A law school graduate who didn’t pass the California bar was bemoaning her circumstance and condemning the 33% pass rate. Among the things noted was that this was one of the first generations of primarily zoom-educated law students to take the bar exam. The graduate asserted that remote education had nothing to do with the massive failure rate. Whether this is right or wrong, I dunno, but it’s not so easily dismissed.
The experience of learning in a classroom was denied these students, with good reason, but still lost to them. Harvard released a study showing remote learning was significantly worse than in-person education, which should surprise no one who didn’t indulge their litany of excuses about why something that sucked wasn’t as bad as everybody knew it was.
But now that the zoom kids are graduating and entering the workforce, do they buy big boy pants and go to work in an office or stay home in sweat pants and play with the cat? Megan McArdle notes that the remote experience imposed by Covid isn’t going away easily.
Many had to go through a full year of pandemic schooling, which denied them a lot of my fondest memories of the place — the fun of being thrown together with hundreds of really smart young people from all over the world. And now they, like millions of other students, are heading into workplaces that may or may not even be places. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 33 percent of employers expanded remote work during the pandemic, and 60 percent of them intend to keep some or all of those remote options in the future. Kastle, which provides security badge systems to companies, says that as of the last week of April, occupancy in the offices they service was about 45 percent of its pre-pandemic level.
Will this be the “new normal”? If so, or if it’s at least an option, should new grads seize the opportunity to stay home and work? Working from home has its obvious benefits, but what other considerations are there?
But there are dangers, too. And those dangers are apt to be most dangerous for young people, who need to be building up their human capital right now: acquiring skills, learning about their industries, making professional contacts who can help them find their next job, or the job after that. All of that stuff is harder to do over email or Zoom.
Humans are a social species, evolved for face-to-face interaction. Anyone who worked or schooled remotely during the pandemic knows the drawbacks of moving to videoconference. The jerky, unnatural pace of conversation stifles spontaneity, and the distractions of home make it easy for people to check out, even when they want to pay attention. You never bump into someone before the meeting and remember a quick question you wanted to ask, nor catch up afterward on kids and pets and recent vacations.
Then there are the benefits of being a person to your co-workers rather than a box on a screen, and them being people to you. Making friends. Talking in person. Building goodwill with your boss and establishing a sense of camaraderie with a creature other than your cat.
The reactions to the notion that going into the office has significant benefits for new employees are fairly harsh. The lifestyle negatives, combined with young people’s disdain for employers, was manifest. Going to the office is certainly less convenient than staying home, and the idea of sacrificing personal convenience is foreign to many young people. And then there is the belief that they have nothing to learn from anyone in the office anyway since they already know everything they need to know.
Many, though not all, of these reasons to stay home are fairly compelling, but so too are McArdle’s reasons to go to the office and engage in human contact. Should remote work become the norm, or at least an option, going forward, or is it creating a host of isolationist problems for businesses and, more particularly, for young employees who have yet to establish their worth in “the real world”?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Although there is a vocal contingent out there, regarding another issue, who believe “let the states decide” is fascist (ie “bad”) the underlying principle, laboratories of democracy etc, is powerful. similarly, the answer here is let some companies try to make remote work the norm, let them compete fairly with others who try a different tack, and we will find out what’s best. of course, it is possible that because the half-life of even a very successful company is usually far shorter than that of a person’s working lifespan, those whose workers who choose wrongly may irrevocably harm their careers. thus, workers should choose their options eyes wide open, and not give in to the expediency of, say, working from the beach. then again, if young workers could be counted on to not give in to expediency a whole host of other issues would go away…
Not your most cogent effort.
I learned yesterday that you were at the 1978 Barton Hall Grateful Dead show at Cornell, which I missed because I was still in elementary school. But in the years 87 to 95, I did my very best to remediate. All this to say, I have a good excuse for lack of cogency.
A 33% pass was quite normal in the 1960s when University was hard and the average person was not expected to attend. I fail to see any vast increases in intelligence in society from having more graduates in the last 50years, we still make the same poor decisions time and time again..
This time the 33% have shown themselves to be particularly good at focusing while distractions abound that obviously captivate 67% of people. They should make great employees, providing far better productivity in their hours worked, just don’t look for them around the water cooler. After all, somebody pays for the time spent chatting about kids and pets and recent vacations. Of course, with such a productive 33% there won’t be the need for the other 67% anyway.
Unless you have a source for your assertion that a 33% pass rate was normal in the 1960s, I call bullshit.
I agree. Maybe I’m showing my age, but I think people of prior generations were more motivated to do well in college and would have higher pass rates. Many were the first in their families to attend college, which brings a pressure to do well of it’s own. I had a friend who got her BA in Social Work in 1978 who in 12 years of public school and 4 at the university got one 3.75. Everything else was 4.0s. And she was devastated. And she was not unique in my experience.
