A good friend of mine asked me to write this post. Actually... to be more accurate, he asked me to write something about the hesitance of corporat...
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As an introvert, I can say be it in office or with remote work I would not shun chats or conference calls. I think that is unprofessional.
Yes we tend to be more selectively social and would like it if people just let us be most of the time, but I think even introverts care deeply for work and delivering the best possible results.
I even tend to schedule more 1:1 with my manager now that we are working remotely to have proper communication and get timely feedback.
Remote work gives me chance to be actively social while not having to partake in office gossip which tends to drain my energy.
But yes point being office or remote work, being an introvert is no excuse to being unprofessional.
Totally agree. And I figured that I'd probably get into some "trouble" using the word introvert - cuz there are a lotta competing definitions of what an "introvert" really is.
When I used that term here, I was trying to convey the concept of some dev types who really prefer to just hunker down into a programming task and be left alone. When I'm working in an office, I can get away with that kinda non-interaction for a good long time. Because my coworkers see that I'm there and they can see that I'm nose-down on a project. And if they really need to talk to me, they know that they can always walk over to my desk and tap me on the shoulder. (Cuz I won't hear them - I'll have headphones on.)
But when you're remote, if you try to go into one of those "programming caves" for more than a half-day or so, you'll quickly find that your coworkers have no idea what you're doing, or even if you're doing.
Yes makes sense. Especially if you join a new company or team in a remote work situation where people have no idea about how you tend to operate. They might just think you are slacking off.
Great article, though I disagree (based purely on anecdotal evidence) on some parts.
Lets start with introverts.
Normally, I'm pretty introverted. Onsite in the office, for at least the last decade now, and especially in meetings, I'm pretty damn extroverted. If I have an opinion I'm going to say it and not give a damn. I'll happily fight my corner.
Then Covid was a "thing" and suddenly, my employer mandated that we all work from home, 100%. I bought myself a new hammock & a few creature comforts, and happily setup an office in the back garden. I couldn't be happier, and probably counter intuitively, I've gone from being a Senior Dev to a Dev Manager while working from home (so, promotions are indeed possible).
Now, since I've come from being a Developer to being a Manager, I've dabbled with being a PM in the past, and I've worked in one form of Agile or another for around a decade or so... I understand how to look at the data so I can tell if we're delivering value or not, and simultaneously look to see if anyone is "gaming" the story points, and look for signals that the guys might need more training in certain areas. I have no need to ask someone what they've been doing, I can see it all in Jira and git (but obviously, if they take 2 weeks to change 1 line of code, then I'll be a little concerned about their work-life balance).
Note here though, that as you imply, the whole company is now remote, so things like "watercooler chats" happen online.
People can't, I agree, but governments & viruses seemingly can.
My employer was 100% "bums on seats" before Covid. I live in the UK, and the government started Covid lockdowns with "if you can work from home, you must/should"... and legally, my employer could have still said "you have to come to the office" - but the en-mass resignation revolt that would have happened, made them take a different approach.
Now, we're 100% remote, have been since around mid Feb 2020 and have "no concrete plans to ask anyone back to the office much before June 2021." After that, they're already talking about some mix of remote & office work, for all roles.
Finally, I honestly don't think the issues you've seen with remote adaptation are company specific. I think it's more management specific. Maybe that's a semantic debate, since the management effectively set the corporate culture.
The pandemic has absolutely forced many organizations to utilize remote work - whether they wanted to or not. But while the pandemic can force an employer's hand, it won't necessarily make them good at managing remote work(ers). Some will embrace it. Others will stubbornly "get through it" - biding their time until they can call everyone back into the office.
I've already heard lots of stories from both sides of this. Some talk about how the pandemic actually led their company to switch to remote work. Others talk about how badly the company handled the situation and how they're all gonna be called back into a physical location as soon as it's feasible.
I suppose, in a way, we were "forced" - and yes, there have certainly been "ill-informed" choices made higher up the food chain.
But ultimately, we were told 1 week before the lockdown was officially announced "Go home", and while we will be going back to the office, we're also told not to worry about it for the better part of another 6 months, and we'll have some WFH ability that wasn't there before.
So I think we fall somewhere in the middle of the good<->bad spectrum.
Nothing to add here. Great research, Adam
I don't personally agree with this, but I get your gist. I think it's unwise to ban remote work. But IMHO the employer is paying the salary, and as such, they have the right to decide on the work arrangement/environment that works best for their preferred style of doing business.
Couldn't agree with this more. This was just a general, 10,000-foot view kinda article. But there are a lotta specific things - skills - that you should have to be an effective remote worker. Same goes for the employer.
When does a job "allow" remote working though? When processes are built around people being physically present, how much change is acceptable?
Honestly, I prefer remote working to office. And I try to learn more information about effective ways of working from home (it's all about 'organize your workplace', 'how to get rid of distractions', 'how to be extremely productive', 'how to communicate with customers or team', 'time management methodologies' etc). I've found a new interesting post about balancing abilities in real life and remote work trends. I'll attach the post here, and I hope it'll be useful for everyone blog.tmetric.com/remote-jobs-3-tre...
Nice article !
In the light of all that, what do you think of partially remote work ? (except that it can slide to fully-onsite work)
For instance, I'm a manager (CTO), used to work remotely and isolated from buggers every morning. I found that I'm more productive that way. Having some time alone.
What would you think of blindly generalizing that ?
Well, since I personally love remote work, I think what you're describing makes total sense. But at the risk of picking nits, I'll also say that such a scenario isn't really what I think of as "remote work". It feels more to me like "escaping distractions".
Of course, the distinction probably doesn't matter. If it works for you, then you should embrace it (and so should your employer/client/customer).
And of course there's cases when remote work just isn't possible at all, even when your job is technically just writing code.
yet another awesome article Adam! thanx
I loved it. Very nicely put.