The Biggest Problem With Remote Work

The synchronizer—or, for large companies, a team of synchronizers—would be responsible for solving the new-worker, new-group, and new-idea problems. Synchronizers would help new workers by ensuring that their managers, mentors, and colleagues are with them at the office during an early onboarding period. They would plan in-person time for new teamm... See more

“Small talk, passing conversations, even just observing your manager’s pathways through the office may seem trivial, but in the aggregate they’re far more valuable than any form of company handbook,” write Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel, the authors of the book Out of Office.

First, remote work is worse for new workers. Many inexperienced employees joining a virtual company realize that they haven’t joined much of a company at all. They’ve logged into a virtual room that calls itself a company but is basically a group chat. 

The Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom—a famous defender of remote work’s potential—told me that this study presented the “best research” on how in-person interactions foster complex, free-flowing discussion. “There are definitely situations, including mentoring new employees and innovative activities, that require some time in the office,” he said.... See more

The remote-work debate has become deeply polarized between people who consider it a moral necessity that is beyond criticism and those who consider it a culture-killer that is beyond fixing. Like the office, remote work will never go away, and like the office, it has important problems that deserve our attention. Solving remote work’s problems is a... See more

Why might the quality of ideas degrade when people collaborate remotely? My favorite explanation is that collaboration requires trust, and trust implies a kind of intimacy, and it’s hard to build true intimacy via Zoom and chat.

the most important job of the office is “soft work”—the sort of banter that allows for long-term trust and innovation.