or a day there from my home when needed and still dial into meetings, be seen and see others. The technology was still slow, cameras had to get turned off often, but it was there, and it was the first feeling of real remote connection. Over the coming three years it only improved, Lynx turned to Skype for business which for me moved to Zoom. Google chat became google meet and the industry started growing. The technology had arrived, no more were work from home days isolated, they were just workdays.
The social evolution during this same period however did not keep up. Butts in seats was firmly the name of the game. Technology moved faster than leadership and with a few notable exceptions work from home days were akin to taking a sick day. This concept is key to our understanding of where we are today. Technology always advances faster than humans. How many new technologies have you looked at gone ‘that will never catch on?’ I consider myself a technophile, but I remember thinking as a kid that when I got my first cell phone I would get a pager too, no reason to keep the phone on all the time, pagers were so much more convenient. News flash: my phone is definitely on, and is next to me, and it’s been about a paragraph since I looked at it. So, if we all do this why can’t we see outside ourselves and push to match the pace of change? Smarter people than me will need to weigh in here but suffice to say, we don’t.
The real social evolution was a forced thing. March 16, 2020, was the day for me. My company decided to do a trial company WFH day. Well, that day turned into 2 weeks, then another 2, then maybe the end of the summer and so on. The entire company that could (and I want to be clear there are jobs that need to be in person, certain engineering, manufacturing, some instruction) started working remotely. And as was observed across the globe…. Nothing happened. Meetings were still attended, work still completed, products still sold, goals still set and achieved. My team in particular got closer as we moved to all zoom meetings as our UK and Hong Kong teammates were for the first time included as equals. The technology held up (mostly) and so did the people. We had achieved something incredible, an evolution in the workplace. Articles went from ‘can we do this’ to ‘the new normal’. If this were the end of the story it would be incomplete yes, but I argue it would be better.
Fast forward to what I called the correction. It happened at different times for different companies, for mine it was an in-person meeting in July 2021. Like so many other companies we had moved to a hybrid model, work from the office if you need or want to (many people do prefer it) and work from home or wherever if you want to do that. ‘We will be hybrid forever’ ‘we have proven that distance is no barrier’. So, what happened. Well fresh off a 3rd? 4th? bout with COVID, leadership started the ‘we need to be in person’ ‘we need to be out there’ ‘we need to be pounding pavement’ ‘collaboration happens in person’. No tangible reasons just platitudes. There was backlash immediately and leadership backed off, but it became a back and forth that continually lessened and lessened the flexibility. And every time the reasons were the same, or weaker. This same behavior has permeated the news and my personal LinkedIn ever since.
The question I asked over all that time is twofold, were they right? And why such the strong push.
Looking across my sources I came very quickly to the conclusion that general blanket back to office had no tangible effect. In person collaboration is no better than slack, quick zooms, texts, etc. We communicate with our friends more digitally these days than directly, the logic just isn’t there. ‘People aren’t really working’ doesn’t hold water either. Any good manager knows what their team is up to. I ran an international team for the last 4 years and work always got done, its not hard. Manage by project and task completion, ‘butts in seats’ is archaic, lazy, and doesn’t actually verify work is being done. It just ensures nothing else is.
So why the push. Well as everything in humanity’s long history, it’s a host of reasons, both complex and simple, selfish and reasonable. But they all have one thing in common, they don’t sound good and won’t convince the work force, so they aren’t said. Top reasons I have come across break down into two categories, money and executive preference. Money is easy: companies have spent a lot of money on millennial attracting workspaces and they want them filled. The companies that are unwilling to drop those facilities want to see them used. Not a good reason but understandable. Executive preference is the one that I cannot abide. CEOs and leaders that want to be in the office and want others to be there literally to keep them company. People so selfish that they want others to simply conform to what they want. And it goes badly every time. Every forced back to office article you read shows the negative effects.
The pandemic showed us that we are all adults, and we all have best ways to work. Its time to accept that many people want to work remote, many others want offices, and the happiest workforce has the flexibility to choose. If you are a leader and reading this, please take this very simple note: Accommodate don’t dictate. Dictators are deposed, leaders are supported, be a leader and listen to your team.
Side Note: Before I get a lot of ‘well what about this job’ or ‘well in this instance’ comments. This is not saying you can build a prototype robot in your living room (although I bet you can in some cases). This is only related to blanket return to office plans.
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