Remote/flexible work and "company culture"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have not been full-time in an office since about 2004 or so. When we gained the technical capability of connecting remotely, people on my project began gradually teleworking one or two days a week, then it expanded. As the project evolved, we were in-office only 2 days a week, then we had to come in 3; I didn’t love it, but couldn’t really complain (I later heard that after I moved on, they made people come in all 5 days). There was no real reason for it, beyond “Someone Higher-Up Decreed” - we were working heavily with people in another city anyway.

As far as “company culture” - in my employment with this company (and its predecessor), I’ve virtually NEVER been “in the office” - we’re usually located at the client site if we’re not teleworking. The few times in the past decade where I HAVE needed to go to the company office, it was a graveyard. Bottom line, there truly IS no company culture anymore.

That said, there is some benefit to having face time with others. Not just people who otherwise are horribly isolated, but the old impromptu chat by the water cooler or over the cubicle walls - can be bonding, and also a good way to share information. I can talk faster than I can type, for sure.

I hear ya on the commute time. The shortest commute I’ve ever had was one that could be 25 minutes, or an hour, to go 8 miles (and there was rarely any visible reason for the traffic to be that horrible). If I have to go into the city, it’s about 1:15 door to door whether I drive or take the Metro. Driving gets me into town faster, but the time saved is eaten up by the stop-and-go traffic trying to find a parking garage. Then we’re talking 15 bucks a day for Metro fare plus parking at the station, or 20 bucks a day for parking (plus gas and wear and tear on the car). When I went to full-time telework, about 9 years back, it was like a 5-10 thousand dollar a year raise.

22

I admire those with the self discipline to work productively at home. I’m a born slacker and all my toys are in my home.

23

Just that news reports or editorials are often lagging behind what is actually happening. Probably not the best example though.

Twenty years ago, I had a friend who worked from home apart from one day a week and loved it. He converted part of his garage into an office and every morning he put on a suit and walked the 20 yards to work.

Our daughter spent a lot of the COVID years working from home and was very glad to get back to her office for several reasons. Social (adult) interaction and the discipline of working with her colleagues were a large part of it. Of course, the fact that she has a short commute and a considerate employer helps too. My sister, who used to spend an hour on the train followed by a 20-minute walk every morning and evening, says she would have been more than happy to have been given the chance to work from home.

24

I truly think that it depends on the person, their company, and their coworkers. The situation you described with not “expected to be nosy, but when Candace…” would be great for some people and vile for others; I’m sort of agnostic about the whole thing as long as coworkers are as reasonably pleasant as most people reasonably expect other people to be.

This. However my company (so far) is really good with this and there has been no pressure to come in to the office. As I mentioned a post or two ago, I do try to go in as often as possible for my own reasons, and generally the same other people come in most days, but most of them are people that I’ve ever known before (it’s a big company) and most of them are French speakers (we’re in Montreal so most of the work is in English because of clients but most of the employees are francophones) so I’ve gotten to meet a bunch of new people and I get to practice my French. And when I’m working from home I’m fine with that too.

As far as separation from work is concerned, that’s not an issue for me as my work is really interesting and I work with a bunch of nice, very smart people.

25

Certainly there are downsides, but for me WFH has been an unalloyed blessing. So much time back to my life.

I do miss the adult camaraderie that came along with the office. I truly liked many of the people I used to work with, especially our self-selected lunch group. But that was not worth the hours and hours every week it took to get there.

I even (so help me) miss the company holiday party. Open bar and really good food with people I mostly liked. But again, really not worth the full year of commuting.

26

It doesn’t need to be an “all or nothing” affair. There are things that I need to be here to do, but not every day. I could easily work from home one or two days a week and still keep up on anything that needs to be done here. That also means that I would still be very involved in “the company culture”, whatever that is supposed to mean exactly.

I think that, in many cases, “the negative thing” in the minds of the company/bosses is the underlying belief that, if you are working from home, you are cutting corners and not doing your job properly. It is usually a baseless mind set because, if anyone does that, they would be able to tell just as easily as they would if the worker was there in person.

Example: Two years ago, when we had an entire year of remote learning, the teachers were using Google Classroom and Clever, all on line tools, to teach remotely. Yet, incredibly, the entire staff was told that they had to come to school and do this from their classrooms even though there wasn’t a single student on campus. They were all at home. There wasn’t a single thing, no matter how minuscule, that they could do from here but not at home. NOTHING.

27

Agree 100% with your premise but not necessarily your conclusion. I wasn’t quite as clear and complete as I meant to be.

