I first asked my bosses to work from home once a week in 2015.

I was mid-level and WFH was a rare privilege I got granted.

My colleagues agreed that "Fanni needs time to not be interrupted by us." 🤷🏻

I was freshly senior at the end of 2016 when I decided to move to Colorado.

I was not desperate to leave my job, and I was not desperate to keep it either.

I asked what my team preferred.

To my great surprise, 100% remote work was granted.

I was told that getting a promotion remotely will not be possible.

I nodded.

I got promoted a year and a half later: the global head of HR called and asked me to write my own job description with the salary I wanted.

The only negotiation was whether I wanted to work 4 or 5 days a week.

I did not realize until 2020 when everyone was forced into WFH that there was a genuine misunderstanding of WFH... due to lack of experience.

I had the experience. Understood the system. The benefits. The tradeoffs.

4 years later, we all do.

There were a lot of reasons why I did not want to be in an office.

There were more reasons why I missed being in an office.

What the debates around RTO and WFH / WFA are missing to me is that there will be no "one perfect solution."

There will be tradeoffs we just have to mitigate.

In both cases, we have to solve the same foundational problems:

How do we use time most efficiently?

How do we achieve productivity and creativity?

How do we ensure that goals and objectives are not only clear, but truly motivate people?

How do we create cohesion + active collaboration between matrixed teams, across levels, locations, generations etc?

Connection happens in person. Through experiences.

You can achieve that through quarterly offsites and retreats if you choose WFH or in the office if RTO.

You can maintain connection over Zoom.

You cannot create + sustain it at scale.

There are very few hard stances I take. This is one.

📸 I really missed the NYC office views in 2021... so I moved my home office to the 35th floor 🙃