Decoding Hybrid Work for Engineering Teams
Post Pandemic, the world is in no mood to take a pause or relax, it is moving faster than ever before. Technology is the key pillar enabling this fast movement. It was a coincidence that I got a message from my cell carrier yesterday notifying that my mobile will automatically be upgraded to 5G this week with 20x more speed. Wow. Welcome to the new world of AR/ VR and immersive apps. While it is the engineers who build all these cool technologies, there is a major debate among the very same engineers on how their work environment needs to evolve. Work from office, work from home, work from hometown or the much talked about Hybrid. My intent here is to decode “Hybrid” for engineering teams who work in core technology areas.
Hybrid is Office + Home. Not work from anywhere.
Before we talk about work environment, let us look at another familiar industry where the word Hybrid is used these days. The automotive industry. We have traditional fossil fuel-based cars and the much talked about electric cars and then we also have a balanced approach with Hybrid ones. The hybrid model, in this context, provides much needed reliability for the owner and at the same time, makes it efficient and environment friendly. I am sure all these models will evolve, and the future will be lot more interesting. But you get my point — Hybrid leverages the benefits of both and attempts to mitigate the weaknesses. Yes, at a higher cost. Nothing comes for free.
Decoding Engineering teams
An effective engineering team in today’s highly complex tech industry, aims to create a holistic team-culture that encourages risk taking, experimentation, knowledge sharing and challenging each other to drive towards it’s common goals. A typical team will be a combination of experienced engineers & relative new hires, and expects seamless interactions to achieve the desired outcomes by teaching each other as well as challenging the status quo. Individual autonomy is very critical for engineers to make deep contributions and, at the same time, collaborating and allowing themselves to be challenged are essential to remain competitive.
Defining Hybrid
While hybrid opens-up several possibilities w.r.t the location from where an employee can work, considering the needs of an effective engineering team, I believe that one of those locations needs to mandatorily be “The Office”. Other locations can be any! So let me define the scope of Hybrid as below.
Let us also put together some parameters to monitor and make course corrections as we move forward. Every change is an opportunity for us to experiment, learn and grow. So let us be creative with Hybrid as well. Some of these need to be done at an organizational level and some at an individual level. Remember, it is either win-win or lose-lose.
Measurement Criteria
As engineers, we don’t want to get into anything without a measurement criteria and progress tracking. So let us try to build one.
Engineering Contribution
- Direct Intellectual contributions
- Leveraging and integrating from others.
- Synergizing in a brainstorming environment and coming up with new ideas.
Engineer’s profile in a typical organization
- Experienced engineers with depth.
- Experienced engineers with range (versatile).
- Lateral hires without domain knowledge
- Lateral hires without organizational context
- New college hires with lot of drive
Based on my observations and from inputs from many leaders, let me try to show a baseline comparison of the above aspects for Office / Remote / Hybrid modes. It is too early to conclude, but a starting point to observe / debate,
Benefits of Hybrid
Let us look at the benefits from the Organisation’s point of view
- Organizational learning improves, builds better products.
- Promotes diversity of thought and lateral thinking. Yes, we do have video conferencing, but the camaraderie and networking are amplified when we’re in one room.
- Effective brainstorming and innovation. Nothing beats a discussion between people sitting together, able to SEE each other!
- A perfect balance and improved employee experience. Deep work can happen at home and collaboration, teaching & socialization at office.
Let us look at the benefits from an individual’s point of view,
- Better opportunities to learn / teach.
- Use home for deep work & office for collaborative work.
- Be at home when needed / in predictable days to support family.
- Personal growth in terms of social skills and career moves.
Let us look at the benefits from the team’s point of view,
- Team bonds well and stands for each other.
- Effective attrition handling and job rotations
- Better new hire integration
Let us look at the benefits from the Industry’s point of view,
- Major breakthroughs in the word have happened with collaboration. So this hope continues with Hybrid.
We can very well argue that all the above can be achieved remotely as well and that many successful teams in the world were already running remotely even before pandemic. We are not talking about all the teams here. We are talking about engineering teams, solving complex tech challenges, which needs collaborative problem solving and mutual learning. Also today’s organizations are seeing ~15–20% attrition, the employee dynamics are shifting continuously. If a team with all experienced engineers, who understand the work and needs very minimal support from each other — the time that they need to spend together could be minimal. So remote can be an exception, not the norm.
