There’s no way to spin this news other than to say it’s a troubling sign when the CEO of a massively popular company is telling employees they can stay home forever.
I’m being sarcastic — but also a little serious. Jack Dorsey recently announced that employees will have the option to work remotely forever if they choose not to come back to the office. In a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, he also announced that the office will likely stay closed all summer and that the social media giant will likely postpone all in-person events this year.
An NBC News report attributed this statement to a company spokesperson: “Opening offices will be our decision. When and if our employees come back, will be theirs.”
“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the spokesperson told NBC News in what is a bit of a humble brag.
We’re in strange times and they are getting stranger. Another recent report mentioned how social distancing in an office won’t stop the coronavirus. Many companies are starting to rethink exactly what an office looks like. (And to think we were debating the value of an open office floor plan just a few short months ago. That’s looking like a total waste of time now.)
It all brings up a lot of questions for me. First of all, what do these people do that they can work at home “forever” and apparently never have to step foot at Twitter headquarters again? You would think there might be some paperwork to sign or a company party to attend.
As for the distributed workforce, that is not surprising. It’s not unique to Twitter that technology has allowed us to keep hammering out Google Docs reports and emailing each other using extremely fast high-speed connections or using 5G phones. Zoom is remarkably stable — the main claim to fame other than the Star Wars virtual backgrounds is that the video chats are at such a low-latency that it feels at times like the person is sitting next to you. Even just a few years ago — before widespread Gigabit speeds became available even in small towns — this stay-at-home lockdown situation would have made remote work a bit harder. Looking back about 10 years ago, high-def video chats were choppy and unreliable.
The question is whether this will be forever. I’m not about to make any predictions about the virus — my great hope is that it won’t last much longer and won’t come back in the fall. Large companies are thinking seriously about the home office not only due to the current pandemic but because we might (stress: might) be living in an age when viral infections like this become more common. Again, my hope is that this is an anomaly and extremely short-lived.
What Dorsey is really saying here is that he is taking the long-term view. It’s time to get settled in. Buy or expense a comfy chair. Upgrade to a standing desk. The times have changed, and every company will need to rely on a distributed workforce in some way or another.
It’s not all bad. There are benefits to working from home. He wasn’t saying everyone who works at home will never need to make a trip into the main office.
At the same time, the business variables here are getting weirder by the day.
And, there’s this:
I’ve worked at home for almost 19 years. I enjoy being around my family, but the truth is I don’t see them for hours on end. I’m a solo act, talking to animated pixels on a screen. Remote work is lonely and tedious, a repeating pattern of monotony.
You can’t read body language, pick up on an exasperated sigh when someone is muted, or sense a coworkers presence. Zoom is fine for the transmission of information but it can’t compare to an in-person brainstorming session with a series of light-bulb moments going pop-pop-pop around the room. Or when we collectively agree on something. Or when we see a funny scene down on a street corner. Or when we laugh because the boss just spilled her coffee in the other room.
Meaning, it can replace those moments when we are just being human.
I can’t imagine “forever” remote work. I can’t imagine being stuck at home on a screen in the year 2035. It sounds like a prison sentence to me.
This article originally appeared on Twitter.
