A Discourse on Remote Work
In the years since COVID-19 forced us all home for a while, remote work has been a hot topic. There are compelling arguments for and against remote work, and I think a nuanced approach is critical. However, many people fall to one extreme or the other, and I really think the industry needs an honest conversation about the merits and limitations of a hybrid or remote schedule.
To confess any bias at the very beginning, I am heavily in favor of remote work. I said to a recruiter once that the only way I would take an in-office job again is if I were unemployed and needed the money. There are extremely few benefits that would be compelling enough to entice me into taking a hybrid or fully in-office job, and I would probably need double my current salary if it were a monetary decision. Furthermore, I planted roots when I built my house here. A relocation bonus is irrelevant, I’m not leaving upstate SC. BUT, that’s just my personal opinion on the matter. There are other points to consider.
One style that I think goes under-appreciated is what my coworkers and I call “full option.” For many businesses, especially startups and small companies, there may not be a physical office available. If enough of the workforce can handle their responsibilities from home, the costs associated with a physical office space simply may not be worth it. For those who do like to occasionally go into the office, this could be a problem. You don’t have anywhere to go without renting a physical space somewhere. That’s one big benefit of Lima. We do have a physical office, and we all tend to go in roughly once a month to coordinate and get lunch together.
The biggest argument I hear in favor of hybrid and in-office positions is the culture. Supporters claim that you need to physically gather with your coworkers to build an office culture, and they suggest that this office culture builds morale. I can certainly agree that I am not as close with fully remote coworkers as I am with those that occasionally come into the office, but personally, I can’t say I care about culture at a potential employer. I do frequently ask in interviews, “how’s the culture,” but this is more of a gauge of burnout, churn, and employee satisfaction. I don’t actually care about being personally acquainted with my work team.
Another factor that in-office and hybrid models gain is the fabled “water cooler conversation.” The idea is that if you’re physically around your coworkers, there are going to be impromptu conversations just by virtue of being near each other. These conversations are going to occasionally cultivate business solutions that may not have originated otherwise. While those do happen, and I have personally been part of them, I don’t think it’s a substantial barrier against the genesis of new ideas. If you have a highly connected remote team that is frequently communicating through group chats anyway, those same ideas are eventually going to come up even digitally.
On the flip side, I think the biggest benefit for remote work is a better work-life balance. As I write this, I am sitting home with a sick child. This would have required the use of a sick day if I were an in-office employee, or potentially with hybrid work depending on when it happened. I can throw in a load of dishes or clothes between meetings. Toward the end of the day, I can lay out ingredients for dinner so that I can be ready to cook as soon as I get off. And for someone that lives about an hour from the office, the difference between getting off while the sun is up and getting home pretty well after dark is substantial. As a remote employee, I see my family more, I get more done around the house, and none of it impacts my ability to do my job.
Something that cannot be ignored is the environmental impact of commuting to the office. My round trip is roughly 80 miles, every time I go into the office. My truck gets conservatively about 20 miles per gallon of gas. I’m burning about 4 gallons of gas every time I go in. While my case is perhaps more extreme (I live further away than most of my team and my vehicle is less fuel-efficient), this quickly adds up when applied to every single team member. Those miles are arguably unnecessary, yet the contribute substantially to pollution. That’s saying nothing of the cost of fuel or the time investment for the drive. Pollution cleared out measurably in the early days of quarantine, and I think it could be consistently reduced if more employers offered remote work.
One of the most contentious elements is employee productivity. I can’t count the number of studies that assert definitive proof that employees are more or less productive when remote versus in-office. Unfortunately, there is a lot of nuance in this that can’t easily be captured in most studies. The specific line of work seems to have an impact, where roles like software engineer tend to be more productive from home, while call center jobs appear more productive with employees physically in the office. Furthermore, the individual employee’s preferences play a part. Some people on my team claim to be more efficient in the office, while I have clearly seen that I get nothing done when I go in. There are so many conversations with other teams and employees when I go to the office, the only productive work I get done is when we go into meetings.
A concession that I will give to in-office work is collaboration. There are tons of collaboration software options, and lots of “digital whiteboards” or ways to mutually work on the same document, but they just can’t beat an old fashioned whiteboard in a physical conference room when you’re trying to hash out some architecture or process discussion. That, to me, is the single largest benefit of a hybrid schedule or full option. When we have lots of meetings that just involve keeping teams in sync or “heads down” development work, we stay home and get the work done. But when we’re trying to plan out some complicated project and need that tangible back and forth, we plan to go in and discuss things together. We’ll share a meeting link with video for those very distant employees and get a lot of collaboration done. We just have to remember to record what we find before we all forget it.
The industry is going to follow top talent, no matter what individual companies would have you believe. Elon Musk can demand employees come back or lose their jobs all he wants, but some other company offering remote work and a competitive salary is going to poach all of the best engineers. There will be substantial back and forth, and we’ve already seen quite a bit of that. Huge trends toward remote, followed by panic reversal, and then a whole bunch of layoffs. The software engineering industry is extremely volatile right now, but it’s going to settle down at some point in the next few years.
After the dust settles, I think we will have a good mix of jobs that range from fully in-office to fully remote with no option to go in. Some companies are very proud of their hybrid or in-office culture, and some employees are actively searching for that kind of team. Other companies will excel in the remote space, and that’s the kind of place I want to be. Whether you like it or not, remote work is here to stay. I just don’t think it has to be all or nothing, and employees and companies in the industry need to come to a common understanding on that.
