This also has implications when we discuss workers who want to "work from home." I reference Coase in "What work can be done from home? What work needs to be done at an office?" While I think this piece is carefully researched, it is easily the least popular thing I've ever written. I'm surprised at how angry people get around this subject. I don't fully understand what is going, but I've never written anything else that drew such angry reactions from people. Simply pointing out the limits of the work-from-home movement seems to leave some people on edge, defensive, wary, and emotional. I'm not sure why. Obviously there must be some limit to work-from-home.
To me, it's pretty clear: A lot of people like working from home, and are wary that they will be forced back into the office, along with the long commutes and sometimes-frustrating social interactions that go along with it. They see arguments like yours as a real threat to their quality of life.
Also, you make a lot of assertions in your post without substantiating them. This generally contributes to outcry when the assertions don't line up with people's personal experience.
In terms of making assertions from personal experience, I do emphasize that what I've seen is limited to New York City. If you live some place else, your experiences might be very different. Perhaps I should repeat this point.
I was thinking about this topic just recently, as someone who got to spend the first ~10 years of my career in workplaces with private offices, now working remotely.
I came to the conclusion that open offices really did ruin everything. “On edge, wary, defensive, and emotional” is a pretty accurate description how I felt every day at work after everything changed to open offices.
People seem to just have these drastic reactions to everything now. Knee jerk reaction wants to blame it on social media. While the socials might not be THE reason, they definitely amplify it. A large portion of society seems to think that if you have a differing opinion/thought/belief on a given topic you are against them in a way that must be vigorously defended against without any consideration of the differing opinion/thought/belief.
It's so bad that when I hear something I WANT to believe, but merely ask why they think that particular thing or what are they basing that (unjustified) conclusion on, they immediately start assuming I believe in the contrary position and leveling personal attacks at me.
Like fuck me for wanting more information and to base my beliefs on sound conclusions.
The issue is that many people view inquisitiveness now as a dog whistle due to its increasing use in bad faith by extremists. It's called "sealioning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I mean, who are YOU to question them in the first place. /s
I have always had the "Asks why way too much" problem. Most people are defensive at first as if I had the gall the question them, but the ones I've learned the most from are the ones that realize the "why" isn't questioning them as it is questioning the process for better understanding.
"Defensive" is a great managerial term. It implies that the lower status person argues against the great managerial deliberations in a helpless and futile manner.
It turns any discussion automatically into a status contest, with a first mover advantage. I've never seen an intelligent person use it.
Environmental activist: we must cut back on the use of fossil fuels, or climate change will be catastrophic
CEO of Shell Oil: What? Why? What is wrong with fossil fuel? Why are you attacking me? What evidence do you have that lets you use words like "catastrophic"? And, uh, what about the economy? The workers?
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Moral of the story: sometimes very high status people get defensive.
Yours is one of the reasoned and illuminating takes on the WFH debate. I am going to share it with my team and one of my senior engineers who is extremely reluctant to come to the office, which in the long term will hurt his prospects.
As for meltdowns, I think it is because you are poking at something irrational namely "the urge to work from home". WFH has been a "freebie" for most folks - to use your example jobs that should pay $110k are paying $250k.
When you poke at this irrationality, like questioning the provenance of stolen goods, people get defensive and have emotional reactions. Deep down folks know that they have to accept the inevitability of going back or take a pay cut and neither option sits well.
The reason for waiting is that there's a sharp dropoff in interestingness along the repetition curve, and a few weeks is long enough to flush the hivemind caches.
Do you also consider the limits of working from the office? I’m thinking of things like lost productivity from open office floor plans, for instance.
I wonder how many firms arise simply to feed the ego of the people who start it? Certainly you must address this part of WFH? That fact was brought sharply into focus by the pandemic, no?
This is an interesting viewpoint and as an advocate of wfh, a good one for me to read.
However I would say that a lot of your argument seems to be based on the fact that senior leaders / top performers like to meet in person, so therefore there must be benefits. Have you considered the possibility that the causality is reversed here? The current generation of senior leaders came up before working from home was really possible, therefore are by definition going to be the people who thrive in face to face environment. Conversely people who work more effectively from home (including all the intangibles) are much less likely to currently have reached senior positions. But now working from home is so much more convenient, is there a reason to think that there couldn't be a rebalancing here?
I work with a lot of startups. I was recently working with PairEyewear.com, founded by 2 people who were 26 years old, and who are now 28 years old. They go to the office 4 days a week. I do not see a generational shift, I see leaders of all ages going to the office.
I didn't mean generation in terms of age. Maybe "current cohort" would have been better phrasing.
Many people will have already decided before they are 26 that they aren't cut out for leadership because they don't fit the prevailing idea of what a leader is/does.
Great idea! It never occurred to me to use Coase's perspective to look at working from home. Thinking about it in this way makes it much easier to reason about. Thanks.
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/what-work-can-be-done-f..."