| I commented on the other thread - which became a generic WFH/office discussion - but one reason it devolved into that is this article isn't any more relevant to the core HN demographic than (say) a factory worker who's forced to go to work together with others every day. There are 2 specific things it seems to me to bring up: domain knowledge and 'tribal' rituals. There's no doubt in my mind that domain knowledge-sharing has suffered while I've been WFH: I started a new job during the pandemic, and it's been really hard to pick-up all the unknown-unknowns. But this is a practical problem that can be overcome with the correct mindset and good tools. Instead of picking-up this essential work information in a discussion by the coffee-brewer, we simply need to be better at documenting what a new employee needs to know; we need to be self-aware of how we share knowledge and how it disseminates in an organization. In other words, the practical things that the article finds are lacking in WFH can be fixed if we want to. The other special element is the 'tribal' rituals, the adrenaline and team-spirit. Now even though that's sometimes an element in programming - for instance hackdays - the atmosphere in a bank trading floor is totally separate to 99% of the rest of workers' experience. Probably a lot of things have changed since the 1990s, but I spent a lot of time with bankers in the City of London around that time (my brother worked at a bar there), and the 'tribal' aspect of these people was obvious in their behavior both in the office and socially. So I'm not at all surprised to hear that they performed differently while working separately in their homes (although I also note the authors don't strictly quantify what they mean by "performed better"). For the record, I'd rather continue to WFH but doubt it will be possible as the 'normal' takes over again. |