During the whole Covid lockdown period and ever since, I have seen a number of articles about the future of work with many pundits explaining that one negative thing about remote or flexible work is the disconnection of workers, particularly new hires, from the “company culture.”
But ISTM that they’re not missing this aspect but rather, company culture is itself evolving to include remote and flexible work.
I work in a fairly large multinational and I don’t think that anyone anywhere is required to be in the office if their work doesn’t functionally or practically depend on it. And in my numerous Teams meetings, as we actually work in teams that are often geographically distributed, we always have in-jokes and levity and, if we weren’t actually working, I would be able to say we’re all having a good time with each other. So that’s our culture.
Are the naysayers just unimaginative and narrow minded, or other thoughts?
“Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one with started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years — provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials.”
I’ve been working remotely most of the time since the pandemic and personal experiences with remote work have been very negative. The isolation of being alone in my apartment every day has been isolating and very bad for my mental health. It’s extremely hard for me to stay focused and productive without physically sharing my workspace with other living humans. I just can’t get any feeling of connection from virtual interaction like Team or Zoom. If anything video conferencing increases my anxiety level. I’ve developed petty and irrational resentment for things like having to sacrifice part of my living space for work or having to provide my own office furniture. “Hybrid” working has proved to be a sick joke. At my last job it meant we had the option of coming in-house about once a month, otherwise WFH was required. I’m unemployed and it’s proving impossible to find an inperson job that isn’t retail or manual labor. I realize I’m in the minority, but WFH is proving to be a very bleak future for me.
[quote=“bob_2, post:2, topic:976032”]i
The New York Times, on Oct 9th, 1903:
“Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with…
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Sadly I’m not the smartest guy around, so I’ll ask you what you’re actually trying to say
And @alphaboi867, I am very sorry to hear that this has been so horrible for you. I’m someone who is often skirting the boundaries of depression so I know what that’s like.
Conversely for me, and notwithstanding the unmitigated tragedy that was/is the pandemic, the resulting office functions at my workplace have actually been extremely positive.
I worked in IT throughout the 2000s. It was 100% in-office work. Our small ~30 person company had a distinct culture, some folks had off-duty friendships with others, a gaggle went out to lunch most days, etc.
We sold the company to a larger outfit in the same industry. They were 100% remote from the CEO on down to the lowliest newbie tech writer. This was in 2010.
As soon as they could wriggle out of the lease they shut down our facility and sent us all home to do the same jobs we had been doing. No layoffs, no big re-org, nothing traumatic. Just quit commuting and spend a lot of time each day on audio-only conference calls looking at shared desktop sessions. Zoom was still nearly a decade in the future.
I hated it. I loved not commuting, but every second on the phone was torture with none of the levity & camaraderie of my friends to buffer it. When I was actually laboring, not meeting, it was about the same. But everything else about the job became slow torture. I left a few months later.
I can see how remote work really sets up the impersonal “Company doesn’t care about me; I don’t care about Company or anyone who works there.” That might sound cost-effective, but it sure doesn’t sound mentally healthy nor highly productive.
I (mostly) am. For a brief time, I had to commute to work. It took about 3 hours out of every day. The monthly transit pass required to commute cost about $200. I am MUCH happier working from home.
Except that now and for the past several months, that’s not necessarily what people are doing, at least not in my world anyway. I believe that most of my company’s office workers are choosing remote wfh; a smaller number (me included when circumstances permit) choose to go to the office fairly regularly. And all of us now have the same social lives as pre-covid, so we’re not “living in caves” and nobody is being forced to.
And, going back to my initial point, none of us are missing out on the company culture. Instead, the company culture has simply evolved to suit the workers’ needs.
I work for a mid-sized advertising agency, which is part of a much larger global agency holding company. I’ve worked here for 7 1/2 years.
Yes, we have Microsoft Teams, and I am on conference/video calls with colleagues (and sometimes clients) for a significant fraction of every day. Even prior to COVID, many of my teammates (and clients) weren’t in the same city I’m in, so I was on conference calls even when I was in the office.
