Every time I deal with the traffic in Seattle, or read about the outrageous increases in rent, I remember that I thought this would all go away with the advent of the "work from home" revolution.
When dial-up Internet was the norm, it wasn't realistic for office users to be able to connect from home and do their work at the same speed as they could when sitting at an office computer connected to the corporate network. But today, using VPNs and other tools, most office workers can connect from home (or anywhere in the world with fast Internet) and be able to download documents and send messages at about the same speed they could do from the office. Why, then, do almost all full-time employees at tech companies have to head into a physical building during normal working hours?
There are the in-person meetings, of course, but it's a running joke among office workers that a lot less is accomplished during meetings than during the time that workers spend working at their computers. For that matter, a video-conferencing system lets people meet virtually and see everyone's faces on the screen.
Pondering that question, I tried to think about the times that I really needed to track down someone face-to-face at work. In almost all cases, I had asked the person a question, and they had either been (a) ignoring me, or (b) giving answers that required follow-up clarification, and the only way to get that clarification was to corner them face-to-face. The answers and the clarifications were not things that had to be delivered in person -- if I had gotten answers by email, that would have been enough. The problem was that my emails were too easy to ignore, but if I found the co-worker in their cubicle, they basically had to answer.
This suggests that there might be a magic bullet that hasn't been tried yet: for an office to simply implement a messaging system that requires the recipient to answer, and periodically nags them with any unresolved questions still lying on their plate. Now, before people stagger back and gasp with horror at the idea of constantly being forced to answer questions, keep in mind that only your co-workers can send these messages, and they can be disciplined (up to and including being fired) for abusing it. If you think a co-worker is abusing the "required answer" or "request for clarification" system, you can go to their manager, the same way that you could complain to a co-worker's manager if they constantly barged into your cubicle with non-urgent matters. What you cannot do is just ignore the question regardless of whether it's important or not. If you are ignoring legitimate questions for too long, your co-workers can complain to your manager as well.
I optimistically think that implenting this sort of "accountability-for-answers" system would greatly reduce the need for people to actually go in to the office to discuss issues in person. On the other hand, perhaps as a tech worker I should be careful what I wish for. A highly efficient work-from-home system would allow me to work remotely for a company in San Francisco without having to move there and pay their outrageous housing prices, but it could just as easily allow the whole job to be outsourced to Malaysia where the labor costs are much cheaper. Maybe I should be glad that managers still insist on in-person meetings and feedback, even if it does mean some extra time every day sitting in traffic.
