Remote work.

Let's have the talk. As the world comes down off this covid weirdness expectations are changing.  Saw a recent statistic thst 80% of new roles are hybrid to full time in office. 
 

Some points 
 

 I do like being around people and being in an office every once in a while would be nice.  Hybrid setup would be ideal.  I understand some people fully want remote work due to life situation or being an introvert.  
 

I lead a team of fully remote folks and getting them exposure to leadership and other parts of the company for advancement is tough without burning them out on travel. 
 

Personally, the chances for advancement are limited without silly amounts of travel.  I've had 50%+ travel roles before. Im kinda done with it for a bit. 
 

anyway. Think I'm slowly on the hunt for another role.  What do you guys think?
 

I'm confused at what you are asking.

I feel that in most cases productivity takes a dive when you are on WFH full time.  Those who say they are "just as productive" are full of it.

If the measure of productitivy is just how many clicks you can put on your mouse in a day - sure.  The intangibles are what takes a hit.  

Right now I travel 1-3 days a week most weeks, have a 13 mile commute that I get paid to do, and work in the office 1-4 days a week.  If I need to WFH for some reason I just do it.  Works good for me but I prefer to be in the office or travelling for work.  

I am ineffective working from home because I don't even try to avoid the distractions. I love home. Home is where I go to get away from work. Having work at home with me made me unhappy. yes it was in a dedicated space and I did the "commute walk" and all that. But I'd hear the dog bark and be like "sweet, I'll go play ball with Bella!"

I also don't want any of the HR responsibilities of a management or leadership role.

I don't know if my reply is helpful, but I didn't really understand the question.

This isn't a productivity discussion.  It's about preferences mostly and the other weird quirks thst remote work force.  
 

like I find that if you're not in the room during meetings at work, you don't matter. 

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

Our team is distributed across the US & Argentina, so we're rarely all in the same room. In our situation we're each given the same level of input & attention regardless of location. However, I realize we're a unique company & situation. 

However, we're also not a "revolving-door" type place where people come to advance their career, then move on. In the 10+ years I've been here that's only happened to a half-dozen people that I'm aware of, out of a ~1200 person company.  

Even before the pandemic I was working from home most days but I am kind of welcoming the idea of people starting to migrate back to the office. 

There are a lot of things that can be done - and are even done best! - when you can hunker down, turn off all the electronic nags, and approach a task.  But there is definitely an advantage to having different disciplines mingling in the office.  It's also a lot easier to pull people together at short notice when they're all physically in the same location.  I have found that with or without video, it is incredibly difficult to conduct meetings via a bridge when those meetings depend on getting spontaneous input from attendees or even having some side conversations.

I do not subscribe to the thinking that the default position of the remote worker is that they're just slacking off all day so you need them where you can see them.  I also don't believe that remote workers are using all that free time that they don't spend commuting doing extra work and putting in more hours.  To me, those are propaganda lies that each "side" is telling the other.  I know that remote folks are slacking off a bit.  Maybe it's stepping away to have a contractor measure the windows or going to pick up kids or run other errands during the day.  But there is plenty of in-office slacking off that goes on as well and I think that balances.  I'll admit that I've had days where I've slacked h.a.r.d. all day, but frankly I would have done the same thing pre-covid.  On the flip side, I've also had days where I've gone balls-to-the-wall from early until late, so I figure that it all averages out, and I suspect that's the way it is for most.

We've been talking about a return to the office for a while now and I've actually been trying to convince my boss to pick a day that he wants to be there.  I have absolutely no desire to go up there and sit by myself in an empty office building since it's about a 45 minute drive each way before we figure in traffic.  But if going in to the office means that I can get face time with folks and have an opportunity to go to lunch, socialize over some coffee, or maybe grab some beers on the way home, that is very much worth it.

There is a lot of truth in the issue of advancement opportunities.  I've always been able to stretch my legs a bit by being able to have those incidental conversations around the coffee pot with folks and hear about things going on across the org.  Knowing that Beth in billing has a problem because Pete in procurement can't put the right data in Salesforce because Sam from sales has to change the way he quotes a service because Cathy in cloud services has a problem with software that I already helped Steve in service delivery fix means that I can stitch all that together and bring a solution.  There are also more opportunities to get face time with my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss so they know who I am and what I do.  Plus more time to talk to other people's bosses so that when they might have openings or be ready to spin up something new, I can get myself into the middle of it if I want.  Being fully remote really limits that.

I don't know about the whole introvert/extrovert thing.  To me it sounds like a bunch of excuses and whining, but I don't really feel like I fit on either one of those labels.  I'm either a shy extrovert or an introvert who loves being around people.  So whatever.  But I do think that an employer has an incentive for its workers to view themselves as a tribe of sorts and having these fully remote teams makes that extremely difficult, if not impossible.  Of course now the question is what about an organization that has a workforce that is primarily geo-located with one another, but has picked up some geo-dispersed fully remote members through the covid times?  When 12 of the team members are getting together for beers after work, but the other 5 are in 5 different cities or even timezones it's going to continue to be difficult to grow that tribe mentality.  For some jobs, I think that may work out just fine.  Certainly for the people that want to do their job and be finished and aren't interested in advancing through the organization.  I think it may have some larger long-term effects on turnover, though, because if you're sitting in your home-office doing X task all day for people you've never actually met, why wouldn't you switch to a different group of people you've never met?

All that said, if they came out and mandated everybody had to go back to the office forthwith, I'd be pretty pissed off.

In an ideal world, I would be in the office 2x a week, and get the face to face interactions in person with the people that can help my career. 
 

Alternatively, I would think being in the office 3-4 times a year as a team, for 4-5 days at a time would be similarly effective.

My current job - though the title and responsibilities have changed over the past 5 years - has basically always been remote. My boss was always traveling, and everybody that we worked with regularly were in different states. 

Then it changed after a merger, and I was the odd man out. Only one not in Ohio.  Starting getting left out and had to really bust my ass to get noticed. 

Now my team is spread out across 4 states again. I met my boss in person after 9 months of reporting to him, at a funeral that happened to be in my town (we live 200 miles apart). That was kind of weird. 
 

I am looking for a new job. With about 3 exceptions, with extremely short commutes, being in the office more than 3 days a week is not something I'm willing to consider, at least not without the compensation to match. I don't want to waste any more of my time commuting than I have to. 

For me it was a coincidence that I took on a new role just as the pandemic hit that was a remote role.  It was a remote role before the pandemic and is expected to always be a remote role.  I am a PM supporting projects originating in our international factories supporting our North American customers.  I have to take calls at odd times early in the morning and late and night.  Being at home allows me to hop on a call and handle a situation but then go back to normal life.  

I do think the introvert / extrovert thing is a part of the discussion.  I am certainly an introvert and have no desire for any of the social aspects of the office or grabbing beers after work.  

My boss and I had a long talk about methods of ensuring work life balance and his expectations for my performance.   Being an professional and paid salary and not hourly, its not about the amount of hours I put in, but about the performance of my projects.  

Nothing much to add since I cannot work on submarines at home, but I do offer an observation:

My wife has worked from home since the outbreak of covid. Before we got the puppies and only had cats, I could tell that she missed interaction. I would get home from a 12hr day and immediately get pounced on and the talking would be nonstop. Immediately as in I would not even have my coat off. With the dogs it is a little better as they interact more than cats do.

Going to the office does have some benefit.