Here’s a thought: If you boss tells you to come in, get another boss at another company that “gets it”.
"Getting it" is in the eye of the beholder.
Sure, "facetime" may seem like BS - and it is frequently - but for industries where there is a high human interactivity dimension to delivering shareholder value, it is VITAL that people work in person.
I never saw a successful sports team, musical combo, or military outfit where everyone worked in isolation and NEVER "practiced" together/only met on Game Day/Show Time/D-Day. Same holds true for many sectors in America today like financial services, healthcare, retail, oil & gas, and so on.
To be sure, some sectors can thrive where employees work remotely all the time. And to be fair, I got a LOT done when I was working remotely in early 2020 when I let my hair down so to speak - indeed I had to censor myself when I got back to the office because I got used to cursing up a blue storm at home while on mute.
Some people also may thrive in that remote all the time environment, including introverts, parents, people with live-in/elderly parents, people on the spectrum, grumpy old men, Deplorables who haaaaate forced pronouns or "join us in the lounge for free tofu on bring your imaginary spouse to work day." More power to them, and if you're a waitress and hate people, you CAN get an office job. Despite Reichskanzler Bidet's recent speech, it's still a free country.
At the same time, people who have the emotional intelligence to understand how many careers work, will thrive with return to office. That doesn't make them a sheep or a fake. It makes them the corporate equivalent of a concealed carrier with situational awareness.
The way our “team” worked was quarterly face to face meetings—but they were partially “social gatherings” and part “brainstorming sessions”.
That gave us all the face time we needed.
That was a great post on your part.
I would clarify myself by simply saying that areas where working from home provides direct value to the employer, it should be encouraged.
And for employers, to provide value to employees by offering a work from home option even on a limited basis has great value both in real-time reductions in stress to existing employees, and serving as a recruitment and retainment tool.
It is interesting-the chair of my department was far ahead of the “work from home” game months before the pandemic, and was doing it largely as a “Quality of Life” incentive. So when the pandemic hit, and there was that short period where we didn’t know much about it yet, we were ready to have certain people working from home. We had employer supplied secure firewalls and workstations installed at home, and were ahead of things.
My point is that, where it can be applied, work from home privileges can and should be encouraged it it advances the efficiency and financial health of the organization. (I deliberately say “the organization” and not “the worker”. If the individual worker is happier and can be just as efficient, that is a happy byproduct. But it should not be the driver.)
It is not a panacea, or a “one size fits all”.
Certain businesses require interaction with the client. Obviously, these are not being discussed. There are other fields that require very little ‘face time’ to accomplish the job. Oh sure, there are those insecure / incompetent types that must see butts in seats to feel as if things are getting done. Of course, those people need the cover of a crowd to avoid having their inadequacies exposed. But this isn’t the 80s. Remote work has evolved to the point of having live VR sessions, group video chats, open audio ‘rooms’, collaborative work tables and drawing boards. There’s very little that needs to be done in person. Beyond that we have task tracking and version control to help manage the teams progress.
Banking, legal, communications, software systems, etc are far less reliant on in person interactions these days. The benefit weighed against the high cost of real estate often times falls short.