In defense of working from home: a reaction to Robin Dunbar's piece in New Scientist.

I work in IT, there is no actual equipment in the office, it is all in 'the cloud'. So I can access that equipment from anywhere with an internet connection. This is true of many desk jobs today. So why would we go into the office? The downsides of working in an office are:

• A long commute, at least an hour for me. My most productive time of day is first thing in the morning. I do not want to waste a chunk of that time commuting, then arriving tired from that commute.
• Interruptions. People see you at your desk and want a quick moment. It takes 20 minutes to get into a flow state and ten seconds to come out of it. There is no such thing as a quick moment. If they have to send a message I'll check it when I'm taking a break.
• Covid and other infections. Since I stopped going to the office I haven't had a cold, flu or covid. While I was doing office time I would always pick up a cold at least. And now I don't have to worry about bringing these things home to my family. Riding on public transport, which is fundamentally better than driving a car, exposes me to more disease. I prefer to do neither. And let's not forget that Covid is a disease that is still killing people, quite a lot of people. We don't talk about it any more, but it is still something we can die from or suffer long term disablement.

Avoiding these things are all really good for my mental health. Dunbar argues my mental health is suffering because I am not interacting with people I work with as much. Maybe I interact with my co workers less, sure. But I don't feel the lack. I have relationships with people outside work. I am not lonely. But when I work I like to, you know, work. I don't like wasting time around the water cooler or whatever. And I can choose my friends. I can choose people who share my values to hang out with. My mental health is much better for that.

Dunbar also argues that we are more productive if we work with people we trust and that takes face to face time. I agree with the former, but it is a specific kind of trust. I need to trust their abilities. You know how that trust is built? It isn't face to face time, it is delivery of results. Projects get divided into tasks, tasks get assigned, progress gets reviewed. People who get their tasks done get their abilities trusted. The others, well, we make sure they get assigned tasks that fit the abilities they have. It has nothing to do with chatting about what kind of water sports we like, or whether we've seen the latest movie. Sometimes in a work situation people have personal issues and need some kindness. Does that work if I don't know them well? Of course it does. I don't have to know people well to be kind to them.

We do have to meet to talk about work. This is done well, possibly better, using online tools than crowding around a screen or even a big display. There are tools that allow you to share files during video calls, as well as text messages and so on. I argue that these interractions are more useful than sitting in a stuffy office. There are people who are a bit shy in meetings but aren't so intimidated typing a query into a text box.

I'm not saying I shun being sociable. I enjoy it. But I don't pretend it is anything to do with work.

What about those serendipitous conversations that come up while waiting in line at the cafe? Yeah, like those happen all the time, right? No, no they don't. Here's what happens instead. People work on something interesting and they post about it on their social media or maybe their blog. Or maybe they put together an illustrative project on Github or similar. Now, say I'm trying to solve a problem so I use search tools to find what other people have done, and I find their post. Maybe I find several different posts that circle around my particular problem and I do some work to pull the different ideas together. Did I interact with any of these people face to face? No. But I probably sent them a like or a thank you comment or whatever was appropriate.

Here's the thing: this way of doing it, as opposed to waiting in line at the cafe hoping to run into someone who might help, gives me a truly huge catchment of talented individuals whose brains I can effectively pick. And I can do it from home more easily than the office.

How do you get people committed to the work if they can't rely on having friends at the office? This is the gist of Dunbar's objection to WFH. The answer is you make the work interesting and worth while (obviously you pay people decently too). But I do understand one of the social needs here, and that is the need to crow about something you've done. So we should make sure there are opportunities for that. Encourage employees to do short presentations on their work to the rest of the team. Maybe make them cross team events, though I would keep them peer to peer rather than have them presenting to the bosses to keep it more relaxed. Situations will vary. Obviously these are video presentations but we have endless tools for doing that nowadays. Sometimes you might get the serendipitous effect from this, but mostly not. What you will get is people taking pride in their work, getting respect from their peers, and learning about the wider business they are working for. All this is good. You can even, gently, bring some of the less confident employees out of their shells.

So do we need any social interaction at work after all? There is a tradition of a last thing on Friday video call called the 'all hands' where the team gets together on video with a beverage of choice. They're okay but we could be better at them. For one thing the team leader who runs the call needs to be good at getting everyone talking. Team leaders aren't always good at this so maybe sometimes get someone else to run it. Often too many people sit there saying nothing, which is probably what they would do in a face to face situation actually so we need to be clear what our goals are with these events and either do them well or stop doing them. Let's face it, you're not doing the mental health of anyone any good either in a bar or on a call if all they are doing is looking at their watch wondering how soon they can leave.

So there it is. WFH has huge advantages over office work, we have the tools to make it work, and if we use them well we can provide employees with work they can be happy and proud to do.

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