What do we get from returning to office?

“Are we going to enforce people to come back to office?”, Tommy asked.

A hot topic these days indeed.

“I am not sure. Nobody told me if we are to enforce anything immediately, or how to enforce it. But we have a policy to return to office three times a week by xx/xx/xxxx. That part I know as much as you know.”, I sighed.

“What do you think about the policy?” Tommy asked.

“What do you think the benefits of returning to office?” I asked back.

“Learning from each others, especially junior engineers to learn from senior ones right beside them can be very helpful. Also the social interactions for sure. We humans are social animals after all.” Tommy answered.

“Then what are the downsides of coming back to office?” I followed.

“The extra hours on commute, interruptions on family schedules, crowed and noisy office space … I don’t even know we have enough seats if everyone comes to office on the same day. Besides, if we all put on our headphones and code for seven hours without speaking to each others, I am not sure what we really get out of working in office. It might lower our productivity if we do it poorly.” Tommy answered.

“Right on Tommy!” I said, “Like most things in life returning to office has pros and cons, it depends on individual’s context and how we implement it in the most productive way possible, to maximize the pros and mitigate the cons.

I learned a lot from my ski school’s head coach. When he gave instructor training to us, he wouldn’t waste a single run - even the last run of our training session. He would ask ‘what movement do you want to focus on in this run?’, and he would suggest what specifics each one should pay attention to. Every run is a deliberate practice, to improve something of our ski skills.

I think to make returning to office productive we all need to be owners of how we spend our time in office. Be deliberate and intentional for every hour in office. Here are some ideas:

1. Schedule 1-1 meetings to get the most from each other.

2. Have clear agenda for lager group meeting.

3. Pair program together.

4. Have lunch together, engage, go for a beer after work, have fun.

If we start working at the age of 22 and retire at 65, without time off and overtime, we roughly have 43 years * 2,080 hours per year = 89,440 work hours. Not even 10,000 hours.

So if we want to be good at anything, make every work hour count! “