TIL remote work killed our office culture faster than layoffs ever could

Back in 2022 I had a choice between going fully remote or pushing for a hybrid setup at our Detroit startup. I went remote because everyone wanted it and the commute on 75 was brutal. Six months in I realized nobody knew each other anymore. We had 15 people who never met face to face and our project handoffs turned into a mess. Lost two good engineers because they felt isolated even with Slack and Zoom. I should have fought harder for at least one day in the office a week. Has anyone else seen a team just fall apart after going remote too fast?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth2761mo ago

Read a study somewhere that said teams need around 100 hours of face to face time a year to build real trust. Sounds about right from what I saw. My buddy runs a small crew in Cleveland and he did the same thing, went full remote and lost his senior guy within 4 months. The guy said he felt like he was emailing a machine, not working with people.

drewr151mo ago

Nah, bad management killed it, not the remote setup.

davidkim1mo ago

Had a similar thing happen to my cousin's team at a marketing agency in Portland. They went fully remote and one of their best designers quit after 6 months cause she said all the team chat felt like shouting into a void. @drewr15 I think you're right that bad management is usually the root cause, not the remote part itself. My cousin ended up doing mandatory video coffee chats twice a week just to keep people from feeling like they were talking to robots.