[xt00]

I would guess based upon my own experience and talking to others:

1) the first 3-5 months were hard to figure out a good rhythm and is super impacted by how busy your house is (do you have kids, live-in parents, special needs kids etc)

2) many people have figured out a good rhythm by now and are doing fine

3) people who were new at the company this year are definitely having a much harder time since just sitting next to people is an easier way to sort of learn stuff by over hearing stuff rather than bugging people

4) long term "everybody working from home" likely is not a good setup.. more likely a mix is going to be a good setup.. where very likely new people should expect to be onsite for fairly extended periods of time until they have a much better sense of what to work on.. the other benefit of the "starting onsite" concept would be there would be less of the "oh but you live in north dakota so we don't want to pay you" shenanigans..

[tidepod12]

>more likely a mix is going to be a good setup.. where very likely new people should expect to be onsite for fairly extended periods of time until they have a much better sense of what to work on

The model that I have seen with moderate-to-great levels of success at the large consulting companies (which have long had a strong remote work culture) is that the companies schedule new hires so that all new hires start at the same time every year, and for "new hire training", the company rents out an entire hotel for 2 months and has all new hires stay there. Those 2 months then are a mixture of intensive job training and social events.

By the end, all of the new hires have received plenty of training, had good conversations with managers/leadership about what type of work is expected, and IMO most importantly, have had a chance to make very strong bonds with coworkers that then become your "cohort" for the next 1-2 years that you can ask questions about work, collaborate, commiserate, or even become friends outside of work. The strong bond developed over those 2 months is important because that "cohort" is then more likely to stay in contact even after splitting up to work remotely.

I went through such a training program at the beginning of my career and it was the best company onboarding experience I've been through, not only in terms of personally enjoying it, but also just from the perspective of setting me up for success at the company and in my career.

[meken]

What company does this?

[tidepod12]

The large consulting companies that I'm aware of (MBB and Big4) have (or had, pre-covid of course) some variant of it. For example, Deloitte built a resort hotel near Dallas and branded it "Deloitte University" for the purpose. I know PwC did yearly training in Orlando for new consulting hires that are hired from college campuses. I believe Accenture does something similar in Chicago at the "Q Center" (though only for ~1 month).

[bicx]

I agree with most of what you said. I'm not sure how the last idea would work in the long run, as much as it should in an idealistic sense. I definitely agree that working from the office is better for some people than others. However, the unfortunate reality is if the boss is working from the office, it's often the case that people who are also in the office get better opportunities, recognition, and possibly resulting promotions than those who work remotely. Even if that's not the reality, I'd imagine that could become a pervasive fear or assumption. Having a split work force like that would require a really deep-rooted culture that supports it.

[xt00]

yea good point.. that would be a challenge for sure.. yea it would only take a couple of performance reviews before people got the message that they either need to move back to an on-site job situation or time to find another job.. so as a result the most likely scenario would be either entire org's would go all remote, or whole companies, or not at all.. the random lone wolf working from home will likely be the same set the company had before.. people working from like Zurich who is some machine learning genius or something, but otherwise, all the remaining people slowly trickle back into the office over the next 2 years..