"At my place, we don’t innovate, we don’t develop new products for a mass market; we do lots of data entry, emails, and writing reports in SharePoint or with comments and track changes in Word."
"...we are not designers or knowledge workers solving issues, we handle data!"
The second sentence is what got me.
I know it's implied as the author's perspective, but speak for yourself.
I am a developer, designer, knowledge worker, and my products are used to solve business issues. There would be no point moving data around and making dashboards, products, automation, except for solving business problems or pushing the bottom line up through innovation.
The whole point of our jobs is to facilitate the needs of the business.
I agree with the general thrust of the article, that in person routine working isn't needed. I work fully remote and collaborate better in many respects that way.
There is also value in having face to face meetings and conversations, body language, microexpressions, aspects of tone are all significantly more palpable in person.
BUT, that doesn't mean we should be in the office all the time, just for occasional face to face meetings. My employer is in another state, I visit for a bit every quarter or two.
It also doesn't change the fact that the return to office is motivated by micromanagement and stop losses on real estate.
“ The whole point of our jobs is to facilitate the needs of the business.”
But people conflate the needs of the business with the “needs” of the executives or investors. I have little faith that any exec that I have met that is capable of putting their own ego aside and honestly describe how RTO helps the business. Maybe it does help the business, but I haven’t seen anyone make that case.
"...we are not designers or knowledge workers solving issues, we handle data!"
The second sentence is what got me.
I know it's implied as the author's perspective, but speak for yourself.
I am a developer, designer, knowledge worker, and my products are used to solve business issues. There would be no point moving data around and making dashboards, products, automation, except for solving business problems or pushing the bottom line up through innovation.
The whole point of our jobs is to facilitate the needs of the business.
I agree with the general thrust of the article, that in person routine working isn't needed. I work fully remote and collaborate better in many respects that way.
There is also value in having face to face meetings and conversations, body language, microexpressions, aspects of tone are all significantly more palpable in person.
BUT, that doesn't mean we should be in the office all the time, just for occasional face to face meetings. My employer is in another state, I visit for a bit every quarter or two.
It also doesn't change the fact that the return to office is motivated by micromanagement and stop losses on real estate.