This is a summary. For a deeper dive, read the LinkedIn article.
Remote work was not created by the pandemic, but the pandemic pushed it into a new stage. Many companies moved from treating remote work as an exception to treating it as a serious operating model.
The transition is not easy. Moving from co-located work to hybrid or remote work changes the cost of communication, the shape of management, and the way teams build trust.
The biggest friction is simple: starting a conversation takes more effort. In an office, someone can turn around and ask a question. In a distributed team, the same question may require a message, a calendar check, a video call, and waiting for everyone to join. The tool may work perfectly and the interaction still has more overhead.
Remote work also creates real opportunity. The talent pool is wider. A company can hire great engineers without forcing every person into the same city. That can make a team stronger if the company is honest about the operating model and does the management work required.
For managers, the lesson is direct: stop managing the chair.
Presence is not the same as value. In a remote or hybrid model, managers need to be better at indirect management:
- make collaboration visible through the right channels
- create trust and transparency
- set clear expectations
- support people rather than monitor their seats
- keep the environment healthy for self-motivated work
The move to remote work needs a roadmap. A team should know which stage it is in, what is hard today, and what should improve next. Without that shared picture, remote work can feel like a failed experiment when the real issue is an unfinished transformation.
My view then was that remote work would become normal. I still think the useful question is not whether remote work is possible. It is whether the team has learned the operating habits that make it work.