I have been considering my priorities about remote or in office work. On one hand, it’s good to see that, at least, hybrid is the default, with various ratios, from one to four days in the office. On the other hand, there’s a lot of individual and parallel work—the typical one person, one ticket feature factory—which can be, depending on how the company goes about it, isolated and unsupportive.

There are several degrees of isolation and “unsupportiveness”. The one I’m trying to avoid is the one when nobody talks to anybody on a day-to-day basis, there’s no communication or collaboration beyond the typical ceremonies and there’s no support even in the onboarding phase (pick increasingly difficult tickets and figure it out as you go, everyone’s doing their own thing).

On the other side of the spectrum, where collaboration and support are deeply appreciated, you might find a team that does pair programming or software teaming (aka ensemble or mob) as the default, where team members talk to each other, virtually or face to face, and there’s a feeling of camaraderie and bonding. They collaborate and there’s an effort to build shared understanding and create a mindset of continuous improvement. In essence, the team is a team, not a group of strangers, each doing their thing.

I appreciate the collaborative and supportive environment way more than the “this is the jungle” one. If I can choose, give me the first option every time. Not only is it a healthier, saner and more fun environment, but it can be more beneficial for the business.

Now, what happens if you join a company with a hybrid or remote arrangement, with a feature factory, in the isolated, unsupportive area of the spectrum? Working remotely intensifies the isolation and lack of collaboration. It’s also more difficult to get any improvement going, build a connection, bond, and rally people around goals. For me, that kind of environment is soul crashing.

Remote or in office work, way of life or way of work, that is the question.

My best—and most likely impossible—scenario would be a team with high collaboration (pairing or software teaming), support and remote by default. In fact, that’s what the team I was working with in the middle of the pandemic was, we went from working five days in the office to working remotely with some small adjustments, and it worked great, we had the best of both worlds and when we could go to the office. It was a choice, not a mandate. Another example was in a previous role, where no developer was in the same country, but we were always collaborating in some shape or form, and had great relationships.

It’s already extremely rare to find a company that does pair programming and cares about quality, it’s even more difficult to see one that works remotely. In their defence, making remote ways of working work it’s tougher than just bringing people to an office, it requires extra consideration.

In truth, going to the office is not the holy grail to avoid isolation and lack of support. It can still happen, now spiced with a cacophony of voices, keyboards, kitchen sounds, an all-year buffet of illnesses and an extra effort to focus. At least we have the creativity and synergy inducing water cooler moment!

Another angle to this is that, if I have to work in a feature factory, where I need to wear the code monkey hat, I rather do it in the comfort of my home, instead of commuting to the office to look eight hours at a screen and plug myself to an endless supply of intravenous pseudo coffee.

Priority wise, it’s a mess. Remote work is great for the quality of life, but depending on the company, it can be extremely isolated. Working in the office can be great if there’s collaboration, pairing, etc. but you have to accept the commute, the noise, etc. The noise in particular is something that troubles me, as wearing hearing aids makes the open-plan office problematic, having to spend more effort to understand people, and it gets me mentally drained at the end of the day.

All things considered, at this point, I am open to going to the office regularly for a great situation that ideally aligns with the way I’d like to work. I’d like that great situation to be remote or hybrid, but that’s like winning the lottery. Otherwise, I’m leaning to remote or hybrid as the default, accepting that it can be isolated in some situations, although I try to avoid companies where all the signs point to no collaboration at all and an every man for himself environment.

Interesting links

• Can we do it? Should we do it? (Gabrielle Benefield). Gabrielle writes about an important topic, to consider the ethical and sustainable aspects of our outcomes, not only if they are feasible, desirable or viable.

• Why Kubernetes, Kafka, or Istio can derail your platform engineering efforts (Steve Smith). “This pitfall happens when your platform team prioritizes the tools they want over the capabilities your teams need. Teams will lack capacity for planned product work, because they have to regularly maintain Kubernetes”

• When Do We Realize the Last Responsible Moment Whooshed By? (Johanna Rothman). “When we decide too soon, often as a form of risk management, we often incur the costs of late learning. […] if we decide too late, we run the risk of emergency work.”