[awacs]

I'm curious what folks here feel about the serendipity factor? I've been remote for 4 years and love it (in the NY suburbs area), but there definitely isn't that "random creativity" as being in the office, as the valley has been trying desperately to analyze and recreate artificially.

[adventured]

Established companies will allow mass remoting, and new start-ups will step in to take advantage of the temporarily collapsed rents. The new companies will gain an advantage from in-person dynamics that you can't generate over Zoom, versus the companies that go heavy on remoting. Start-ups will thrive from it, then the established companies will tamp down their remoting as they see the brain drain from new companies having superior work environments and pulling talent away.

That's what the cycle will look like.

Like everything else in tech, the overzealousness about remoting is a partial fad, that will swing too far, and then you'll have to endure 487 articles on HN about how remoting was the wrong way to go ("Why remoting was the wrong choice for us" says the future Medium post) and in-person dynamics are superior in every way. Tech is nothing if not a fad chasing perma teenager constantly repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

[onecommentman]

And I’d be curious if there are systematic data-driven studies on the existence and level of unique-to-physical-collocation creativity in the era of advanced multipoint videoconferencing.

There will be a lot of anecdotal evidence presented over the next few months, but I suspect it will be tied to political agendas. There’s a lot of money and economic dislocation at stake if downtown real estate, or commercial real estate in general, suffers a structural drop in value, so I’d expect those interests, along with mayors, will marshal their direct or indirect PR minions to talk down WFH.

Cutting through that fog will be worth it for those parents who, saved from (some of) the commute, have the energy and time to build a better family life.

[marketingPro]

Ofc you don't quite get that.

But the longer I've worked for big companies, the less I think a big company needs these.

There are departments for new ideas, they can be calculated for profitability by a different department.

An engineer has a great idea from brainstorming with coworkers, how often does that make it into production? Instead of focusing on the job, the Engineer is working on a project that never happens.

I guess that sounds pessimistic, but I've rarely seen anything come from the bottom up.

[opportune]

It definitely feels harder to break ground on a project when you can't easily have a brief chat with someone (need to instead schedule a meeting that defaults to 30m), go look at something your coworker has pulled up on their screen, easily sketch something out on a whiteboard.

On the other hand, there are some benefits to formalizing things. For example, by being more rigorous in defining an approach to a problem you can more easily identify roadblocks. Also I think some people I work with prefer articulating themselves over text as opposed to face to face, so for them serendipity (in terms of creative output) is probably actually improved.

We have tried to "manufacture serendipity" by having unstructured video chats but it usually ends up feeling cliquey (too small groups of friends, people feel excluded) or too awkward (too many people, not enough rapport for conversation to flow easily). I think the problem of building rapport is the biggest issue.