The State Bar of California has a list of pass rates for each bar exam from the fall of 1951 to the present. (No link per rules.) No pattern can be discerned. The pass rate in February, 2019 before we knew about Covid was 31.4 percent, February, 2018, 26.8 percent. In the sixties, no pass rate was lower than 40 percent.
It’s a bit tangential, but I get the feeling that the ones who shun the real jobs are the same nice folks that have to text everybody and can’t stand to talk on the phone IRL.
I’m also pretty certain that their cat’s would be thrilled (almost to the point where you could notice) if they left them the hell alone for an 8 to 10 hour stretch everyday. After all, they, like me, have far more important things to do than listening to grown children complain…like taking a nap, for instance.
Spontaneous communication is awkward. After all, they can say something wrong. Better to hide alone in a dark room and wonder why so many suffer anxiety and depression.
Must be nice to even think about working from home instead of having to go someplace to produce stuff.
Stan Rogers (1949 – 1983) pondered the issue for the white collar generation, and recorded this shortly before his untimely death aboard Air Canada Flight 797) .
A nice nuanced piece SHG. I guess there are some lines of business where face-to-face will always be preferable, others where it can be useful; especially for those starting out, and others, such as mine, where it really doesn’t matter a damn and working remotely is fine.
Being forced into a whole new paradigm of work by Covid has left very little room for the pros and cons to be properly explored and it seems that people just jump off the fence on either side.
Forcing people back to the office is going to piss off those who have come to enjoy the free time and lack of commuting, having felt that they have shown that they have the self-discipline and motivation to be productive without someone looking over their shoulder all the time. Similarly those who have taken the opportunity to coast along are going to resent that they now have to perform. Figuring a way through that particular minefield is going to tempt the unwary that a one-size-fits-all solution is the easiest.
Finding which wins out is going to be a hell of a sociological experiment and there will be winners and losers regardless. And given the denizens of this here hotel, this debate will be interesting; I wouldn’t expect comments of the nature of “your job can be done cheaper by someone in India” for a start!
Perhaps I’m jaded.
Friends. Goodwill. Having “relationships” at the office and building rapport with the boss / company… That’s kind of all horseshit.
These relationships don’t meaningfully exist, aside from an incentive to the employee to put forth extra effort. The company that encourages you to “build relationships” will have security walk you out on Friday for any reason, or no reason at all, and everybody there is gonna show up Monday like you never existed.
Hell you can DIE there on Friday, and everybody is gonna show up on Monday, including the new guy. Maybe somebody will pass around a card to sign.
I like to think WFH is a genuine revolution engendered by the pandemic. Your company pays you provide a service, you do it, in a suit or your PJ’s, and that’s what they get for their money. All this other crap is part of a culture developed over centuries to encourage additional benefits, that only ever go one way.
Yup. You are jaded.
Retired about ten years from a career in law enforcement. Maintain more or less constant contact with a dozen or so friends from work in person or by text/email. Try to respond to invitations to events in their lives as they have to events in mine. Headed back to the big city (yuck) on Tuesday to have lunch with the whole crew and catch up, pass around pix of the grandkids, tell lies and outrageous jokes, and generally celebrate life while we still have it.
You missed an opportunity.
Well you people have to develop a social network at work, nobody else wants to hang out with cops.
Heh, “you people”. Now that is downright funny.
Once when I showed up for jury duty, the judge said “Don’t use ‘They need me at work’ as an excuse to get out of jury duty. If you died tomorrow, after a week they will have forgotten your name, after a month they will have forgotten you ever worked there.”
You have to wonder if the judge felt that way about his own workplace.
I think that’s more a social thing, I have seen people at work remain friends after they have left work. Not in my case but that probably because I am less social and why I might go out for a drink after work with someone twenty years younger I do not actually want to be a long term friend. You do have to make a effort and I don’t.
Anecdotally I find I work better at work, face to face tends to help me resolve issues, while just thinking about it I just spin my wheels. Is A or B better when they both have detrimental effects. Should I really spend 4 hours to get a fractional better result. Working from home was also not good for my work/life balance.
Anecdotes and personal experience aren’t proof. Still . . .
For 4 years, while in private practice in Ohio, I lived in New Jersey. I’d go to Ohio for about a week a month for personal contact and court appearances. Because I was mostly doing appeals, that was perfectly possible. And with various forms of electronic communication with colleagues and co-counsel, it worked fine. Sort of.
During the first year of the pandemic, before I mostly retired, I was a public defender. We worked remotely, meeting with colleagues and clients electronically. Again, doing mostly appeals, that was perfectly functional. Yet.
I’ve argued cases in court by telephone and by Zoom. It’s doable. But.
Here’s the thing. Phone calls and zoom meetings aren’t the same, aren’t the equivalent – and can’t be – of walking down the hall and into a colleague’s office to ask a question or bounce an idea.
