5 Reasons why I’m shorting WFH
In September 2022, I switched to working at an office 5 days a week with no remote work option. Here’s my thought process behind it.
For the last 3 years I’ve worked remotely. In September 2022, I switched to working at an office 5 days a week with no remote work option. Here’s my thought process behind it, even though I love remote work.
Remote work boomed during the lockdowns and pandemic, as we know, and out of necessity. This gave back some power to employees, but also created many problems.
Many could, for the first time, be location independent, set up their own timetables, say no to pointless meetings, avoid commuting, save money, avoid office politics, get straight to the point, etc.
And this is why I loved it.
Living in rural Spain back then, I was no longer bound by my geographical location. I could work a job from the capital and live in a small town, playing location arbitrage. But after a few months, it wasn’t so easy.
The issues with the forced transition became more noticeable, and the benefits from working remotely started to go back to baseline. All in all, I think the situation has become more balanced, and working remotely has stopped being a “no brainer”.
Here are the main reasons why I’m shorting WFH for the time being:
Working remotely as a reaction
Not all niches benefit from remote work
You might be working in an online sweatshop for the mind
People don’t respect your work
No sense of working in a team
Working remotely as a reaction
Most businesses introduced remote work as a reaction to the lockdowns. And for most businesses, remote work is “doing what we were doing before, but with Zoom”.
A truly effective remote work environment needs a complete overhaul of the business systems. It needs a design based on first principles. An opportunity to stress test everything and figure out how your business systems can become more effective.
Adding Zoom meetings to your business is not that.
Something like your onboarding process needs to change entirely. Did you have any written documentation that would aid new hires in learning their job? Or did you rely on someone in a senior position giving them a few tips here and there for a week and then overseeing what they’d do for a few months?
Because now the senior workers have 8h of meetings per day and the juniors don't want to annoy them with endless Slack messages on the most basic things.
How’s middle management handling the lack of attention? Are they booking endless (and pointless) meetings to keep an eye on everyone? You can sure bet they are.
Did your teams have clarity on their roles, expectations and goals? Because if there wasn’t much clarity before, there is even less now.
Other than businesses who experimented, tested and implemented remote work before the lockdowns, most businesses have failed at transitioning. Only those who took the challenge seriously and did a complete overhaul of their business systems have been able to thrive in this environment.
But it needs a lot of work, and it’s a challenge most have failed to meet, affecting employees the most.
Not all niches are suited for remote work
I don’t see this mentioned often, but a developer who needs 5h a day of creative time is better suited for remote work than a marketing person who needs to be in contact with half a dozen other people.
No matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, communication is harder remotely. The flow isn’t as easy if you’re all in the same physical space.
Some niches that, in my opinion, are better suited for remote work, are those where people are more often than not involved in creative work:
Software development
Writing, copywriting
Design
Video production
etc.
If you only need 2-3 touch-points with others to spend 5h creating a video, you won’t be affected much if you’re working at an office or remotely. Now, in the opposite case, those niches or positions that need management and systems work are better suited for working physically together.
While I’m the first person to hate middle managers, people whose job is to manage others need fluid communication with those they manage. As a manager it’s easier to go to someone’s desk and talk to them. Get whatever point across in 3 minutes and go on with your day.
Remotely, you now have to either spend 15 mins back and forth in Slack. If they’re online and replying fast. It could be more than an hour because they’re in another meeting or DND mode. Or maybe you have to set up a 15-20 minute meeting in their calendar later throughout the day to say what you could have said in 3 minutes in person.
If your job requires several touch-points of communication with people, remote work only adds friction. And even if it doesn’t, maybe your personality isn’t as suited for it as other personalities are.
Online sweatshops
Everyone who works remotely says they are more productive. I can tell you right now that I am more productive working remotely than I am at the office. Objectively, I get more done.
But you know what this means? That while at the office you had 8 hours to perform 5-6 hours worth of tasks, you now have 8 hours to perform 8 hours worth of tasks.
Your manager thinks you are lying in bed playing video games because he can’t see you sitting down at your desk in the office, so to make sure you aren’t, he gives you more work.
Having a 15 min coffee break at home in between deep work sessions? Congrats, you now have 5 new chats in Slack requiring your immediate attention. People noticed your yellow “absent” status on Teams.
Having a 15 minute coffee break at the office in between deep work sessions? Nobody cares. They didn’t even notice you weren’t at your desk. Your manager might even be having a coffee break too, join in and you crack a few jokes. Heck, maybe you extend the break to 30 mins and nobody will care too much.
As tired as the trope may be regarding how easy it is to slack off at the office, people just assume that you’re working and leave you alone. Working remotely? They assume the opposite, and that guides many interactions.