Arguments against Hybrid.
As we all got a great opportunity to experience 100% remote work, it is obvious that everyone will form their own strong opinions based on their personal circumstances and available options. I personally love working from home and prefer not to have any mandatory rules on when to go to office. At the same time, I also love the fact that office provides a dedicated place to focus on work, interact with people and more opportunities to help people in my role. So it is always a challenge to make a clear decision. Let us look at some of the typical concerns people raise and potential way forward,
1) Commuting is a waste of time: A valid point indeed. Especially in cities like Bangalore, it is significant time and associated stress that discourages people given an option. It is a tough call. I will not give you any stories to paint a rosy picture. Let us explore off-peak hours / smart commute options and manage as much as we can.
2) Office means distractions / unplanned meetings: Yes, in the past we never had an option to balance it. Now with hybrid, we can plan few days per week to be at home and reduce distractions. Let us also not forget the number of distractions we all get at home these days. The world is not silent like it used to be during the pandemic.
3) Cost of living in a City vs home-town: It is purely a personal choice. I have seen some people making interesting choices post pandemic. It is great. But we can’t hold that against organizational needs. So it is a pure personal choice and people need to live with it in their own terms.
4) Unique Personal situations needing remote work: Most of the organizations will be sensitive to this need and will definitely allow flexibility for genuine needs. Cisco for example, has been promoting flexible work culture for decades and we are wholeheartedly supporting any such needs. So, work with your management and build a plan. Remember to go extra mile to collaborate remotely and work towards the common goals. Also be vocal in meetings and share your progress to the team and manager frequently. Review and move to Hybrid when viable.
A practical example.
One of the leaders in my team shared this observation and I found it very insightful. Pre pandemic, when we estimated a work item, it was very natural to discuss with other experienced folks on the floor and factor in cross leverage of expertise as an expected outcome during the project. So the estimations were assuming cross leverage. Employees who joined the team during the pandemic assume that they need to figure out everything on their own and build their estimation accordingly. Net net, everyone is trying to learn everything. This can slow us down. In this fast moving world, every engineer doesn’t have to learn everything from scratch to contribute. They need to tap into the organization’s knowledgebase to speed up the project deliverables, ensure predictable quality and be an impact player.
Future of Hybrid
Today, technology helped us to make Hybrid possible. This level of effective collaboration through video conferencing was not viable 5 years back. That reminds me again of the text message I got yesterday on 5G services on my mobile. With 5G opening up AR/ VR apps and newer ways or collaboration, I am sure the future of Hybrid won’t be the same as what we defined today. So let us not debate and get stuck, let us move forward and adapt to the current Hybrid needs and be flexible to embrace the future technological advancements. I am sure if the challenges of remote work can be effectively mitigated by technology tomorrow, companies have no vested interest to keep their expensive office buildings. They can sell it off and become more profitable. Let us talk about it when that day arrives.
The magic ingredient
If you are still in doubt, I can give you the magic ingredient which you should leverage and make Hybrid work for you. Flexibility. If your team is expecting you to come to office 3 days week and work from home for 2 days, start following it. It will take some time to adopt. Use flexibility when you are in real need. You may not have to be in office from 9–5PM every day. You may have a specific situation at home, and you decide to be in office only for 2 days a week for sometime. All these will be OK and we should communicate this to the team and they will support you. Flexibility is a powerful tool in Hybrid world if we use it right.
In Summary,
It is time to pause the debate and start adapting to the new reality. We need to start somewhere. Go with your organization’s directions and modify it for your convenience within the flexibility umbrella. Discuss within the team and re-arrange the weekly schedules. More meetings & socials on the office days and deep work while at home. Team leaders can look at various ways to incentivise engineers who are supporting the cross leverage of expertise. Hybrid is Office + Home. Not work from anywhere. I am positive that in the future automotive industry will move from fossil fuel → Hybrid → Electric. We need to allow the technology to mature and wait for the future of Hybrid. Btw, we are the very same engineers to make it work. So back to work. When the new technologies become viable, we will open this topic again.