To paraphrase my intent:

Corps are inadvertently killing the one thing that affirmatively motivates salaried workers to work 60 hours a week. They are inadvertently killing the team spirit that makes Sally want to sacrifice for Sam & vice versa. They see the bottom-line gain of stopping paying for all that office space, but don’t see the productivity loss from less unpaid overtime and more importantly, less give-a-shitness.

They are inadvertently pulling back the curtain and showing all us worker bees that the Wizard was a fake all along. Some of us already knew that, but now it’s obvious to everyone. And will be utterly obvious from the git-go to the new-hires in an era when younger workers expect work-life balance and expect engagement. Neither of which they will receive and they can see that coming from Day One.

They (Corps) by and large don’t realize they’re doing this to themselves. They will come to rue that day.

As you suggest, some corps see WFH as a poisoned chalice that will make getting the “best” (read as “most”) out of their workers more difficult. But far more IMO are sleepwalking into the future, unaware of the booby trap they’re building into their own culture & future.

28

Sorry, I may not have been clear. I wasn’t saying it was saying it’s a great sort of culture - I wasn’t thrilled with it myself. But I would have paid a price (and not from management) if I didn’t comply and it would have been extremely difficult to comply if everyone was working remotely. And any change in that culture would have taken a lot longer than two or three years - when I left last year, people were still wishing for policies and practices that were eliminated 20 years ago to reappear.

29

Does anyone here read Ask a Manager (https://www.askamanager.org/)? It’s a fascinating work-based advice column/blog discussion forum and it was really interesting to read once the pandemic started. My sense, from reading it often, is that most of her readers see work as something you go to to get paid as part of a business arrangement; coworker doesn’t equal friend; and most workplaces are stuck in the past and needlessly forcing bums in seats as compensation for bad management.

30

“Company culture” to me just seems like a thing to make it more bearable if you do need to be in an office setting. What is company culture even? My main thing I’d want to know when I interviewed with a company, culture-wise, is, do they respect a healthy work / life balance, or do they expect me to work long hours for a set salary based on a 40 hour week? If the latter, no thanks.

My company went from in-office to permanent work from home due to the pandemic. I mostly love it, myself; I love the flexibility of it. I do miss the human interaction with my co-workers to some extent; I like all the people in my department, and there was more camaraderie there in-office. As mentioned, Zoom or MS Teams meetings are just not the same.

31

The first topic to address is the conflation of culture, social connection, and atmosphere. These concepts are related but distinct, and we can’t talk meaningfully until we determine exactly which thing we want to fix.

The function of atmosphere (ping-pong tables, bright colored art and furniture, fancy coffee machines) creates a relaxing, caring vibe, so that there’s a reserve of goodwill when they company asks you to do things of a non-relaxing, non-caring nature. An important recipient of this signaling is new hires. This kind of signaling doesn’t apply to remote workers, although some employers shell stipends to do that signaling in a different way (if I want to take up saxophone lessons, my company will reimburse the equivalent of 20 lessons a year. True story.).

The concern of social connection is what people usually mean when they talk about “culture”. We want co-workers to have deeper bonds than as worker-drones. Management will spam remote workers with dozens (if not hundreds) of human-interest meetings to get people to connect. I find this useless (at least with my employer). What remote work has shown me is that the company structure was already hostile to sociability. The structure is flat, roles are poorly defined. Everyone is part of my “team”, therefore nobody is. I don’t work with the same people week to week. They have no responsibilities to me, I have none to them.

If we’re physically present in the office, then we can sort of ignore the work-structure alienation because we bump into people in the breakroom, lobby, hallway, whatever. When you’re at home, the chance encounters don’t happen, and you realize that there’s no real need to talk to most of the company.

The topic of “culture” itself is simply the enduring behaviors of our group. It’s not the signs and signals I described before (though that can be part of it). If people are connected through their daily work context, and cultural values are set at a high level, then good culture can emerge anywhere. Remote culture won’t be the same as in-person, but it can still be a good culture.

What emphatically does not work is spinning up more online meet-and-greet, shoot-the-shit Zoom sessions. You cannot foster culture by putting people on both ends of a camera with a cocktail for an hour. Real bonding comes from repeated meaningful and pleasant interactions. If we don’t get that from physical space, then it has to come from the work context. If it doesn’t come from there, then there’s no culture.

32

The people I know who work 100% remotely clearly differentiate between “good” and “bad” employers/workplaces based on things other than salary. Of the folk closest to me, I’d say the most important factors are the extent to which their organization is well run, and the caliber of their cow-orkers. If you are working with competent folk and accomplishing something of value, it is easier to do without personal interaction. But if your cow-orkers are duds and management hinders more than helps, I would imagine missing the sense of “we’re in this together” with the few cow-orkers you respect.

