> It's more about lower management becoming less needed. If a dude managing a team of 5 and not contributing anything can't have f2f meetings all day he suddenly feels obsolete and fears for his future at the company.
I don't know about that. In my admittedly limited experience as an EM of 4 ICs, I'm drowning in work, mostly because they all do great work and are now double and sometimes triple booked on projects because we haven't been allowed to hire anyone. It's more than a full time job to keep a small team supported and I don't remotely feel like I'm obsolete because the company could chose to WFH.
I've personally noticed, since we've been back in office, it's been easier for those ICs to have conversations with other people in the company that they need to work with, as well as have informal brainstorming sessions with each other. This is great for me, because simply being a conduit of information between other people isn't the most efficient use of my time, so I don't really feel threatened by that. All of them have told me they've actually appreciated the hybrid schedule and the time in office for some of the week, and some of them told me that when I was a peer IC (before being their manager).
Our work is definitely more experimental/R&D/unproven though. Frequent communication, collaboration, and brainstorming is critical for success. If you're doing the kind of work where you can sit down today and create a year's worth of feature tickets then maybe it skews in favor of the office being more of a distraction.
> Of course he will sacrifice his 5 reports to feel more important so he communicates up the chain that it's absolutely vital that they return to the office. 5 guys will commute for a combined 50 hours per week so that 1 guy who doesn't do anything can keep his job.
I don't get the impression anyone at the executive level of a BigCo is collecting feedback from low level managers about whether they should RTO or not. And even in the Bay Area, 2 hours a day of commuting is on the extreme end. Everyone on my team has a total of a 1 hour commute or less, and in my case that includes a day care drop off and pick up. Personally speaking, my commute wouldn't change even if we were 100% WFH because my home and the office are equidistant from day care.
We do have a peer IC who has a long commute though and it's not great for him. I do wish there was more flexibility on a case-by-case basis to tweak the number of days he's in the office.
> I've personally noticed, since we've been back in office, it's been easier for those ICs to have conversations with other people in the company that they need to work with, as well as have informal brainstorming sessions with each other.
Most communication norms aren't tied to the physical location, it's just easier to communicate communication norms when conversations are visible to the people not involved.
I was on two projects during covid WFH. The digital collaboration styles were night and day. One's mattermost team still has less than 50 messages total across all channels. The other team's mattermost was and remains a major collaboration point now that we're back on site. One team always had cameras on during calls, the other didn't. And wasn't just chat, just calls or just emails. The communication was different on every medium.
There was a lot of the same people on both projects, too. We all adapted to different collaboration styles depending on the project. The only difference was that project management made a few gentile pushes to enable fluid communication at the beginning of one project, and the other team didin't.
And I've noticed something similar with younger people. They're much more interactive in discord chat/calls than the slack/mattermost/zoom/chime equivalents. Not that this is necessarily unique to young people, just that older people tend not to lurk discord as much. What might be unique to that age group is they've been taught corporate tools mean bifurcated groups (e.g. teacher/pupil) where they're not equal participants.
I don't know about that. In my admittedly limited experience as an EM of 4 ICs, I'm drowning in work, mostly because they all do great work and are now double and sometimes triple booked on projects because we haven't been allowed to hire anyone. It's more than a full time job to keep a small team supported and I don't remotely feel like I'm obsolete because the company could chose to WFH.
I've personally noticed, since we've been back in office, it's been easier for those ICs to have conversations with other people in the company that they need to work with, as well as have informal brainstorming sessions with each other. This is great for me, because simply being a conduit of information between other people isn't the most efficient use of my time, so I don't really feel threatened by that. All of them have told me they've actually appreciated the hybrid schedule and the time in office for some of the week, and some of them told me that when I was a peer IC (before being their manager).
Our work is definitely more experimental/R&D/unproven though. Frequent communication, collaboration, and brainstorming is critical for success. If you're doing the kind of work where you can sit down today and create a year's worth of feature tickets then maybe it skews in favor of the office being more of a distraction.
> Of course he will sacrifice his 5 reports to feel more important so he communicates up the chain that it's absolutely vital that they return to the office. 5 guys will commute for a combined 50 hours per week so that 1 guy who doesn't do anything can keep his job.
I don't get the impression anyone at the executive level of a BigCo is collecting feedback from low level managers about whether they should RTO or not. And even in the Bay Area, 2 hours a day of commuting is on the extreme end. Everyone on my team has a total of a 1 hour commute or less, and in my case that includes a day care drop off and pick up. Personally speaking, my commute wouldn't change even if we were 100% WFH because my home and the office are equidistant from day care.
We do have a peer IC who has a long commute though and it's not great for him. I do wish there was more flexibility on a case-by-case basis to tweak the number of days he's in the office.