If you're starting an article with a strong, absolute, data-devoid, and highly opinion-based quote from an executive (not an engineer or direct manager), then I'm not going to take much stock in your writing.
Look, I'm not saying remote is better or worse. But I will say that as an engineer, a hybrid model works excellent for my personal productivity. If anything, I spend more hours focused when I'm at home or at my local coffee shop. I am fully aware that I am missing social interaction, serendipitous productive conversation, yada yada, when I'm not in the office. I am aware that my company might be more productive if we were all in-person. But statements like this?
> Full WFH is a two-day workweek.
Yeah, fuck off. Why are we trusting executives' opinions on day-to-day lives of their line workers anyway? Their work is different: it's largely based on connections and debates and presentations and deal-making. My work is centered around focused writing and refinement of code and prose. Obviously our ideal work environments might differ.
Also, tangentially, every image in this article seems to be a stock photo of someone stressed out in an office :)
'cause executives are the ones whose neck is on the line for success of their business division so they are extremely motivated to keep a close eye on profitability and progress on business goals, particularly when the economy looks wobbly. [mic drop]
(Yes, there are examples of executives who are incompetent and/or just plain dumb, but they are the minority.)
And, of course, before I get attacked as pro-RTO, I myself WFH and only go to the office when circumstances require it.
...so? What is the conclusion? You force people to do what they hate and hope for better results? It really makes no sense.
If your financial livelihood and the financial livelihoods of many other people are dependent upon you delivering a highly complex block of code—would you want to rely on a brand new production method or tool to deliver it that you don’t trust? A method that departs from successful methods of historical code production that have worked well for you for decades. A method that your peers, whose opinion you trust, advise against? A method that successful industry leaders are publicly moving away from rapidly?
Seems like there isn’t a WFH preaching engineer that is going to willfully move away from their set of tools and comfortable knowledge base to deliver something critical, I am not sure why we should expect something different from these leaders either.
Moreover, this line of reasoning completely ignores the influence of employee satisfaction on productivity. They had something they valued a lot, now you take it away. I witnessed it several times and every time CEOs did that, productivity plummeted significantly and people were starting to take photos for LinkedIn.
So we have WFH at scale for 3 years balanced against in-office work that has decades and decades of successful history behind. Also consider that the global catalyst that drove WFH at scale is now no longer a factor.
So when presented with a choice of what’s comfortable vs uncomfortable, people will opt for the comfortable unless forced to the uncomfortable. What’s happening now is simply a restoration to a comfortable business state…from the executives POV because there is no longer a pandemic forcing them to be operating in an uncomfortable business state.