I wrote a long edit clarifying a few things, and lost it on submit thanks to timing out. Damn.
I'm morbidly fascinated by the polarisation that drives some online conversations. Admittedly I have probably fuelled some of that with my question, I'll try to do better in future. However, it was intended to point out that there are shades of grey here (as evident in the comments) while the post I replied to seemed very black-and-white to me.
I wonder if a better question might be something like: what does a healthy, productive future of work look like now that covid has demonstrated that some people will very much want to continue working entirely remote, while some people very much do not?
For what it's worth, I completely agree and sympathise with all the issues people raise here. None of remote, in-office, or hybrid are perfect. They all have problems.
It seems that covid has given us the opportunity to at least try to improve things, even though clearly the answers are difficult to find.
Slight tangent: I was saddened to read recently that Basecap has permanently closed their Chicago HQ [0]. I've held up this place as a model for how I'd want to build an office space should my unicorn/cash-cow finally hatch. No, it's not perfect, but I loved the fact they explicitly tried, and they explicitly recognised it might be seen by some as a waste of company funds, particularly when they also did things like deliver fruit & veg to employee's homes rather than workplace as an incentive to go home rather than stay late in that expensive office space [1].
I think there are major underlying structural issues that discourage companies from solving issues relating to worker happiness. Extortionate rent and service charges have produced homogenous high-streets, and they're homogenising the business districts too. The labels over the door of each building might be different, but the attitude inside is the same. Worker happiness is grist to the mill, productivity and the bottom line reign. I think we could do better.
I'm morbidly fascinated by the polarisation that drives some online conversations. Admittedly I have probably fuelled some of that with my question, I'll try to do better in future. However, it was intended to point out that there are shades of grey here (as evident in the comments) while the post I replied to seemed very black-and-white to me.
I wonder if a better question might be something like: what does a healthy, productive future of work look like now that covid has demonstrated that some people will very much want to continue working entirely remote, while some people very much do not?
For what it's worth, I completely agree and sympathise with all the issues people raise here. None of remote, in-office, or hybrid are perfect. They all have problems.
It seems that covid has given us the opportunity to at least try to improve things, even though clearly the answers are difficult to find.
Slight tangent: I was saddened to read recently that Basecap has permanently closed their Chicago HQ [0]. I've held up this place as a model for how I'd want to build an office space should my unicorn/cash-cow finally hatch. No, it's not perfect, but I loved the fact they explicitly tried, and they explicitly recognised it might be seen by some as a waste of company funds, particularly when they also did things like deliver fruit & veg to employee's homes rather than workplace as an incentive to go home rather than stay late in that expensive office space [1].
I think there are major underlying structural issues that discourage companies from solving issues relating to worker happiness. Extortionate rent and service charges have produced homogenous high-streets, and they're homogenising the business districts too. The labels over the door of each building might be different, but the attitude inside is the same. Worker happiness is grist to the mill, productivity and the bottom line reign. I think we could do better.
[0] https://basecamp.com/about/office
[1] https://basecamp.com/books/calm