Remote vs return-to-office is close to a culture war issue now, so what do I have to add? And having spent years of my life obsessing about the design of physical office space, isn’t it a bit weird that I’m pro-remote? Not at all. I’ve always been searching for a way to make a working environment for software development, that weird mix of deep focus and high collaboration, as good as possible.

Pre-pandemic I ran a portfolio of product teams who were already geo-graphically distributed. We “supported remote”, but we really struggled to be “remote first” - those not in the London had a decidedly second class experience. It was a source of continual shame - we were well aware of the challenge and invested significantly to overcome the challenges. I also often worked remotely (I don’t live anywhere near London) so was personally on the receiving end of the second class experience.

The pandemic gave us the opportunity (ha!) to become remote-first. Post-pandemic, our teams decide (both as individuals and as team) how they work. Some people have rarely set foot in the office since early 2020. Other people work in the office most days. Some teams co-located in person for specific events. And a lot of people come into the office for a day or two each week.

We’ve come out of this with a deeper understanding and appreciate of the various permutations possible, the trade-off and the pitfalls. We are decidedly remote-first in our culture and practices, but it’s of course more nuanced than that. In this post, I’ll share my top insights.

Insight #1: Remote-first team members are sat next to everyone

In working with workplace consultants and architects on our new office (sadly another victim of the pandemic), I realised that most of the world categorised the work of knowledge workers into distinct buckets of “collaboration” and “individual focussed work”. As I set out in my article “Noise and the developers”, I believe software development is a weird fluctuating blend of the two.

One area I didn’t touch on that article was “who sits next to who”. I made the assumption that office seating was sufficiently organised that teams that work together sat together…. Sadly this isn’t always true. If you’re not sat next to someone who might as well be in another building.

With the right tooling and culture, everyone in a remote-first team is sat next to everyone else. There is no “person 3 seats away” problem. Culture & customs are of course important here - everyone wants to be able to get help from everyone else, but no one wants to be pestered by everyone simultaneously! But I’ve witnessed amazing things, including teams having long-running zoom session open… not as a meeting… just as a medium of communication & collaboration.

Insight #2: Junior talent does just fine remote-first

I have overseen the talent reviews of multiple cohorts of graduate developers, data scientists and product managers covering years pre-pandemic and post-pandemic.

With one notable exception (see below) I am confident that our junior talent has progressed in their knowledge, skills, confidence and value at a rate at least equal to their pre-pandemic levels. The quality of documentation and the clarity of process we’ve needed to enable remote-first has support rapid onboarding. But most importantly it’s been the mentoring, support and opportunities we’ve given people that has been the most important. Our senior team members have always seen this as part of their job, not something that accidentally happens. So to start a recurring theme in this post: it’s about being deliberate.

Insight #3: Junior talent needs to embrace remote-first, and not just hang out with their mates

Ah, the exception. We do a pretty good job of creating of a strong sense of community amongst our grad cohorts. And we had one cohort that really liked to come into the office and hang out together.

We didn’t manage this well. It broke the remote-first experience. Because they personally valued in-person interactions over talking with their teams online, they were no longer sat next to everyone in their team. They were, by their own choices, having a second-class experience within their product teams. This also meant they tended to ask their friends for help, rather than the experts in their product teams. And their friends weren’t even on the same product!

In fairness, this was the generation that had the biggest impact of their university experience disrupted by the pandemic. I think they might have missed out on the hanging out phase of life. See also Insight #5: People need people.

We were able to course correct on this one (mostly education and expectation setting), but I’m still surprised by just how off guard we were caught by this. Because leaders weren’t in the office we only saw half the problem and it took us longer to piece it together.

Insight #4: There’s been an inversion of what happens automatically and where we have to apply effort

I suspect a lot of frustration about changing working habits stems from not explicitly analysing which things now need effort, and correcting our inbuilt assumptions about them. In a lots of cases this is just exposing where we were previously on autopilot, and exposing the gaps we’d failed to address.

Take being social with the team. When everyone is in the office, it’s easy: grab a beer after work… Unless you think beyond a commitment-free, booze-focussed existence and consider inclusivity. We had already invested significant effort pre-pandemic on having inclusive work socials, so we just continued this as part of our approach of being deliberate about why, when and how we met in person.

Another example is team comms. In the office you can assume everyone “just knows” or has heard, and not put that much effort into internal comms. Which works fine until your team scales beyond 20 people, you have anyone working in another location or anyone is on holiday. So you have to address this anyway.

Insight #5: People need people

I don’t have an MRI machine to hand so can’t validate this, but I have a strong belief that talking to people on the phone or even via video calls doesn’t light up the brain in the same way that an in-person encounter does.

Personally I’ve found that after 2-3 weeks of working from home, I’m itching to get back to the office and be social. And it certainly got worse when my wife started being predominately back in the office and I was at home alone. People in my team have told me for them it’s even worse. People need people.

To some extent I’ve personally mitigated this by making sure I see people in the evening. I appreciate this is a privilege that comes from not having caring responsibilities and having my life configured in such a way this is relatively easy. Certainly compared to my 20s when my whole life was configured around working hard, partying hard and then getting on the tube home - I didn’t know anyone near where I actually lived.

This could be considered an unbundling, of life from work. I feel that loses something. I’m not sure I like it. And I know others don’t like it and have voted with their feet. This is a hard one to square.

Insight #6: You can build personal connections remotely, but you don’t have the same handy tools as the real world

As I look back over the last 5 years, I’ve built a surprisingly large number of close professional relationships with people I’ve never met in the real world. It takes more deliberate effort but follows roughly the same approach as in the real world: spend time talking, be available, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.

But if I critically analyse it, have any of those flipped from professional relationships to personal friendships? Probably not. But that’s because friendships are built on repeatedly sharing experiences, even if that experience is just hanging out in a pub talking crap. I find it fine to talk to someone about all sorts of topics for hours in a pub, or on a bike ride, in a way that I would find weird if I tried to do that on the phone.

Future

The past is another country, and we don’t have the right visa to go and work there.

Sadly, or happily, the working culture of the 2000s and 2010s is dead. In just the same way as the boozy lunches of the 80s and 90s are dead. We can mourn the loss of the parts we liked and celebrate the demise of the parts we despised. But time keeps moving forward.

I strongly believe that blanket “return to the office” mandates are doomed to fail. Over time we’ll hopefully settle into a healthier, balanced pattern. We’ll physically colocate when it makes sense and be remote when that makes sense. The flexibility on this is a two way street, and it’s built on trust and shared goals. Those are surely the most important things.