> what people managers are paid to do. The job is to align a large groups of people on tasks while maintaining coordination with other large groups and keeping morale high.

And if WFH improves output and morale at the cost of more difficult management, isn't that absolutely worth it for managers? Their entire effort is dedicated to enabling contributors, if a policy does just that then they should push for it.

I do mechanical engineering, we design stuff for our manufacturing operators and our customer's operators. Whenever some amount of effort on my side may reduce the operator's burden over the life of the product, it's absolutely worth it. I'm not going to make a subpar design just to save myself an analysis, that's the job.

So if WFH requires more management effort, and results in better output for the team, it should be pushed by management. Managers shouldn't compromise their team's output and morale just to save themselves some remote meetings.

Your conclusion is trivializing management and missing the big picture.

1. Not all workers productivity goes up when working from home. During COVID about half my team of ~35 told me they hated working from home and felt their productivity had fallen significantly.

2. It’s often the case that things which are optimal for one team are not optimal for the organization as a whole.

Those two points don’t mean that moving to work from home is never the right decision, it can be the right decision and it can be worth the effort. But it’s just not as simple as most work from home champions like to imagine.

> During COVID about half my team of ~35 told me they hated working from home and felt their productivity had fallen significantly.

It’s pretty common for people to say what the boss wants to hear. It sounds like you like in person work. So I wouldn’t base too much important decision making on your straw poll.

Also, self reported productivity is a terrible measure unless you specifically want to measure feels.

For management decision, you should have some reliable basis that works to control for your biases.

> Consider this: if your home had only a 56k dialup modem and your office had gigabit fiber, would you still prefer to work from home?

Perhaps you underestimate how much I hate being outside of my home. If given a realistic choice, there is no situation where I would ever prefer or enjoy the office. Nothing is worth it, and most of it is an active detriment to my quality of life, especially the people. I'm not asking for everyone to be remote, unlike the many people who want to force everyone to be in-office, I just want the option for myself and others to be remote based on preference.

> it’s brutal to be a people manager in an org that was designed around office work and leading through the conversion to remote-only.

It's brutal to be an introvert/misanthrope forced to sit in a chair 8h a day, and the point is that it's not necessary. Let people who want to be in-office do so, and let the rest stay home. I still haven't heard a convincing or legitimate reason why things should be otherwise except for people who are stuck in the 1940s office mindset.

But you have that option. Remote work is available and plentiful, now more than ever. So work remote if that’s what you need. It sounds like that should be non-negotiable requirement number 1 for any job you consider.

All I was pointing out in my original comment is office work is not a conspiracy by management to torture you: it’s by far the best work environment for many people and many kinds of jobs. If you could understand that - while also understanding yourself and that it’s not a fit for you - you might be able to let some of that anger go and find a more comfortable fit on a team.

> It sounds like that should be non-negotiable requirement number 1 for any job you consider.

You're right. Thankfully I'm finally in a position where I can do that moving forward. Before my current point in life, I was more in a position where I had to take what I could get, which is where the lack of flexibility became very frustrating. Just like we let engineers listen to music and wear hoodies, I think it's reasonable to let engineers work from home or the office as desired.

> office work is not a conspiracy by management to torture you: it’s by far the best work environment for many people and many kinds of jobs. If you could understand that - while also understanding yourself and that it’s not a fit for you - you might be able to let some of that anger go and find a more comfortable fit on a team.

You're right about this as well. It's not a conspiracy to torture, and office work is best for some people. But again, I think people underestimate how much people want to have the option of working remote, and overestimate how important in-office presence is for a huge majority of cases.

I appreciate this insight

As an engineer who transitioned to p eople management pre-covid, then back to engineering during covid (after burning out HARD), I gained a ton of empathy for my managers.

It's really shocking just how complex and demoralizing mid-level management can be, especially-so in the remote world.

After seeing just how hard it can be to simply know what your team is doing on a given day (let alone to align them to some vague OKR passed from on-high)... Let's just say it's made me want to adopt some practices that make me easier to manage.

At the very least, I'm putting more effort into keeping my tickets & PRs up-to-date and easy to understand at a glance.

And so instead of the managers adapting, the engineers have to adapt to the 56k equivalent by being in the office?

That’s a disingenuous interpretation and not what I said. Good managers work hard to try and help everyone on the team do their best work. Just keep in mind that the overall team optimum may not be the individual optimum for you. It’s basically impossible to create a work environment that is ideal for more than 3-5 people. The more people you add the more you need to balance everyone’s preferences.

But good management can and does create a work environment where everyone feels things are pretty good.

As for me, the biggest takeaway I have from COVID life is that open office designs have to go, and possibly that hybrid remote work has some answers for how to make that possible. Open office is fine for some kinds of work, but ruins deep work. I think most people who are having an epiphany about work from home either had a terrible commute and didn’t realize how much it stressed them out, or had never gotten to do deep work before and didn’t realize how valuable it was. Those are important things for all of us to learn.

Exactly. Leadership/management love to complain about how they want to be in office because it's better for them, but then couldn't care less when people work better at home.

Only terrible management fits this description. Good managers care very, very much about what’s best for their people, and are willing to sacrifice a lot to help them achieve.

You are right. Unfortunately in my experience the average manager averages closer to terrible than good, let alone great.

Funny my managers often wanted me to be more "flexible" to meet absolutely non-flexible deadlines.

I certainly won't mind if my manager has to adapt for once (and don't tell me they adapt to each of us and all situations and that's already taxing)

I'll happily turn the tables.

> and keeping morale high.

My morale has never been lower than when they moved us into an open office where I had to hear everyone jabbering away (plus it was in another state which more than doubled my commute).