File This Under "Boo Hoo"

I used to work at a company where the CEO absolutely refused to let anyone work remotely. There was no reason to be in an office, but management felt workers would just goof off if we stayed home. We lost a lot of brilliant employees too, over time, because of that policy. So imagine how vindicated we all felt over the lost profit opportunity, when forced to work remotely, that we posted record profits (like way above norm) and that every productivity/efficiency metric spiked off the charts.

I feel like it’s only CEOs, execs and shareholders that adhere to the need to have workers in the office. Just seems so old school to me and feeds into the discontent of workers feeling like commodities. I could see where meetings that involve things like negotiations would require f2f. Perhaps since I’m more of a project based role, I don’t see any need for live interactions. My meetings are super short, to the point… agenda, purpose, status, timeline, roadblocks, actions items… that’s it, nothing more.

But the bigger thing to me is the time savings. The commute, more efficient ways of getting personal life stuff done are the obvious ones. But even shaving off the 5-10 minutes multiple times a day from not having to walk from meeting room to meeting room is underrated IMO. Also, when a Zoom call ends, you don’t have “got a minute to chat?” physical lingering that wastes more time.

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