Personally, I’m happy with as little in-person interaction as possible. But I respect neither my employer nor the majority of my cow-orkers. I’ve been friendly enough with several folk over the years, but repeated experiences have convinced me that they are not friends and that, if we weren’t forced together at work, we’d have nothing to do with each other. And workplaces can be comfortable enough, but I have yet to encounter one as comfortable and convenient as my home.

33

I certainly get that. If I was facing a lengthy commute, maybe working from home would be more attractive.

But my commute is 20 minutes in the summer, walking. If I drive, it’s 10 minutes.

Commute time isn’t a factor for me in the calculus.

34

But if working from home at an 8-9 hr job, don’t you have plenty of time to leave your cave to do what you enjoy with the people you choose?

I moved to my current home because it was 6 minutes from the office I was going to eventually transfer to. Even when I went into the office most days, I noticed all of my working neighbors left their homes before me and returned later than me. I got no social benefit from physical proximity to persons at work, and felt rich in time I had to do whatever I wished/felt needed.

35

I feel like corporate culture is something that will endure and thrive even remotely, if it’s something organic to the company that grew up out of the corporate experience.

But if it’s top-down corporate indoctrination and/or how the company wants you to think and act, that stuff isn’t going to stick as well remotely, and without a captive audience, it’s a lot harder to communicate remotely. Which isn’t a bad thing; I’ve always felt like the top-down version is just a huge load of BS trying to get you to put your job ahead of the rest of your life.

36

That’s absolutely true of the commenters , but she’s also often said that her commenters are not necessarily representative about a lot of things. I remember one letter where half the office objected to signing birthday cards - they weren’t expected to chip in for a gift , they weren’t expected to buy their own card. They objected to signing a card that someone else had bought and was circulating. There have been other letters where people objected to saying “good morning” or “good night” to coworkers. I don’t want to say those things aren’t normal - but it’s certainly not common to be opposed to merely signing a birthday card and let your coworkers know it. And actually, those things are examples of office culture - I’m sure there are many places where it is not the culture to circulate birthday cards and I am sure there are some where people just walk in and go straight to their workspace without any greetings or non-work related conversation at any point during the day. But if someone is new to a job and has never been in office they won’t know if the culture expects them to do whatever has replaced circulating a birthday card. Alison also often says you don’t have to say hello to people or sign birthday cards or participate in social events or engage in small talk but that there may be a cost to not doing those things. And that’s a part of “culture” - that sometimes there’s a cost for not conforming.

I am not one of these people - but I know plenty of people for whom hell is 8 or 9 hours without interacting with other people. Maybe just to socialize , maybe to discuss work problems , maybe to share work gossip - but I know people who when they worked at home would go out every day to buy coffee or lunch just to speak to someone else in person.

37

Yes and no. With work from home, a lot of remodel was done on the building. I had the best cube in the building. It got snatched up very, very fast. We have some ‘Hot’ cubes, but I’ll never go that route. At least for an all day work. I’ve got myself set up quite well at home.

First thing I did was upgrade my internet. I had to use climbing equipment to put the new dish on my house. Then, a new workstation and a 43" monitor.

38

Ooooh! Nice! :slight_smile:

You’re fortunate that you can do all of your stuff from home.

39

I come from the view point of having been a 100% telecommuter since 2014.

When my manager found out I was commuting for 3-4 hours a day (traffic being the big variable) she pulled strings and got me set up as the division’s first 100% telecommuter. As a workgroup, we were already scattered worldwide in seven or so corporate offices, so we’d already been making extensive use of phone calls and Skype. When I was in-office, there was no “culture” - it was a building with a couple dozen disparate groups and people floating in and out of the “hotel” section. So no big loss when I no longer had to go there. A bottle of kombucha has better culture that that.

Saving $6,000 a year on commuting and those 3-4 hours a day are HUGE to me. And it didn’t hurt that my work quality and productivity were better when I wasn’t being bothered throughout the day by people asking if I knew where some person or thing was, as if I might know the location of ever one of 300,000 staff across the planet, or if I knew were the three-hole paper for the printer was kept.

40

Just never having to use the shitty printers we had in the office ever again is worth working at home. We used to have shitty printers that at least did what I wanted them to do most of the time, but would jam like an M-16 if there was even a hint of humidity in the air. But then we got moved to a new department, and the new management demanded we must switch to all-new printers just because The Big Boss of that department had been part of the committee that chose the new printers. These ones didn’t jam quite so much, but were almost entirely inappropriate for our style of work. No amount of trying to explain that made any difference. We were getting new printers no matter how much we didn’t want them.