" Remote work, doesn’t work" absolute clickbait? I've been working for a "remote first" organisation for over a decade. Admittedly, for me, there was some communication failure in the lead up to joining that cost a day or two. But, according to more recent joiners, this has been addressed long since. It has been one of the easiest places to be effective in that I've experienced. I've also suffered on site at organisations just as ineffective as John describes, this has nothing to do with remote or on site and has everything to do with the culture.
Remote work, doesn’t work. It’s ineffective and hugely wasteful. For seven months I worked for a large enterprise company and it’s been the most frustrating role of my career. Let’s start from the beginning. In July 2023 I accepted a fully remote role with the company. My start date was set for early August. Things started to look bad just over a week before my start date. It was suddenly pushed back because they weren’t ‘ready’. Then as the start date got closer, just days away I’d still had no comms. No news of when a laptop would arrive or who to contact or what to do on day one . Day one was me tracking my new boss down to arrange a meeting to chase my onboarding. It didn’t give me a great impression of my boss. Even worse when he had no plan. I’m a grown up though. I’ve been through onboarding at many organisations so I cracked on as best I could. Which didn’t go well. The organisation was extremely bureaucratic and some people clearly had learned to use that to their advantage - looking busy, but doing the absolute minimum. This seemed to be particularly amplified by being remote. Previously in bureaucratic organisations I’d solve this problem by walking around the office and speaking to people. Then if needs be, talk to their boss/approver and figure out how to get things done. Remotely, with people spread across many timezones that just wasn’t possible. It’s too easy to be anonymous and hide behind Slack when that’s all there is. The net result, access to the very basic systems took a month, and many things I still didn’t have when I left six months later. The many sagas of this role bring me to the conclusion that remote work doesn’t work if you don’t have the right people and processes. And things haven’t improved in the month since I’ve left, I’m still trying to return their hardware to them.
It's really sad that someone would elect to write off an entire way of working based on one negative experience. It's certainly true that you can't all just go home from the office one day, change nothing else and expect remote work to work. You have to change to make it work. But when you make it work, it works fine. May not be everyone's preferred way of working, but it certainly works.
Shame what happened John Crickett bit worse that you’ve written off remote work especially with so many followers that will be influenced by your post. IMO opinion the problem was the culture and the leadership not driving the right behaviours. The whole walking round the office thing you mentioned can be a problem in its own right. Wasting time looking for people and also those that are trying to concentrate and in deep work getting distracted by unplanned visitors.
there are pros and cons for both. I personnally don't like it for myself, but some people look at me suspiciously : I must certainly have horrible reasons for not wanting to stay home. The same people that were working fully on-site some years ago.
I've worked in remote teams and I've led remote teams that have performed brilliantly, and I've been in on-site teams that were nightmares. As you say, it all has to do with culture.
Software Strategy Ltd.•6K followers
1yYes, it is clickbait Yes, it is in accurate The more interesting questions are: When does it work well? When does it not work well? and What can you do to make it work well? And when should you avoid it? I know your employer has worked hard over many years to make it work well. Many employeers rushed into it in March 2020 and haven't put those supports in place so it isn't always such a positive experience.