It’s Friday, and we’re diving into the data on the impact of hybrid and WFH policies, understanding the balancing act required of a DevRel professional, and designing offices for the grid. 

Room to Roam

Like it or not, WFH is here to stay: although levels of hybrid and remote work dropped during the latter half of the pandemic, they plateaued earlier this year with no indication that workers will ever return to the office tout de suite. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom calls the turn to remote and hybrid work “the largest change to hit U.S. labor markets since WWII.” 

Some are better positioned to benefit from this sea change. Retail and office properties in the country’s cities have taken massive losses. (One company suggests San Francisco office occupancy won’t reach pre-pandemic levels for another decade.) With fewer people making the commute, mass transit systems are also struggling to adapt. And all of this is stackable: fewer commuters and empty offices means lower tax revenues for cities themselves. 

The good news? As EiT never tires of saying, workers value hybrid work to the tune of an eight percent pay increase. (That’s a pretty big perk!) And research shows that workers are spending something like an additional forty minutes a day with their kids. All of this is, at least at first glance, massively profitable. Spending just three days per week in-office has a neutral effect on employee productivity, and companies reap massive benefits from reduced office space and the ability to hire outside of the metro area in which they’re stationed. 

But are we bullish on holographic technologies for virtual meetings? We don’t envy the etiquette experts who have to deal with that one. 

– WSJ 🎁

Leggo My YOLO 

Welcome to the Envy Office! (Welcome, that is, during the two-point-seven days per week you’re actually in the office.) The new trend in office design reaches for maximum “hospitality-adjacent”  while also mugging for the camera. 

When you run a whimsical cereal company, you want a pink couch shaped like a cruller and a Keith Haring coffee table book on your side tables (because yes, you also want side tables). You want the biggest fiddlehead fern in five hundred miles and optic-nerve throttling wall paint. You want a design calibrated for maximum FOMO. (Just don’t ask for a place to store your stuff. We’ve got HOT desks now!)

The reason for the change? Sure, orgs are always looking for ways to entice new talent, but as it turns out, they’re also sensitive to how the office digs look on Instagram. The textured walls of your Herman Miller cubicle scream “you’re at work” no matter what filter your people use, and what better marketing for a keto-friendly cereal than a selfie in a library nook with a view of the Hudson River? 

– NYT 🎁

Butcher, Baker, Community Manager

Developer Relations professionals frequently find themselves taking on a wide range of responsibilities in their organizations. As they toggle between internal and external roles, their advocacy shifts among developers, customers, and the company’s goals. DevRel teams are often plagued by a lack of balance and coherence among these roles, and company-wide confusion over the job’s definition is to blame. 

Developer Advocate Rizèl Scarlett builds a case that an org should see Developer Relations as a philosophy as much as a role. When done right, everyone in the org can support and benefit from DevRel activities. Scarlett suggests several strategies to create a strong, self-reinforcing DevRel culture: early engagement in DevRel activities; inclusive strategy and product discussion; encouragement of non-DevRel staff to contribute to initiatives; working in public; open lines of communication; consistent transfer of knowledge from engineering to DevRel; and integration of DevRel principles in the company mission. We’d take it a step further, and argue that this kind of alignment and transparency is key for all kinds of organizations, both with and without dedicated DevRel teams. 

– Dev.to

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNETS

YESTERYEAR TECH OF THE WEEK

The birth of BASIC!

See ya next week, 

– The EiT crew at Status Hero 🫡