But, lacking the face-to-face content with at least some colleagues and teammates is definitely a negative. I go into the office about one day a month now, and while I see a few friends when I’m there, it’s still a very lonely experience.
In addition, our agency was merged with another agency (part of our holding company) the week that COVID lockdowns began in the U.S. They tried to forge a new agency, with a new “culture,” out of both of them, but without the benefit of teammates and colleagues being able to be in the same physical space for over a year and a half. I don’t think that the melding of the two previous agencies has ever really happened.
Finally, new employees to the agency – particularly younger ones, for whom this might be their first or second job – have almost universally told us that they have struggled to feel part of a team while they have been 100% remote. We’ve lost a number of promising young people, who have quit, at least in part because they never really felt like they were part of the agency.
As read about the in-jokes and levity and having a good time during your Teams meetings, I wonder if your meetings were different than mine were or if you perhaps have a somewhat limited view of “company culture”. The culture where I worked was that I absolutely should know something about my co-workers personal lives. Not that I was expected to be nosy, but when Candace took a few days off for the birth of a grandchild , I was expected to remember it. And ask about the grandchild occasionally. Same for weddings, deaths etc. My manager once caused himself some trouble when he didn’t express his condolences when someone’s spouse died. He didn’t directly supervise her, and neither did I. I supervised her supervisor - and people were pissed about it. He probably didn’t even know her by name , since there were two layers between them but that didn’t prevent people from being mad. A lot of that info got passed around in hallways or waiting for in person meetings to start - that never happened in remote meetings or conference calls because they weren’t conducive to multiple conversations happening at the same time. At one point, my employer went from providing training at one central site to people from a mix of offices to providing training at each worksite. That meant most people no longer encountered people in other offices, which meant they didn’t have relationships with people in other offices which often meant it was difficult to get a favor.
I had a semi-remote job pre-COVID. “Semi” because I was not working from home. I was based in one office and I was responsible for and supervised people in six additional offices, which fortunately were all in the same city. I traveled between offices mostly because of culture rather than need - if I had been based 150 miles away *, I wouldn’t have been expected to appear at each office at least every couple of weeks but since I was in the same city, that’s what was expected. And not by the people above me - as far as they were concerned, I could work out of my base every day and go to the other offices once or twice a year. But if I hadn’t traveled to them often, the people would have felt they were being treated “like stepchildren” ( and they would actually use those words.) They would have felt the same if I worked from home ( they couldn’t go remote due to their jobs but I could have - I wasn’t physically at 6 of those locations anyway)
This was without people working from home - I can’t even imagine what would have happened if people had been able to work from home. What I am certain of is that the culture wouldn’t have changed very much - it just would have become harder. Instead of finding out about Candace’s grandchild from Muriel when we are waiting for a meeting to start, I will have to make it a point to call people to socialize.
In 2020, as part of our pandemic business continuity plan (which I wrote for our department), I went from working from the office five days a week to working from home almost 100% of the time. It wasn’t difficult at first, but after a few months I began to feel isolated and disconnected to the point where the quality of my work started to suffer. I used to run new employee orientation at work, and we had a much more difficult time onboarding employees since we’ve started working from home. I used to love NEO, but I grew to hate running it online, mostly because I wasn’t getting a lot of feedback in Teams/Zoom NEO, but thankfully it’s no longer one of my job duties.
I got so sick of hearing “this is the new norm” during COVID that I hate to say it myself, but WFH is the new norm for many office workers and I don’t see it going away any time soon. When my company tried bring us back to the office in 2021, we suffered so much turnover that management reversed their decision. Now 90% of the company works from home either full time or at least part of the week. Despite some high profile CEOs bragging about making their workers come into the office, I think the trend will continue to favor working from home for a great many employees.
I work for a pretty good company, and while I’m not sure what working from home will do to our work culture, I’m sure we’ll adapt and continue to be a decent place to work.
Remote work really only sets up the second half, “I don’t care about Company or anyone who works there” part. The company never cared about you, this notion of “Corporate Culture” was largely how they controlled people to get them to sacrifice their whole lives to working for the company.
