The canonical example would be it's hard to have a serendipitous conversation with your male colleagues in the mens restroom if you're female.
That's the obvious one. Then we get to styles of conversation and engagement. I've had to defend promotions for female engineers from criticism based entirely on their communication. "She is not assertive enough." Ok, is she highly effective at her job? Yes. Ok, then what the fuck are we talking about?
And always what we're talking about is men communicate a certain way, and women don't, and the men don't want to have to change.
To answer the disabled question, there was a flight of stairs at the office, and the meeting would end and people would just head up the stairs. Except the dude in the wheelchair. I'm autistic and I have light sensitivity, and after a meeting in a nice bright window office, I am exhausted and don't want to engage in social rituals.
My point is that the examples that tech leaders give as the reason to go back to the office are simply male social rituals, held up as "how we have good ideas and develop new hires". They're not. They are all managers performing post-hoc rationalization theater And if those were the goals, they'd figure out an effective way to meet them that's better than "chatting to john while taking a leak".
And the most galling thing is that every single one of my most impactful career moments didn't involve having a serendipitous conversation. It involved researching things I was interested in.
No one is having serious conversations in the restroom. That would be profoundly bizarre and weird.
And most people aren't saying that serendipitous conversations spur great big innovations or "aha!" moments, but rather that it just makes the process easier. Or that they prefer it. If yours are different then fine, but don't be so dismissive of other people's experiences and preferences.
I’m sorry but rude people exist everywhere and it’s not a tech thing. I’ve been in big tech for over a decade and I don’t have conversations in the bathroom. If you think WFH reduces these bro-relationships, you are being naive and they just become less accessible.
That's the obvious one. Then we get to styles of conversation and engagement. I've had to defend promotions for female engineers from criticism based entirely on their communication. "She is not assertive enough." Ok, is she highly effective at her job? Yes. Ok, then what the fuck are we talking about?
And always what we're talking about is men communicate a certain way, and women don't, and the men don't want to have to change.
To answer the disabled question, there was a flight of stairs at the office, and the meeting would end and people would just head up the stairs. Except the dude in the wheelchair. I'm autistic and I have light sensitivity, and after a meeting in a nice bright window office, I am exhausted and don't want to engage in social rituals.
My point is that the examples that tech leaders give as the reason to go back to the office are simply male social rituals, held up as "how we have good ideas and develop new hires". They're not. They are all managers performing post-hoc rationalization theater And if those were the goals, they'd figure out an effective way to meet them that's better than "chatting to john while taking a leak".
And the most galling thing is that every single one of my most impactful career moments didn't involve having a serendipitous conversation. It involved researching things I was interested in.
I am for nerds and against tech-bros.