Hybrid is remote. Remote is work.
Summary
We must soon retire the word “hybrid”. It does less to clarify work patterns and more to confuse people.
If it’s a shorthand for mandated return to office policies, then it somehow undermines inclusion and productivity.
Most teams are distributed in some shape or form. People are “remote” in relation to each other.
In flexible work settings, “hybrid” is yet another configuration of remote work. The term adds zero value there as well.
Instead of fussing over hybrid, teams and companies must instead build a mindset to treat everyone equally, regardless of location.
We’ve created a monstrosity. It’s this term - “hybrid”. I make no secret of my dislike for this term, though I’ve been less negative about it in the past. We’re at a point where “hybrid” is a concept that we willingly or unwittingly weaponise. For example, leaders use it as shorthand for mandating one-size-fits-all policies that prescribe the number of days one must spend in the office. Well-intentioned as they may be, such mandates undermine diversity and inclusion and do little for productivity. When people have to endure long commutes, much to their chagrin, both morale and performance suffer. High performance needs a predictable rhythm. “Three days in, two days out” or other such models don’t let employees build such daily rhythms.
But this apart, I also notice that “hybrid” is a term that confuses the idea of modern work. Even in “remote-first” settings where employers continue to offer full flexibility to their employees and teams to choose where they work from, the notion of “hybrid” muddles collaboration patterns. So in today’s post, I want to make the case to retire the term “hybrid” and to even look beyond the term “remote work”.
Someone is always somewhere else
In 2023, it’s hard to build tech teams where everyone is in the same city. If by some stroke of luck, you achieve this, it’s almost impossible to have all stakeholders in your vicinity. People have different life stories. Any team that cares about inclusion will struggle to bring everyone into the same physical location regularly.
If any of these observations is true for you, then your team is “distributed” in some shape or form. Tech talent will continue to be scarce. Offshore delivery has been an ever-growing industry since the time I was born. With few exceptions, tech teams are, and have been, “distributed by default”.
Of course, this isn’t anything new. It’s just that, between 2019 and 2023, we’ve gotten a lot more distributed, because of the pandemic-induced remote work revolution. It only makes sense to revisit our work practices considering this shift. And if we don’t, we go through hell.
The path to hell
It all begins with good intentions. Imagine this scenario. A bunch of coworkers find themselves in an office. Some colleagues, however, are remote. The co-located team members run a workshop in “the good old way” - i.e. with physical whiteboards and post-it notes. And then someone thinks, “How do we make this hybrid, so our remote colleagues can take part?”. One terrible suggestion follows another. Here are some situations that you may find familiar.
Point a camera to the whiteboard. Expect the remote attendees to follow along.
Appoint a SPOC for the virtual participants. These virtual participants share their inputs with the SPOC, who becomes their spokesperson in the workshop.
Attendees in the physical space, engage in fast-paced banter. When the remote attendees can’t keep up, they interject and ask for clarification.
I won’t go on describing other versions of these painful situations. I hope though, that you can see how the quest for “the good old way” (a good intention), leads us to collaboration hell. No one enjoys this way of working - neither the people who are co-located nor the remote people. Surely, “hybrid” shouldn’t be a way to make work suck.
Without a mindset shift, hybrid sucks
When teams are distributed by default, you can’t have a mindset that optimises for a “good old”, co-located environment. This site already advocates for an async-first mindset for such teams. But even when you communicate in real-time, you must adopt a “remote” mindset. Regardless of where anyone is at any point in time, treat everyone as if they are remote. This means that if you were running one of those workshops, don’t muck around with physical whiteboards and sticky notes any more.
Choose a collaborative whiteboard like Mural or Miro. Or choose a collaborative document like Google Docs, Coda or Notion.
Get everyone to join an online meeting, with dedicated audio and video.
Run the meeting just like any other remote workshop.
When you’re done, document the outcomes for the benefit of those who couldn’t attend.
When you operate this way, “hybrid” becomes just another configuration of remote work. You can still enjoy a coffee or lunch with the people in your proximity, but for work activities, you create a level playing field.
If your ways of working are consistent, regardless of where people work from, then the word “hybrid” is unnecessary. It confuses people. We’re better off without that term. Embrace a location-independent mindset to work. Better still, aim for time-independence. Go async-first. But I said that already, didn’t I?
At some point, companies and teams will do well to choose whether they are location and time-independent, or not. If you and your employers believe that an office-centric model is best for you, then commit to it. But if you value location and time independence, then go all in - remote plus async! As DHH says, don’t fiddle this Machiavellian middle.
“When work straddles the gap between asynchronous and real-time throughout the week, you can easily end up with half-assed versions of both. When some of the information you need is written down and discussed online on the out-of-office days, and the rest lives only in the minds of people from oral tradition.”
I see the next couple of years as the years of churn with remote work. “Hybrid”, despite the media hype, will eventually die off. Some companies will re-embrace their identities as office-centric outfits. There’ll be little or no room for remoteness here. Other companies will choose a remote-native way of working, much like GitLab, Automattic, 37Signals and Doist do today. And like it is for these OGs, the conversation about “remote” will be passé by then. Work won’t need a suffix to qualify it. Work will just be work. Or so I expect.