Remote work: a human right or...
A few weeks ago, an interview with Spotify’s HR chief Katarina Berg relaunched a heated discussion on whether companies should allow remote work.
In her interview with Raconteur, Berg voiced a PR-worthy statement: “You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grown-ups and then treat them like children.” The words were echoed in click-baity headlines by most business publications, from Fortune to Entrepreneur to Fast Company.
Nobody seemed to question the premise of the (Spotify PR team-produced) claim: expecting people to go to the office = saying they're children.
But going to the office, daily, to get work done is anything but juvenile. In fact, it is a mature decision to create space for oneself that enables…
- deep focus with fewer temptations to slack
- real-time exchange of information with colleagues (video calls just don’t enable it)
- adding structure to one’s weekdays
- keeping home a place for relaxing, free of work-related thoughts
Moreover, the question of remote v.s. office isn't as much a question of company culture but the company's state.
Fast-growth companies just can't afford to have low employee performance. Something that, in my experience, is what happens when a team goes remote.
I have yet to see a person who is more productive working in a cafe in Bali, or an AirBnB in some exotic location, than the one who wakes up in their bedroom and walks to the office to work...
Our year of (forced) remote work
Back in 2019, I was working as Head of Global Marketing at Bolt. I loved going to the office daily—to see my team, have insightful (and often heated-argument) conversations, and walk 30min back-and-forth as daily exercise.
Then, Covid hit, and we were all forced to work from home.
The first few weeks were great. I did get more work done, being behind laptop by 8am and logging off around 6pm. There were fewer meetings, more Slack.
After week 2, my productivity began to go down. It always does after the novelty of a new working environment begins to wear off.
My productivity curve resembled the post-elephant-swallowing snake from The Little Prince...
I began to do all the usual-suspect things of working from home: snack breaks, walk breaks, being only half-present in team video calls.
Above all, even though I was living with my partner, I began to miss being around other people. It’s a hormonal thing, or something like it, to spend too much time apart from the rest of the world.
You know what? It becomes rather depressive...
Post-Covid post-apocalyptic office
As the Covid restrictions were lifted, we were allowed to go back to the office.
I was back to our Marketing team room, glad to be back to the old-but-now-new work environment.
Only it wasn’t the same anymore.
Most days, only ⅓ of the team was present. We were all still allowed to work remotely. And so, I also took to going to the office on ca 50% of days, uncertain who else would be there when I did check in.
With those colleagues who were back to the office, we had good coffee-time chats, and often went out for lunch. With the rest of my team, we became increasingly distant: icons on Slack replying to each others’ text messages, video-off voices on Google Meet calls.
It all felt like a post-apocalyptic new world. The old bonds and relationships would take months to rebuild. In fact, some never rekindled.
As a team lead, I would have liked to ask everyone to return to the office: at least twice a week, on the same day, so that we could still brainstorm and exchange ideas.
But these were new times, and I didn't want to be nasty kind of manager.
Going freelance x eternal home-officing
I soon moved to Paris, and began working from home. It was simply too expensive to rent a co-working space. The biggest expense seemed to be time.
I was still working at 50% for Bolt, and the other 50%, I spent consulting tech startups.
The new career arrangement meant that 60% and more of my days were spent on video calls. I couldn’t have taken all those calls at a co-working space. — If you’ve been to a WeWork, you’ve seen the sauna-like tiny call boxes. They’re overbooked, fiercely guarded, and never available when you need them.
So I took to working from home from my new Marais apartment. And I liked it, for months, for years.
The reason it worked so well for me was not because working from home, i.e. remotely is more efficient. But because I no longer had a single team. I was working with 4-5 teams simultaneously.
And in this case, it would have been impossible to go to 4-5 offices weekly. Also, the companies I worked with were located all around the world: Tallinn, San Francisco, Luxembourg, Milan…
As a self-managing freelancer, remote work was…well… great.
But still, had I worked for a single company, in a single team, I would have much preferred to have an office to go to. For the change of scene. For being around real people. For my weekdays to feel different from weekends.
Fast forward to 2024, an update from NYC
For the past month, I’ve lived in Buchwick, NYC.
After two weeks of working from home—on a new app launch as a co-founder and some freelance gigs—I was desperate to have an office.
I’d used up my free WeWork day passes (you get three per month with the Revolut Ultra subscription). Staying at someone else’s apartment, I didn’t have a dedicated, private workspace.
So I got myself, finally, a hot desk at a nearby co-working space. A 30-minute walk from the apartment, it features a quiet hot-desking room with ergonomic chairs (another thing one's unlikely to have at home).
It’s been two weeks since and I do feel better. More structured. With a proper work routine. Home, again, is for resting and reading.
It really is so much easier to focus in office v.s. home.
Having people working beside me keeps me from opening random browser tabs for news and, well, online shopping.
But going to a co-working space in any city in the world is a particular kind of freedom…
It is a freedom that comes with a pay-off: having an unhinged life.
The real question: stable job v.s. freelancing
Now, I must admit that I could not have moved to New York—or Paris, or London—if I were still working full-time for a high-growth tech company like Bolt.
The reason why I can be anywhere in the world is because I gave up the benefits of being a full-time employee.
Sometimes, I miss having a stable job and a stable income. I miss other people taking care of my office arrangement, my laptop, my health insurance, and the company’s overall survival.
And when I see someone complaining that they can’t work remotely as a full-time employee, I feel they're being unjust. “But what about all the benefits you’re getting?” I'd like to ask them
Everyone seems to want to have their cake and eat it too....
Some people actually can. Perhaps, they’re the Spotify employees. But is it even a cake I would like the most? Would you? So why not apply for a job at Spotify?
Personally, I chose another track. And I think that people working at Bolt are those who subscribe to a different set of values than people working for Spotify. Or Wolt. Or Amazon.
Are you Meta or Google?
I've recently heard a lot about the work culture in Meta v.s. Google.
Talking to a friend working for Meta in NYC (over a video call, although she was in the office, just too busy for a coffee/lunch date), she said that their office culture was highly performance-driven, and the low performers are eventually let go.
“I think you would like it there,” she said. Recalling my days in Bolt, the growth-focused work culture, I thought: I actually would.
Then, another friend told me a story of riding a bus in San Francisco, overhearing two Google employees. “I wouldn’t invest in Alphabet’s stock,” one of them said. “Everyone in the office leaves around 3pm.”
I’ve also heard from other sources that Google’s a “great place for getting paid for doing very little.” Would I like that kind of a job? —I doubt it.
The discussion on whether some company should allow or not allow remote work is beside the point. Especially coming from people who don’t work there.
The real question is: Once you know a company’s work culture, is it right for you?
If it isn’t, you are 100% free to not work there.
Found your own company. Work freelance & as remotely as you wish. Join Google instead of Meta.
Merci! 🐿️
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In other news, I'm still open to 1-2 marketing projects starting from November, when I'll be back to London, working remotely from my apartment.
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Thanks for reading!
Karola