This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
I’ve been working remotely for a year now. It has revolutionized everything in my life. I’ve rediscovered my passion for swimming laps, I do Zoom yoga with high school friends 7 days a week and I’ve done the best, most meaningful work of my career. Post-pandemic, I can’t wait to stretch this lifestyle further. There was definitely a transitional period in late spring-early summer 2020 when I felt neurotic about needing to LARP my job. Then a period of sadness/depression when I realized literally no one at work was paying attention to my productivity. And THEN an intense thrill when I realized the power to fly under the radar and work on my own terms was priceless. I no longer am plagued by worries that I’m underpaid or underappreciated - my job has gone from an entire identity to one, average-size piece of the pie that is my life. WFH freedom almost feels equivalent to a $50,000 raise. I hope the flexibility lasts forever.
I am so incredibly happy for you!! [and also love this description of the progression — part of it really is decoupling value from productivity, which is really weird and interesting and valuable and something I'm still working on every day]
Eagerly awaiting your next book with Charlie to help me further divest from the rat race. The future of burnt out millennials is in your capable hands, but no pressure!
I’m a full-time child care worker who can only fantasize about this life. Good pay and benefits at my center (rare for this field), but I spend nine hours of my day at work, giving my all to the little ones. I wish we better took the very real tolls of emotional labor and care work into account, and rethink what a reasonable number of hours (and $$) for this type of work should be. Or, if I didn’t have to worry about health insurance, I would go part-time and take up something remote/creative on the side. Because this isn’t sustainable!
Slight tangent, I know, but your depiction of ideal WFH life made my lip wobble and I’m trying to reconcile my desire for flexibility and time for creative pursuits with my passion for working with young children.
Believe it or not, childcare is a big part of this book — specifically transforming childcare into something that we think of as a public good, funded like other public goods, with pay and benefits on par with that of K-8 teachers who also provide public goods. I also have a big piece coming out this week from Vox on transforming our thinking about funding and pay for childcare workers, because there is just no way for us to "fix" work without also fixing childcare, which absolutely includes making it into a job that's sustainable.
And, as for the healthcare piece: so many people are locked in bad jobs because of healthcare. Disarticulating healthcare from work has to be a priority.
I had similar thoughts. I'm a librarian working in an archive at a museum, and for my field flexible work is really not an option in any shape or form. I mean, there are some positions, usually tenure track positions at big universities, that offer flexibility. But, for most of us, or work is tied to a physical location with physical objects, and what at the end of the day is a very transactional job. And I too, have been rethinking whether this is a field I want to continue in. I mean, for the past year, it's been a real mindfuck being the only one of my friends who still had to go into a building, and (due to my state's stupidity) keep business basically as usual. In fact, it feels like we've been busier than ever this year, and I've had several people contact me to do research prefacing it "Now that I'm at home, I'm finally getting around to this pet project".
And on top of our increased influx of researchers, there's also a huge drive from leadership to drastically increase our digitization efforts, which is very time consuming, and of course is just added onto all our existing duties.
Sorry this got a little rant-y but I've just been thinking a lot about this as people are starting to talk about the future of this remote work situation, and there's still a lot of us in these very white-collar, knowledge-sector jobs (not to mention educators, and front-line workers) for whom that has never been and never will be an option.
I hear you — and I'm sorry about the dumb state making you keep going into work, because I actually think it might have been interesting, if you were forced to work from home, to figure out what tasks could be done remotely if necessary (even if just for a few hours at the beginning or end of the day). But on a separate note, there's a lot to think about i/r/t to the future of work that isn't necessarily about WHERE the work is done so much as how it's done, and the way we think about it, and management just generally....a full, hulking section of the book is about CULTURE, and that's something that all office workplaces can be thinking about moving forward, even without the option for more flexible physical locations.
I keep trying to envision what an office would be like if it wasn't like a factory full of workbenches. What if people could come and go? What if it was like a library? Or a cafe? I worked for an agency that placed part-time consultants in other companies. Its office looked almost like a home. There was a kitchen island in the center, couches and a coffee table, hot desks near a window with a view of a lake, and a ring of private offices. It felt so different, so much better!
What I think would be amazing is the ability to temporarily move somewhere and work remotely. I actually knew a consultant who did this - she would "move" to a country for 4-6 weeks, work during US business hours, and then spend the rest of her weekdays and weekends exploring. This worked out really well for her visiting Europe - She'd have the mornings to herself and then work from 1-9 pm. She could check out new restaurants or eat at favorite more than once. Visit a different museum every day. She was able to take vacation time and see the world without taking any time off (which was especially critical for her since any days off were unpaid). She basically figured out how to live a study abroad lifestyle in her adult life.
I have a friend who lives and works in Arizona and she is excited about being able to do work remotely for part of the year in Virginia to be near her kids. Currently she takes a week of vacation time every six months - now she will be able to spend upwards of half a year on the east coast with them on evenings and weekends! It's a huge quality of life game changer!
