I did software work for most of my career and am a huge fan of remote and hybrid arrangements.
But having started a hardware robotics company… it does seem more difficult to run the team remotely. When we get together in person, everything moves faster. We have more equipment. EEs can fix things on the spot. Perception engineers can perceive their algorithm’s behavior in front of their face. We can mitigate safety concerns with proper protections.
I wish we could all be remote, but I think the team does need a component of hybrid to pool resources and move faster. I only say this as there’s a lot of “C-suite bad they just want to micromanage” and I feel like it’s not that simple for many businesses.
Don't feel bad. Working/developing with real hardware seems to me a legitimate case where wfh might not work.
This does not mean that the constraints you have apply to everyone and most places that are forcing RTO are actually optimizing for other things like CRE.
Not every job can reasonably be done remotely. Working with specialized and expensive hardware is an area that seems to me to have a reasonable expectation that people work in the office, at least when they need to test on actual hardware.
Also why I'm avoiding such fields personally, despite thinking they're pretty neat.
But having started a hardware robotics company… it does seem more difficult to run the team remotely. When we get together in person, everything moves faster. We have more equipment. EEs can fix things on the spot. Perception engineers can perceive their algorithm’s behavior in front of their face. We can mitigate safety concerns with proper protections.
I wish we could all be remote, but I think the team does need a component of hybrid to pool resources and move faster. I only say this as there’s a lot of “C-suite bad they just want to micromanage” and I feel like it’s not that simple for many businesses.