Offices across the country remain largely empty, and it looks like it could remain that way for a while. With all the uncertainty out there, we wanted to poll our readers and gauge the comfort level of people in the tech industry.
So... we asked the question:
Are you ready to get back to the office?
After hundreds of submissions, we are seeing a clear trend. The industry seems plenty comfortable working from home in the new remote work environment, and would rather wait for a full vaccine, or stick to remote working indefinitely.
There seems to be some concern about a potential loss of culture, however.
Here is some of the feedback we received with the poll submissions:
"I'm better at what I do subtracting a commute! My company is not renewing their leases for their offices!"
"I like the working at home thing but I'm not convinced. As a corporate leader I'm worried about the deterioration of our existing culture and the lack of assimilation of our newer employees some of whom have never met their team in person. My opinion is this all looks good now but it's running on momentum and at some point reconvening in the office is important and might even be essential to survival. The lesson from COVID however is that we can confidently be less structured in our office participation and liberal/employee selected work at home orientation is going to be an addition to our repertoire."
"Going back to the office won’t be feasible until schools and childcare programs are back to normal operations."
"I would feel most comfortable returning to office after the public has accepted and chooses to inoculate against the virus and that leads to a significant decrease in transmission."
"I see tech companies as the last that should go back so that organizations that really need to be in person can be."
"There is something to say about collaboration and interaction with teams and being in the office promotes this and remote work is not collaborative."