I've been saying that I miss "quiet company." Working in a crowded coffee shop, those little interactions with the shopkeeper and other patrons. After spending all my working life 100% in the office, I've been home for the last year. I never thought I would like working from home but going back to the office 5 days is something I don't want to do. The hybrid model seems best, but I could work from home forever if I had my normal social life going and could end the day, as you said, with a beer with my friends, or a workout with my rowing team.
I stole it from an old song by Gretchen Peters called "Picasso and Me." It's from the point of view of Picasso's cat, and the cat says, "we both like our freedom, and quiet company."
Actually, Arthur Brooks was until recently the president of rightist think tank AEI, and before getting into think tank world was a professional French horn player. But he's got this ongoing agenda about unhappiness being the outcome of the liberal experiment. It's the nail and he's got the hammer. I like him, but if anything his actual resume underscores your point better than were he a hard-boiled Hahvahd wonk.
Plus he's at Harvard - most academics don't have this kind of flexibility. There's a lot of 4/4 load people out here with 4 day teaching schedules - which doesn't even take in community colleges with 5/5 or greater teaching loads. We're closer to corporate than anything, and our butts in chairs ain't going anywhere but campus when we go back to face to face I'm betting.
Totally — and without allocated office spaces, too! Tried to gesture that way with the "non-contigent" part but I know TT people who are scheduled five days a week as well on 4/4 loads.
I started a new job about a month ago, and remote onboarding, along with the need for time and space to focus on learning and performing new tasks, does have me a little excited to think about collaborating with my new team onsite.
As for my ideal hybrid schedule, I would love the option to have a hybrid work *day.* My dream is to drop the kids off at their respective schools, head downtown to the office where I can be 100 percent engaged and amazing, then head out at 2:30 to pick up those same kids from school and finish out my day completing work tasks while the kids do homework, snack, etc. together at home instead of paying for after-care and worrying about my tween navigating his way home alone after school. It's not fair to my kids that they have to be away from home from 8-6 just because my husband and I have to be at work until 5 (because Corporate America says so.)
I would to have to have two afternoons a week in the office during which I would schedule meetings (remember when meetings were a break from the screen) and spend the rest of my time working from my apartment, the library, and cafes. Changing my environment really helps me and I’d love to have a routine that incorporates it.
I have also been fantasizing about a coworking space in my neighbourhood where I could meet up with friends to work remotely, so that all the little social interactions that add up over a day could be with people I choose to be with (introvert here, don’t miss office small talk).
I've been fantasizing about a similar situation. A sort of coworking coop endeavor. I live in a super rural area that has no public transportation (can't even grab an Uber or cab), no nifty coffee shops, not even a nice park with a babbling brook. Our tiny town has a plethora of empty retail and office buildings and I would LOVE to get 6 cool friends together to rent space together for 2-3 days per week of coworking. Sigh. I don't have 6 cool friends who work from home, even now with COVID.
I work in a creative agency, and I am almost frantic at the opportunity this situation has presented to industries like mine. To unshackle creative people from specific geographic locations and allow them to work from anywhere for your company unlocks a mind-bending amount of potential, both for the company and the individual. And not having to LARP my way through a work week is freeing in ways I couldn't have anticipated.
To be a totally honest buzzkill, reading this kind of stuff just makes me depressed because it's so unlikely. I've never worked under an upper management group that was even slightly receptive to this kind of flexibility.
And even within white-collar non-care work, I think this could introduce equity issues. Let's say you switch to a management system based on output, not ass-in-chair time. What if two people have similar roles but one of them works much more slowly than the other--does that person deserve to work twice as many hours as the other person?
Not a buzzkill at all — these are the sorts of questions that we spend the book trying to confront and parse. So often it comes down to management, too — how can that manager see that one worker takes longer to complete a task, but maybe does it better, or with more precision? How do we stop equating "butt in chair" with "time working" just generally? This book is for workers to try and imagine different scenarios, but also for managers who recognize that the current system is broken, and want to figure out a way forward. The thing about the pandemic is that it forced a lot of very rigid and inflexible upper management groups to realize that what they thought was impossible could, in fact, be possible — and that even includes area of work (like finance!) with deeply toxic ideas about work.
I am a new manager, and what I am paying attention to with my employees is what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses? What feedback can I give them to help them grow in the directions they can excel at, and what can I take back that they aren’t good at and give to someone else? The point isn’t that two people need to compete at the same task. Maybe the question we should be asking is, what can person A excel at and enjoy doing and what can person B excel at and enjoy doing? I see so many managers setting people up to fail because they are asking them to do things they hate and are not good at. But yes, there ARE people who are just super fast and that is a specific skill, and I do think they should get some kind of reward for that. If that means they get to work slightly less hours than someone who is much slower, that is equitable. I think we need to readjust our ideas about what is “fair” and maybe look at what is equitable instead. Sometimes people are really fast at tasks because they have been doing it for a long time, and they can complete the same task it would take a person who is new at it in half the time. In that case a company is paying them more for all the years of labor and work and experience it took to get to that level. That doesn’t mean the slower person is less valuable. It means they are on a different part of the curve.
