Working from home may hurt your career
bbc.com
bbc.com
What's real nice is to have the ability to find the right balance for yourself, if you have the luxury of a company that's relaxed about such things.
I live in the New Jersey suburbs and have an approximately 2 hour (one way) door-to-door train (includes a 20 minute walk from Penn station) commute to get to my office in Manhattan. For me, I like to be able to work at home 2-3 days a week. I do like to go into the office and see my co-workers and friends. I would feel out of it and lonely if I didn't have that. I just don't want to do it 5 days a week. Thankfully I have that luxury now. Situations change all the time and nothing is forever, but it's great at the moment.
That said, I've done a lot more collaborative work at other times and definitely got more benefit from working mostly in an office. Also, although I know times and communication mechanisms have changed, I really have trouble imagining that I'd have either enjoyed or done well with working from home when I first graduated.
I wouldn't recommend this for junior devs though. You need to be around experienced people to fast track your learning.
Relatedly, I would design a 100% colocated team around basically the same workflow as a 100% distributed team.
Offices may still hold the upper hand here, a lot of people have mental barriers about messaging coworkers vs casually wandering by their office.
Coffee/Break room chats and other social gatherings would help in building rapport with other devs and eventually you would be learning from each other. Unless the place you work is extremely toxic, I would say just give it time. My 2c.
Unfortunately, it didn't work at all. Even though the nominal agreement was that during "work hours" I wasn't to be disturbed so I could be productive, and my wife agreed that was necessary and ok, in practice little things inevitably came up each day that broke flow and made it nearly impossible to get anything important done. I ended up switching jobs after a few months to a BigCo with an office in large part to regain that separation between work and personal life, to the benefit of both.
I'd still like to work from home, but I'm not sure that it's possible with my current life situation.
There is no template that fits all.
I have almost the same situation, 1,5h (one way) train + bicycle or buss trip to work. However my employer gives me the choice to work remote from home as much as I like.
I usually go to the office one or two times a week, and this is perfect for me right now, It might change in the future, who knows?
My strong believe in this subject is that you, as an employee, will more likely stay happy and perform better in your work if your employer gives you the flexibility of working remote.
I know that, at least for me, I would have to get paid a lot more to come into the office. I don't miss the commutes, business lunches, and the general overcrowding of the city.
I've been offered and approached about multiple roles which have had a variety of nice bits about them, but having to commute for them ...costing me 4 hours of my time per day just doesn't make it make any sense.
I've turned down roles for twice my wage. Don't get me wrong i want a new challenge but i also love my free time. Getting to bed my 22:00 each night and setting my alarm for 06:00 is something i don't think i can tolerate.
when i'm stuck with a commute i'll cycle, as it replaces gym time.
What I will say is that there are certainly advantages to being in a shared space with collaborators for a scheduled bracket of time on a regular basis. I haven't yet found a remote-working setup that can properly mimic these advantages. Certainly some make a praiseworthy attempt -- but some of my team's most productive days have been kicked off with a brief hallway conversation that resulted in alignment/commitment that would have taken far longer if attempted remotely.
There are two big negatives i find from working from home, by the end of Friday I NEED socialising which can be at odds with my partners desire to chill inside after her week 'outside'. Secondly i don't get involved in side projects not directly associated with my actual role, which i do miss.
I have been lucky enough to work with really awesome people in good environments. If I have worked from home I will have lost the pleasure to meet them, and - with some of them - to have long lasting friendships.
I also have learned a lot about people needs, fears, and worries. And how that affects the work environment, and how to deal with it to create a more productive environment, at the same time that a happier one.
To hide away from "office bullshit" just hides the problem, it doesn't solve it. If you have a lot of that in your company, maybe it will be better to change to another one.
> I don't miss the commutes, business lunches, and the general overcrowding of the city.
I live at 10 minutes from the office, 45 minues if I walk. And I love to go for lunch with my co-workers. We have a really relaxed and welcoming environment at the office. So it translates in people that want to work toguether.
Working from home can solve some problems. But "office bullshit" needs to be solved in other ways. Otherwise you are just hiding it behind distance.
I have much the same problems while at the office (and while avoiding open-plan areas helps, all offices seem to be distraction factories to some extent).
Different environments for different people, I guess. Although that doesn't fit well with a culture that says management is about fitting people into standardised processes.
