> remote workers are significantly more productive than on-site employees
That is what GP says, too. GP was saying the advantage of in-person is agility and course-correction, which require intense discussion.
> The missing piece is that leaders need to plan, execute, and communicate effectively.
Maybe with perfect leadership this is tenable, but when responding in a quickly evolving situation, I can see the advantage of in person. It just doesn't seem realistic to expect leadership to do all the planning. Engineers "at the bottom" often have better perspective and should be at the planning table.
My personal perspective: I'm currently 100% remote and enjoy the improved throughput. I also have had to get better at planning, as you point out. But when I have to do heavy coordination, video conference fatigue gets real. I'd prefer to be in person for those days with >3 hours on video.
> GP was saying the advantage of in-person is agility and course-correction, which require intense discussion.
I worked in-person for the first 7 years of my career and remote for most of the last 7. This was true until the pandemic. It's not true anymore. Even in-office workers at my current hybrid workplace are using huddles and threaded chats to meet and decide things faster than scheduling a room or walking up.
The only thing that was consistently faster in-office was the espresso machine, and even that flipped around when the Bambino came out around 2019.
Have you really had zero issues with brainstorming and team design remotely? I find it way more efficient to jot down messy ideas on a whiteboard than mess around with a virtual mock. Those are great as a polishing step once we reach a general approach we agree on. But constantly shuffling, panning, and resetting a Mirio board ends up with utter chaos IME
> Have you really had zero issues with brainstorming and team design remotely?
Literally none. PMs are disciplined, there's top-down and bottom-up accountability, there's good transparency of work status and blockers, and people can take days off, miss meetings, and still contribute to decision making because all the work is done in a shared space that everyone in the company can see.
We don't even need standups most weeks because everyone knows where everyone is just by looking at the related tickets.
The closest things to "problems" are in bridging front-end design and back-end implementation collaboration because they use different tools, but that was at least as big of a problem when it was turning whiteboard mockups and Post-its into engineering tickets.
I don't recall middle management being amazing in person - mainly I recall some unnecessary guy who spent all day on Facebook until he got bored, who then starts wandering around bothering people. With 100% remote, those positions just seem to be gone which is a big upgrade in my book - though I can understand why middle management is anxious about it.
That is what GP says, too. GP was saying the advantage of in-person is agility and course-correction, which require intense discussion.
> The missing piece is that leaders need to plan, execute, and communicate effectively.
Maybe with perfect leadership this is tenable, but when responding in a quickly evolving situation, I can see the advantage of in person. It just doesn't seem realistic to expect leadership to do all the planning. Engineers "at the bottom" often have better perspective and should be at the planning table.
My personal perspective: I'm currently 100% remote and enjoy the improved throughput. I also have had to get better at planning, as you point out. But when I have to do heavy coordination, video conference fatigue gets real. I'd prefer to be in person for those days with >3 hours on video.