Don't want the office? But you may need it!
Summary
Remote work is popular, but its not for everyone.
Time-sensitive businesses can’t accommodate async workflows. It’s hard to be remote in such setups.
When companies that don’t design to be remote-first, remote-workers become second class citizens.
If you lack distributed work discipline you’ll often take a toll on your team’s productivity and your work-life balance.
Everyone doesn’t have the privileges and personal situation that are conducive for remote work.
This is why we’ll still need offices, but companies should still not be heavy-handed with their RTO policies.
Most people want to work remotely most of the time. That’s a fact, and I won’t try to quantify it anymore. There’s enough research out there for anyone who wants to learn. And hey, no one’s stopping you from doing your research! But, despite the overwhelming popularity of remote work, I’m not a remote work absolutist. Not only is remote work the wrong arrangement for some organisations, but it’s also the wrong choice for certain people, even those who want and crave it deeply. In today’s article, I want to highlight a few symptoms that may tell you that remote work isn’t for you. Let’s get right into the first one.
Your employers are inherently synchronous operators
Around the time that I was getting ready for my sabbatical, Kailash Nadh, the accomplished CEO of Zerodha, wrote a well-reasoned article about why 10% of their workforce had transitioned to a hybrid model of work. You needn’t agree with all of Nadh’s arguments. I disagree with a few of his arguments and may address them in a separate post. But there are two big themes that you cannot ignore.
First, Kailash explains how Zerodha’s core business, which is that of a stock brokerage, needs extreme time sensitivity. While he conflates time sensitivity and complexity, which I disagree with, we know that time sensitivity and remoteness combine to create a stressful workplace. A remote work arrangement that isn’t primarily asynchronous leads to the hyperactive hive-mind phenomenon, where your day is full of chat messages, emails and video calls, and you have little or no time for deep work.
Second, Nadh mentions Zerodha’s “DNA” several times in the article. He never quite explains what he means by “DNA”, other than his conviction that it “is built on human relationships, free-flowing conversations, and spontaneity”. I must tell you I couldn’t find any Zerodha page that talks about their company values or the behaviours they encourage as employers. Kailash is part of the company’s C-suite. He set up the Zerodha tech organisation from scratch. If there are no documented values and behaviours, you must take his opinion about the company’s DNA at face value. He’s not being disingenuous. He’s only stating what he believes; if no one can challenge that notion, his view stands.
The points I’m trying to make are simple. Some companies, or at least some parts of companies, can’t be async-first. If you work in those organisations, you may need some office time. Thankfully, there are enough knowledge work jobs that can be async-first - 90% of Zerodha is still all-remote. But if your company leaders believe in a “DNA” that has a bias for proximity, then remote workers will always be second-class citizens in such a company. For some of us, that’s OK. All we need is a “good enough job”. The more career-minded amongst us may have to head to an office. Kailash Nadh refers to such people in the “technical, creative, business, and critical decision-making teams”. I leave it to you to decide which group you’re part of.
You may lack discipline
Before your eyes roll to the back of your head, I assure you I’m not being a management stooge when I say this. The fact remains, though, that remote work needs a high degree of professional discipline. Some discipline indicators are apparent and indistinct from office work. We must complete our work at a reasonable level of quality within the deadlines we’ve committed. But there are other, less obvious indicators.
For instance, documentation discipline is far more critical for distributed teams than it is for one that sits together every day. Even if you follow a meeting-centric way of working, you’ll lead your colleagues down a slippery slope if you don’t maintain the professionalism of writing a meeting agenda and summarising meeting minutes. Indeed, everything - task handoffs, decisions, onboarding, reviews - becomes harder on distributed teams without documentation discipline.
So, even if you’re productive at solo tasks, you might drag your team’s productivity down with your lack of structure and discipline. Cynical, capitalist enterprises accept work arrangements only if they stand to profit from them. If the productivity losses from remote work outweigh the operational savings, I don’t blame the company for doubling down on a return-to-office policy.
Remote work is a two-way street. While we expect employers to support location independence, as employees, we must elevate our team’s productivity to a level that office work can’t match.
Discipline isn’t only about productivity, by the way. It takes discipline to separate work and life. Countless people spend every waking hour connected to work email and IM because they bloody well can. The laptop is right there! So is the phone! Contrast this to the office, where you walk in at a specific time, and when you walk out the door, you close out the day. No doubt, you can screw up your work-life balance as an office worker, but the commute acts as a natural way to separate life and work. Those who can’t manage this separation while working remotely, usually take a heavy, long-term toll on their lives.
Your situation may not be conducive
After 20-odd years as a forward-caste cis-male in the IT industry, I have a few privileges. A private home office is one among many. But let’s start there. In India, many people live in “joint families” - i.e. multi-generational households where several couples and their children stay in the same home. In such homes, private office space is an unheralded luxury.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have young professionals. They often live in shared accommodations. In India, young people often live in long-term, hostel-style apartments called “paying guest” accommodations. If your job demands privacy, like my consulting career, then sharing your workspace with a roommate doesn’t cut the mustard.
However, a private workspace isn’t the only privilege necessary for remote work. You need a solid internet connection and an easy way to organise your meals. I have both. Everyone doesn’t. In India, the catered meals an office may provide can mean a big deal to people who don’t have storage space for food items or a proper kitchen at home. And despite our telecom revolution, you can’t take the internet for granted. Oh, and don’t even get me started on uninterrupted power!
Let’s also not forget about your social needs. I have all the friends I need, thank you very much. I met my wife at work, and I’m not looking for a new love interest ever since. But everyone isn’t in my situation. Back in the heyday of office work, we’d often make friends and find our significant others at the workplace. If you feel isolated and don’t have a way to make these connections, maybe the office is your place to find people whose company you enjoy. After all, these are people you already have some common ground with.
All my arguments notwithstanding, none of them justify a blanket RTO policy - Zerodha is an excellent example for now. I congratulate Kailash Nadh and his peers in their leadership team for being detail-oriented enough to identify the 100-odd people who will benefit from office time. They’ve also given others who need the office the freedom to use it.
And there lies the case for the future of the office. Companies that can afford to lease a space for themselves or provide coworking space arrangements should offer such spaces to employees. Such spaces make for inclusive work arrangements where people with different work styles and personal situations can be part of the same workforce.
But even when our employers offer us location independence, we must be self-aware enough to judge if being remote is best for us, our colleagues and our employers. Otherwise, we stand to lose the hard-fought gains of the last decade by mistaking our wants for our needs.