> I have much the same problems while at the office (and while avoiding open-plan areas helps, all offices seem to be distraction factories to some extent).
> Different environments for different people, I guess.
Absolutely! I seem to get the most work done and the best "flow" when I'm sat on a train (the Metropolitan underground line in particular). I believe this is partly down to the complete lack of distractions and inability to do much else but sit and work.
Alan Shreve summed it up perfectly for me: https://inconshreveable.com/10-17-2013/code-at-30000-feet/
If it was feasible I would spend the entire working day going back and forward along the length of the line.
If I want to research a problem without interruption, home. If I want to be available to people casually (they don't feel it merits a ticket, which often means I will write one up for them) I need to be in the office.
Different requirements, different environments.
Personally i now prefer to have the option to wfh on some days (i don't use it often) but in general i enjoy working at an office. My communte is also just 20min by bike though.
One of the best things about remote work is that it puts the responsibility for the working environment on the individual rather than the organisation. Different people thrive in different environments, and forcing everybody into the same environment isn't going to get the best out of everybody. But people tend to know which environments they work best in, and remote work lets them work in the environment that suits them best. Do you need to lock yourself away in silence to concentrate? You can do that. Do you need human contact to stay sane? Go to a co-working space or coffee shop.
Agreed.
But there are some surprisingly paternalistic views out there about employer-employee relationships. You'll definitely find employees who believe it's the employer's responsibility to create a very structured environment where work happens, and managers who are very happy to go along with this.
Interesting. I'm wondering if that's true in reverse for people. Did you accept a 23% pay cut to work from home? For people who currently work in an office, would you accept that? It seems pretty steep--I don't think I could afford to do that.
> and the usual tax robbery..
You don't pay taxes working from home?
He's justifying the large monetary penalty for NOT working at home by mentioning that it takes in account income tax as well.
I've never been offered the chance (and sadly, I need the money).
For example, say you value your time at ~$50/hr, and the train costs $8/day, and there are 20 work days in a month. If your daily commute takes 2.5 hrs, that's $2660/month in value to you. If your marginal income tax rate is 28%, then to actually get that amount of additional spending money you'd need to make $2660/.72 = $3695/month. This would be a 30% raise if you currently make about 12k/month (144k/yr).
It's hard to justify assigning a dollar value to your time though, unless you'd otherwise be making that ~$50/hr. If I were not commuting for 4 hours per day, it's not like I'd be consulting for those hours, so there's no opportunity cost. Is the time I'd otherwise spend lying on the couch worth ~$50/hr? Hard to say.
Assign an hourly value to your free time. If you wanted to relax at home on a Saturday playing video games, how much money would I need to pay you to do something for me instead?
I'll work for no less than $20/hr. I'll give up my free time for no less than $100/hr.
My rates differ because, at least for me, I'm required to work to pay bills and pay to do things I enjoy doing with my free time. Since I'm required to do it and I need to be realistic with what I ask for, I charge less. My free time is time I'm not required to work - so there needs to be enough monetary incentive for me to be willing to give up my free time. Idealistically my "work rate" would match my "free time rate".
In an entire 7 day week, if I only had 1 hour of freetime, I would value it at $1000. My 100th hour I might only value at $5, as I would be getting bored.
So if you are busy with family and commitments.. working from home vs not may be the difference between 10h and 0h of freetime a week. Whereas for a single guy with no hobbies, it might only change the balance from 30h of freetime to 40h of freetime, which is a bit less.
Even with constant free time - my mood can affect the price. If I'm not in the mood to work, I'd charge more. Free time itself can adjust in value. Nothing happening this weekend? Normal rate. I planned to go to an expo? Looking at x10 the normal rate if they expect me to miss that. I have a date planned? They're looking at an all expenses paid two week vacation for my date and I if they expect to be able to buy that time from me.
Would I give up another hour with my family for $100? How often would that opportunity come along? If I had the opportunity to make $100/hr whenever I wanted, I'd first quit my job and fill up that time with this new $100/hr activity, before eating into my free time. But that's a lot of money--it would be very tempting to let it eat into my free time and I'd probably just apply it to as much time as possible in order to maximize the opportunity. That's probably true for any dollar value over what I currently make.
But reality is, whether or not I would give up an hour of free time for $100 is a pointless question to ask because I'm not aware of a way to convert free hours into $100 bills. If I had the opportunity to do such a thing, I'd simply be doing it instead of what I'm currently doing.
For some people it could be $5 because they need some money to buy some food to eat. For others it might be $30 to spend at the bar on Friday night. Others charge more - I know a contractor who won't settle for any less than $10,000 for 40 hours of their time (comes out to $250/hr). Some people value their time above all else, refusing any monetary incentive. You simply can't buy their time.
If you think $40/hr is worth your time, do it. If you think $2/hr is worth your time, do it. The value is yours to set - it can fluctuate and change. But learning to value your time is worthwhile. You only get so much of it, so be sure you're happy with how you're spending it.
[0] I've been told that's terrible future planning, because I may need more cash in the future. I prefer to live in the now and worry about possible futures when it becomes the now. There are just so many futures to worry about and plan for. What if I worked harder to store away more money just to die of a heart attack without ever being able to enjoy my life? To avoid stress and simplify my life I don't worry about possible futures.
Just curious, where all are you commuting between? I rarely hear people commuting over 2hrs round trip here on the West Coast, and a 2hr commute round trip can allow you to buy super far out in the gricklegrass, IE Tulalip, WA, where a couple acres with a house is ~170k, with a 5min drive to the park and ride and a 47min ride to Downtown Seattle. Living closer to the core, a similar house would be easily $500k, but it'd be a single seat, 20min bus ride, less if on the train.
I suspect there's no "occupational privilege tax" if you're working from home.
I live in the suburbs and work in the city and for the privilege of having a job, I have to pay the city money.
In fact, you do not even need to live in Rumenia to use this clause. All you need to do, is to set up a Rumenian company that invoices your employer and then pays you your salary, free of tax.
This is just one of the gazillion ways in which as a programmer, you can avoid paying even one dollar in income tax.
I have personally paid the equivalent of less than 12 months worth of income tax in a career of 25+ years.
Seriously, there is never a good reason to pay it. You can always circumvent any attempt at making you pay. That is pretty much always trivial.
Uh, generally speaking one is still liable to pay income tax on payments coming from a foreign company.
I'm preparing for a big move that will require me to work remotely or leave the company. Part of my bargaining chips is accepting up to a 50% pay cut, starting at a much lower % of course (10-20%~)
There's no reason I can't work remotely other than they dislike it. The team frequently works from home/remotely (eg: while "on vacation") and there is little in the way of processes that requires anyone to come in to the office. Nearly all communication happens over Slack and the occasional email chain.
I love the company I work for and don't want to leave them. But I also have my own dreams and ambitions in life and given a choice between the two I'll choose to follow my dreams.
In the US, you can cut out state taxes by moving to a state that doesn't levy income tax. It's a nice self-raise.
It is very easy to achieve that by moving out of the country. You see, in 75% of the globe they do not have a population registry with address registry with a functioning postal system to send you a tax return right to where you happen to live. A lot of these countries -- most actually -- have an income tax system on their books, but they cannot make it work, not even to save themselves from drowning. In those circumstances it is impossible for them to ask me about my income, which they then don't. I pay no income tax because nobody around me does, and if they did, I would just move elsewhere.
If you dedicate a portion of your home as a "home office" that you work out of, suddenly you can gain a lot of interesting deductions, based on the square footage of the home office.
It's not a lot (but every little bit counts), and it also depends on how much you work out of the home, but there's various deductions for electricity, internet costs, magazine and book purchases (relating to your work), and other items. So you could potentially lose this if you don't work from home (and if you don't claim the deductions, of course).
This may or may not be what they mean, though...
Less social interaction, no clear home/work time split, lack of the background encouragement and feedback you get constantly from working face to face with people, even the simple lack of exercise and time outside - these are all things you have to be really careful about.
You can't expect to work from home and still interact with everyone who is home.
And where is this "someone else" supposed to come from? You have enough money to hire a full-time nanny? For many professionals, both parents work (and the mother taking significant time off to raise kids is a career-killer).
I think you're just grasping for excuses for why working from home can't work with kids.
I don't think I'm "grasping for excuses" at all. The kids that I've seen and met would be completely impossible for me to work at home and maintain any concentration. I'm honestly befuddled how parents of kids under the age of 10 get any rest at all. I guess some of them are lucky and get kids like me when I was young (I was quiet and liked to sit in my room on my computer, or doing puzzles, etc.), but the kids my friends have aren't like this at all, and from my observation are the norm these days (I was an odd, quiet kid even back in those days).
At 3:15PM my father-in-law picks up our 7 year old from school and hangs out with her.
At 5PM my wife gets off work and goes and picks up our 7 year old. I go and pick up our 2 year old.
We come home, make dinner, have family time, and put the kids to bed.
My only distraction during the day is my 4 month old lab puppy who needs a little play time and bathroom breaks.
It's not tough. It's about having a consistent schedule.
I did however get lucky as my 2 year old has slept through the night all but 4 nights since she was 2 days old.
My wife goes to bed around 9PM, I go to bed around 11:30PM, she gets up at 6:30AM and I get up at 7:45AM.
I worked semi-remotely for a mid-sized company with ~100 IT/developers and those that were working from home were less-involved from a workplace perspective.
I now work for a small company (< 60 employees) that's entirely remote and it works wonderfully. Everyone is on a level playing field and all processes are designed to support it.
I always think about the study of pianists in Berlin - the excellent ones and mediocre ones put the same amount of time into practice, but the excellent ones did it in two 100% focused blocks while the mediocre ones did it interleaved with other things.
If you need an office, a man-cave, a vacation house on Hawaii, a one-man island, New York during rush hour, noise of Barcelona center, ... to get into the flow, by all means do it!
The problem is, many people can't afford to set up an ideal working environment for themselves if they need one of the quieter venues. A one-man island obviously is unattainable for almost anyone, a vacation house on Hawaii is unaffordable to all but multi-millionaires, and even a decent house with a separate, quiet room is unattainable for many because of family or roommates.
Small ones are on the market for less than a modest family home in popular urban areas, e.g. http://www.orkneyproperty.co.uk/content/b7a2dd97-8b71-4b09-9...
Much of the issue with housing costs and difficulty getting the property you want are down to people piling into a few hotspots. More remote work seems like the answer to this.
Oh, if only that were true! (It's less that $400k at current exchange rates, and arguably even that overstates the purchasing power).
not exactly a "modest family home" in most of the US outside of a few overpriced metro areas like SV.
It'll go a long way in the housing market of much of the UK, too. Just not the "overpriced metro areas" (where, sadly, a lot of the software jobs seem to end up...)
Apparently you are a genius. Which is fine.
The point of the article is that this kind of setup doesn't always work, so the rest of us average people should take the time to consider before jumping on the wagon.
When you start working from home you realize that while you were in the office, none of the stuffs that actually matters to you (besides your career) get priority:
- send that mail to ask for a refund: it's been on the dining table for months.
- fix that sink: meh... the plumber would not come on Saturdays
- buy a new bbq to have friends over: I'll go next week.
- doing your taxes: I'll hire some accountant to do it.
- wanna buy an apt: I'll do the visits after 7pm please.
Yeah, doing all these stuffs is annoying, but going to the office just to get away from chores seem like a terrible advice to me.
Out of curiosity, are you a native speaker of German or a closely related language? I'm not intimately familiar with the language, but it seems like both these nouns' German equivalents are countable, and I'm wondering whether that is the origin of your unusual usage here.
(ObTopic: In prior positions, I avoided working from home, because there are many more distractions there. In my current role, it's about even, which is regrettable, and working from home is off the menu here in any case.)
/for what it's worth, your English is already better than my French, which is virtually non-existent! Also - it's already way better than a lot of adults here in the United States, which isn't saying much...
Plus the mistakes are very rookie mistakes that any WFH guide will tell you not to do. Almost all of them say have a dedicated work space so that your work mind can switch on and off.
The guy that tried being Mr Dad and WFH should have known better; kids require almost constant attention until they are in school. On the other hand, a few interruptions from family is no worse than those from your coworkers.
If you have a dedicated home office where you can put your headphones on and shut the door it's an utterly ideal programming environment.
Better yet (if you're one who like background music while working): a home office with speakers. Even nice headphones get uncomfortable after a while.
This example working in a small London house, on the dining room table with a baby around is very different to the American guy in a quiet suburb with a few spare rooms for an office, with kids at school or perhaps no kids at all.
Its one of the reasons I dont like working from home - I dont have an office at home and I prefer a short commute to the office where I have some space.
And this is exactly why I wish I could work from home: at home I have some space and peace & quiet. At work, I don't, because every company in America now has embraced the open-plan work environment, and thinks we need to be surrounded by chattering coworkers to be productive.
