The tightest professional relationships I've made in many moons were made entirely remote during some Covid-19 relief work. I still haven't met any of them in person, but there was as much humanity in that project as we ever get working-from-work.
I absolutely have close work (and friend) relationships with people on far flung teams, and even companies I no longer work for in countries I'll never visit, whom I've never met in meatspace (or only a couple times at conferences or whatever). These relationships were built mainly by IRC/jabber/slack (depending on the vintage) and phone calls/videocon though, not tickets and email. Time zone probably matters more than anything -- I keep in touch with colleagues from India who I met when working third shift in web hosting support, but couldn't tell you the names of the daywalkers from the same office I was in.
Modern corporate environments are spread out all over the planet. If you can't build relationships without sharing air, you will be at a massive disadvantage. That's just how it is, and it isn't something that was caused by the pandemic, it's a consequence of intense globalization over the past ~40 years and an aggressive investor-driven acquisitions culture.
Me and one of my employees are going through almost identical and seriously difficult personal times. Our company and the people within it have really rallied around us, providing personal and professional support in ways I could never have imagined.
I have said that while other companies I have worked within would be sympathetic, they definitely would not have been empathetic; however, at my current company, EVERYONE from the CEO to interns have been so very empathetic, helpful, and thoughtful.
We are all remote and have been since the pandemic. These are people who are reaching out regularly, coming to visit, offering support in whatever way possible, and being genuinely good human beings. It's simply a work culture when you don't have this, but you CAN find it.
Don't lose hope. Good companies and great people within them are there, remote or not.
This has long been true to some degree when you work with people scattered around the world. But it's a legit concern that, overall, we're probably developing much shallower relationships with the people we work with compared to when we were together in-person more of the time. Doubtless there are people who prefer just tuning out co-workers as much as possible. But it's reasonable to ask how it will affect many companies in the longer run when many co-worker relationships are very surface compared to pre-COVID.
Coming from a 25-member tech team where all local members are very close (we get along well), I think that a big part of what makes us operate well as a team is our closeness. We get less stressed during crises, communicate better, etc. because we are connected.
That type of connection is difficult to establish with our remote members. Because they aren't sitting right next to us, we can't joke around or come over to chat with them in order to get some mental relief from the daily grind.
Essentially, our work environment is enhanced by personal contact with fellow employees, something that isn't easily established with remote workers.
I struggle with isolation at work. It really escalated during the pandemic. I run a small team and we're often isolated from everyone else, except the client in front of us at any moment in time. Most the work is indirect.
Coming back into the office, its a struggle to integrate back into a culture that, for me, appears to no longer exists. I'm trying to reconcile if this is my own doing, or if something else has changed. I look around and many of the faces in the back office are new. There's no love coming from the middle or front office or top brass.
To me, at this point in my life, I don't want to be monk. I want to feel like I belong, I want to feel like a valued member of a community. I've worked in financial technology and back office operations most of my career. I doubt I will find any of that in any back office these days.
I started a new job after the start of COVID, and it has been really hard to build the personal relationships to become fully effective (our offices are spread out globally). My manager has said that pre-COVID days, I would have had the chance to meet many of my colleagues face-to-face and have a few beers with them, which would have greased the wheel to creating some personal connections. It's always easier to request help from someone who has a good impression of you.
Similarly with clients. It's much easier for people to go on attack-mode when they are displeased when it's only through email or a video conference where people have their cameras off. Unhappy clients can be placated and turned towards working together to a solution much more easily in person, and happy clients can be turned into long term partners more easily over dinner and friendly chats. This is especially true of customers in Asia.
I really appreciate this story, but I'm not sure I agree with seeing this tragically.
A working relationship is just something different. There is still emotion, because we're human. But more than anything, there's mutual trust and respect.
I have very deep and emotional connections with my family and with my friends, who I trust deeply and call on (and am called upon by) daily. But I wouldn't necessarily trust them with a technical project or start a small business with them or something in that realm.
Meanwhile the small startup I work with just released an app yesterday, one with lots of difficult problems that we worked through together to resolve over the past two years. I have such a thorough trust and respect for every member of that team - technical and not. I wouldn't call any of them for a personal issue.
I have friends who fall into both categories, but they are few and far between.
There's nothing wrong with these relationships, and there's nothing more or less valuable to them. They just work differently and for different reasons. I don't need to be my colleague's best person at their wedding or pall bearer at their sibling's funeral for us to have a long and solid relationship building amazing things. I don't need to start a business with my wife or teach my kid how to program for us to have full lives together.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've worked on a small dedicated hardware/software team with a multi-year focus overcoming challenging technical obstacles. We certainly weren't flying a helicopter on a remote planet, but the closeness and shared vision were similar. They know what they did and they know that they did it together. While hugging and other demonstrative behaviors are wonderful and should be cherished, they are trivial compared to the internal feelings of accomplishment and gratitude to have been a part of such of an effort with such a talented team. Those feelings and their shared bonds will stay with them forever.
I think it takes both parties to maintain a connection. I'm part of several Slack groups with friends and acquaintances from old jobs. We aren't as tight as we were while working together, but we aren't radio silent either.
It's certainly possible, but that would make me personally feel very uncomfortable around these people, and I would eventually float towards working in a more tightly coupled team with relationships that transcend work.
That being said, many people actually prefer having that distance. For me I find that distance bothers me, and that may be a cultural thing.
Have you made good friends amongst your colleagues in your remote company, during the remote-work era ?
All the trustworthy people i know from work were people i socialized with in person, at the office, around coffe-breaks, post-work drinks, etc. I don't see something similar happening over Zoom meetings and my guess is that 95% of people are like me in that regards.
Now, this may not be a big deal over the short-term but I believe that an actual company culture need actual tangible human bonds over the long-term.
This is similar to mine. Being regular people(we are over 1500km away from each other) and then discussing some work things. But most work things get addressed as they’re issues or come up anyways. But it’s a time to just be people. I have a good relationship with my manager though, so YMMV for others.
Where is that community supposed to form though? I would think those relationships tend to get made in the office, but the environment seems to he going more towards remote.
This was an area that improved hugely at my workplace, because we're spread across multiple buildings in multiple cities anyway; the pre-COVID dynamic was that people were in the habit of including only those in physical proximity. COVID has made cross-city collab instinctive for people.
The comment you're responding to sounds like a team resenting the inability to have the (bad) habit of only talking to people in physical proximity.
There's a lot to say about in-person collaboration and knowledge transfer through osmosis, but I think this quote from the article highlights the crux of it
> When you’re remote, you’re out of sight, out of mind
The people in the office are having lunch together, they're talking and laughing, participating in office birthday celebrations and get togethers after work. Even something as simple as a warm smile and a "good morning" has a cumulative impact on those around you. Your presence is a contribution to the cultural mosaic of the company in a visceral way.
It's a lot easier to lay off someone you've never met and a lot easier to trust someone with responsibilities when they're also someone you can have lunch or drinks with. The business world is just as much about politics as it is about productivity and if you find yourself far away from court, you'll inevitably deal with the consequences of those who are present to assert their influence.
I've got better friends and more in common with people on a remote team than I ever had in an office day in day out. Depends on the people. Culcural cohesion feels like some bs term to keep managers relevant.
I don't know the term for this, but in-person contact is important for metagroups/in-groups at work. People who are coworkers, but also friends as well, to an extent. People that you trust more than others not part of the group, and who you might even become friends with outside of work. I've found developing relationships like this impossible while fully remote.
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