Brandon Southern, who previously held positions as the head of analytics at eBay, Amazon, and GameStop, highlights that remote employees are deprived of advantages such as the incidental yet valuable insights gained from overhearing significant conversations.Brandon Southern has over 25 years of experience working for companies like eBay, GameStop, and Amazon. In an interview BusinessInsider, he mentioned that most employees, particularly those in junior positions, should work in the office instead of from home.
However, for these employees to fully benefit from in-office work, young-tenured employees need experienced employees to work in the office as well.
He stated:
“Now, before the pitchforks come for me, I’m 100% supportive of remote work, and I’m fully supportive of employee flexibility and all the great things that come with working remotely. But while many people talk about the benefits of remote work, few talk about its consequences.”
Brandon Southern
According to his experience, for better or worse, everyone had access to overhear conversations that others were having. This was occasionally disruptive when a colleague was speaking too loudly, but the act of overhearing conversations also held its merits.
The unintentional eavesdropping enabled team members to become privy to discussions from which they would have otherwise been excluded.
This fostered the dissemination of ideas and knowledge and enabled team members to interject with comments on work related to the ongoing activities of other teams.
According to his experience, slower growth happens for many employees because they can’t overhear these valuable conversations, and they aren’t able to receive help from coworkers or leaders quickly.
