If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know that I’m fascinated with remote work. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t embrace it but I realize that some don’t. Regardless, remote work is dug in and here to stay. A recent article in The Guardian notes that buildings in major U.S. cities are empty and business owners are facing a come to Jesus moment. Their employees are not coming back to the office no matter what they say and the smart money is making plans to adapt to the new reality.
Part of the pushback from the office-first folks is that you can’t run major projects without the principals having frequent face-to-face interaction. I’ve seen several posts and articles lately making this claim as if it’s indisputable. The thing is, we have several counter examples. Most of the open source movement is managed and thrives in a completely remote environment.
Since this is Irreal, let’s look at Emacs. The project, in its various guises has always been remote and has thrived that way for over 40 years. I don’t have any statistics but I doubt that more than a handful of Emacs developers have ever met in person. Rather, they debate and argue online. There’s no water cooler but there’s also no prattle about “How ‘bout them Yankees” or “Let me tell you about my date last night.” Sure, there’s some extraneous discussion but mostly it’s on point. Take a look at the Emacs-devel archives to see what I mean.
As much as the control freaks might wish otherwise, the days of everyone in the office all the time is over. Almost all of us are glad.
UPDATE [Added before publication]: CNBC Make It has an interesting article about the return to work movement. The TL;DR is that most executives who decreed workers must return to work now regret that decision and many have had to retract their demands. As with the Guardian article, a large factor is empty office space. It costs, CNBC Make It says, about $16,000 per employee per year for that office space so you can see why companies are loath to let it sit idle.