It creates tension. A climate of mistrust. One of “higher standards” to ensure that there’s 8 hours of real work put in every day. Standards which many times can end up being unrealistic.
When you’re a slave working at a sweatshop, you start with 100 t-shirts per day as the goal. The day you meet them, the next day you need to do 101 t-shirts or else. Meet the 101 t-shirts and after that it’s 102.
Repeat endlessly and you end up in situations like delivery guys pissing in water bottles to not receive penalties for missing their quota.
Working remotely is more productive, but there are real incentives to just continue to squeeze out as much as possible from you. When working at the office, standards are just lower and it’s more relaxed.
I know, I know. A young hustler will read this and say “I want the highest standards, that way I will progress faster”. And there is some truth to it. But the best standards come from within. Everyone can perform with external pressure in the same way a kid working a sweatshop will push himself to make the 103 t-shirts he needs for the day.
It’s the internal pressure that makes the difference.
You might avoid commuting and office politics. You might save more money. But your manager gives you more work now, expects you to work twice as hard, with more friction in communication and with worse systems.
Oh, and also to be available at every moment. Don’t forget that.
People don’t respect your remote job
Everyone accepts you’re unavailable for everything while you’re at the office. But when you work from home?
Your kids who are also at home don’t care. The delivery guy delivering your endless Amazon product you bought with the money you’re saving doesn’t care. Your partner who comes back home from her office job doesn’t care. The electrician repairing your AC doesn’t care.
Not only do you now have 8h of uninterrupted work. Not only do you have lunch and replying to Slack messages. But you’re now also responsible for cleaning the house, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, being fully available to all doorbell rings, entertaining your neighbour, etc.
What do you mean your dishes are dirty? Couldn’t you find 10 minutes of your work day to clean them?
What do you mean you can’t attend to the plumber who needs to fix the washing machine? It will only take 20 mins, I’m sure you can find time in between your “busy schedule”.
Your manager thinks you’re slacking. Your coworkers think you’re in bed. Your partner thinks you’re sunbathing. Your parents think you’re playing video games. Your neighbours think you’re unemployed. The plumber thinks your email job isn’t real.
You’re more overworked than ever, and nobody could give a f*ck.
In the same way your mother never believed you “couldn’t just stop the game because you can’t save while fighting the final boss”.
No team in remote work
I know, I know. The idea of a team is dumb. Any company who mentions the words “work family” is pure cringe. And your coworkers are not your friends. But even knowing all of this, remote work is isolating.
Sure, you might have a strong social circle outside of work and you might not need any socialising aspect from your coworkers. But if you don’t have that, working from home can be hard socially.
No amount of daily walks you have will be enough to remove the feeling that you spend all week locked inside your own house.
I’m going to write a silly observation that I need to add: I think the lack of office politics can make you more replaceable.
You’re not a person to your coworkers. Nor are your coworkers people to you. You’re all pixels on a screen. The relationships are more superficial.
So while you avoid dramas and silliness that can occur with office politics, you also avoid any potential friendships or good relationships you may have.
In the ideal world, your worth and value in a company would be based exclusively on your results and performance. In the real world, this is not the case. Not only because of silly office politics and human nature, but because not every job can be measured by your Github commits.
I would, however, advise to work jobs with skin in the game and that can be quantified. There is less room to hide. If you work in sales, it all boils down to “did you sell or not?”. This will do wonders for you, your skills and your career.
But back to the social aspect, we are all social animals. Remote work can be very isolating and I don’t think every personality is suited for it. I know mine isn’t.
Closing thoughts
What’s important, in my opinion, is that you always make decisions maximising your personal benefit at every moment. There are certain niches, careers and skill levels where it makes more sense to work remotely than in an office. And also vice versa.
For me personally, I worked remotely when it made sense to me (to save a lot of money getting paid big city wages while living in a small town), and I switched to working at an office when it also made sense to me (progress my skills faster and get out of the house).
At some stages of your life you want to work 12h days, 6 days a week and give it your all. At other stages of your life you want to close the laptop after putting in your 8h and not worry about returning calls or emails until Monday next week.
Some people want to have an easy remote 9-5 and build their side hustles. Others want to have a great job where they can build their skills and maximise learning.
Some entrepreneurs want to build teams remotely, run a lean business and be as effective as possible. Others would rather have everyone together, foster the idea of being a team and having zero friction when communicating.
I think it is important to share the downsides of remote work, written by someone who has no stake in you working remotely or not, and as someone who’s been a massive fan of it. I would never trust Fortune 500 CEOs claiming it’s better to work in an office “for your career”.
Their companies have invested too much in offices in prime locations to now have everyone working from home and still pay the bill.
It really does depend on where you’re at, your personality, your skills and your goals.
You can read more on why I still think WFH has come to stay here:
