A Middle Ground Regarding Working From home

Vaddadi Kartick
Nov 7 · 2 min read

In my startup, we work from home, and meet in the office once every few days. If there’s a team meeting, we all turn up. Or if two people need to work together on something, whether debugging something, knowledge transfer or a release, they turn up.

I find that this works better than coming to the office every day, as was the norm in my previous job. Some people never worked from home, and others worked from home once in a blue moon. But on the whole, work happened in the office, reflecting a traditional mindset. This wastes a lot of time in commuting. I knew people who’d sit in a cab 3 hours a day [1]. If some of this time is used for work, and some for personal things, it would be a win-win: the company will get more work out of the employee, and the employee will have more time to spend with his family or whatever he likes to do.

We need time to work alone without disturbance and we need time to communicate, coordinate and plan. Some of the latter is best done in person, at which times we use the office. Though we have one person who prefers to work from the office even if nobody else turns up. Again, I give employees that flexibility.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t hire a candidate who insisted on coming to the office only once a week or some other rigid attitude like that. When candidates ask me what our policy is regarding WFH, I tell them they can do it as long as it doesn’t affect their work, but they should always be available to come in to the office whenever needed.

I pay a lot for a coworking space we hardly use. This bites because it’s a significant amount of money coming out of my pocket. But it would be a fallacy to conclude that people should therefore come to the office every day. The office exists to serve us, not the other way around.

In summary, companies that expect everyone to come in everyday are being inefficient and rigid. A middle ground of coming to the office every few days works better for both the company and employees.

[1] The company offered free pick up and job. Maybe they shouldn’t, in which case this guy might work from home more often, and save time. As any economist will tell you, subsidies distort decision-making. The money spent in providing the free cab service can be paid to employees as increased salary, for example. That way, employees don’t lose.

Vaddadi Kartick

Written by

Senior Technical Consultant: kartick.org. Founder of Futurecam.app

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