Discussing RTO in my Genesi t-shirt...
This Monday I talked to a couple of friends about work while wearing my Genesi t-shirt. A teacher going back to school after Spring break and an IT guy explaining the nightmare of RTO threat. I love coincidences :-) Why do I say that?
Genesi t-shirt
As I wrote a few years ago about working from home: “After graduating from university, I worked from home for a small US-based company. I never met my boss while working there and met only one of my colleagues at a conference in Brussels. I eventually met my boss some seven years later, when I gave a talk at a conference in Washington, D.C.” The company was Genesi, and that was the work culture which defines me. I received the t-shirt on the photo during my visit to Washington, D.C.. Luckily, I’m still living mostly this way, visiting the office 1-2 times a week: working hybrid.
Imagine the contrast I felt, when I realized that I’m talking to someone who works on a very strict fixed schedule. For a teacher vacation is only possible when there is no school, like Spring break in Hungary last week. There is a fixed schedule all year around. Compare that to my Genesi years: no regular meetings, communicating by e-mail & chat, and working when it was the right time for me: sometimes in the morning, other days during the night. It was fantastic, especially with small kids. I have been working on flexible hours ever since, limited only by meetings.
COVID made remote work less of a niche. Sometimes even mandatory. Many people in IT started to work remotely. Most of our work does not require a fixed place or time. On-line meetings became the norm, teams are often not location based anymore but scattered around the globe. As long as you have an Internet connection and a noise canceling microphone you can join a meeting from anywhere, even from the top of a mountain. It is easy to get used to this flexibility and very difficult to give it up.
RTO became a periodical threat. It’s a lot cheaper to announce RTO and let people leave voluntarily than sending them away. Quite a few friends write me every once in a while that they have to return to the office starting in a few weeks time. Then, a few weeks later they happily share: they gave me an exemption, so they do not want me to leave…
Wearing my Genesi t-shirt all these problems feel so distant. I hope that it stays this way!