Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.
As a disabled woman I need fully remote work. The longer I’ve worked in tech the more I’ve seen that an office really isn’t needed. If you like being in an office and the company wants to provide one then that’s great but there is no reason to require it.
Just writing code or discussing things in meetings feels much better remote.
IMO things like mentoring juniors or on-boarding new colleagues is pretty hard when you’re not sitting next to each other.
And that’s why I love my company’s policy. Basically, we have two days “mandatory” at office (i.e. you’re expected to be in, unless you have obligations), and our VP has committed to three days minimum remote and stuck by that. And we’re totally cool with people doing full remote for a month or whatever if they are doing an extended trip or have some other reason why coming into the office is impractical.
So all of the mentoring and whatnot happens on those two days. It works quite well because the barrier to collaboration is lower those two days, and people still have the majority of their work remote for better focus and comfort.
We’re not a tech company, but I do have a tech job, so I’m very happily surprised that my org is so sensible.
As a disabled woman I need fully remote work. The longer I’ve worked in tech the more I’ve seen that an office really isn’t needed. If you like being in an office and the company wants to provide one then that’s great but there is no reason to require it.
Depends on the tasks at hand, I think.
Just writing code or discussing things in meetings feels much better remote. IMO things like mentoring juniors or on-boarding new colleagues is pretty hard when you’re not sitting next to each other.
And that’s why I love my company’s policy. Basically, we have two days “mandatory” at office (i.e. you’re expected to be in, unless you have obligations), and our VP has committed to three days minimum remote and stuck by that. And we’re totally cool with people doing full remote for a month or whatever if they are doing an extended trip or have some other reason why coming into the office is impractical.
So all of the mentoring and whatnot happens on those two days. It works quite well because the barrier to collaboration is lower those two days, and people still have the majority of their work remote for better focus and comfort.
We’re not a tech company, but I do have a tech job, so I’m very happily surprised that my org is so sensible.