I'm a professional writer who reads and writes relatively slowly. I don't mind being at my writing desk longer than a faster writer. Making that person sit at the desk for no reason isn't equitable. Giving that person more work to fill up their time isn't equitable. Letting each of us work at our own pace is equitable; if I'm so slow at a particular job that I'm working 12 hours when other people work 5, I probably don't want to do the job at all.
Minor, tangential point, because I've got an axe to grind -- lecture as performance is a bad way to teach, regardless if it is in person or virtual! Studies in STEM fields show that student learn much more if they are actively engaged during class period (anecdotally, they also enjoy class more). I'd bet a lot that this is also true for non-STEM fields as its a basic aspect of cognition. Anyways, I know this isn't the point of the article, but take every opportunity that I can to grind this particular axe.
I worked remotely pre-pandemic, but my work experience absolutely changed bc I was no longer spending about 50 percent of my time on the road visiting offices. A fraction of that travel was unnecessary business nonsense, but a lot of it was important for my work and helped me do my job more effectively. I really liked that split where I saw my work friends in various cities or countries, pulled some long days in face-to-face sessions and shadowing, read books on airplanes to and from, and then came home and hid behind a laptop attending remote meetings and doing errands during the day for a week or two before heading out again.
I also need that time away to miss my husband! I am really independent and pretty introverted and weirdly loved just sitting in a rental car eating sushi from Whole Foods for dinner at the end of the day without anyone to coordinate with for anything.
I think this way about my work travel too: what's the perfect recipe of the good, essential stuff (the stuff that made me better at my job, the stuff that gave me time away to miss home) but none of the wasteful (and unnecessary fossil fuel burning) stuff?
I’m a bit of an outlier here, I think: my ideal situation would be to spend most of my time working on-site, but with the flexibility to work from home or in some other place whenever I want/need.
Part of it is that I work in the arts, where so much of what we do is about conversations and hands-on experiences with works of art. Yes, it can be done through technology, but its power is greatly diminished. It is nice to be able to work remotely when I have a grant proposal to write or a program or talk to prepare and I need to concentrate without interruptions, but for the most part I have a people-facing job and I generally like it that way.
Part of it is that I need to set very clear boundaries between work and the rest of my life, otherwise my mental health suffers tremendously: I can think of several times in my life where I could not enjoy something I was really looking forward to because I could not stop thinking about work. This is something I’ve been working on for a while now, and while I admire those of you who can toggle back and forth more easily, I don’t know that a life with just guardrails is possible for me.
And part of it is that I have actually found a lot of community through my work — community I haven’t really been able to find elsewhere. Maybe it’s because I tend to be very shy around strangers, or maybe it’s because I live in famously standoffish New England, but I haven’t had very good luck getting to know people who live in my town or my neighborhood. However, I have managed to find a lot of friends through my various workplaces, and while some of these friendships faded away once we were no longer colleagues, others have flourished and deepened long after our working relationships ended.
I know my reality isn’t the same as everyone’s, and that’s okay: I really appreciate the fact that your work acknowledges the fact that not everyone can work remotely, nor do they necessarily want to. So much of the conversation about the future of work focuses exclusively on the subset of “knowledge workers” who work remotely and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but the entire system needs to be rethought for all of us.
I think where work-related loneliness comes in for me, a person who has worked remotely since 2015, is missing the opportunity to be in the same room with my closest collaborators on a regular basis. I'd never want to go back to the office full time (LARPing the job was one of the reasons I left it to begin with), but I also don't think you can replace in person contact with your team. There's just so much nuance you miss in virtual settings. It's harder to read the room, pick up on the subtleties that might be the real drivers of whatever is going on.
So maybe it depends on what kind of work you do, and how much you actually collaborate with people as opposed to just coexisting with them? I totally share your optimism in general, for the record!
Yes, I think this is very real — and definitely depends on your job, and how collaboration has been figured. One thing that's emerged as we've spoken with different disabled work activists is how many unspoken cues have become standardized that....maybe shouldn't? Also: our current Zoom technology is going to improve, and there are going to be more and more interesting ways for us to conceive of remote collaboration. But that doesn't mean that for some types of work, periodic in-person interactions aren't valuable as well.
Interesting -- looking forward to reading more about what your research has revealed and how unspoken cues play into discrimination of various kinds.
