Hybrid Work Practices and Strategies in Software Engineering - Emerging Software Developer Experiences

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work became commonplace out of necessity, and has since remained widespread. Currently, many organizations offer the possibility of remote work while encouraging occasional on-site presence, leading to the emergence of “hybrid work” or “work-from-anywhere” – a blend of remote and on-site work. Hybrid work is a novel phenomenon that currently concerns the industry, as organizations are still looking for good and best practices related to work modes in the post-pandemic situation. As few studies on hybrid work in the context of Software Engineering (SE) currently exist, we take on an explorative approach to the topic in this paper. Using a qualitative case study approach, we interview 10 software developers to study (a) the factors influencing the work mode choices of software developers, and (b) how remote and on-site work could compliment each other in SE. Our findings highlight factors that influence the work mode choices of developers when they are free to choose their own work modes, in addition to providing some insights into challenges in hybrid work in SE and how to tackle them. Hybrid work can, for example, help tackle some of the issues often associated with fully remote work such as social isolation, but it also results in new challenges such as on-site days feeling unrewarding for developers if the office is largely empty. Our findings build on existing research by providing further insights into the challenges and benefits of the two work modes in hybrid contexts.