The WFH Folks

I think the best advice I can give is to reach out to people and have normal conversations when you don't need anything. If you only talk to people when you need something from them, they are going to be less likely to talk about things that they have going on outside of work. Talk about anything that they are interested in. Plus the beauty of messaging apps is that people can respond when they have time and if they are busy they can ignore the messages.

Also if you get some downtime in meetings or join early, ask how things are going, what the weather is like, or if they have any weekend plans. There usually is a bit of time before or after meetings where you can still socialize.

I probably get half as much work done during that morning as I would at home, but I do feel like it’s helped me get settled and feel part of the team much faster. Even that short time each week gives you the opportunity for inside jokes and so on.

Obviously I’m in a lucky position in that it takes me 15 minutes on the bus door-to-door and to be honest I’m not sure I could be bothered going in if it meant a full day. I’m very hesitant to set precedents for being in the office in case WFH gets taken away or nerfed or something. Not that I’ve had any indication that’s on the cards, I just don’t really trust any companies at all, no matter what their “people team” talks about.

Make an effort to connect with coworkers in person whenever there's a business or on-site trip. See if the company has any hosted events, holiday parties, or other in-person meetups (and if not, suggest some). If there's any coworkers that live nearby, suggest meeting up for lunch or after-work drinks occasionally.

Beyond that, as others have mentioned, you can seek out local social organizations and clubs, or even just try to interact with your neighbors more.

New people settle in faster in on site environments because we adapt to environments especially when we are required to.

The ideal situation requires a lot of effort and probably some desire to side-step professional development (talking about work) to spend time with people you currently work with doing something you enjoy (like playing board games). The ideal situation for me is probably something like being able to easily "coordinate company socials" with "let's play a game over Zoom/Discord". Even better if the Zoom/Discord are not company monitored and the interaction is ephemeral. Few products or services would give up the data collection since morale and performance can be measured in relation to the usage of these products or services.

On the other hand, not having a commute, and not having to fake being busy during down times makes it easier to strengthen outside of work friendships and hobbies.

I also think occasional remote meetups in person can really help. I think it's easier to hold a casual text or zoom conversation if you've interacted in person a bit

Even if they lived in the apartment next to me, maybe I don’t want to hang with them after hours or on the weekend? Maybe I don’t want to talk work outside the office?

If your lonely go find a bar - don’t drag us all back to the workplace!

Additionally if I am bothered by someone or am generally not interested in them, it's far easier to avoid them in a WFH setting. My interactions with them can truly be limited to only whatever it takes to get the job done.

That said, I recognize that working this way isn't for everyone. Some people need to breath the same air to feel a connection with others. I have just never needed that.

I haven’t found a solution.

It has really helped getting people comfortable with each other, as well as being a shockingly effective way to solve tricky problems and get new people up to speed.

But what I do lament is that it's very difficult to guide and mentor rank newbies. After a certain amount of push, we hired a few kids right out of college to be able to give them guidance. A couple of them flourished and grew but there are stragglers. One in particular has personally given me a lot of grief and I really wish I could meet them in person so I could guide them as my mentors guided me. A lot of the time, text and voice conversations just don't express ideas well enough. I don't think it's wise to deny that we are a species which has learnt to communicate through cues, gestures and other physical contexts and all of this is lost now. Messages that are meant to educate can sound mean and demeaning and I have to constantly think over ways to express concerns and suggestions in a way that won't discourage my mentees. A smile, a shrug and a few words of reassurance and encouragement go a long way. After all, most of us are constantly learning and there's no shame in ignorance as long as you ask the questions

I am quite worried about the silos we've erected for the new folk who need the help to grow. Some of them will manage but I fear that a lot will be left in the dust with little recourse

You know the unfortunate fact that taller people are paid more, well when you're WFH your height is 2 inches in your little Zoom square.

Not trying to be mean, just being realistic about the vibe I'm sensing from the people big on being back in the office and I think the dominoes are starting to topple.

Short answer - relationships cannot be made via zoom. Thus, interactions are transaction based. I can provide a million examples of why this is a fact in as simple as online dating where you always want to end up meeting the person and digital correspondence is not sufficient to cross the boundary of trust between 2 humans.

…and trust is the one thing that gets you promoted, gets you the benefit of the doubt when you need to leave the office and inconveniently make your coworkers pickup your slack, provides a social barrier via awkward convo when your manager has to let someone go and is debating who vs the simplicity of 3 clicks to removing even a more productive person with whom they have no relationship with by just removing a person on slack and zoom and your jira board. Do you let go the person you know that has 2 kids and you met their kids and they do ok work vs the solo ic who does not seem to want to talk about anything but their work and go home? Surprise surprise most managers would easily coach the ok person they feel closer to vs even the most productive person who they cant get a read on and assume they may even leave some day. Humans being humans.

Trust also forms camaraderie, your tribe in an office, the people you can gripe to with trust in their silence vs someone can easily record or back talk you with your manager via zoom. In office, you can see where people move and who they talk to and thus their relationships.

Therefore, you cannot solve building better relationships via more technological solutions. Humans grasp many small pieces of meta data via in person contact.

Small companies may want whatever your solution is, but large ones where divisions need to scale and trust needs to scale already know this truth and will not buy into it. They would rather wait for covid to be less fearful amongst their constituents and bring them in office which is already happening at banks and apple and soon to be many other orgs next year.

BUT! For the fully remote small companies where work is distributed amongst maybe 20 people in different geos, maybe some small tools will work.

Just remember, a bunch of startups tried to build products to address this at the start if the pandemic and failed learning this truth that human relationships need in person contact.

And as you solicit more advice, notice how the proponents of wfh typically are in roles that are more transactional in nature or accept the risks of or want a more transactional relationship with their work. Most people, especially young ones without enough background understanding how human orgs work, will think they want wfh but in fact want in office with some flexibility to get their outside work life tasks done more easily. And it is not until peoples heads are on chopping blocks or they are passed up for a promotion that they will realize the mistake of wanting 100% remote work.

Before, when working in the office, we used to follow the SAFe framework, which promotes doing a 2-day planning workshop every 4 to 6 sprints.

I got to know more about my colleagues during those 2 days offsite than during the 4 in-office sprints preceding it.

- Have very direct conversations on your team about how you want communication to go. Our agreements sit right next to our team charter.

- How the company manages chat seems to affect how people communicate. If there's zero organization and everything gets dumped into a single channel, then people also stop bantering in that channel.

- Company chat channels shouldn't just be for business. Have some community channels that let people coordinate around topics. Supply "feed" channels where people can dump pictures and videos; I tend to post pictures of my dog, plants, or brews.

- Let people create channels on their own but give them a framework for doing so. That way they're more discoverable and descriptive. For instance, all of our community channels start with #comm- and team channels start with #team-

- Email should only be for formal and external communication. Having all of your communication in one place, for the most part, is quite nice.

- Establish quasi-working hours. My team has a window where all or most of us are online. It's not super strict, but it's there so we can coordinate. Most of our work is done asynchronously though.

- Have a stated bias towards using video. We also use the video tool built into our chat application instead of something external like Zoom.

- All meetings are remote first.

My first job out of college had lots of socializing. In fact, that's where I met my wife.

Now I have kids. I don't really want to socialize with coworkers.

Socializing with coworkers was low before COVID. Now it's even slightly lower and I'm okay with that.

Edit: Also the impact of social connection on productivity might depend a lot on role and personalities involved.