Embodiment Is A Superpower In An Abstract World

Why hybrid work is the best.

Hybrid work is the best of all worlds.

Since the pandemic, pundits have weighed the benefits and drawbacks of remote vs in-office work to no end. Those on team-remote cite better work-life balance, fewer ad-hoc interruptions, and a wider potential talent pool as reasons to cancel commercial real estate deals and furnish everyone with home office stipends. The onsite advocates contend that collaboration, engagement, and productivity suffer when people communicate asynchronously and attend virtual meetings with their camera off.

For the eight years I’ve worked in software development, at least half of that time has been remote. My first dev job had me onsite, but there was considerable flexibility. We had two main offices — Huntington Beach, CA and Boulder, CO, but we also had a number of employees, particularly on the sales team, who worked remotely. The engineering team was mostly colocated — primarily in Huntington Beach, with a few UI-oriented devs in Boulder. My manager, who was arguably the most senior engineer, worked remotely, but had started onsite before moving out of state. After a few months of working there though, I negotiated permission to work from home a couple of days per week, for the sole purpose of the benefits it brought me — time to attend to house chores, run errands, and avoid a commute. When I moved to Charlottesville, I became a fully remote employee, though I flew back to CA twice and to a conference with some teammates before taking a job with a local startup. This second job was also in-office, but also afforded considerable flexibility.

In both of these roles, remote work was seen as a benefit primarily to the employee. It was a bidirectional signal of trust and respect, a byproduct of a culture that cared about outcomes rather than inputs, and assumed the best of team members. While some people maintained that they were more productive without the distractions of an open office, for the most part there was a shared consensus that we were at our best when we were working together. Zoom was a poor substitute for a conference room with a whiteboard.

Once the pandemic began stretching into the summer though, there seemed to be a shift in the collective consciousness of tech workers. We became increasingly insistent that we could execute equally well in our housebound condition. And in fairness, my colleagues did continue to do some remarkable work, especially given the disorienting hyperreality of contagion, riots, and unrest that our smartphones constantly reminded us about Tack on near-zero interest rates and an influx of cash that fueled a hiring bubble, many of us in software development felt nearly invincible for a couple of years. In the minds of many, remote work was here to stay, regardless of what the future held.

When the interest rates rose along with inflation, however, the fragility and transience of our situation became increasingly apparent. Along with layoffs and declining job postings came return to office mandates. It was at this point that the fissures began to show. Employees who were hired as remote were given a timeline to relocate. Others, who had moved to more remote environs to escape the urban grind were told they would need to commute in again.

Some of these announcements were handled poorly — that I won’t dispute. Some might even contend that they acted as “soft layoffs”, compelling employees to resign without needing to pay unemployment insurance. Given these realities, it’s no surprise to me that many feel suspicious at best toward their employers.

But what I find frustrating about the discourse as it stands is what I consider to be disingenuousness on the part of many remote advocates. Prior to 2020, I rarely encountered people who considered a virtual meeting to be as good as sitting alongside someone. In my first job, we eagerly awaited our engineering summits and team gatherings. Aside from the camaraderie and good times that were had, it was also a time to lock in and collectively gain clarity about what we were doing and why.

In my current role, my immediate team is fully distributed. I have colleagues on the west coast and the east coast, elsewhere in Texas, and in Portugal. Given the disparate timezones, it makes our excellence at execution all the more impressive, in my opinion. My role is technically based out of the Austin office, but I’m allowed to work from home as I like. This is something I take advantage of, especially when life admin things like doctor’s appointments and childcare hiccups occur.

But most days, I choose to go into the office.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that, despite having a shed in the backyard (the “casita”) that acts as a guest room, library, and home office, the presence of young children is a distraction. I think most working parents would agree with me on this. Second, I do well in dedicated environments — when I’m at the office, I’m there to work. Finally though, I like going into the office because there are teams adjacent to mine who work there, and it’s an opportunity to build relationships. The benefits of small talk at the coffee maker and impromptu lunches compound.

Most significantly, though, just as art by humans is made all the more valuable because of AI-generated art, I would argue that embodiment is a superpower in an abstract world. It’s a trust-building mechanism to encounter someone in their dis-intermediated form when you are accustomed to interacting with pixelated avatars. Through handshakes, eye contact, and just shooting the shit, one can build connections that Zoom cannot replicate.

This isn’t to say that you can’t succeed as a remote team. I’ve seen it happen, and I think it has its benefits. But the consensus on my team is nearly universal that we want to meet one another in person someday. And it’s not just for the food and drinks on the company dime and time (though who doesn’t love that), it’s also because we know that embodiment provides the highest fidelity signal, no matter how well reconstructed digital signals may be of their analog counterparts.

If you want to stand out from the machines, stand next to another person.