I think this poll highlights an important issue. This is coming from someone who has been remote working for almost 10 years now since late 2015.
A paradoxical phenomenon I find with remote work: The volume of my work is higher when working remote because I can focus more on tasks without distraction, however, I also work smarter when I have interactions with people in the office. Personal interaction results in more efficient feedback loops that help me course-correct better. Being able to skip an inbox (or a meeting!) and get a direct answer can be massively valuable. Not being reduced to just another message notification is over-powered.
Despite the benefit of in-person work, the value proposition drops when you work in a "global" company. The sweet spot is finding ways to effectively collaborate, but sometimes this just means being available at odd hours that wouldn't make sense for an in-person office job. Both this and the course-correction problem I mentioned before are the major contributing factors to dissatisfaction with remote work, IMO.
Those of us who feel pressured to put in extra time while working remotely may also be at risk of sedentary lifestyle. Ever since COVID-19 lockdowns and for a variety of reasons, the time I used to invest in physical activity has been replaced by more desk work. The physical and mental effects of this are significantly detrimental. Improving my health seems like an impossible challenge with the encroachment of competing priorities that I'm seemingly locked-in on for months/years. I have no doubt that in-person work would make it easier to control this lifestyle imbalance.
PS: Remote work before Microsoft Teams and Zoom was the golden age of remote work. The only people who turned on a camera were the few with a license for Webex or GoToMeeting. Nobody cared about the color of your activity indicator.
evanjrowley•8mo ago
A paradoxical phenomenon I find with remote work: The volume of my work is higher when working remote because I can focus more on tasks without distraction, however, I also work smarter when I have interactions with people in the office. Personal interaction results in more efficient feedback loops that help me course-correct better. Being able to skip an inbox (or a meeting!) and get a direct answer can be massively valuable. Not being reduced to just another message notification is over-powered.
Despite the benefit of in-person work, the value proposition drops when you work in a "global" company. The sweet spot is finding ways to effectively collaborate, but sometimes this just means being available at odd hours that wouldn't make sense for an in-person office job. Both this and the course-correction problem I mentioned before are the major contributing factors to dissatisfaction with remote work, IMO.
Those of us who feel pressured to put in extra time while working remotely may also be at risk of sedentary lifestyle. Ever since COVID-19 lockdowns and for a variety of reasons, the time I used to invest in physical activity has been replaced by more desk work. The physical and mental effects of this are significantly detrimental. Improving my health seems like an impossible challenge with the encroachment of competing priorities that I'm seemingly locked-in on for months/years. I have no doubt that in-person work would make it easier to control this lifestyle imbalance.
PS: Remote work before Microsoft Teams and Zoom was the golden age of remote work. The only people who turned on a camera were the few with a license for Webex or GoToMeeting. Nobody cared about the color of your activity indicator.