(Disclaimer: I come from a privileged, upper middle class family. I live with my parents, have no financial and household responsibilities, and I am able to afford both the time and money spent in commuting, being at places, etc. The thoughts in this piece come from this very specific circumstance, and is in no way dissing the option of flexible work itself.)
Ten years ago, I told someone that my ideal job was to live in a house in Alibaug, own a farm, run a beach-side cafe, all the while working as a contract writer for a company in the USA, and get my consistent income in dollars. I was scoffed at being too much of a dreamer and advised to “read less”.
Five years ago, a lot of people lived this reality, as the pandemic locked us up in our homes.
Tides of cultural phenomenon come in waves; the bundling and unbundling of human fuckery. So, for a few years we rallied behind the joys of remote work; less commute, less stress, more agency about how we could spend our time, and allocate responsibilities. Then there were the equally strong rallies about the benefits of being in office; Silicon Valley startup owners claiming that the really big epic stuff could only happen if people were in the same room together.
So obviously the world of work went ahead and created the delightful hybrid work model, the situationship equivalent of workplace culture.
The types of hybrid offices
First up, let’s define the types of hybrid work cultures.
Type A
The come-in-when-you-want-but-it-has-to-be-there-twice-a-week office, which reserves a sort of workplace with a fixed capacity, and maybe a schedule manager to book a spot on a particular day.
Type B
The you-have-to-come-in-on-a-Wednesday-and-a-Friday-and-for-any-parties office, which is a little better than the first. At least you know what to expect, when to expect, and create a discipline that can only come with some sort of routine.
TYPE C
This is the some-of-us-are-working-together crowd. The we-are-fully-remote-and-don’t-have-an-office-but-we-will-try-to-meet once in a while crowd.
I have worked a bit in each type of setup to be honest, and there is not one worse than the other. In fact I am sure that people and companies have made each of them work. This is just an analysis of the nature of hybrid work on company culture from a humanities lens, inspired by my recent replaying of this interactive game on The Evolution of Trust.
Connecting some dots
Your best friends and relationships, the strongest communities, are the ones who spend a lot of time together. The ones you know for a long time. Even game theory proves this; that a world of trust is built through repeated interactions with each other, and it’s the only kind where more people win. These repeated interactions must happen at many levels, not just rely on verbal/written communication.
A pen pal is very different from a neighbourhood buddy, in that you may feel equally connected to both, but your relationship to the latter would be stronger, because that’s what human communities and connections are made of – being there, in flesh and blood, and tuning to and finding comfort in each others to emotional, intellectual, and physical presence.
Even families grow distant and friends replace that void if you are far away and do not meet beyond the pleasantries (those who have lived away from home, know). We have to put in time AND presence to build a relationship that shares memories, creating internal languages of communication (including jokes, knowledge of each other’s habits and a built tolerance towards differences).
Then how can work teams be exempt to these rules of humans in groups? In Type A and Type C, there is no cadence for repeated interaction, and so if you want to build teams, at the very least, you must follow the Type B rule; create a schedule for all to follow, and then make sure that that rule is broken as little as possible.
The lack of a cadence (such as in Type C kind of workplace) creates that great truth of our species; cliques.
It’s invariable that some people are going to be more able to come to work or group work-alongs than others, its invariable that they will develop a relationship that’s closer and thicker than with the rest of the group. And if one of these members is also leadership, it’s difficult to feel like you belong, sitting behind your tiny desk in a geography far away.
Even if everyone is in an office, proximity biases can change how your potential as a professional plays out.
This is not to say cliques are bad or unfair, they are fundamental to human nature and we should all be more honest about it to ourselves. I am a part of several, and I am not part of many others myself, in professional as well as personal relationships.
But just to say that the great glorification of flexible work culture plays out very very specifically at an individual capacity, and it’s better to be aware of it, so that you know where your career is headed, and your place in the boundaries of the company itself – which define what chances you get.
You can ask yourself several questions if you are confused about where you stand:
Are you getting face time with clients?
Are you part of initial discussions or just the recipient of the final discussion?
Is your ability to even understand what to work on hampered by some gap in communication?
Is all the work that can be really quantified being handled by those in proximity to each other?
How do other people with distance between the team/city and themselves look? Are they getting opportunities to take on bigger tasks or are they too sidelined?
Chances are, your job is not hierarchical, and you are not looking for that work community or feeling of being a team that joshes around and operates from friendliness not task-orientedness. Maybe you are looking for work as a contract. That’s a powerful variable and you need to know what you seek.
(I always seek a feeling of teams a lot. It’s the thing I have been most unsuccessful for at Purple Pencil Project, which is fully remote. For the brief period that two of my three people were working from the same Starbucks for two months, I was the happiest, and had a lot more direction and clarity. Same for the days I spend with Amritesh at JLF.)
The logistical pitfalls of hybrid work
Team dynamics are not the only factor sacrificed at the altar of uncertain and hybrid work cultures. It also affects organisational and individual logistics.
One, in any kind of hybrid work, you still have to move cities, or exchange city commute to inter-city frequent travel. You still have to set up an environment for yourself individually for non-office days where your productivity thrives. And you may never get to automate much in any aspect of your life – creating constant and new mental frictions that will affect your work. Productivity tips and gurus will back me on the need for a sense of automation, so you don’t have to ‘think’ too much about stuff that does not matter. Re: Steve Jobs, Vir Das’ Wardrobe of White T-Shirts, and more.
Even as an office, you still have to pay rent, get the equipment required to support any workplace, and coordinate between teams and their schedules – which is a logistical challenge, and one that (anecdotally) slows work down unless you have an impeccable system and every member of your team adheres to it.
Yes, hybrid work allows you to hire talent but are you able to earn their respect and trust, by giving them a rightful platform?
Yes, hybrid work allows you to juggle responsibilities without it costing your career, but does it also sort of not?
I think of hybrid work as a situationship because of these reasons – it’s neither here nor there in terms of expectations. It’s a way for companies and individuals to shrug off responsibility without thinking about the consequences. It’s certainly a way to go against a lot of our intuitive behavioural tendencies. And it always operates with a sort of one foot out of the door.
Seems that modern working, like modern dating, requires a sprinkle of values from the past.