Out of Office in Review

Summary: Interesting look at the past and potential future of work, but not very actionable for non-managers.

As someone who permanently transitioned to working from home during the pandemic, I had a personal interest in this book on the opportunities and challenges of working from home. My main takeaway was that I’m already in a very good situation. One of my favorite things about my workplace is the work/life balance. No one really cares when you work as long as the work gets done. People rarely email at odd hours. And personally, I have a shutdown routine that ends my work day at a reasonable hour most day, so I don’t let work become my life just because it happens at home.

Like the authors, I recognize that I’m lucky to be able to have this work arrangement. I appreciated that the authors acknowledged that privilege and advocated for those of us with work flexibility to use that power to fight to improve working conditions for everyone. That’s definitely something I’ve been trying to do in my community. I also enjoyed learning about how we arrived at our current work ‘normal’ and was uplifted by the authors’ vision for a better future.

One of the downsides of my already good situation is that the changes that are left to be made are large and structural. There weren’t many actionable items I took away from this book. Although this book may give some workers ideas for advocating for themselves, it mostly needs to be read and acted on by managers. I would still recommend this book to other people working from home. It was enjoyable to hear from other people in a similar situation about how they organize their lives. It was just a little less helpful for me personally than I’d hoped. I’d just go into it looking for more of a work history and vision for the future, rather than a self-help book.

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