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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I've been working remotely for a long time, and I both love and hate it

… I've been working remotely for a long time, and I both love and hate it. My little anecdote is this: I found out that my team in Boston was going out after work to eat pizza, or would have the occasional team lunch at a restaurant. My manager was paying for that, and my team was bonding together, but not me... At first I was angry that I've never been afforded a budget for weekly pizza delivery, and then I realised it wasn't about me, or what I initially saw as inequitable, like a benefit I was unfairly not being given... I then realised it was all about fostering a human connection, and team building. Then suddenly I got even more angry by that realisation. I felt dehumanised, marginalised, and overall demoralised.... I wasn't ever going to really be part of that team, and would exist as a useful "Resource" on the other side of a network connection. Nobody was personally invested in knowing me, and if I left the company or whatever there was no strings attached for any of them. You're mentor was trying to tell you how they were attaching strings, and even randomly so... …

Original discussionAmazon will require employees return to the office 3 days a week642 source comments · at import
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NI

What I'm struggling with is, even my own leadership and executives, have struggled to meaningfully communicate the WHY; they have not succeeded in selling the back to office, to myself at least. My own mentor, when I pushed in a friendly manner, related an anecdote how last time he was in the office, he met this new person from another team and they had a nice chat. Which is a LOVELY anecdote, and COMPLETELY irrelevant to forcing 300 people on our project back to office. If meeting people from other teams is a priority, there are a myriad ways of doing do (I avail of many of them myself). Neither the business nor personal benefit of this chance random encounter was quantified nor discussed, nor compared to alternatives. But I keep hearing these benefits of "water cooler conversations" and "elevator chats" etc. Is it a generational thing? I'm a 45 year old grouchy geezer, but between slac…

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HO

Ah, so people that have fulfilling social lives outside of work and don’t need to fill that void with people they have to work with are “reclusive quiet quitters”. Sure. I don’t see how people described by yourself as “great workers” are simultaneously quitters, but you’ve got it figured out I guess.

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LI

> rigorous statistics show that in-person teams are more productive in the long run, even taking into account and correcting for, all the various reasons remote work could be characterised as highly productive in a narrow focused vacuum. Link please, you astroturfing HR shill. Your stupid anecdote doesn't speak for all people. I would almost feel sorry for you needing work to have fwiends and warm little feelings of belonging if you weren't so biased in your own stance.

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