I expect everyone to let me work 100% remotely for regular work, and please don't bother me with daily video calls where everyone will repeat what is clear to see on GitHub or a Kanban board. I am able to deliver good work (front-end web development most of the time) without ever meeting anybody in person and some things don't even need a single meeting or phone call.
That being said, I still enjoy meeting people in real life from time to time, especially for collaborative work on tricky or inspirational stuff, sketching, talking, and I enjoy meetups and conferences as in-person events as they offer so much more inspiration and room for hallway talks compared to online events, and I don' t want to stare at a screen unless I'm coding or in cinema.
As several people already added to the disussion, learning and onboarding of junior team members is probably another aspect that is much easier to achive when actually being in the same place together.
But for regular daily work, the old "normal" is nothing that I have been missing ever since I started remote work (even before the pandemic, thanks to Germany's shitty railway system which allowed me to skip some commuter days every week when I was still an employee). And don't expect me to go back to working 5 days x 8 hours every week either. The old "normal" has never been normal, and it's about time to make people realize that life is not supposed to be a 9-to-5 in a corporate office.
I am working as a web developer for nearly 20 years. I care a lot about simple and maintainable code that is fun to work with, good documentation and clean APIs.
I expect everyone to let me work 100% remotely for regular work, and please don't bother me with daily video calls where everyone will repeat what is clear to see on GitHub or a Kanban board. I am able to deliver good work (front-end web development most of the time) without ever meeting anybody in person and some things don't even need a single meeting or phone call.
That being said, I still enjoy meeting people in real life from time to time, especially for collaborative work on tricky or inspirational stuff, sketching, talking, and I enjoy meetups and conferences as in-person events as they offer so much more inspiration and room for hallway talks compared to online events, and I don' t want to stare at a screen unless I'm coding or in cinema.
As several people already added to the disussion, learning and onboarding of junior team members is probably another aspect that is much easier to achive when actually being in the same place together.
But for regular daily work, the old "normal" is nothing that I have been missing ever since I started remote work (even before the pandemic, thanks to Germany's shitty railway system which allowed me to skip some commuter days every week when I was still an employee). And don't expect me to go back to working 5 days x 8 hours every week either. The old "normal" has never been normal, and it's about time to make people realize that life is not supposed to be a 9-to-5 in a corporate office.
Are you working as an employee, or contractor/freelancer?
I'm free now.