RTOh well
In 2024, I collected more than 1,100 hours of recorded meetings across 150+ teams. In analyzing the corpus, I found much to recommend about in-person work: People both participate in discussions and disagree with each other more in person, especially women. Startups that work in person grow faster than those that are remote.
Based on the data and also my own feelings of isolation last year, I decided that, whether I started another company or took a role at someone else's, I wanted to work in person. These days I work in person about four days a week.
But for everyone like me who wants to work in person most of the time, there's someone else who doesn't. Data or no data, I get where they're coming from.
Ah, the good old days
Remember ten years ago? Game of Thrones hadn't gotten bad yet. Beyoncé was headlining the Super Bowl. And, if you were a corporate employee, you were probably working in an office, possibly with free snacks. You probably checked email at home before work and again in the evening, but particularly if you worked for a big company, when you left the office, you left. It's so far from current reality that it's hard to remember, but that's how things were.
But then the pandemic happened. As the CEO of Textio, which was based in Seattle, I was one of the first leaders in the country to close down the office as COVID took off. It turned out the tools for doing our jobs at home worked pretty well, at least for day-to-day stuff. Everything we did except spend time in the same physical room was already online anyway.
The endless workday is endless
Over the last five years, the tools for remote work have only improved. Given a reasonable physical environment and an internet connection, most knowledge workers can do their daily work from anywhere. And because working from anywhere is possible, many leaders set (explicit or implicit) expectations that employees should be working from everywhere. Always online, always available.
As companies ramped up endless workday expectations over the last few years, for most people, their devices became extra limbs. Laptop at your desk, laptop on the couch. Work calls on AirPods walking around your neighborhood. Quick Teams check on your phone during your kid's basketball game. Wake up in the morning, sign in. Wake up in the middle of the night, sign in.
I'll be honest: I aim for better sleep hygiene and family time than the above, but for the most part, the endless workday works for me. My professional life feels creative and interesting, and I like being able to dive in to stuff whenever I want. I might take a long lunch with colleagues and goof off for a couple of hours on a Tuesday, only to get into total flow state and produce a month's worth of work on a Friday night.
I know this isn't for everyone. Unfortunately, most "endless workday" expectations set by most workplaces assume that it is.
But now RTO has entered the chat too.
RTO or endless workday: Which is it?
In the old days, you were fully present at the office from 8am-5pm or whatever. You had an annoying commute. But apart from checking email here and there, your time outside of work was generally your own.
In the pandemic era, you worked from wherever you happened to be. You were always at least a little bit online, but you could show up to work in sweatpants and pick up your kid after school.
In other words, both the old world and the pandemic world had positives and tradeoffs. Now, though, most companies have this trifecta of expectations: 1) RTO during work hours 2) endless workday outside of work hours, 3) pressure on both of the above coming from AI. But also, it's complicated, because AI may be one of the only ways for an individual to effectively manage the divergent priorities of RTO and endless workday.
Many conventional after-hours tasks (triaging email and chat, working through admin stuff) lend themselves to agentic approaches pretty well. If agents can expedite those tasks during core working hours too, in theory you have more time to get into flow state during the workday and creative work doesn't get pushed into nights and weekends.
But the theory is a long way from reality for many people. And even with agentic helpers in place, it's still hard to weight RTO and endless workday equally and have a system that doesn't cave in on itself. My hot take: By 2030, the most important corporate labor and employment law conversations will focus on how RTO and endless workday are managed, and which hours are managed with AI.
The bottom line: I see huge value to working in person and prefer it. For myself, I also don't mind the endless workday. But at a systems level, it's hard to prioritize both equally.
What do you think?
Kieran
Whether you work distributed or in person, here are three exercises to build high-performing and connected teams.
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