The cues I'm thinking about are more about knowing where you stand in a group or power dynamic. That can be really hard to read in remote settings. Which again comes back to the type of work/culture you're operating in. If your company has a lot of politics at play, in my experience it's harder to know which way the wind is blowing without in person interactions. Definitely would like to read more about how people navigate this.
Think about how many of those cues are non-verbal and only really legible to people who are neurotypical — that's one place to start. There are some really interesting examples out there of companies that try to be very transparent and explicit about how, say, promotions, pay, all that stuff works, in part because it creates a less toxic work culture and in part because they want to be inclusive of people who are neuroatypical as well!
OMG I am autistic and a multiracial Black woman and yes. In person can be so hard because I just don’t understand how to play these (white) social games that other people get. Plus I’m just way too blunt. I literally am incapable of being subtle. Sigh.
One of the reasons I think I have excelled in my current position is that I work remotely, and the output is what matters. Plus I deeply care about my coworkers and that seems to come across better for me remotely as opposed to in person.
I’m getting a promotion to manager very shortly, and I have NOT told the owner of our company (my direct boss) that I am autistic. He doesn’t realize the reason I am so good at what I do is I notice and pick up on the things that other people don’t. I also check in with my coworkers much more often because I can’t make assumptions about what they think or feel because I really don’t understand what I consider to be passive aggressive social cues, and because I have a lifetime of experience of understanding that not everyone is the same and therefore we all have different needs to be met. This actually makes me a really good boss.
I’m managing right now without the official title, in case anyone is comparing my comments. I stated before I am a new manager because I an doing the job without the title at the current moment.
Before the pandemic, I'd been teaching at a community college and running my private accent reduction coaching practice on Zoom. I'd been gradually adjusting my lifestyle to support a heart condition that made commuting and being in a crowded, noisy city untenable. The silver lining to the health challenge is that it was oddly like pandemic boot camp, in that I was partially sheltering in place anyway and the move to running my business full time was pretty seamless because I'd gotten myself set up already. After 1 semester of teaching a large college class on Zoom, I devoted my energies to my business. I'm one of those quietly happy people who doesn't mind working on Zoom at all. In fact, I really enjoy it.
I'm comfortable in my home, teaching in my yoga pants with my kitty nearby. No exhausting commute or any of the other stressors of my recent past work life. While I don't have colleagues nearby to chat with, it's actually less lonely than teaching in institutions in which I barely ever saw any colleagues at all. I'm an introvert and an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and this set up, that's cut out the overstimulation of my past work life, is actually what I've needed for a very long time. I teach one-on-one, so I'm spared the awfulness of trying to keep track of a large number of students at once on Zoom. Without all the stressors and distractions, I think that I've been able to get even better results from my clients. And if I'm hungry, I just go to the kitchen and eat. I love being able to do what I need to do.
I feel fortunate that I can work and that I have lovely clients, with many in other countries. They're not commuting, either, so they generally have more time for our work. I like that occasionally a 3-year-old pops in to say hello or a cat joins us. Early in the pandemic, it was like having a front row seat to the responses of different countries, like Taiwan, which was so much more effective in managing COVID than the US.
Overall, this arrangement has worked out rather unexpectedly well for me. Having spent pre-pandemic time in the nightmare of Bay Area commuting, I'm grateful. I can't imagine going back to it.
I worked remotely from 2009-2013 and discovered how productive I can be when I honor my own body’s rhythms. Handling east coast biz before the kid wakes up...taking her to school...hitting the gym for an hour...10am meal...4-5 hours of alone working time and then, yes, a final spurt of screen-based productivity at our corner bar while noshing on an afternoon snack and a glass of wine like I’m in Spain instead of Arizona. It was heaven. In 2013, for good reasons, I took an ass-in-chair M-F job. I wasn’t prepared for the depression, the weight gain, the claustrophobic nature of no longer controlling the rhythm of my day. I almost quit after a month. In many ways this last year has allowed me to reclaim some of my old life (except peloton instead of gym and Vinho Verde on the lawn instead of the bar...). We are repopulating our office now and were just informed (with great and grandiose fanfare) that we will be “eligible to select one remote working day per week, which must be consistent on a week to week basis.” For a construction company run by a CEO who has never truly believed people can be productive outside a traditional work environment, this is a big deal and I’ll take what little agency over my own time that I can get.
For me (as an academic), I would like one day of teaching (pretty normal in the UK), 2 days in the office, and 2 days at home. I was anti WFH for myself pre pandemic but now I've got the set up to make it work, and I have been enjoying wearing leggings every day and going for a leisurely cycle ride at lunch which I can't do in the office because Edinburgh is super hilly and drivers are terrible.
