For me, one of the dreams of the information age, when we were still working on all the pieces that make it possible, (Circa 1987) was the promise of working from anywhere, being as comfortable as in your living room, and being more productive than you could ever be in an office.
Over the next 35 years, the IT industry has made good on that promise with devices, protocols, software development languages and frameworks, and video calling that we didn’t even dare dream when I was coming up in this industry.
In the last 3 years, I have realized two important things.
1. We have arrived. We have collectively, through science, software, and the hard work of some very smart people, we have effectively fulfilled all the promises we were able to imagine when I was in school, learning about computers.
2. Bosses will never let us go. The need for control, and the repression of information workers can ONLY happen if they are overworked, micromanaged, and waste a couple of hours coming and going from home to the office for the privilege of being “monitored closely” by people whose ONLY job is to make sure employees have no time to think, imagine, or find a job with better conditions.
I believe it is time to reject the calls to return to that, and those of us who have the skills and indispensable abilities, should absolutely do so.
Not only will workers be more productive, when measured by their delivered results rather than hours in the seats, more relaxed, by working in the environments they themselves shaped for comfort, and more effective, by working on flexible schedules. They will also be happier to be working for the companies that truly recognize their efforts, treat them as if their lives are also important, and reward them appropriately for a job well done.
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