[kelw22]

Personally, I find it pretty funny how this "work that can only be done well in person, in an office" can suddenly be done remotely no problem when the government mandates that everybody stays home.

You're spinning things toward your bias with your sentence. Who, exactly, is saying it can be done "no problem"? My experience is that any communication-intensive work is significantly harder and more time consuming. We just don't have a choice now, so we're doing it.

[dudul]

That's the usual argument, and honestly I'm not even gonna put a lot of effort into arguing. People work differently, fine, it's your XP, sorry it's not working that well for you.

My XP is that remote communication is different, seem to take longer, but is also far superior. When you're forced to communicate via documents, diagrams, chat, etc you put more effort into your content. You try to anticipate questions to avoid wasting a few round trips. It forces you to think more about what you're saying, it forces you to think about edge cases, specific details, etc.

[kelw22]

That's the usual argument, and honestly I'm not even gonna put a lot of effort into arguing.

That's fine. I would like to explicitly point out that calling something the "usual" argument doesn't make it any less valid. You are both claiming to not bother arguing while also taking a fairly dismissive posture. My feedback is to instead ask people why they feel a certain way. I'll answer as though you had:

For your point about clarity and organization of written communication: I completely agree with you. I suspect you're an IC engineer without many non-technical responsibilities, though, because you're ignoring all things that exist outside of technical design and planning intended for technical audiences.

Not everything is well suited to diagrammed or long-cycle asynchronous communication. At some point in your career, you might need to start handling things like working with lawyers on requirements where they have varying degrees of product understanding, nuanced feedback from a large sales team, tough and iterative product roadmap decisions in the face of revenue shortfalls, personnel issues as they come up, and so on. For conversations that span disciplines or involve career development or crucial feedback, having a high bandwidth pipe through which to quickly identify gaps in understanding or holes in communication is invaluable. That higher level coordination is vital to the success of most businesses, and it became significantly more challenging. We have to do it, though, because the alternative is much worse.

My opinion is that remote work has been great for IC engineers. I generally support liberal use of remote work for IC engineers. The world doesn't work if everybody sits in that role, though.

[dudul]

I'm a director of engineering with a team of 20 engineers. Been successfully remote for 6 years or so now. I guess I make it work, but hey, maybe at some point in my career I'll understand.

[kelw22]

I'm a director of engineering with a team of 20 engineers. Been successfully remote for 6 years or so now. I guess I make it work, but hey, maybe at some point in my career I'll understand.

Great. I stand corrected when I suspected you were an IC.

Do you have the same non-technical responsibilities I mentioned having? How have you approached the portions that I cited as being challenging without high-bandwidth communication channels? And if you have you held this role in a non-remote office, how do you know whether you're being as effective as you were then? (I always like to hear more about how people measure their effectiveness.)