I’ve been working remotely for a year now. It has revolutionized everything in my life. I’ve rediscovered my passion for swimming laps, I do Zoom yoga with high school friends 7 days a week and I’ve done the best, most meaningful work of my career. Post-pandemic, I can’t wait to stretch this lifestyle further. There was definitely a transitional period in late spring-early summer 2020 when I felt neurotic about needing to LARP my job. Then a period of sadness/depression when I realized literally no one at work was paying attention to my productivity. And THEN an intense thrill when I realized the power to fly under the radar and work on my own terms was priceless. I no longer am plagued by worries that I’m underpaid or underappreciated - my job has gone from an entire identity to one, average-size piece of the pie that is my life. WFH freedom almost feels equivalent to a $50,000 raise. I hope the flexibility lasts forever.
I am so incredibly happy for you!! [and also love this description of the progression — part of it really is decoupling value from productivity, which is really weird and interesting and valuable and something I'm still working on every day]
Thank you, AHP! Your book was key, frankly. Coupled with regular exercise and medication. ;)
This is the best book review ever.
Eagerly awaiting your next book with Charlie to help me further divest from the rat race. The future of burnt out millennials is in your capable hands, but no pressure!
I am interviewing for a fully remote position in about an hour and this is exactly the outcome I am looking for!
best of luck to you!
I’m a full-time child care worker who can only fantasize about this life. Good pay and benefits at my center (rare for this field), but I spend nine hours of my day at work, giving my all to the little ones. I wish we better took the very real tolls of emotional labor and care work into account, and rethink what a reasonable number of hours (and $$) for this type of work should be. Or, if I didn’t have to worry about health insurance, I would go part-time and take up something remote/creative on the side. Because this isn’t sustainable!
Slight tangent, I know, but your depiction of ideal WFH life made my lip wobble and I’m trying to reconcile my desire for flexibility and time for creative pursuits with my passion for working with young children.
Believe it or not, childcare is a big part of this book — specifically transforming childcare into something that we think of as a public good, funded like other public goods, with pay and benefits on par with that of K-8 teachers who also provide public goods. I also have a big piece coming out this week from Vox on transforming our thinking about funding and pay for childcare workers, because there is just no way for us to "fix" work without also fixing childcare, which absolutely includes making it into a job that's sustainable.
I can’t wait to read your piece! Thank you for your continued work and advocacy.
And, as for the healthcare piece: so many people are locked in bad jobs because of healthcare. Disarticulating healthcare from work has to be a priority.
THIS
I had similar thoughts. I'm a librarian working in an archive at a museum, and for my field flexible work is really not an option in any shape or form. I mean, there are some positions, usually tenure track positions at big universities, that offer flexibility. But, for most of us, or work is tied to a physical location with physical objects, and what at the end of the day is a very transactional job. And I too, have been rethinking whether this is a field I want to continue in. I mean, for the past year, it's been a real mindfuck being the only one of my friends who still had to go into a building, and (due to my state's stupidity) keep business basically as usual. In fact, it feels like we've been busier than ever this year, and I've had several people contact me to do research prefacing it "Now that I'm at home, I'm finally getting around to this pet project".
And on top of our increased influx of researchers, there's also a huge drive from leadership to drastically increase our digitization efforts, which is very time consuming, and of course is just added onto all our existing duties.
Sorry this got a little rant-y but I've just been thinking a lot about this as people are starting to talk about the future of this remote work situation, and there's still a lot of us in these very white-collar, knowledge-sector jobs (not to mention educators, and front-line workers) for whom that has never been and never will be an option.
I hear you — and I'm sorry about the dumb state making you keep going into work, because I actually think it might have been interesting, if you were forced to work from home, to figure out what tasks could be done remotely if necessary (even if just for a few hours at the beginning or end of the day). But on a separate note, there's a lot to think about i/r/t to the future of work that isn't necessarily about WHERE the work is done so much as how it's done, and the way we think about it, and management just generally....a full, hulking section of the book is about CULTURE, and that's something that all office workplaces can be thinking about moving forward, even without the option for more flexible physical locations.
I can't wait to read your book.
I keep trying to envision what an office would be like if it wasn't like a factory full of workbenches. What if people could come and go? What if it was like a library? Or a cafe? I worked for an agency that placed part-time consultants in other companies. Its office looked almost like a home. There was a kitchen island in the center, couches and a coffee table, hot desks near a window with a view of a lake, and a ring of private offices. It felt so different, so much better!
What I think would be amazing is the ability to temporarily move somewhere and work remotely. I actually knew a consultant who did this - she would "move" to a country for 4-6 weeks, work during US business hours, and then spend the rest of her weekdays and weekends exploring. This worked out really well for her visiting Europe - She'd have the mornings to herself and then work from 1-9 pm. She could check out new restaurants or eat at favorite more than once. Visit a different museum every day. She was able to take vacation time and see the world without taking any time off (which was especially critical for her since any days off were unpaid). She basically figured out how to live a study abroad lifestyle in her adult life.
I have a friend who lives and works in Arizona and she is excited about being able to do work remotely for part of the year in Virginia to be near her kids. Currently she takes a week of vacation time every six months - now she will be able to spend upwards of half a year on the east coast with them on evenings and weekends! It's a huge quality of life game changer!
I've been saying that I miss "quiet company." Working in a crowded coffee shop, those little interactions with the shopkeeper and other patrons. After spending all my working life 100% in the office, I've been home for the last year. I never thought I would like working from home but going back to the office 5 days is something I don't want to do. The hybrid model seems best, but I could work from home forever if I had my normal social life going and could end the day, as you said, with a beer with my friends, or a workout with my rowing team.
"Quiet company," I love that phrase!
I stole it from an old song by Gretchen Peters called "Picasso and Me." It's from the point of view of Picasso's cat, and the cat says, "we both like our freedom, and quiet company."
Actually, Arthur Brooks was until recently the president of rightist think tank AEI, and before getting into think tank world was a professional French horn player. But he's got this ongoing agenda about unhappiness being the outcome of the liberal experiment. It's the nail and he's got the hammer. I like him, but if anything his actual resume underscores your point better than were he a hard-boiled Hahvahd wonk.
Thank you SO MUCH for this illuminating clarification!!!!
Plus he's at Harvard - most academics don't have this kind of flexibility. There's a lot of 4/4 load people out here with 4 day teaching schedules - which doesn't even take in community colleges with 5/5 or greater teaching loads. We're closer to corporate than anything, and our butts in chairs ain't going anywhere but campus when we go back to face to face I'm betting.
Totally — and without allocated office spaces, too! Tried to gesture that way with the "non-contigent" part but I know TT people who are scheduled five days a week as well on 4/4 loads.
I started a new job about a month ago, and remote onboarding, along with the need for time and space to focus on learning and performing new tasks, does have me a little excited to think about collaborating with my new team onsite.
As for my ideal hybrid schedule, I would love the option to have a hybrid work *day.* My dream is to drop the kids off at their respective schools, head downtown to the office where I can be 100 percent engaged and amazing, then head out at 2:30 to pick up those same kids from school and finish out my day completing work tasks while the kids do homework, snack, etc. together at home instead of paying for after-care and worrying about my tween navigating his way home alone after school. It's not fair to my kids that they have to be away from home from 8-6 just because my husband and I have to be at work until 5 (because Corporate America says so.)
YES THIS
I would to have to have two afternoons a week in the office during which I would schedule meetings (remember when meetings were a break from the screen) and spend the rest of my time working from my apartment, the library, and cafes. Changing my environment really helps me and I’d love to have a routine that incorporates it.
I have also been fantasizing about a coworking space in my neighbourhood where I could meet up with friends to work remotely, so that all the little social interactions that add up over a day could be with people I choose to be with (introvert here, don’t miss office small talk).
I've been fantasizing about a similar situation. A sort of coworking coop endeavor. I live in a super rural area that has no public transportation (can't even grab an Uber or cab), no nifty coffee shops, not even a nice park with a babbling brook. Our tiny town has a plethora of empty retail and office buildings and I would LOVE to get 6 cool friends together to rent space together for 2-3 days per week of coworking. Sigh. I don't have 6 cool friends who work from home, even now with COVID.
I work in a creative agency, and I am almost frantic at the opportunity this situation has presented to industries like mine. To unshackle creative people from specific geographic locations and allow them to work from anywhere for your company unlocks a mind-bending amount of potential, both for the company and the individual. And not having to LARP my way through a work week is freeing in ways I couldn't have anticipated.
To be a totally honest buzzkill, reading this kind of stuff just makes me depressed because it's so unlikely. I've never worked under an upper management group that was even slightly receptive to this kind of flexibility.
And even within white-collar non-care work, I think this could introduce equity issues. Let's say you switch to a management system based on output, not ass-in-chair time. What if two people have similar roles but one of them works much more slowly than the other--does that person deserve to work twice as many hours as the other person?
Not a buzzkill at all — these are the sorts of questions that we spend the book trying to confront and parse. So often it comes down to management, too — how can that manager see that one worker takes longer to complete a task, but maybe does it better, or with more precision? How do we stop equating "butt in chair" with "time working" just generally? This book is for workers to try and imagine different scenarios, but also for managers who recognize that the current system is broken, and want to figure out a way forward. The thing about the pandemic is that it forced a lot of very rigid and inflexible upper management groups to realize that what they thought was impossible could, in fact, be possible — and that even includes area of work (like finance!) with deeply toxic ideas about work.
I am a new manager, and what I am paying attention to with my employees is what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses? What feedback can I give them to help them grow in the directions they can excel at, and what can I take back that they aren’t good at and give to someone else? The point isn’t that two people need to compete at the same task. Maybe the question we should be asking is, what can person A excel at and enjoy doing and what can person B excel at and enjoy doing? I see so many managers setting people up to fail because they are asking them to do things they hate and are not good at. But yes, there ARE people who are just super fast and that is a specific skill, and I do think they should get some kind of reward for that. If that means they get to work slightly less hours than someone who is much slower, that is equitable. I think we need to readjust our ideas about what is “fair” and maybe look at what is equitable instead. Sometimes people are really fast at tasks because they have been doing it for a long time, and they can complete the same task it would take a person who is new at it in half the time. In that case a company is paying them more for all the years of labor and work and experience it took to get to that level. That doesn’t mean the slower person is less valuable. It means they are on a different part of the curve.
I agree.
I'm a professional writer who reads and writes relatively slowly. I don't mind being at my writing desk longer than a faster writer. Making that person sit at the desk for no reason isn't equitable. Giving that person more work to fill up their time isn't equitable. Letting each of us work at our own pace is equitable; if I'm so slow at a particular job that I'm working 12 hours when other people work 5, I probably don't want to do the job at all.
Minor, tangential point, because I've got an axe to grind -- lecture as performance is a bad way to teach, regardless if it is in person or virtual! Studies in STEM fields show that student learn much more if they are actively engaged during class period (anecdotally, they also enjoy class more). I'd bet a lot that this is also true for non-STEM fields as its a basic aspect of cognition. Anyways, I know this isn't the point of the article, but take every opportunity that I can to grind this particular axe.
I worked remotely pre-pandemic, but my work experience absolutely changed bc I was no longer spending about 50 percent of my time on the road visiting offices. A fraction of that travel was unnecessary business nonsense, but a lot of it was important for my work and helped me do my job more effectively. I really liked that split where I saw my work friends in various cities or countries, pulled some long days in face-to-face sessions and shadowing, read books on airplanes to and from, and then came home and hid behind a laptop attending remote meetings and doing errands during the day for a week or two before heading out again.
I also need that time away to miss my husband! I am really independent and pretty introverted and weirdly loved just sitting in a rental car eating sushi from Whole Foods for dinner at the end of the day without anyone to coordinate with for anything.
I think this way about my work travel too: what's the perfect recipe of the good, essential stuff (the stuff that made me better at my job, the stuff that gave me time away to miss home) but none of the wasteful (and unnecessary fossil fuel burning) stuff?
I’m a bit of an outlier here, I think: my ideal situation would be to spend most of my time working on-site, but with the flexibility to work from home or in some other place whenever I want/need.
Part of it is that I work in the arts, where so much of what we do is about conversations and hands-on experiences with works of art. Yes, it can be done through technology, but its power is greatly diminished. It is nice to be able to work remotely when I have a grant proposal to write or a program or talk to prepare and I need to concentrate without interruptions, but for the most part I have a people-facing job and I generally like it that way.
Part of it is that I need to set very clear boundaries between work and the rest of my life, otherwise my mental health suffers tremendously: I can think of several times in my life where I could not enjoy something I was really looking forward to because I could not stop thinking about work. This is something I’ve been working on for a while now, and while I admire those of you who can toggle back and forth more easily, I don’t know that a life with just guardrails is possible for me.
And part of it is that I have actually found a lot of community through my work — community I haven’t really been able to find elsewhere. Maybe it’s because I tend to be very shy around strangers, or maybe it’s because I live in famously standoffish New England, but I haven’t had very good luck getting to know people who live in my town or my neighborhood. However, I have managed to find a lot of friends through my various workplaces, and while some of these friendships faded away once we were no longer colleagues, others have flourished and deepened long after our working relationships ended.
I know my reality isn’t the same as everyone’s, and that’s okay: I really appreciate the fact that your work acknowledges the fact that not everyone can work remotely, nor do they necessarily want to. So much of the conversation about the future of work focuses exclusively on the subset of “knowledge workers” who work remotely and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but the entire system needs to be rethought for all of us.
I think where work-related loneliness comes in for me, a person who has worked remotely since 2015, is missing the opportunity to be in the same room with my closest collaborators on a regular basis. I'd never want to go back to the office full time (LARPing the job was one of the reasons I left it to begin with), but I also don't think you can replace in person contact with your team. There's just so much nuance you miss in virtual settings. It's harder to read the room, pick up on the subtleties that might be the real drivers of whatever is going on.
So maybe it depends on what kind of work you do, and how much you actually collaborate with people as opposed to just coexisting with them? I totally share your optimism in general, for the record!
Yes, I think this is very real — and definitely depends on your job, and how collaboration has been figured. One thing that's emerged as we've spoken with different disabled work activists is how many unspoken cues have become standardized that....maybe shouldn't? Also: our current Zoom technology is going to improve, and there are going to be more and more interesting ways for us to conceive of remote collaboration. But that doesn't mean that for some types of work, periodic in-person interactions aren't valuable as well.
