The work from home disconnect
There’s a vast disconnect between managers and their employees when it comes to working from home. And the disagreements about this disconnect have reached a fever pitch recently, as many companies are planning a return to office life. I hope to highlight both sides of the debate and offer a little wisdom I’ve picked up in my first few days back.
Employees, like me, are pushing back on a return to the office. We’ve spent 18 months working from home and, in many cases, we’re crushing it. My company went through an enormous growth period during the COVID-19 pandemic. All while we were working from our cozy home offices. We’ve proven that we can be productive from home. Not only that, we’ve gotten used to many of the benefits working from home provides, including flexible hours and not having to pay for transportation.
Many people moved out of the city during the pandemic. With all the bars, clubs, and businesses closed, it was difficult to justify the sky-high rent you pay within city limits. My team went from being clustered in Boston to being spread across the world from Seattle to Dublin. While I stayed local, I still have to take the train into the city to get to the office. That’s $300 per month for a train pass and $80 per month for parking. Going back to the office is going to cost me $380 per month. In that sense, going back to the office is like getting a pay decrease.
This is the reality for most of us. As a result, many have started assuming that decision-makers are operating with the worst intentions. For example, I’ve heard people say that management wants to be able to micro-manage their people. I, personally, have a hard time believing this one because installing spyware on your computer would be far easier than making you come back to the office. Others have pessimistically speculated that managers want people back in the office to justify having offices, which companies use as a sign of prominence.
I, personally, had a desire to see my colleagues, have the option to work in a more communal space, and reacquaint myself with talking to real-life humans face to face (what can I say, I’m an extrovert). So I decided it was worth it, to me, to commute for a couple of days this week. And I think I figured out the cause of this divide.
The problem isn’t that employers and managers are out of touch (well, maybe a little). And it isn’t that they want to micro-manage us. Or that they want us there to serve their ego. The problem is that we have very different jobs. And productivity means different things depending on your role.
Meetings As Productivity
I am a software engineer for a fairly large company. In my role as a tech lead for my team, I attend a lot of meetings. But I don’t consider these to be my actual work. In fact, meetings are the things keeping me from doing my “actual work.” However, the meetings I had in my days back at the office were undoubtedly more productive. With people talking face to face, interpreting body language, and having access to whiteboards, communication was far more effective. There was more camaraderie. People weren’t putting themselves on mute and reading the news in another browser tab until they heard their name or some specific phrase that caught their attention (not that I did that or anything…). I was able to talk to one of my directors, even though his calendar looked booked, by just looking over and seeing that he was free.
These interactions yielded great results, but I realized I’d gotten nothing done at the end of the day. Not one thing I said I was going to complete at standup that morning had been accomplished. In fact, I think I spent a whopping 20 minutes actually writing code. Granted, some of this was because I was seeing people for the first time in 18 months, and there was some level of general socializing, but out of my whole day I got about twenty minutes of what I consider “real” work in. And this is where the difference lies.
For managers, the meetings ARE the “real work.” They spend most of their time coordinating teams, communicating timelines and road maps, doing discovery work, or ensuring everyone is aligned. That’s their job. So when they say working from the office is more productive, they aren’t lying. Working from the office IS more productive… for them.
Wanting everyone to return to the office isn’t malice. I mean… sure, some people have horrible managers who like to go on power trips. But for most of us, our managers and employers are being totally honest and sincere. They simply don’t realize that we have very different jobs. The work they are trying to make more efficient isn’t the part of our job that we consider “work.” It’s the part that we fit in between work. Unfortunately, in some cases, it’s the thing that prevents us from doing work. If you’ve ever had to put together a presentation solely for a meeting to update management, you know what I mean.
What should employers do?
First, leave return-to-office decisions up to your team leads. They understand how to make their teams productive. They’ve been doing it for 18 months or so. If you need everyone in the office for specific meetings, say that. Allow people to arrange their work schedule around commuting for that day. Talk to your employees and be honest about your needs.
Second, have some empathy for workers. Commuting is expensive. Offer reimbursement if you can. By demanding we come in, you are effectively giving us a pay cut. If having us in the office isn’t worth the extra $380 to you, why should it be worth it to us?
Third, consider re-focusing the office on collaboration instead of productivity (and understand the difference). The number one benefit of working in the office is collaboration. Consider this when communicating with your employees. If you start requiring everyone to work two days a week from the office, maybe it makes sense to schedule meetings on those two days. Perhaps your managers and leads need to spend more time in the office than your other employees. Having different requirements for different jobs is OK. A junior engineer who’s just crushing tickets all day doesn’t necessarily need to be in the office all the time.
If you have any thoughts, leave them in the comments. Definitely interested in other people’s opinions, as well as how the next year or so will unfold.