This really comes down to discipline and prioritizing. I'm not saying it's easy, but if you are at an office the plumber will think you're not home and leave. Not answering the door because you're working has the same effect. It's a choice.
For me personally, an office has more distractions than home.
In fact, the quote gives an example of why remote working is awesome. The author can get basic house chores and repairs done without doing a scheduling dance with people who also work 9-5.
In fact, I'm a great example of this. I tried to work from home in my mid 20s, and it just didn't work. I was too distracted by repairs to the old home we were rehabbing, to the dog, to video games. Fast forward a few years later, and my editor let me work remotely. That time, I had a nice office setup separate from the rest of the house, and I found it far more productive for a lot of the reasons commenters have suggested. Now, I've worked for home for more than a decade, and as long as the conditions are right (no inlaws visiting, the dog isn't sick, home repairs aren't calling my name), it's absolutely lovely.
Now, I also rent a co-working desk and go in to the office a couple times a week. It's a way to get the things you miss at home -- coworkers to talk to, especially -- while also having the freedom to stay home when you want.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback, and stay tuned for a follow-up soon.
Personally I did not find distractions to be a problem and problem worked more hours from home than when in the office.
Another problem with working from home is lack of human interaction. After a few months you start to want to talk to people (other than your family).
But I guess I might misunderstand the term anyway.
Life may be short, but we often lose perspective of how easy modern life is, in general. Some people have the short end of the stick, and I've had it a few times in my life. But rather than obtaining a career, I'd much rather obtain the ability to give my occupation the middle-finger and just do something else without batting an eye.
As far as working from home vs the office, to me it's not about one or the other. With the amount of isolation we have in the modern world, the office can be a more positive force for healthy social interaction than it once was. But sometimes I want to work in the solitude of my home while being able to do a few chores, eat ice cream, etc., while my Docker image gets built. I usually choose to work at home when I especially enjoy what I am working on but am just sick of the office atmosphere. Other times, I have something I'm less interested in but need a "serious" environment for so I can better concentrate. For that, I choose the office.
I really hope employers don't read more articles like this and take them the wrong way.
no chewing, no talking, good food, no noisy coffe machine, breaks when I need them (even a bed) and a good sound system (I'm slightly audiophile).
I still never dilute work too much. Sometimes 45min of table-tennis or something, but in general never more than 1h of break time during the work chunk of the day (I do quite strictly 8h plus break-time and finishing some smaller task or short communications with the team).
I do make sure to tell the others what I accomplished or when I'm stuck a bit so they know what I'm up to, even when not following the tickets closely.
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For various life reasons I've strongly considered fully remote positions recently but am concerned that I'd neutralize my most valued job skill in the process. To that end I've managed to swing at least a partial WFH arrangement.
For most people, what does work well is a split office/remote schedule. Some do a couple days a week from offsite. Some will work onsite 3 weeks, offsite 1 week. This sort of arrangement yields the benefits of being in a common location (face time, boss time, etc), while giving workers the option to work offsite part-time so they are not chained to the same desk all of the time.
Distractions exist at work too, but when everyone around you is working, you can't help but work as well.
When you're home, your mental state it's "I'm home, I should not be doing work". At least that's how it was for me.
I can be productive working on a personal project when I'm home, but that's because I can work on it whenever and however I want. I can work in bursts of energy. But that's not how professional work is done.
Just have a place at home where you only do work. It can be a room or a desk. If you try to do work on your couch, bed, or lunch table it won't work.
Obviously doubling up like this does not work, and I don't know anyone who tries to do it. Implying that it's common gives working from home a bad name. At least in this article it is the father home with his child though, usually it's the mother.
I work in an office now but have worked from home both as an employee and a full-time freelancer. With the exception of children and sick pets, distractions at home during the work day are a choice. Someone knocking on the door is no different than a phone call at your office desk. If you have the time, answer it. If you don't, don't.
over time, the worst part of working from home is lack of eye contact. engaging with others outside of home can help, but there's still an awkward quality to getting to know people without seeing their reactions
The distractions issue mentioned at the beginning of the article falls on the employee: you simply cannot do two things at once. When I first started out I would take a shower, get dressed, etc., then move into a room that I have dedicated to work. That physical "commute" served as a mental delineation between the home and the office, and served me well. Over the years I've been able to change gears more easily, but that break between home and work is still essential.
