I imagine the GP also objects when remote work die-hards force remote work on people like them. According to the article, almost half of remote workers want to work for a company where all workers are remote, leaving people like GP commenter out in the cold.
It seems large groups from both sides are unwilling to meet in the middle.
And that's for good reason, really. The reality is that in-office workers have an inherent advantage when it comes to activities that require interaction between people, such as promotions or work assignments. People who want to work remotely are going to want everyone to work remote so that they aren't disadvantaged when it comes to those things, but then we are left with the problem of one group forcing their way of working on the other group.
> The reality is that in-office workers have an inherent advantage when it comes to activities that require interaction between people, such as promotions or work assignments.
I don't think those two things are an inherent advantage, rather, it's the reality of managers that don't understand how to remote work.
If "work assignments" require in-person communication, it seems like something is severely broken with your work assignment system and/or process. For software development, to me, that is basically tickets, kanban/scrum/whatever, and the regular communication that takes place to discuss. This communication doesn't need to be "in-person" to work, which brings me to the next point: meetings.
Having remote people exposes many problems with meetings. One is having too many meetings, ad-hoc meetings, or agenda-less meetings. These are problems in-person too, but they're not as directly noticeable.
The other meeting problem comes more from how the meetings take place. The most remote-friendly orgs have a rule like "one person remote, everyone remote" which basically means everyone does the meeting with a webcam and headset, even if they're in the office. At a minimum, meeting rooms need good audio/video (as in: no PSTN speakerphones, and no laptop mics or webcams allowed), and all meeting invites are always sent with an online meeting URL, at a minimum the day before.
There can be inherit advantage in being in-person both for ad-hoc technical discussions and building personal relationships, but if those are job advantages I think it's also a management failure. Ad-hoc technical discussions should quickly be moved online and inclusive of remote people, and that's something a manager should be constantly encouraging/enforcing. It should also without saying that a manager that favors employees for promotions with whom they have better personal relationships isn't doing their job properly (and note this isn't directly a "remote worker" problem).
> People who want to work remotely are going to want everyone to work remote so that they aren't disadvantaged when it comes to those things, but then we are left with the problem of one group forcing their way of working on the other group.
It seems large groups from both sides are unwilling to meet in the middle.
And that's for good reason, really. The reality is that in-office workers have an inherent advantage when it comes to activities that require interaction between people, such as promotions or work assignments. People who want to work remotely are going to want everyone to work remote so that they aren't disadvantaged when it comes to those things, but then we are left with the problem of one group forcing their way of working on the other group.