It’s 2025, and if you haven’t noticed — there are still whispers of a Remote Work vs Office Work Productivity. Random research papers, blog posts, and social media unitize stats that are always contradicting each-other and proving one side more efficient than the other. I cringe reading these types of articles mostly because the stats are meaningless. Companies are composed of people, and if I want to answer the question ‘How can I ensure my company can still be effective as a Remote-First Company?’ That answer all boils down to the type of people your company has hired. What I will argue in this post is that there is a lack of candidness In some organizations (In particular Software Organizations) that hold the organization back. People are too afraid to be honest and too concerned in being polite.

The Problem of Politeness

Organizations come to life because they solve a problem a group of people agree needs solving. Therefore the people tasked with making the product are nothing more than problem solvers. Here’s a fun thought experiment: strip all the titles and accolades away and really your coworkers and teammates are all bound together to solve a particular set of problems. If we don’t know the unlovely truth in the details of the problem we are attempting to solve, how are we going to go about the business of problem solving? There is such a tendency ‘to be nice’ and avoid telling the honest truth in human beings — that it might be considered a characteristic of human nature.

This will not cut it in a remote work environment. When product features are presented, when prioritizes of work are being discussed — be honest. How are these changes going to effect my customers? Is this what my customers want? How about my potential leads — will this sway their opinion to buy my product? How will these new features and prioritized work help sell the product.

I bring this up in the context of remote-work-environments because I believe teams can get into a ‘lull’ of living their own individual life without considering how work will benefit/cost the company in the long run (1 - 3 years down the line). There is a casual way of going about business that has the potential to make a company fall to irrelevancy if it does not course correct. The way to stop this casualness is being candor, being honest, with the fellow engineers and stake-holders of the project.

Don’t be a jerk.

Myself advocating for engineers to ‘stop being polite’ is not the same as me advocating for engineers to ‘be more of a jerk’ — Have you seen GitHub PR reviews? That is already enough of a battlefield. There are ways to be honest that don’t involve being rude. I have listed below some common interactions that I find myself and how I would interpret them:

Polite Saying	Candor Saying
"That’s an interesting idea — let me look into it."	"That’s going to be really hard to implement and may not deliver the value you expect."
"This might take a bit more time than expected."	"The scope keeps changing, so the timeline to completion will require more time."
"I see what you’re going for, but we may need to explore alternative solutions."	"Your requirements don’t match the constraints of our system, and we need to redefine them."
"I see your point, but maybe we should consider another approach."	"Your solution won’t work because it doesn’t handle edge cases."
"I think there’s a cleaner way to do this."	"This code is overly complicated, and it’s going to be hard to maintain."
"I’m not sure that aligns with the design patterns we discussed."	"This completely ignores the design patterns we agreed on."
"This looks good, but I have a few minor comments."	"This has major issues and needs to be rewritten."

(That last one is personal — I’ve been a victim of it many times)

Conclusion

So, how are we going to ensure a company can be productive in a Remote-First Environment? The PEOPLE working on the product will decide. It certainly will help if the team involved can work in an honest and candor fashion. There are business books and theories on what makes a successful business team. All I’m saying is by being polite in the present — you’re robbing your teammates of making the best informed decisions of the future. Depending on when that future is… could make or break your product! So speak up! Be unapologetically honest if you have a disagreement!