Working from the office is a management strategy. It goes like this:
If you work remote, you have to actually write down things, like 1. who your workers are, 2. what the teams are, 3. where they are, 4. how to contact them, 5. what they're working on, 6. who else they depend on or who depends on them, etc. There are a lot of new tools to learn, you have to learn how to ask for someones time and schedule time. That's a lot of work that managers don't want to do.
If you work from the office, you mostly have to: 1. walk around the office and ask someone. Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime. Of course, there may be many offices, but then you call the other offices and ask the secretary to go around and ask people.
It's also very easy when wfh to accidentally leave a paper trail or records of conversations you'd rather stay hidden. In an office you can just talk in person with no record.
Wfh is a right that white collar workers are gonna have to fight for, the way all unions have had to fight for the rights workers deserve. Don't threaten to quit, threaten to unionize.
As long as tech workers can credibly threaten to quit I think that’s easier than unionizing. Unions are great when you have a single big employer (a monopsony) like the public sector or a dominant single company, like a factory in a small town. Then the “monopoly” of the union is matched to the monopsony of the single employer. But there are still many tech companies competing for skilled workers. As long as we can say we quit if they force us back to the office I don’t see the need to unionize.
Unions are applicable for any number of employers and jobs, big or small, many or few.
Sure, threatening to quit is easy. But doing the easy thing isn't the same as doing the right thing. Unionizing allows us to prevent unpaid overtime, demand more vacation, better health care, fewer contractors, more diverse hiring, fewer hiring restrictions, and of course, things like wfh, child care, family leave, maternity and paternity. Things corporations making hundreds of billions in profits could easily do, but will never do unless we organize.
I guess my "don't bother unionizing" take is extremely dependent on where you live. I'm in Sweden where we already have very generous benefits and labour friendly laws.
> If you work from the office, you mostly have to: 1. walk around the office and ask someone. Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime.
In the office one person at a time can DOS attack my attention and everyone else can see I'm busy helping them. Slack is far worse, multiple coworkers are DDOS attacking me and 10 more unread messages pop up before I finish helping the first guy.
See this is exactly what I mean. People don't want to learn how to wfh.
There are easy solutions to these problems. Put up an away message and silence notifications. Set office hours when you will respond to messages. Time box. Give estimated response times. Provide an escalation method for emergencies. Keep a weekly rotation for support requests.
All of this is well established in fully remote companies. But you can't expect to completely change the dynamic and expect it to work perfect with no changes.
> walk around the office and ... Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime.
Without sarcasm, I think a lot of people think this is what "important hallway conversations" and "collaboration and innovation" are. I also find it hugely disruptive, and it caters to people can mostly only communicate verbally.
I check my slack when I have some slack. If it's super urgent and important, page me. If it is important and not urgent, set up a meeting. If it's urgent but not important, stop doing it. If you let slack pop dialogs or notifications, then you're going to get a lot of urgent-but-not-important shit.
This same thing happens in an office if it's not small/one big shared workspace. Literally no difference. Also if you have other offices/remote works this can happen even with WFO.
People message me while I'm on zoom, I tell them I'm busy but I'll get to them in the order they reached out. It works just fine. I have a note on my computer I add their name to and once I get off zoom I check if I still need to reach out to anyone.
If you work remote, you have to actually write down things, like 1. who your workers are, 2. what the teams are, 3. where they are, 4. how to contact them, 5. what they're working on, 6. who else they depend on or who depends on them, etc. There are a lot of new tools to learn, you have to learn how to ask for someones time and schedule time. That's a lot of work that managers don't want to do.
If you work from the office, you mostly have to: 1. walk around the office and ask someone. Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime. Of course, there may be many offices, but then you call the other offices and ask the secretary to go around and ask people.
It's also very easy when wfh to accidentally leave a paper trail or records of conversations you'd rather stay hidden. In an office you can just talk in person with no record.
Wfh is a right that white collar workers are gonna have to fight for, the way all unions have had to fight for the rights workers deserve. Don't threaten to quit, threaten to unionize.