From what I’ve learned by working in top heavy product teams vs slimmer developer teams. The basis for this “in-office leads to productivity” mentality is:
People who’s job uses meetings as their main tool, want these meetings to be in person, and push for a lot of otherwise unnecessary meetings. These meetings, are, of course, more effectively conducted in person.
People who’s job is ultimately to do the work, want to avoid unnecessary meeting. The work that needs doing, can be done more effectively, with fewer distractions, higher quality of life, less environmental impact from the commute, etc, from home.
The pandemic showed that productivity increased when people worked from home. What you can deduce from that, would be unpleasant for all those in the former category.
My wife would be in the former category (PO for the biggest software product in her company). Some days she has meetings back to back for 8h straight.
She hates in person meetings. According to her:
Online/hybrid meetings are easier to keep on schedule (both starts and finishes are often delayed)
In person meetings more often go off topic
back to back meetings means going from one meeting room to another in person, sometimes in another building. That same time can instead be used to take notes/prepare the next meeting when you don’t have to walk anywhere and just click a button to be In the next call
when a meeting turns out to be irrelevant or useless to you, it is socially not acceptable to get up and leave. Just not having your camera on and doing other work on the side works without anyone knowing
In person work is only for when companies don’t trust their employees. This is also true for people whose main work tool is meetings.
back to back meetings means going from one meeting room to another in person, sometimes in another building
Lol I used to work as a contractor for a small company at the Comcast Center HQ in Philadelphia. We had the gig producing Comcast’s mobile apps. One day my boss emailed me and said we were going to meet with Time Warner Cable to talk about handling their mobile apps as well. When he showed up I started to put my coat on and he said “what are you doing?” We then took the elevator up to the 16th floor … where TWC had an actual suite of fucking offices in the Comcast Center. The subsequent announcement of the merger between Comcast and TWC was no surprise to me, at least.
She sounds like a great PO. Especially if she is aware and encourages that last point.
I’m currently losing my mind where going to the office is being praised on a weekly basis as this excellent way to increase productivity. At the same time as I’m spending about 90% of time on meetings. They don’t realise that the underlying problem is a dysfunctional management, and exactly what you’re describing, as a trust issue. More than half the meetings are unnecessary, and disguised micromanagement.
Yes and no. There’s a certain amount of passive communication that you.miss out when you’re isolated from a team environment. A good team can mitigate this, however, by advocating regular group water-coolers and voice calls / screen-shares rather than emails or teams messages to get or deliver info. Getting a random teams call from a team member is not much different from them scooting their chair over to you.
I’m a huge advocate of letting people work how they are most happy. Some people like office, some like home. Just let people do their thing and figure out how to make it work. If we force people to work within a system that doesn’t suit them then you lose out on acquiring good talent and will hemorrhage the talent you have.
I agree with all of what you wrote. I even think having a couple of fixed days a week where it is encouraged to meet at the office, is also helpful. Personally, I go to the office whenever I need social stimuli, and I’m not overloaded with work.
Not really. Maybe it is the case in general. In my experience the distinction is more between useless and useful, and not so much “class”. At least the engineers are better paid. Or, I really do hope they are.
Company I work for, middle management is mostly unhappy about forced in office too, it’s only the directors and above that are forcing RTO. Even a lot of the directors I knew preferred wfh
This company is fucked tho, they refuse to change and have an insane amount of tech debt and inefficiencies in processes.
From what I’ve learned by working in top heavy product teams vs slimmer developer teams. The basis for this “in-office leads to productivity” mentality is:
People who’s job uses meetings as their main tool, want these meetings to be in person, and push for a lot of otherwise unnecessary meetings. These meetings, are, of course, more effectively conducted in person.
People who’s job is ultimately to do the work, want to avoid unnecessary meeting. The work that needs doing, can be done more effectively, with fewer distractions, higher quality of life, less environmental impact from the commute, etc, from home.
The pandemic showed that productivity increased when people worked from home. What you can deduce from that, would be unpleasant for all those in the former category.
My wife would be in the former category (PO for the biggest software product in her company). Some days she has meetings back to back for 8h straight.
She hates in person meetings. According to her:
In person work is only for when companies don’t trust their employees. This is also true for people whose main work tool is meetings.
Lol I used to work as a contractor for a small company at the Comcast Center HQ in Philadelphia. We had the gig producing Comcast’s mobile apps. One day my boss emailed me and said we were going to meet with Time Warner Cable to talk about handling their mobile apps as well. When he showed up I started to put my coat on and he said “what are you doing?” We then took the elevator up to the 16th floor … where TWC had an actual suite of fucking offices in the Comcast Center. The subsequent announcement of the merger between Comcast and TWC was no surprise to me, at least.
She sounds like a great PO. Especially if she is aware and encourages that last point.
I’m currently losing my mind where going to the office is being praised on a weekly basis as this excellent way to increase productivity. At the same time as I’m spending about 90% of time on meetings. They don’t realise that the underlying problem is a dysfunctional management, and exactly what you’re describing, as a trust issue. More than half the meetings are unnecessary, and disguised micromanagement.
Yes and no. There’s a certain amount of passive communication that you.miss out when you’re isolated from a team environment. A good team can mitigate this, however, by advocating regular group water-coolers and voice calls / screen-shares rather than emails or teams messages to get or deliver info. Getting a random teams call from a team member is not much different from them scooting their chair over to you.
I’m a huge advocate of letting people work how they are most happy. Some people like office, some like home. Just let people do their thing and figure out how to make it work. If we force people to work within a system that doesn’t suit them then you lose out on acquiring good talent and will hemorrhage the talent you have.
I agree with all of what you wrote. I even think having a couple of fixed days a week where it is encouraged to meet at the office, is also helpful. Personally, I go to the office whenever I need social stimuli, and I’m not overloaded with work.
This is a class war of sorts, between middle management and the workers.
Got it.
Not really. Maybe it is the case in general. In my experience the distinction is more between useless and useful, and not so much “class”. At least the engineers are better paid. Or, I really do hope they are.
Company I work for, middle management is mostly unhappy about forced in office too, it’s only the directors and above that are forcing RTO. Even a lot of the directors I knew preferred wfh
This company is fucked tho, they refuse to change and have an insane amount of tech debt and inefficiencies in processes.