This article is adapted from a post I shared on LinkedIn.
I can say it comfortably on behalf of our own company and teams: we work fully remotely. Even more interesting, we started this back in 2018 — before the pandemic — together with my manager at the time, Cengiz Şeker.
In companies that work on technology yet insist on calling employees into the office, I often observe shortcomings. When I question their reasoning, it usually comes down to: lack of organization, inexperience, a high cognitive load, an immature company culture, and not using the right tools. At a large organization I consulted for, they ran “two days office, three days home”; but in online meetings, the voice of those joining from home echoed through the microphones of those in the office.
I believe cognitive load should be reduced as much as possible. You do this with a document management system everyone can access, with AI tools, with internal training, and — most importantly — by helping staff gain experience. That way, when you assign work to someone, you evaluate it by its output, its value and the time spent — at the individual, team and manager level.
We don’t expect anyone to work eight hours, 9-to-6. Three or four hours of healthy, productive work is enough for us. Where you are doesn’t matter; can we reach each other, can we talk comfortably when stuck, can we critique and correct — that’s what I look at.
Even though story points on the Jira board mean something to customers, we prefer to evaluate retro story points; we hold meetings where we discuss this openly. As for technology companies that still, in the 21st century, call people into the office — I find them inefficient.