Forget the social aspects, the getting to know people and the relevant culture. The work may have been possible. The quality may, ultimately, not have suffered. Maybe. But i’d been practicing for decades. I knew my way around the systems intimately. And still it was a loss. At the very least, it was harder to do the same quality of work, despite the convenience of mostly not having to put on a tie – or even pants rather than PJs. It’s not a question of what’s possible. It’s a question of what’s best. Remote ain’t it.
Yeah, I know that’s just me and that personal experience isn’t proof. Even so.
Having worked from home and in an office, I can say at least in my experience there’s benefits to both.
It’s nice to be able to work from home when, for example, one or both kids are sick.
However, there’s something nice about being able to go to an office, work there, and then leave work at the office, coming home to focus on family.
Those who choose to work from home and never get that office experience, in my opinion, are missing out on a lot of intangible benefits.
This is a good summation of things in my opinion. The majority of things I do can be done remote, but meeting with students and faculty face to face (college kids, I am administration, not faculty) is easier when it comes to explaining things to them. It also removes the parents from the conversation the majority of the time.
And, leaving the office and going home makes it easier to enjoy being home.
That being said at least 2 of my 6 staff members have no real need to be in the office and I would give them the option of full time remote if it was allowed.
I am engineer with a large suburban house, no kids at home and my home office has a view of a park. In nice weather, I have coffee breaks and lunch on my deck with my dogs and we watch people in the park. With no commute, I can sleep in until 8. Why would I want to go to the office? Younger people with apartments and people with school age kids have a totally different situation and go to their cubicles at the office.
This means I have little interaction with the new hires and I am certainly not helping them the way I did in the past. I feel guilty but I am looking more towards retirement than advancement within the company. If I get assigned a major project with a new hire, I will start going into the office more but, for now, I am drinking my home-made Americano and watching the birds flit by my raspberry bushes.
It’s just another example of how the pandemic benefited the (older, richer) elite while the younger, poorer people got screwed.
Oh man don’t even get me started on how much better the coffee is at home than in the office…
Hoo boy. This is a subject, alright.
I started the pandemic 100% convinced we were going to lose a lot with everyone working from home. I was a true believer in the benefits of “spontaneous conversation”. After two years of being forced to work remotely (also, “coincidentally,” the two most successful years the company has ever had) my perspective has flipped 100%. Being able to better manage my time, particularly by controlling how other people are able to monopolize it, has been such a huge benefit.
Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but whenever someone else avails themselves of that benefit of “walking down the hall and into a colleague’s office to ask a question or bounce an idea” I end up giving them my full attention until I’ve solved whatever problem they’ve got. Hey that’s great for them, but I’m supporting a team spread across three time zones. While they’re taking 100% of my focus on a low priority question I could’ve answered in an email when it was convenient for me, the guy on the east coast who’s got a deadline tomorrow isn’t getting what he needs.
My company went back to a one-size-fits-all hybrid model of three days in the office, two days remote, whether or not that makes any sense for your job duties. People hate it. And we’re bleeding senior staff at an alarming rate. On top of that, anyone in a supervisory role is expected to be in the office at any time one of their reports is in the building. We already had a huge problem convincing engineers to step up and be managers, and now that they’ve added the benefit of “lose your work from home privileges” they’ve essentially killed the ability to promote from within the company. Even before COVID, I could go a month without seeing my supervisor. Him sitting in an office on the other side of the building from me didn’t provide some magic “work better” aura. But our leadership are true believers that there’s a literal magic of people being in the office.
Right now my magic is losing time to commuting I could spend solving problems, sitting in my office all day feeling isolated and alone, and increased anxiety about getting a disease that might kill me. I experience no benefit from being back in the office and have taken a noticeable hit on productivity. It’s very frustrating and has led to me exploring full-time remote work positions at other companies.
I think there are benefits to working in the office, there are benefits to working from home, and they all depend on the details of your actual job. I think the decision about the right balance between these options should be based on actual evidence and made at the actual team level, not based on the rosy memories and beliefs of a C-Suite executive that hasn’t touched any code in 20 years. Before the policy change, I’d actually planned on going back into the office once-in-a-while on my own initiative and had started working on that, as I thought there were some things I could do better there. Forcing a one-size-fits-all policy down everyone’s throats, though, just led to hard feelings and killing any desire to figure this stuff out. Especially as we watch our colleagues walk out the door to better opportunities…
P.S. Online meetings are 1000% better than our old worthless meetings in conference rooms. That may be something unique to our company culture, but manager types actually pay attention to the online meetings, as opposed to playing on their laptops in the conference rooms.
HR may have forced the one-size-fit-all 3/2 schedule on everyone to avoid charges of favoritism and the following lawsuits.
While that may have been a factor, I have reasons to know that was not the primary motivation. It’s also a cop-out, as other tech companies that have proven themselves to care an awful lot less about their employees adopted policies that put the decision in the hand of team leads, not the C-suite.