Remote Work - A Dithyramb
In other words: How to work remotely and not go feral…
Oh, wait, I actually don’t know that. And I really wanted to use the word “dithyramb” in a post title.
I belong to the group of COVID beneficiaries. Ever since the global lockdown was decreed, I’ve only occasionally left the house for work. I’m fine with it because I’m pretty good at self-management and I have strong intrinsic motivation to finish the job before a whip appears over my back in the form of urgent emails and a manager asking, “Where do we stand with [task X]?” As far as I’m concerned, it’s all upside. In the IT industry, however, the phenomenon of remote work also has its negative sides, which I’d like to examine in this post. But I’ll start by presenting my own balance sheet of gains and losses caused by remote work to give this post an autobiographical touch.
Going feral on remote, or: confessions of a remote worker
What do I gain by working remotely?
- Time needed for commuting—altogether over 2 hours a day. I don’t get frustrated sitting in traffic. I have more time for my family, though the fact that my home (in a spatial sense) is also my workplace doesn’t quite let me fully enjoy it.
- Money, because I spend less cash “on the town”: on food, tickets, fuel, on lunches-brunches-scrunches, coffees and beers with colleagues, and the like. I save on new clothes and on investing in my image, because I often don’t even turn on the camera for calls.
- A sense of agency, because I do the laundry, cooking, and cleaning during work hours. I do happen to lie down, yes, often with a laptop on my knees.
- Better efficiency in performing tasks (the famous “performance”), because I’m not distracted by what’s happening in the office, nor do I waste time on social gatherings—see below.
What do I lose?
- The entire social side of work: coffee chats, networking, a bit of social grace which—if not practiced—tends to degenerate and transform into becoming feral. This is the cost I need to pay.
- Visibility and brand recognition in the workplace, which often puts me at a worse starting position in negotiations or discussions.
- A sense of time. Days of the week often blur into a monotonous mass of a uniform, usually crappy, color. On Wednesday, I think it’s Friday, and on Thursday—that it’s Tuesday.
- A tangible boundary between work and free time. My work room is often a child’s playroom or a place for relaxation. I find myself checking into work while playing with my kid.
- Peace of mind, because I’m afraid this remote Eldorado will end one day and I’ll have a hard time switching back to on-site mode. As Tyrion Lannister once said: “It’s hard to put a leash on a dog, once you’ve put a crown on its head”.
Who is remote work for?
I’ll venture to say that with current advancements and access to various online collaboration tools, most IT positions have the potential to be remote. Especially in large corporations, where you work daily in teams operating in different parts of the world, across various time zones and cultures, face-to-face contact is not only impossible but also unnecessary. I refer you to the classic book by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, „Remote”, who have written pretty much everything there is to say on the subject.
However, positions are still occupied by people, and not every person is suited for remote working. It follows from an Aristotelian syllogism that since every IT worker is a human, but not every human is suited for remote work, then not every IT worker is suited for remote work. Or something like that 😉
From an organizational point of view, the lack of a sense of control over the employee and the inability to manage remote teams has caused managers to collectively “soil their armor.” Even former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shared his rare brain fart with the world, suggesting that remote work was the reason the tech giant lost its competitive edge.
And here we get to the heart of the problem.
Managing a remote team
I feel for managers because managing a remote team is quite a challenge. On one hand, they deal with a percentage of purebred slackers who will do their job at minimal cost (if they do it at all), have a litany of excuses ready as to why a given task couldn’t be completed, and spend the rest of the time racking up hours on Steam. A non-technical manager and his Sancho Panza, the Scrum Master, will nod their heads and swallow excuses peppered with technical jargon like hungry pelicans, for what else can they do in the despair of their ignorance?
There is also no shortage of hustlers in the industry who skillfully juggle assignments and, within their full-time job, squeeze in two more plus 3 side gigs. This doesn’t mean, however, that remote teams can’t be tamed.
Consistency and clearly defined tasks can help, as can good communication within the team. Of course, I realize this sounds like mentoring bullshit, but unfortunately, I have no other recipe. Sorry!
Through the looking glass
When I put myself in the manager’s shoes, I must admit I see mostly the downsides of remote work. I see that the team doesn’t integrate, it’s harder to show ownership of a task, and knowledge transfer is more difficult, slower, and less effective. After all, face-to-face contact and the ability to look over a colleague’s shoulder at their monitor or arrange even a 10-minute meeting to show how to trigger CI/CD pipelines often yield better results than a 2-hour Teams session, where after 15 minutes the concentration of the participants drops and cannot get back up for the rest of the day. Social learning theory says a lot about this. This doesn’t mean remote work is worse—it just requires a completely different approach to people and the selection of those people.
On the other hand, it’s no coincidence that the first people to return to the office after COVID, when it wasn’t yet fashionable or mandatory, were PMs or other types of managers for whom physical presence was the only chance to maintain their raison d’être in the organization—existence for existence’s sake. Ed Zitron beautifully described this phenomenon in a post about business idiots.
Like it or not, they pulled their subordinates along with them, because what would a lady-in-waiting look like without her entourage. Even if the Return To Office wasn’t dictated by real need, the herd mentality did its job. This isn’t a rule, although in the post-COVID landscape, I have been a direct or indirect witness (“a friend said”) to such scenarios.
Conclusions
Of course, there is a certain percentage of people in technical positions who prefer to work in an office. It could be interpersonal skills training for them or a good excuse to get their asses off a dusty Aeron chair. They might not like their family or spending time with them, they might be put off by the loneliness of a remote worker, or they might simply be unable to motivate themselves or focus at home. They might just not have the right conditions to balance working from home with living with roommates, in-laws, children, etc. For such people, it’s worth keeping an office. The rest? Let the managers worry. I wouldn’t make a fuss as long as the employee isn’t slacking off too much. Unfortunately, I don’t know a better recipe.
Wishing you good managers, DEV Whisperer