Telecommuting: What Went Wrong?

 October 2021

Why Work From Home is going badly as the pandemic winds down

The work from home dream is dying for an increasing number of workers, if in fact they were interested at all. Why?

> Work/life separation anxiety

Think about why gyms: yes, you can work out at home...but do you ever? Of course not. So we established a place where you travel to it, work out, and don't do anything else, for a specific amount of time.

Offices were built on the same theory of establishing a place just to work, although home office workers have turned out to be astoundingly productive. That's good, I think.

So what's the bad?

Well...you leave an office every day, after 8 or 9 hours (if you're lucky). But the home office? 

You can't leave it. 

Where are you going to go? The other room? Maybe, if you have one. And it's not full of anxious small children and/or an irritated spouse. The kitchen? Well, there's the source of your "Quarantine 15", isn't it?!

And you add those hours you're not commuting to your workday - minus setting the alarm a little later, a bigger breakfast, more promises to workout unfulfilled - and 10-12 hour days become the norm. (The dream to do that 4 days a week and then have 3 day weekends be the norm is one workers cling to desperately, and one that will probably never come true.)

As for "relaxing" after work, instead of hitting up your team's favorite watering hole on the way home, you now have to make a special trip there...as if anyone ever would. (Which is terrible news for any given restaurant or bar, needless to say.)

Which leads us to problem #2:

> Office communities allow learning and advancement

Offices can be unpleasant to be in: the lights are harsh, everyone is crowded in together, and some people are just annoying. Especially bosses.

...but some people are very knowledgeable and helpful to you for any number of reasons. You need people like that to grow, and advance in your career, maybe to the point of doing the same for others.

And those great people are gone, isolated in their own home offices. Reaching out to them is awkward and might cut into their important time...so we don't.

This is a recipe for disaster in any business. Trying to get recent graduates and anyone new to a career up to speed on the reality of the work world quickly and efficiently has been bad enough in recent times. In a post-office world, it's become almost impossible - and it's probably already having a disastrous impact on your industry, on businesses you like, and maybe even the company you work for. 

Good help doesn't grow on trees, you know.

LinkedIn has fallen down on this job, turning into a Facebook for the "still posts Dilbert cartoons on their cubicle walls" set. Social media events are very overloaded with get rich quick garbage. Online classes can help, but they only show recipes - fresh talent needs space to make them.

Is there any way to save the telecommuting dream?

It would be nice to think that the massive disconnect between the unemployed population and the business world's hunger for new talent can be resolved. But it's simply the result of a massive automation fail decades in the making. You didn't get a call about your resume because the bots at the company you wanted to work for didn't understand something, or didn't get X amount of desired keywords, and just threw it out. (If the job existed at all... but I digress.) The company either knows this and isn't vested in fixing it, or it has no idea and lacks the resources to fix it. Either way, you and everyone else who applied (and doesn't know someone at the company) are out of luck.

What to do? Start a business? Well...doing what? How many developers, designers, content producers, and marketers can the economy sustain? There must be something else we can do, medical school or that chemical engineering degree being out of reach at some point in one's life.

And then there's problem #3 (nope, not done yet):

> The internet can only provide you with so much business

The work is out there. The problems people face that they can't resolve on their own are all out there, in the big wide world where potential customers still refuse to get gMail addresses or update their desktop OS. Don't sleep on those people.

Entrepreneurs have to do the legwork of finding the work, and without an office life pedigree, you're going to have to be more resourceful.

It's going to be fun. And scary. And frustrating. Or maybe rewarding a little.

Good luck.