25 Comments
Jun 4, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Thank you, Tomas, for another great article. Here are some observations from my work experience at a large incumbent company and a government agency.

(1) Knowledge workers hate cubicles but, inexplicably, cubicles have become the norm. Telework is great for escaping the cubicle environment where people use speakerphones and raise their voices in "shouting matches" with concurrent users of speakerphones.

(2) Knowledge work is difficult to measure, and knowledge workers frequently resort to appalling tricks such as writing documents that are too long and creating PowerPoint slides that have too many irrelevant graphics and "eye charts" instead of clear summaries.

(3) Managers [in large incumbent companies] don't know how to rate knowledge work. Their main heuristics are: (a) whether an employee comes in early and leaves late, (b) the gross volume of an employee's products (documents, PowerPoints), and (c) whether a manager (or his boss) likes this employee.

(4) When I teleworked one day a week, I was required to be continuously connected to a chat and respond immediately. This state of constant readiness has largely depleted the advantages of escaping the commute and the cubicle.

(5) Hybrid solutions seem optimal, BUT they are usually more complex and carry a large overhead. As you wrote in the article, a hybrid worker can't move to a low-cost-of-living area. Coordinating meetings and deliverables of hybrid workers is more difficult than having either "office" or "remote" employees. Managing, rating, and promoting hybrid employees is more difficult. For example, an employee who comes to the office on the same days as her manager does gains some privileges due to subconscious sense of connection.

Victoria

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Jun 27, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

A thought-provoking article, but I think it is a bit one-sided as it doesn't discuss several factors in favor of working from the office:

1) Employees need socialization and like leaving home (at least from time to time).

2) Long-term productivity such as creativity and integration of complex projects may be less effective when working remotely.

3) When working remotely, employees miss the exchange of ideas that takes place in corridor/water-cooler/cafeteria informal meetings.

4) It's harder to build a company culture when employees are remote. Remote employees may be less attached to the company and more prone to hopping between jobs.

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Jun 7, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Rural areas would need high quality schools to attract remote knowledge workers. This is not the case today. How do you see this playing out?

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Jun 7, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

How about the effects of having different types of arrangement, e.g. hybrid for some and fully remote for the rest, within the office environment, especially within the same work team? Many years back, my former company had such an arrangement for some of us within the department, and the most obvious disadvantage for us remote workers (even then, we would visit the office a few times each month) was that we had to kiss our promotion goodbye. It seemed that we had to exchange our career progression with freedom. I wonder if this issue has been resolved now that most people are working remotely.

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Jun 5, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Thanks for the excellent article, I was somewhat of a remote working sceptic but have been convinced. The state monopoly NHS tried (with no consultation or discussion) to insist that GPs go back to face to face appointments a couple of weeks back. They were forced to back down by revolting doctors. It will be fascinating to watch the evolution of hybrid and remote working in medicine. I know doctors who already work entirely remotely for Aboriginal communities in Australia.

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Dec 27, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Great interesting article Tomas. An observation: now that some companies hire to work 100% remote (and using here the same definition of your article) that does not necessarily mean that you can reside everywhere. I received a job offer in January 2021 from the software company RedHat, the condition was: you can work from everywhere in the country where you reside. It is not only done by RedHat, but becoming popular in EU - some companies justify with taxation reasons

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Sep 28, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

As always, your articles are incredibly well-written, enlightening and inspiring (your covid articles were amazing, insightful and incredibly important). However, as a knowledge worker at a successful, wonderful tech company which has been all remote during the pandemic, I think you are exaggerating the problems of working at the office and underestimating the benefits of hybrid work. Like most people, I enjoyed the benefits that WFH gave me (such as more time with family and more freedom), but I also feel lonely and bored at home over Zoom. My general happyness has increased significantly after I started coming in to the office one or two days a week and many of my coworkers seem to feel the same way. Some away time from my wife (also WFH) and social interaction with other people during the days makes our time together better. I don't buy your theory that people will just have more time to connect to friends and networks of their choice instead -- establishing new close connections is not so easy in adulthood unless (sometimes) you're young and don't have family, activities to drive your kids to and all sorts of other chores occupying the rest of your non-work time. For many people, their only time to socialize outside of weekends is through work.

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Jun 4, 2021Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Thank you for this fascinating and in depth piece Tomas! One angle that's missing from the home office / remote work discourse is its macro political effects.

I tried to its effect on geopolitics here: https://shiftprint.writeas.com/the-geopolitical-implications-of-home-office

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Hasn’t Sun Microsystems been acquired by Oracle 10+ years ago?

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I think you may be missing two things about Hybrid from an excellent article.

1: It does change WHERE you can live, just not as much as remote, for example a 2 hour commute is pallatable if its only once a week. There are many cities with a ring of expensive homes within a one hour commute, and a further ring that is significantly cheaper between 1 and 2 hours.

2: Hybrid office costs can also be lower, depending on the pattern; if people's office days are split over the week then hot-desks work, or if people are all coming in on the same day (as we've used in the past), then temporary crowding is acceptable for a day when most of it will be in meetings anyway.

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