The larger issue that I feel affects my career is the lack of "water cooler" connectedness that comes from being out of the office. I lose track of company/team strategies, decisions, projects, code names, and the like - all things that are usually handled by walking down the hallway. Mitigating these issues requires a change to the way the company operates. It needs to have managers that are aware of and accommodating remote employees in ways that would be automatic for an office of employees. When I travel to HQ for work, one of my primary jobs is reminding folks that there's a person attached to the voice on the other side of so many phone calls.
After more than 15 years outside of the office, has my decision to work remotely impacted my career? Almost certainly. Have there been days when I've wondered if it was the right way to go? Sure. At the end of those musings, though, there are benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. I get to have lunch with my family daily, I have the shortest commute in Los Angeles, and I get to set my own hours (within reason.) Professionally, too, there a benefits. I can crawl into my programmer-cave more easily than someone who is part of an office environment. In some ways I am easier to contact than my colleagues, because I never leave my chair.
To address another comment made elsewhere, I have been contacted by other companies, and been given offers that are very competitive to my current compensation. However, the ability to work remotely full-time has usually been the reason I turn them down. Maybe in another stage of life the answer may change, but for this season, I don't think I'd have it any other way.
I've done the best work of my life working the better part of the last decade and a half from a junior fortress of solitude.
But since TANSTAAFL holds, it did nothing good for my social life so I try to blend office time with solitude now.
And your experience will vary. I'm just another data point after all.
I think it's related to the level of autonomy that you have within a company and how passionate you are about the work.
When talking about how it's perhaps more important to investigate the conditions of success over failure, and how the situations contain multiple contributing factors to the way a complex system behaves, one thing that gets highlighted is common ground breakdown between practitioners.
With regard to communication, we are worried about assumptions made, communication fidelity, and the repair process. When we talk about IRC or Slack or Conference calls or email or whatever, those are really just adding another channel of communication and are not necessarily making communication more resilient. Repair processes to communication are a paradigmatic function of good teams.
What makes humans really good at succeeding in high tempo emergency situations is the ability of adaptive capacity.
I think the distinction with regard to remote working can fit into this, albeit with a little bit of corruption and maneuvering of the language.
To speak to this article, the takeaway should be that it's about organizations commiting to a remote-first approach. This goes so far beyond the dicussions we usually think about when wondering wtf people are doing while working from home. It actually also includes the resiliency of working with remote offices globally -- which makes it a culture problem. And the more a change tries to change the culture, the more likely it is that change is going to fail. So remote-first has to be taken by companies on principle or they're just making accomodations and the people who are working remotely are going to suffer. "A bad system will beat a good person every time" for the obligatory Deming quotation. The worst thing a bad process can do is tarnish the repuation of individuals.
Folks whose HQ is in another state/country: do you feel like part of the team or is your influence diminished among the outer rim?
If a team is only simply making accommodations for people to work from home ocasionally or whatever (not truly "remote-first"), then hallway conversations are inexorably changed from a convenience into a liability where people get left out of the loop to develop their own misconceptions about the way things work, the "why's" of what we're doing, and what sort of goals are important.
A remote-first approach can force the organizational infrastructure necessary to make work visible and provide feedback on milestones with distributed, empowered decision making. It is one of the ways (just like TDD, pair programming, etc all attempt to address) to help distribute knowledge across all teams wherever they are to help decrease the heroics needed daily and add ways to address changing demands. Increasing adaptive capacity has to be a fundamental ideal of an organization (aside: the trick here is avoiding building on human misery/heroics, and resulting in burnout).
It also helps improve the onboading process. If it takes 6-12 months for a new teammate to significantly contribute, then that is a risk. An organization with a remote-first approach who can cope with asynchronous workers will have the right kind of documentation, tooling, and relationships between teams to make this robust.
I would highly recommend watching this talk about 'common ground': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgC_N9glqMs
edit:
Let me clarify by that 'remote first' i don't mean force/recommend that everyone work remotely. By remote first, I mean taking the approach that all things should be considering the remote workers in the organization as first class citizens and creating processes that are unable to ignore the aspect of remote working. Pretend that all work could not be done if it wasn't addressing remote working.
In this way, remote working is actually a value add to an organization, not an accommodation.
edit 2:
I've been told my stump speech on this is too much of a millennial idea, which is funny because none of this is my original thoughts. A lot of these ideas come from people who are today aged 50+ or dead.