The manager’s schedule is holding remote work back
As a former software eng. who has been on the management side for a few years, I am quite ambivalent about remote work, and I find most arguments for it a bit naive. For example, the idea that the manager schedule is built around taylorism is not true IMO. I have never seen a single senior manager who do not have their life consisting mostly of 30 &#x2F; 60 &#x2F; 90 mins slots in my life, and I have worked in very technical environments, e.g. where the average engineer had a PhD.<p>First, to let it out of the way: yes, you can definitely have remote teams which work very well and produce high quality products. In my experience, those have the following characteristics: clear and fairly technical product definition (e.g viz software which are built for scientists), excellent teams with no bad performer, and healthy business environments.<p>The problem is when at least some of those conditions are not met:<p>1. Most organizations are dysfunctional in some ways. Product and engineering are not aligned, or there are constant re-organizations, lack of ownership. It is extremely challenging for managers to improve this situation if everybody is remote, because communication is your main tool here, and doing so remotely is even more difficult. My experience in those situations is that face to face discussions are the most effective tool to untangle the mess.<p>2. When things go south (e.g. you lose a big client, etc.), it is almost always the case that people will start to find teams &#x2F; people to blame. Executives have shallow information, and most will rely on what is available to them (kind of availability bias, but for people instead of ideas). Remote teams will be at a disadvantage.<p>3. When your team is not very good, or not very experienced, it is very difficult to improve their skills remotely. First, being remote means you lose a lot of very useful information, such as &quot;do they often talk to other people when they are stuck&quot;. Instead of observing how people act, you have to ask, which paradoxically means more interruption.<p>Generally, my sense is that remote-first work is quite fragile, or said differently, is an unstable equilibrium. As soon as things go badly, it is much harder to fix things. As long as everything goes well, it may well be more efficient though.