I was already doing two days at home, typically.
There are two versions of my job, as a senior software engineer. One is where I just get on and do the work. This is indefinitely sustainable from home.
The other is where I do less myself and spend my time empowering other people - teaching, mentoring, showing juniors how to do things better, talking about why we do things. This is now extremely difficult because WFH has no serendipitous opportunities and is usually a fairly formal, transactional arrangement.
I can get away with doing the first but the loss of the second is a really big negative and I hope we don't embrace permanent remote work.
Agree with all this.
I really worry that a lot of people are going to rush into home working and abandoning offices, hugely underestimating the negative impacts.
Because something works OK for 3 months, doesn't mean it will work in the long term. Everyone who's continued through this working with their colleagues remotely - a lot of that only works because of pre-existing relationships built up through months or years of real-world interaction.
Those serendipitous opportunities are crucial for passing on knowledge and identifying problems early.
For the past few years, I've worked from home, and for myself, so it might seem hypocritical to say that people shouldn't be rushing into doing this, but those years working by myself have taught me what you miss from being physically in a room with other people doing similar stuff. Also, I can only do what I do now because of years working in a company with other people, learning all the stuff that is not written in any textbook anywhere. And - a lot of things I do now, self-employed, spring from relationships formed when I wasn't.
Ironically enough, just before lockdown, I was doing some freelance stuff that involved me going and sitting in an office for a couple of days a week. It did remind me of the things that I don't like about that, but it really highlighted the value of those incidental conversations, the things you can ask people about if they are sat in the same room, but which you wouldn't do in an email, or by phone. Working by myself, I'll come across problems that I don't really know the solution to. It's easy to spend a whole day worrying about something - looking online, looking in books, whatever. Trying to work out what to do. In an office, with other people who do the same job as you, you can just say, um, have you got any idea what the normal way to do this is? And either, someone with different or more experience will say, yeah, just do this - or, everyone will say, oh, we don't know what the answer is to that either, and it doesn't seem like anyone really does. And then the issue that you would have spent all afternoon stressing about is dealt with in a matter of minutes. This is really valuable.
Also, it seems to me that working from home if you're self employed is different to working from home if you are an employee. If you're self employed you have more control over your time and delineation between work and non-work. And you benefit directly from the lack of overheads, and can make that choice yourself. For employees, it seems like a real intrusion into personal, private space, and also kind of parasitising on those overheads. And, it's just aother thing that reinforces inequality - the WFH experience for those with large comfortable homes will be completely different for the WFH experience for those in small flats, or shared houses, or living with extended family, and so on. At least having an office that everyone goes to has some kind of levelling effect, in terms of the environment that you have to do your work in.
So, yeah, it worries me somewhat the enthusiasm that many people seem to be showing for continuing to work from home in the long term.
Also, if you ask nearly anyone who's worked from home for more than a few months, they'll tell you there's a kind of honeymoon period that might wear off after 3 months or 6 months or a year, when the implications of the isolation and lack of imposed structure really start to sink in. Some people really start to struggle - it's not easy.
