[codelikeawolf]

As a remote worker before the pandemic, I think the worst thing we could do is return to the status quo. I remember trying to find a new remote job before I moved across the country to Portland (pre-pandemic). I interviewed for a job in downtown Chicago, which would have required a 35-minute train ride to and from the city each day. I wasn't moving for a few months and I offered to work in the office before switching to remote. I even said "if you don't think I'm contributing enough value by the time I leave, and you aren't comfortable with me working remotely, let me know and I can stay with the company long enough to help you find my replacement". They still turned me down.

The status quo was "people that work from home aren't actually doing work", or "people that work from home aren't as productive", etc. I remember going to the dentist and telling the dental assistant that I work from home, and her response was "don't people think you're slacking off?" and my response was "no, because I'm an adult". There was an almost insurmountable stigma around remote work. As terrible as the pandemic was, it exposed an irrefutable truth about remote work: people can still do their jobs perfectly fine at home.

I spent most of my career working in offices, until I went fully remote about 2 years before the pandemic. There are aspects of the office that I miss. I'm not vehemently against going back into an office, but it would come with some pretty big caveats: the office has to be relatively close, there are no fixed days or amount of days I'd be required to come in, and I'd have the flexibility to come and go as I pleased. I doubt many companies would agree to that arrangement, mainly because of the real estate costs, which is why I stick to remote work.

I don't want to go back to a world where I have to convince a company that a remote worker can still provide as much value as one in the office. I don't want to be forced to stay late at an office to finish something that I could knock out twice as fast at home. I can only hope that we don't spend the next few years going backwards to arrive at a status quo that was misguided and not grounded in reality.

Edit: Grammar

[denton-scratch]

> The status quo was "people that work from home aren't actually doing work", or "people that work from home aren't as productive", etc.

In my last position (exclusively work-from-office), I had two co-workers (out of nine) that were seriously counterproductive: the rest of us had to work around them. I don't know why the bosses hired them, and I don't know why they kept them on - perhaps they thought they were somehow rescuing them.

At any rate, these guys weren't just less productive; they were seriously counterproductive. And this was a strictly office job; we were more-or-less forbidden to work after 5:30PM.

The bosses had some kind of "company culture" fantasy, that they could weld us together into a bean-bags-and-table-football crew of clones, who would both work and play together. Interestingly, neither of these bosses had ever done an office job in someone else's office...