10 days ago I posted on LinkedIn that I'm looking for the next thing and set my status to 'open to work'. Since then, 16 people have reached out regarding a total of 18 positions. I had the skills to fulfill any of them, and found a few interesting.
One thing all but a few had in common and very different to what it used to be pre-covid19 is that they only required me to be in the office at least once a week, and in some cases once a month.
Teams who chose to go this route of 'work remote as much as possible' are at a significant disadvantage to those who chose to collaborate in person. It is true that one can be as effective regardless of where they work from, but the nature of innovative work requires an active communication with the people we are collaborating with.
Now imagine you are working on an innovative new product and every time there was something to discuss or get feedback, you had to send a message, figure out a time for a call, postpone your decision till then, and finally have the call. By this time you are already out of the creative moment or you chose not to do this, made a best guess decision and moved on. Furthermore in the call itself, if you are a fast thinker then your brain is probably outpacing the up to a 1/4 second two way network latency and, in the dynamic conversations, is likely frequently interrupting your colleague on the other side.
When I was a CTO at BestProfi (2020, 2021), covid-19 lockdowns hit as I was just getting started. The new team I was putting together had to learn to work remotely, but as soon as the rules allowed, we returned to the office following all safety measures. Instead of the 'work remote as much as possible' stance, team's philosophy was - work remote when you have to, take time off to take care of any urgent personal matters, and collaborate in person by default. During a year and a half our team worked remotely only for a few months, and we have over delivered our plans.
One may think it's easy to say the above for someone from a C-level position to say - no, I always lead by example, and in case of BestProfi I was in the "trenches" working hard alongside my team coding or wearing any other hats the team needed to succeed.
p.s. I bring you my points without them being revised by any AI.
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