The loud one and the quiet one
I like offices. I like the coffee-machine conversation that turns into a solution, the workshop where a whiteboard fills up in an hour, and meeting the people I otherwise only see as a tile on a screen. And still, commuting tires me, especially in winter, when the whole train seems to be sneezing and coughing. I do not need to be in the office five days a week. What I need is a reason to be there.
Recently, Eugene wrote a LinkedIn post about leaving a new job during probation, after years of working mostly from home. The daily travel at rush hour, an office without quiet spaces, physical access to the building: each was an “added friction” he could manage on its own. Together, they were too much. He ends with a line that has stayed with me:
When the working environment is suitable for your most vulnerable employees and colleagues, it’s suitable for EVERYONE.
By temperament, I am almost his opposite: I recharge in a full room, he needs a quiet one. His story and mine still lead me to the same place. People are different, teams are different, and the same team is different from one month to the next. A rigid rule fits none of that. So the office days for workshops, networking, collaboration and debate should be agreed by each team, and for the rest of the week we should be free to decide where we work.
Why rigid rules fail
A rule that counts days measures attendance, not whether the day in the office was worth having. It can even make staying home sick feel like a missed quota.
“Three days a week, pick any” looks flexible, but when every person picks their own days, the team splits into groups who rarely overlap. You commute in to sit on video calls with the colleagues who chose Tuesday. People come in for people.
And some weeks call for much more time together: a project kick-off, a series of workshops, the weeks before a go-live, the first weeks of a new colleague. Other weeks are quiet delivery phases, when the best thing a team can do for each other is let everyone work in peace. A single company-wide count cannot follow each team’s rhythm. A team can.
Knowing each other is the point
When I have to analyse a database or work through a document in full concentration, I am faster and more precise at home, where it’s quiet. When we need to brainstorm, run a workshop or build a team, the office wins, and it wins by a wider margin when people already know each other. During the COVID-19 pandemic, my experienced developer colleagues told me they got more focused work done from home, while our new joiners had a hard time finding their place in the team. Focused work suits many people at home, but learning happens near the team. While a team has new joiners, their need should set the minimum, whatever the seniors prefer.
Some teamwork needs a room. Retrospectives and technical discussions go better on site, while status meetings work well remotely. The session where requirements meet code belongs in the room: walking the developers through a request, the reasons behind it and the options for solving it. Those conversations go better when people know how the others think and argue.
That knowledge rarely grows in a video call that starts on the hour and ends five minutes early. It grows at networking and team events, which belong at the centre of the office days. They do not all have to be social: a workshop, a planning day or a lunch with the colleagues from the other office builds team spirit too. The social side has to stay an offer that people can decline freely, and it should not always mean drinks. I say that as someone who would happily stay until the end.
An office built for different people
Once a team has set its office days, they bind its members. For the rest of the week, each person decides where to work.
The office itself has to work for different people. Someone like Eugene could work from home most of the week and come in for the workshop or the networking event, with a desk in a quiet spot for the hours in between, away from the meeting rooms. Ideally not next to me, or to any other business analyst who spends the whole day talking in meetings. In Switzerland, trains have quiet compartments where nobody takes a call and nobody expects a chat. Why not the same at work, especially in open-plan offices? Nobody should have to explain why they need quiet. Where someone needs more, such as remote participation by default, that is a private arrangement between the person and their lead, made without arguing the case in front of the team. Whether this would have been enough for Eugene is his to judge.
For a distributed team, the meeting room matters just as much. My team meets across three or four offices, and I have seen what goes wrong. A whiteboard on the side wall is invisible to everyone outside the room. A camera that shows the whole table makes it hard for remote colleagues to see who is speaking. When one person shares their desktop, only one person has the mouse. A shared digital whiteboard that people in the other offices and at home can draw on, and cameras that frame each speaker, make the room a reason to come in, though across offices they narrow the gap rather than close it.
Objections, answered
The usual objections are that a company needs shared anchor days so that teams overlap, that team choice creates silos, and that mixed meetings with half the people on video do not work.
Anchor days as such are not the problem. A number that ignores what the days are for is. If the office days are worth it, the team may well ask for more of them. Silos are a fair worry, but a company can set the frame, a minimum or a range, and let each team choose its days inside it, with a periodic cross-team gathering for the everyday contact that gets lost.
Mixed meetings do not fix themselves, so discussion-heavy work belongs on the office days and the team agrees on its meeting rules. A common rule says that if one person is remote, everyone joins from their own screen. I do not follow that rule. In a team spread across locations, someone is always remote, and a colleague who can only join from home, perhaps because of care duties, should not send everyone who travelled in back to their laptops.
What your office days are for
Eugene and I want different things from an office: he wants quiet, I want the crowded kitchen. His story convinced me of what is wrong: a count of days that ignores what the days are for and what the office must offer us. Fixing that does not start with a new policy document. It starts with a conversation in each team about which weeks need the room, what happens there, and which work stays at home. The rest of the week then belongs to each of us. Here is a question for your next team meeting: if someone asked your team why it comes in on its office days, what would the answer be?