A growing number of smaller companies are adopting a four-day workweek. Now the results of a recent trial at Microsoft suggest it could work even for the biggest businesses.
It feels like the big elephant in the room about shorter work weeks and more remote work is that lower level employee productivity is not the issue with them (likely at all).
And it isn’t even that managers and higher-ups have some biases against such schemes (which they certainly do).
It’s that such schemes put a clearer focus on the actual role managers and higher-ups are supposed to be performing, namely organising employees and their tasks and priorities into coherent and well-planned projects. Managers are, on average, not actually good at this. And the problem is systemic … the average work culture doesn’t have a good sense of what this looks like. Instead, there are “glue people” all over the place, working beyond their roles to fill in the gaps and keep things together.
But, with a less “monolithic”, co-located and co-active workforce, the need for actual coordination beyond “do the things! LFG!!” becomes very real, and very anxious for people who either don’t know how to do that or don’t want the world to find out that things were actually working fine in spite of their inability to do it. A remote and discretely scheduled workforce necessarily asks accountability questions like “who is responsible for planning this?” and “this isn’t my responsibility, you need to get someone else to do it” etc.
Managers and higher-ups aren’t comfortable with their actual value being scrutinised more closely. And in many ways, it’s actually understandable … as they likely don’t know the answer themselves.
I think this was actually the first time someone put it this way and me reading it. I felt this way for years but never did I actually stop and think about this in such a manner. Maybe also because it is discouraged to talk about it.
Thanks for the complement … and I’m glad my hot take resonates. If you like you can paste this into your own post (and just link back here or whatever if you want to cite me).
Your own experience realising that you’ve felt this but not been able to talk about it could be a very interesting addition or framing and is also probably deserving of its own post!
Or me! Let’s jump in a convo and discuss this. Post this in our Kubernetes or have one of our interns do it. Let’s say “this afternoon and I will cancel anyway”-ish?
Since I started to answer more “who planned that?”, "who decided we should do this/that? instead of like “we’ll try to make it work next sprint” and taking obvious flak, things are way more calm nowadays.
In my last job, productivity was through the roof when the managers were on holidays.
I wish it were that simple. There’s also personality and behaviour differences in people. Some people simply suck at working alone or remotely and it fucking sucks to be their manager because guess who has to work onsite now?
Even if my current team was like my previous ones where everyone could 100% remote—hell, I saw one guy every six months or so and let another travel Europe remote working—theres’s personalities that loooooooove seeing everyone at work and 0.6 of their FTE is socialising. Work is getting out of the house and away from the family. They complain that no one’s at the office to get paid to talk to.
And what about the people that suck at working at the office? And those that don’t get any or are not interested in a work based social life?
Reality is that there’s diversity and lots of in betweens. Thus diversity and flexibility and the value of managers in bringing it all together (like maybe they were always supposed to?)
It feels like the big elephant in the room about shorter work weeks and more remote work is that lower level employee productivity is not the issue with them (likely at all).
And it isn’t even that managers and higher-ups have some biases against such schemes (which they certainly do).
It’s that such schemes put a clearer focus on the actual role managers and higher-ups are supposed to be performing, namely organising employees and their tasks and priorities into coherent and well-planned projects. Managers are, on average, not actually good at this. And the problem is systemic … the average work culture doesn’t have a good sense of what this looks like. Instead, there are “glue people” all over the place, working beyond their roles to fill in the gaps and keep things together.
But, with a less “monolithic”, co-located and co-active workforce, the need for actual coordination beyond “do the things! LFG!!” becomes very real, and very anxious for people who either don’t know how to do that or don’t want the world to find out that things were actually working fine in spite of their inability to do it. A remote and discretely scheduled workforce necessarily asks accountability questions like “who is responsible for planning this?” and “this isn’t my responsibility, you need to get someone else to do it” etc.
Managers and higher-ups aren’t comfortable with their actual value being scrutinised more closely. And in many ways, it’s actually understandable … as they likely don’t know the answer themselves.
I think this was actually the first time someone put it this way and me reading it. I felt this way for years but never did I actually stop and think about this in such a manner. Maybe also because it is discouraged to talk about it.
I think this deserves its own post.
Thanks for the complement … and I’m glad my hot take resonates. If you like you can paste this into your own post (and just link back here or whatever if you want to cite me).
Your own experience realising that you’ve felt this but not been able to talk about it could be a very interesting addition or framing and is also probably deserving of its own post!
Aww, you guys are sweet!
Kidding aside, you’re definitely onto something vis a vis insecure and quite likely incompetent middlemen!
As a middleman that’s certainly not insecure and hopefully not incompetent I don’t know what to say.
BUT I agree with most of it, as long as it doesn’t apply to me.
There, summed it up for you 😛
Or me! Let’s jump in a convo and discuss this. Post this in our Kubernetes or have one of our interns do it. Let’s say “this afternoon and I will cancel anyway”-ish?
So true!
Since I started to answer more “who planned that?”, "who decided we should do this/that? instead of like “we’ll try to make it work next sprint” and taking obvious flak, things are way more calm nowadays.
In my last job, productivity was through the roof when the managers were on holidays.
FYI Plannified is not a word in English.
I have seen it for years from native French speakers though.
Thanks! Planned it is I guess!
I wish it were that simple. There’s also personality and behaviour differences in people. Some people simply suck at working alone or remotely and it fucking sucks to be their manager because guess who has to work onsite now?
Even if my current team was like my previous ones where everyone could 100% remote—hell, I saw one guy every six months or so and let another travel Europe remote working—theres’s personalities that loooooooove seeing everyone at work and 0.6 of their FTE is socialising. Work is getting out of the house and away from the family. They complain that no one’s at the office to get paid to talk to.
And what about the people that suck at working at the office? And those that don’t get any or are not interested in a work based social life?
Reality is that there’s diversity and lots of in betweens. Thus diversity and flexibility and the value of managers in bringing it all together (like maybe they were always supposed to?)