> My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office.
None. I started 3 different consulting jobs during the pandemic and always felt very productive and very connected to my colleagues, even though I never met them.
After working remote for ten+ years I disagree. There are things one can better understand about a person in a face to face meeting. When discussions become differently casual. Also some discussions are simpler in a completely informal circumstance ("random" meeting at the watercooler) than a virtual meeting of any kind.
People talk online too; it’s different for people who grew up using text messages and social media where they’re accustomed to building and maintaining online relationships.
I’m old, so don’t look at me, but when you look at the cohort of folk who are dealing with wfh successfully and productively, it’s, in my direct observation, younger folk.
None is perhaps true for more people than you think.
The ones who are struggling are the people who don’t “do chat” (ie the “oh no! I despise slack” group and the “let’s have a call to discuss that” group) and managers.
...and to be fair, it’s a lot harder to be a manager remotely; I can’t deny that.
...but people can build meaningful relationships online; it’s just different, and that’s hard for older people, in general.
Many of my best friendships were forged online, often in groups collaborating on doing real work.
I have not been able to get any such spontaneity during remote work with my group or division at a large tech company with mostly young coworkers. I haven't been able to figure out why.
> the “oh no! I despise slack” group
Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture. I don't know what the tools are to turn chat into a value-adding thing, but I don't think they're in place yet.
It pains me to see the number of people who reply quickly to chat messages all day in order to show they're 'working' rather than doing their jobs.
>Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture
How is does chat creates an interruption culture compared to people literally standing in your shoulder and directly interrupting you? At least with chat I can decide to ignore the notifications until I’m finished with my current task.
Sending a chat message is a really low bar: people send off chat messages at will, without respect to whether someone looks like they're concentrating, wearing headphones, have the door closed, are in the office, whatever. This is fine so long as chat is regarded as async, but in a culture where people feel compelled to get them in real time, chat becomes super interrupty, even compared to people coming by.
If people exercise good judgement on ignoring notifications, it's less rough, though the tooling is really poor for using chat for async tracking, organization, triaging, and replies, even compared to emails or tickets.
I despise slack more than probably most anyone. I've been working remote more often than not since the early 90s though, so remote is very natural. Non-stop interruptions will kill you though, regardless of job location, so close that slack tab.
> I don't know what the tools are to turn chat into a value-adding thing, but I don't think they're in place yet.
It's called email.. in the case of slack, just let it send notifications to email. That's how I monitor slack, I'll check my email when I have free time between concentration sessions.
It certainly depends on how willing you are to just have a random off topic chat with someone over IM. For me, there are a few people where if its the last hour of the day, we will just spend 30 mins half working half chatting. This helps build relationships with the people you work with in an otherwise unproductive period. If they are really busy at the time they can just tell you.
During 2020 I interviewed people, hired and onboarded a new person, ended up interviewing for another company myself, joined them, have interviewed and hired new people at the new gig. Never met anyone in person. No issues at all.
Been doing similar conditions for much longer than a year though. Over ten years ago I was leading a team of 20+, everyone distributed across the globe, nobody in the same timezone as me.
I strongly disagree, between people that do not turn on their webcam during meetings, don't stay after 5 ect ... there is no social connection and nothing forces them to do so.
Many people, if not most, have more potential to connect better when more senses are engaged and more experiences are shared. These relationships sustain over time, with some degradation of course.
None. I started 3 different consulting jobs during the pandemic and always felt very productive and very connected to my colleagues, even though I never met them.