To confess any bias at the very beginning, I am heavily in favor of remote work. I said to a recruiter once that the only way I would take an in-office job again is if I were unemployed and needed the money. There are extremely few benefits that would be compelling enough to entice me into taking a hybrid or fully in-office job, and I would probably need double my current salary if it were a monetary decision. Furthermore, I planted roots when I built my house here. A relocation bonus is irrelevant, I’m not leaving upstate SC. BUT, that’s just my personal opinion on the matter. There are other points to consider.
One style that I think goes under-appreciated is what my coworkers and I call “full option.” For many businesses, especially startups and small companies, there may not be a physical office available. If enough of the workforce can handle their responsibilities from home, the costs associated with a physical office space simply may not be worth it. For those who do like to occasionally go into the office, this could be a problem. You don’t have anywhere to go without renting a physical space somewhere. That’s one big benefit of Lima. We do have a physical office, and we all tend to go in roughly once a month to coordinate and get lunch together.
The biggest argument I hear in favor of hybrid and in-office positions is the culture. Supporters claim that you need to physically gather with your coworkers to build an office culture, and they suggest that this office culture builds morale. I can certainly agree that I am not as close with fully remote coworkers as I am with those that occasionally come into the office, but personally, I can’t say I care about culture at a potential employer. I do frequently ask in interviews, “how’s the culture,” but this is more of a gauge of burnout, churn, and employee satisfaction. I don’t actually care about being personally acquainted with my work team.
Another factor that in-office and hybrid models gain is the fabled “water cooler conversation.” The idea is that if you’re physically around your coworkers, there are going to be impromptu conversations just by virtue of being near each other. These conversations are going to occasionally cultivate business solutions that may not have originated otherwise. While those do happen, and I have personally been part of them, I don’t think it’s a substantial barrier against the genesis of new ideas. If you have a highly connected remote team that is frequently communicating through group chats anyway, those same ideas are eventually going to come up even digitally.
On the flip side, I think the biggest benefit for remote work is a better work-life balance. As I write this, I am sitting home with a sick child. This would have required the use of a sick day if I were an in-office employee, or potentially with hybrid work depending on when it happened. I can throw in a load of dishes or clothes between meetings. Toward the end of the day, I can lay out ingredients for dinner so that I can be ready to cook as soon as I get off. And for someone that lives about an hour from the office, the difference between getting off while the sun is up and getting home pretty well after dark is substantial. As a remote employee, I see my family more, I get more done around the house, and none of it impacts my ability to do my job.
Something that cannot be ignored is the environmental impact of commuting to the office. My round trip is roughly 80 miles, every time I go into the office. My truck gets conservatively about 20 miles per gallon of gas. I’m burning about 4 gallons of gas every time I go in. While my case is perhaps more extreme (I live further away than most of my team and my vehicle is less fuel-efficient), this quickly adds up when applied to every single team member. Those miles are arguably unnecessary, yet the contribute substantially to pollution. That’s saying nothing of the cost of fuel or the time investment for the drive. Pollution cleared out measurably in the early days of quarantine, and I think it could be consistently reduced if more employers offered remote work.
One of the most contentious elements is employee productivity. I can’t count the number of studies that assert definitive proof that employees are more or less productive when remote versus in-office. Unfortunately, there is a lot of nuance in this that can’t easily be captured in most studies. The specific line of work seems to have an impact, where roles like software engineer tend to be more productive from home, while call center jobs appear more productive with employees physically in the office. Furthermore, the individual employee’s preferences play a part. Some people on my team claim to be more efficient in the office, while I have clearly seen that I get nothing done when I go in. There are so many conversations with other teams and employees when I go to the office, the only productive work I get done is when we go into meetings.
A concession that I will give to in-office work is collaboration. There are tons of collaboration software options, and lots of “digital whiteboards” or ways to mutually work on the same document, but they just can’t beat an old fashioned whiteboard in a physical conference room when you’re trying to hash out some architecture or process discussion. That, to me, is the single largest benefit of a hybrid schedule or full option. When we have lots of meetings that just involve keeping teams in sync or “heads down” development work, we stay home and get the work done. But when we’re trying to plan out some complicated project and need that tangible back and forth, we plan to go in and discuss things together. We’ll share a meeting link with video for those very distant employees and get a lot of collaboration done. We just have to remember to record what we find before we all forget it.
The industry is going to follow top talent, no matter what individual companies would have you believe. Elon Musk can demand employees come back or lose their jobs all he wants, but some other company offering remote work and a competitive salary is going to poach all of the best engineers. There will be substantial back and forth, and we’ve already seen quite a bit of that. Huge trends toward remote, followed by panic reversal, and then a whole bunch of layoffs. The software engineering industry is extremely volatile right now, but it’s going to settle down at some point in the next few years.
After the dust settles, I think we will have a good mix of jobs that range from fully in-office to fully remote with no option to go in. Some companies are very proud of their hybrid or in-office culture, and some employees are actively searching for that kind of team. Other companies will excel in the remote space, and that’s the kind of place I want to be. Whether you like it or not, remote work is here to stay. I just don’t think it has to be all or nothing, and employees and companies in the industry need to come to a common understanding on that.
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