I love remote work and will never go back to in person work again. But I do see some problems, both immediate and on the horizon.
I look at the people on my social media that I actively follow, and they are in three groups: friends from High School, friends from college, friends from work. None of those groups are growing. The first two for obvious reasons, but last one is the concern. I think back to the last time I worked in an office.
My path to the bathroom happened to go past a bunch of people I never worked with for my job, but I'm still friends with a lot of them a decade later. People who I would just start random conversations with on the way to and from the bathroom. And I'm still friends with a lot of my old coworkers who I last worked with a decade ago (the last time I worked in an office). In part because we hung out a lot outside of work, going to lunch, dinner, bars, shows, etc.
But after that? My rate of making new work friends went way down. The chances for socializing are very small. The closest friends I've made in the last few years are all parents from my kids' schools, because we have constant in person interactions.
My old work friendships are not only important to my psychological well being, but also in finding new work. When I need a new job I go to those friends first. I'm lucky that I already have that network, but people who are new to work life won't have that chance.
Which leads to the other problem I see -- the juniors of today are the seniors of tomorrow. But the juniors of today are losing out on a lot of chances for mentorship with remote work.
Remote work is great for mid to senior level people, who already have some experience and know what they are doing. But it's not great for junior employees. They need those random interactions, randomly overhearing shop talk, being in the hallway and getting pulled into a meeting "because you really should be learning this". All things that happened to me when I was a junior engineer, and helped me immensely.
We try to replicate that with remote work, but it's just not nearly as effective.
So either we'll have a tier of in person companies where all the junior employees will work with the few senior people who like being in the office, or we're going to have a big problem in a few years when there are a bunch of junior people who we can't promote because they didn't get the mentorship they need to move up.
We need to solve the mentorship problem and the (human) network building in a remote world.
I look at the people on my social media that I actively follow, and they are in three groups: friends from High School, friends from college, friends from work. None of those groups are growing. The first two for obvious reasons, but last one is the concern. I think back to the last time I worked in an office.
My path to the bathroom happened to go past a bunch of people I never worked with for my job, but I'm still friends with a lot of them a decade later. People who I would just start random conversations with on the way to and from the bathroom. And I'm still friends with a lot of my old coworkers who I last worked with a decade ago (the last time I worked in an office). In part because we hung out a lot outside of work, going to lunch, dinner, bars, shows, etc.
But after that? My rate of making new work friends went way down. The chances for socializing are very small. The closest friends I've made in the last few years are all parents from my kids' schools, because we have constant in person interactions.
My old work friendships are not only important to my psychological well being, but also in finding new work. When I need a new job I go to those friends first. I'm lucky that I already have that network, but people who are new to work life won't have that chance.
Which leads to the other problem I see -- the juniors of today are the seniors of tomorrow. But the juniors of today are losing out on a lot of chances for mentorship with remote work.
Remote work is great for mid to senior level people, who already have some experience and know what they are doing. But it's not great for junior employees. They need those random interactions, randomly overhearing shop talk, being in the hallway and getting pulled into a meeting "because you really should be learning this". All things that happened to me when I was a junior engineer, and helped me immensely.
We try to replicate that with remote work, but it's just not nearly as effective.
So either we'll have a tier of in person companies where all the junior employees will work with the few senior people who like being in the office, or we're going to have a big problem in a few years when there are a bunch of junior people who we can't promote because they didn't get the mentorship they need to move up.
We need to solve the mentorship problem and the (human) network building in a remote world.