Private Mars Rocket II

I've been watching the various corporate and now Federal governmental "return to office" (RTO) initiatives with some interest. What I'm about to say is my personal opinion, not that of any past or present employer. Before I offer this, a bit on my background. I've been in the civilian workforce at various for-profit companies for 31 years now, in both managerial and non-managerial positions. For the first 26 years, I went into an office, and the last 5 I have worked from home. When I was hired for this current job, it was a requirement to come into a specific office - that changed in 2020 with decisions made well above my paygrade.

With that background, thoughts:

1) Some of the RTO advocates seem to have an emotional belief that people not working at an office are not actually performing work. This is frankly bullshit. I have seen many people taking up space in an office while not actually getting anything done. Just because somebody is or is not typing at a keyboard at a given moment does not tell you whether or not they are working.

2) Related to the above, there are personal errands which can only be performed during working hours. As a manager, you can either micromanage these errands or allow your people to live their lives. I find it easier to do the latter. There are clear exceptions to this - for example, if you are working in a call center, then yes you need to be in front of a phone during specific hours.

3) Much is made by RTO advocates of "collaboration." In my experience, I have never had a random conversation with somebody in an elevator or at the coffee station which resulted in some wonderful breakthrough. In fact, once you get to over a certain number of people physically at the office, you have no idea who most of those people are.

4) Related to the above, if you are working for a company with more than one location, even if both locations are in the same county, you will be having a lot of meetings and collaborative activities via phone or Zoom, unless, of course, your employer wants to pay mileage and time for you to drive between sites. Finally, again speaking from experience, the most difficult meeting to conduct is one in which some people are physically in the same room and some are remote. All-remote or all in-person meetings are much easier.

5) Location and time are different factors. It is entirely reasonable to expect remote workers to be available during set times for meetings and real-time communication. But where they are sitting doesn't matter. Again, exceptions, such as customer contact positions, do exist.

6) RTO advocates are correct that training for fully-remote people, especially new hires, is more difficult. Also, even experienced people need training when they start a new job - they need to learn "how we do things here" which is probably different then how they did things there. Alas, Corporate America does not do training well.

7) Knowledge work is not an assembly line. In an assembly line, the measure of productivity is widgets per hour. For most knowledge work, the measure of productivity is completing a task on or before a given time. How many hours the employee spends is secondary.

It's fair to say that some people don't like remote work. Since I occasionally go into the office myself, I understand that. The bottom line is this: we go into the office to do paperwork. When that meant physical handling of a piece of paper, the office made sense. Now that "paperwork" means "type on a computer" it does not.

One of the organizations I am affiliated with is looking for a new vendor to perform some key tasks. For confidentiality reasons, more I cannot say, and frankly more is not relevant at this point in time. What is relevant are some ruminations on the nature of work and specifically what types of work are most conducive to doing at home. These ruminations came up during the (ongoing) search for a new vendor.

1) Work involving in-person customer contact is not particularly conducive to WFH. This is obvious for retail jobs (very few people indeed can run a restaurant out of their house) but is also true for work that involves making a lot of site visits. Speaking from experience, one can develop an inertia that makes one reluctant to go out to a job or customer site and take a physical look at things.

2) For some jobs, a key component of the job is to be available for certain hours. For example, a key function of being an IT help desk technician is that you're at your phone during set hours. Being in an office is more conducive to that, as well as seeing who else is available at any given time.

3) Jobs involving creative thought are very conducive to WFH. The classic WFH, writer (technical, corporate, or fiction) is an example. Ditto programming. Productivity is not very highly correlated with sheer hours in the seat, nor is productivity very highly correlated with set hours. Obviously, some seat time and some fixed hours to support meetings is required, but much creative work is done when the worker is just walking around.

4) The closer the individual worker's WFH environment matches that of an office, the more productive they are. I have an actual office (formerly a child's bedroom) at my house, with a door and a functional desk.
Distractions are minimal.

4) Having an office to go to is helpful. I go into an office when I have heavy printing needs or when my house is being cleaned (it gets me out of the way of the cleaner).

I don't have any profound conclusions here, just some thoughts.

Like the label on the tin says:

Thing The First

Star Trek's "Genesis Trology" proved you don't need to have a plan. As somebody who committed trilogy by accident, I fully endorse this idea.

Thing The Second

Afghanistan Isn’t 1975 South Vietnam, It’s 1948 China. Basically, we "lost" China because Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang (AKA Nationalist) Party did a shit job of governing. To paraphrase Dean Wormer, corrupt, greedy and incompetent is no way to run a government.

Ditto Afghanistan. In both countries, as George Marshall said of China, "A great deal must be done by the Chinese authorities themselves…nobody else can do it for them.” The key difference is that in China, some US policy-makers were honest about the situation. In Afghanistan we stuck our heads in the sand.

Thing The Third

Much ink has been spilled about why the job market is so tight. Since the extra Federal aid has ended, that can't be the cause. I agree with Robert Reich when he says "American Workers Are on Strike Over 'Low-Wage S*** Jobs."