There was a good discussion recently on this on The Changelog's interview with Jack Warner, the CTO of Github. They discuss how if there is a drop in performance of ~5% then it is a worthwhile tradeoff to work from home, whereas if it's more like a 90% drop then obviously it isn't suitable and that with most businesses pre-COVID it was mostly a perception that the latter was the case.
Personally I enjoy working from home. I work in a city that's an hour away by train (and that's assuming they're on time, which 90% of the time they aren't), so for me it saves me a good 2 hours of my day, each day that I can work from home. That time is invaluable to me, not to mention the comfort of being in my safe place so to speak, as well as the convenience of being able to do various tasks like collect parcels, walk the dog etc.
Professionally, I find there isn't much of a difference. If I were in the office working, we'd still be using Slack to communicate, JIRA to manage the project, Confluence to document things... The only difference is the face to face element that comes in handy when you hit a block and you need to vent/rubber duck with a colleague. We've found that this can also be solved by throwing in some short ad-hoc Zoom calls when they're needed (sub-10 mins usually).
On the flip side, I do see the importance of meeting up occasionally, both recreationally for team building and socialising, as well as if a meeting needs it. We are social creatures and nothing can assume that feeling of a proper chat by the watercooler or while getting coffee.
On a macro scale, benefits such as less congestion and pollution from transportation also comes into play, however this would probably balance out when you consider that there is also more heating being used as everyone is now heating their own homes rather than a singular office space.
Thanks for the podcast link, will check it out! Yep I guess we also need to wait a bit and see what the data tells us. This can be the only indicator that helps us see where we are headed.
The lack of interaction seems to be a problem for a lot of folks, so it would be really interesting to hear from those remote-first companies how they fix this.
Lookins at Ben's comment, probably by hosting ocasional meet-ups :
There was a good discussion recently on this on The Changelog's interview with Jack Warner, the CTO of Github. They discuss how if there is a drop in performance of ~5% then it is a worthwhile tradeoff to work from home, whereas if it's more like a 90% drop then obviously it isn't suitable and that with most businesses pre-COVID it was mostly a perception that the latter was the case.
Personally I enjoy working from home. I work in a city that's an hour away by train (and that's assuming they're on time, which 90% of the time they aren't), so for me it saves me a good 2 hours of my day, each day that I can work from home. That time is invaluable to me, not to mention the comfort of being in my safe place so to speak, as well as the convenience of being able to do various tasks like collect parcels, walk the dog etc.
Professionally, I find there isn't much of a difference. If I were in the office working, we'd still be using Slack to communicate, JIRA to manage the project, Confluence to document things... The only difference is the face to face element that comes in handy when you hit a block and you need to vent/rubber duck with a colleague. We've found that this can also be solved by throwing in some short ad-hoc Zoom calls when they're needed (sub-10 mins usually).
On the flip side, I do see the importance of meeting up occasionally, both recreationally for team building and socialising, as well as if a meeting needs it. We are social creatures and nothing can assume that feeling of a proper chat by the watercooler or while getting coffee.
On a macro scale, benefits such as less congestion and pollution from transportation also comes into play, however this would probably balance out when you consider that there is also more heating being used as everyone is now heating their own homes rather than a singular office space.
Thanks for the podcast link, will check it out! Yep I guess we also need to wait a bit and see what the data tells us. This can be the only indicator that helps us see where we are headed.
The lack of interaction seems to be a problem for a lot of folks, so it would be really interesting to hear from those remote-first companies how they fix this.
Lookins at Ben's comment, probably by hosting ocasional meet-ups :
I think remote will gradually become the default, and creative organizations will find ways to bring people together some of the time.
I just think that's the balance that will wind up being more effective than the work from home one or two days a week philosophy.