Companies hate the new WFH scenario because it puts workers on the same footing as the company.
This is the big factor. WFH when most businesses and social outlets were closed, or, if open, very under-utilized because of people’s hesitancy to go out and socialize, is a very different creature than WFH when you can go out to the movies or the pub or church or a football game whenever you want.
I’ve had somewhat of the same experience, although not to the degree that you’ve experienced.
What I never knew before Covid was that the drive to and from work provided a means for me to separate my work life and personal life. And of course that went away when the company went remote. We’re still working from home, and apparently it’s going to be permanent. After trial and error, I discovered that going for a walk right after work (or at the very least, running a few errands) provided a way for me to reset my brain from “work” to “home.”
In addition, I cover my work equipment with a sheet when I’m not using it. It’s not a perfect solution, but I find that in this case, “out of sight” does sort of equal “out of mind.”
I would still prefer to be back in the office, but these coping mechanisms–while far from perfect–are sufficiently effective that I will be able to continue the current situation for quite some time.
I made the same discovery. I’ve spent most of my career commuting into downtown Chicago from the suburbs on the train; it’s a commute of an hour or so, door-to-door, including a walk on either end of the train ride. That separation, of both time and location, between the office and the house was important for me to separate those two portions of my life.
This has helped me, as well, though walking in the cold and snow this time of year is less appealing.
Man, I’m sorry to see you’re struggling so hard, alphaboi. Have you considered looking in to some sort of shared workspace, if you were to get another WFH job? I wonder if they’re getting more popular now that WFH is getting more popular. The downside is that you have to pay monthly for access. But if there is a space near you, it still could be cheaper than commuting. CoHatch is one example.
If nothing else please try to get out into the world while you’re not working, and once you do start working again. Yes, WFH is very isolating (I’ve been doing it for 20 years, living by myself for 16 of them) but you can find connections outside of work. At least with connections outside of work, you can pick your tribe.
And, if you’re able, consider getting a pet as a pal for WFH. I talk to my dogs all day.
My wife and I both started working home during the pandemic, and when people asked how we were doing, I almost felt bad by telling them we were doing great. Working from home was like getting a raise and more free time on my hands. I spent less on fuel, food, and clothing. Seriously, I didn’t buy any new clothes between March 2020 and October 2021. Without a commute, I had an extra 90 minutes which I spent exercising and managed to drop 60 pounds since 2020. There are some drawbacks to WFH, but people like it for good reason.
My roomie is like you, she needs to have people around her as well. I can see your point, many people are needful of social connection in person.
I am the opposite, I telecommuted with my final job [health issues, pre pandemic] and I thrived away from people [I love isolation, I get way more work done without interruptions] and loved being able to set my workspace up without corporate constraints [silly stuff like being able to crank my music up without disturbing others and not having to wear headphones, incense, cat in my lap, stuff like that] I would adore finding a pure telecommute job, but finding one where I don’t have to start by going into a nonwheelchair friendly building for training for an indeterminate amount of time was proving difficult so I stopped trying. Sigh. I should start looking again, now telecommuting is actually getting to be a thing.
Been working home alone since the beginning of COVID. It’s wonderful. I do have two dogs, and my Wife (she works on site, gets home around 6:30pm).
I’ve gotten to know some of my co-workers better through Slack and other communication platforms. I reallly don’t need or want to be a part of ‘company culture’. I’m going to skip the x-mas party because any gathering of people is very hard on me due to my hearing being so bad. I can only catch about 50% of what someone says if there is a lot of background noise, then I have to puzzle what they said together.
We live pretty remote. No where to walk to and no neighbors to speak of. I prefer this type of lifestyle. Really, the SDMB is a good connection for me to the outside world.
Other nice things
I plow my own snow. Now I can plow in the middle of the day when it’s light out. Ditto for walking the dogs.
I mostly work about 7 am until 5 pm. But I can work pretty much whenever I want. Early morning, weekends whatever. Sometimes take a long lunch or other break, sometimes not.
