It's pretty bad when your CEO disparages your product that much. It's like if Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said they'd be switching to Google Workspace because Microsoft Teams was inefficient and difficult to use.
Teams and Zoom are great for remote work, and I get how a lot of people love just dialing in to meetings, but there’s definitely a different dynamic to being in the office.
During the pandemic my dev team grew from two people to six. Since it was in waves we got to try being at the office and being at home using remote work only interchangeably.
Especially as a manager I see the benefits of working in the office. Not necessarily every day, but regularly.
Not necessarily from a raw productivity perspective. The office has a lot of apparent drawbacks, but these drawbacks are what triggers the dynamic that makes the office better - at least for me and my team.
I find that the office conversations triggers more ideas and better collaboration.
With my manager hat on I find that it’s easier for me to see if I need to get involved in discussions or let people handle it themselves.
People are different, teams are different, but it’s not black and white.
People love the flexibility of remote work, and some people are certainly better off working “alone” at home than being with the team, but for me it’s all about finding the balance. I don’t want to micromanage anyone, but there’s a reason a lot of people need managers, and that is simply that left to their own devices they will start working on 200 things and not finish anything.
As boring as it is our job is to deliver value to the company.
But on occasion, I will let people run wild with ideas and see where it goes. And then rein them back in when there are deadlines to be met.
As someone else in management I would take the higher morale boost I have from my completely remote engineering team to some “good conversations” and “interesting ideas” that may pop up from time to time. It’s not their job to come up with that shit. It’s either mine or products and they are definitely able to do it organically if you facilitate casual working sessions that promote conversation over productivity.
Edit: also if you have people who can’t manage their work without you stating over their shoulder that’s a failure on your part not theirs. Yes some people just aren’t cut out for some jobs but if the difference is being remote or in the office that is totally on you.
I love how everything is being taken in the worst possible way. I certainly don’t micromanage my team.
And morale boost? Strange how the team prefers the arrangement we have now over being completely remote…
But sure, I’m the bad guy. Whatever floats your straw-man. I merely tried putting forward a different perspective.
Here’s another perspective: I don’t like the commute, but I hate working from home. The commute gives me a much needed separation between work and home.
Agreed with this. But that's part of the problem. It takes effort to foster those conversations and "casual working meetings" like you stated. Many managers that push for back to office just don't do that.
We are going through a transition where we need to change how we work top to bottom.
Those who are less adaptable will push for the older way of doing things because the older way is more efficient for THEM. They aren't wrong, they just don't know they would be more successful if they changes how they worked.
Lots of products are effective at what they do. Water is super effective at keeping us hydrated, but you certainly can’t sustain on water alone.
Zoom is super effective at what it does, it’s just not a silver bullet for building highly effective remote only teams, and clearly neither is the organization behind the product.
I get that we always like to twist and tabloidize the narrative, but the world isn’t black or white.
Unless he doesn't believe zoom is intended to solve the problem of remote work.
There's a difference in scale of making a zoom call occasionally to add flexibility and having your entire business run off zoom for its day to day.
Some things you'd want to solve for in the second but not the first case:
Remote learning, team building events, snack distribution.
Offloading the entire office experience to remote isn't as easy as just using a video conferencing app.
Unless he doesn't believe zoom is intended to solve the problem of remote work.
Remote work fucking MADE his company into what it is today. Nobody even heard of Zoom before the pandemic. They were a nothing company with a shitty product amongst many. He knows this very well, he just can't keep his own micro-managing inner asshole down.