i have this inexplicable feeling that remote work might actually be even more of a hamster wheel than the traditional commute to office gang.
realistically you wouldn’t work 100% of the time in the office.
office banter, walking from a to b, coffee runs, lunch walks, colleagues, etc.
while being remote there’s not much else to do. so it becomes a lot about productivity and efficiency. remote meetings are becoming structured and systematized to the point where it’s just check-in, agenda points on repeat, check-out. every day. every week.
we’re drastically losing the time and place to wander (or puttering as jeff b. calls it).
that’s usually when the ideas, the dreams, the visions for future products, features, and systems start.
companies have historically chosen central locations (in big urban cities) for their headquarters. however, remote work showed us that hiring nationally (or internationally) instead of locally widens the talent pool immensely.
i think for us knowledge/tech workers we need to get away from the traditional thinking of headquarters. the solution likely is something like distributed hubs which employees can use to meet, ideate and connect.
those again need to be attractive. people understandably hate return to office (rto) if it is just an endless sea of ugly grey rooms with outdated furniture in a badly connected suburb.
think more colorful, more loungy, more living space than cubicle.
encourage people to travel and visit other hubs. the loss of travel expenses will be worth the stronger community.
it was @davidmcj i think who also mentioned a similar model in a podcast recently, where companies will have several distributed hubs which they hire around.
also, pay for people’s coworking spaces if they’re not close to your hubs (or subsidize them). they’ll be around other creative people and more connected to local communities.
in the end, it’s a gap between protecting the status quo (rental properties) and designing the future (being innovative). change has to be wanted by upper mgmt.
as for the actual working teams, wandering can easily be encouraged.
(first posted as a thread)