Interesting -- looking forward to reading more about what your research has revealed and how unspoken cues play into discrimination of various kinds.
The cues I'm thinking about are more about knowing where you stand in a group or power dynamic. That can be really hard to read in remote settings. Which again comes back to the type of work/culture you're operating in. If your company has a lot of politics at play, in my experience it's harder to know which way the wind is blowing without in person interactions. Definitely would like to read more about how people navigate this.
Think about how many of those cues are non-verbal and only really legible to people who are neurotypical — that's one place to start. There are some really interesting examples out there of companies that try to be very transparent and explicit about how, say, promotions, pay, all that stuff works, in part because it creates a less toxic work culture and in part because they want to be inclusive of people who are neuroatypical as well!
OMG I am autistic and a multiracial Black woman and yes. In person can be so hard because I just don’t understand how to play these (white) social games that other people get. Plus I’m just way too blunt. I literally am incapable of being subtle. Sigh.
One of the reasons I think I have excelled in my current position is that I work remotely, and the output is what matters. Plus I deeply care about my coworkers and that seems to come across better for me remotely as opposed to in person.
I’m getting a promotion to manager very shortly, and I have NOT told the owner of our company (my direct boss) that I am autistic. He doesn’t realize the reason I am so good at what I do is I notice and pick up on the things that other people don’t. I also check in with my coworkers much more often because I can’t make assumptions about what they think or feel because I really don’t understand what I consider to be passive aggressive social cues, and because I have a lifetime of experience of understanding that not everyone is the same and therefore we all have different needs to be met. This actually makes me a really good boss.
I’m managing right now without the official title, in case anyone is comparing my comments. I stated before I am a new manager because I an doing the job without the title at the current moment.
Before the pandemic, I'd been teaching at a community college and running my private accent reduction coaching practice on Zoom. I'd been gradually adjusting my lifestyle to support a heart condition that made commuting and being in a crowded, noisy city untenable. The silver lining to the health challenge is that it was oddly like pandemic boot camp, in that I was partially sheltering in place anyway and the move to running my business full time was pretty seamless because I'd gotten myself set up already. After 1 semester of teaching a large college class on Zoom, I devoted my energies to my business. I'm one of those quietly happy people who doesn't mind working on Zoom at all. In fact, I really enjoy it.
I'm comfortable in my home, teaching in my yoga pants with my kitty nearby. No exhausting commute or any of the other stressors of my recent past work life. While I don't have colleagues nearby to chat with, it's actually less lonely than teaching in institutions in which I barely ever saw any colleagues at all. I'm an introvert and an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and this set up, that's cut out the overstimulation of my past work life, is actually what I've needed for a very long time. I teach one-on-one, so I'm spared the awfulness of trying to keep track of a large number of students at once on Zoom. Without all the stressors and distractions, I think that I've been able to get even better results from my clients. And if I'm hungry, I just go to the kitchen and eat. I love being able to do what I need to do.
I feel fortunate that I can work and that I have lovely clients, with many in other countries. They're not commuting, either, so they generally have more time for our work. I like that occasionally a 3-year-old pops in to say hello or a cat joins us. Early in the pandemic, it was like having a front row seat to the responses of different countries, like Taiwan, which was so much more effective in managing COVID than the US.
Overall, this arrangement has worked out rather unexpectedly well for me. Having spent pre-pandemic time in the nightmare of Bay Area commuting, I'm grateful. I can't imagine going back to it.
I worked remotely from 2009-2013 and discovered how productive I can be when I honor my own body’s rhythms. Handling east coast biz before the kid wakes up...taking her to school...hitting the gym for an hour...10am meal...4-5 hours of alone working time and then, yes, a final spurt of screen-based productivity at our corner bar while noshing on an afternoon snack and a glass of wine like I’m in Spain instead of Arizona. It was heaven. In 2013, for good reasons, I took an ass-in-chair M-F job. I wasn’t prepared for the depression, the weight gain, the claustrophobic nature of no longer controlling the rhythm of my day. I almost quit after a month. In many ways this last year has allowed me to reclaim some of my old life (except peloton instead of gym and Vinho Verde on the lawn instead of the bar...). We are repopulating our office now and were just informed (with great and grandiose fanfare) that we will be “eligible to select one remote working day per week, which must be consistent on a week to week basis.” For a construction company run by a CEO who has never truly believed people can be productive outside a traditional work environment, this is a big deal and I’ll take what little agency over my own time that I can get.
For me (as an academic), I would like one day of teaching (pretty normal in the UK), 2 days in the office, and 2 days at home. I was anti WFH for myself pre pandemic but now I've got the set up to make it work, and I have been enjoying wearing leggings every day and going for a leisurely cycle ride at lunch which I can't do in the office because Edinburgh is super hilly and drivers are terrible.