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As an introvert, I’ve been a fan of remote work & working from home for a while now. It can help level the playing field vs. extroverts, giving space for collaborating and communicating in writing vs. verbally in group meetings. It naturally provides the conditions necessary for deep focus, away from the noise and stress of an open office. And it makes it possible to speak to pretty much any number of people from the comfort of your own room, vs. actually standing in front of an audience with a microphone, and having a panic attack when you see that many faces staring at you.

With the pushback against remote culture and attempts to corral people back into the office making headlines, the common arguments in favor of office culture are really about the office itself: they say it’s easier to collaborate with and form connections with colleagues, quickly iterate with the people sitting next to you, and have those chance encounters and conversations that occur in shared spaces that lead to more creativity. And they’re not wrong.

You can try to recreate that in a remote setting with a combination of good collaboration software and work practices (e.g., communicating and working transparently, documenting meetings and decisions made, etc.). A new generation of products like Sidekick, Tandem, and Switchboard have sprouted up in an attempt to solve the “office-like collaboration” problem. But if you’ve ever worked in an office, you have to admit that you just can’t replace the raw, buzzing, kinetic energy of an office with Zoom and Google Docs.

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