I keep seeing people — here and elsewhere — claim that the pandemic showed that working from home is viable for the majority of office jobs.
I’m a big fan of remote work but I’ve got to say: it didn’t, and it’s not.
The pandemic did show that remote work was viable for a lot more jobs than had been remote previously. But it’s far from true for all or even most jobs.
A lot of employers adjusted their expectations during the pandemic — making compromises in what was getting done because of public safety — but couldn’t realistically remain that way long-term.
Moreover, even when someone is convinced they can perform their job just as well from home, they’re not always right about that. In some cases it means transferring some of their tasks to other people who are in the office, or it keeps junior staff from learning from more senior colleagues — a lot of which happens simply by being around more experienced employees and being able to observe how they do their jobs.
And sometimes the person just doesn’t do as well at their job as they did in-person — even if they don’t necessarily see that themselves — whether that’s because they’re not around for impromptu conversations, they don’t have the same relationships to help get things done, or simply because some things truly are easier to do in person.
That is not the case for everyone or every job, but it is the case for more people than gets acknowledged in these conversations.
Obviously, too, that’s before we get into the millions of jobs that literally can’t be done remotely at all — think retail, health care workers, skilled trades, hospitality, lab workers, truck drivers, teachers, and on and on.
It’s also true that employers are requiring people to work from the office even in cases where the work could be done extremely well from home. But too often people extrapolate from some instances of that and decide that’s what’s happening with all office workers whose employers want them on-site — and it’s not.
