It has been raining a lot lately. The kind of rain that turns commute into an adventure you wouldn’t wish even for your enemies to go through. Through flooded roads and people left stranded in the middle of nowhere, everyone’s timeline is suddenly filled with reminders of why working from home is supposed to be one of the best perks a company can offer.
I saw a post on Threads recently saying exactly that: WFH is the best.
I smiled to myself and thought… I beg to disagree. Yep, this is an unpopular opinion but hear me out on this.
And I say this definitely not because I don’t like working from home. I do. I really do. I spent half a decade and more working remotely and there is something wonderfully luxurious about waking up at 8:55am when you have a meeting at 9 and not having to conquer the monstrous Manila traffic just to sit in front of a laptop.
But if I am gonna talk from experience, I’m no longer convinced that WFH is the best work perk.
I think a great boss is.
In the many years I spent in the workforce, I’ve had enough jobs to know that the person you work for can completely change your experience of work. Look, in a span of 10 years, I have been to four companies, and my longest stay in one company was three years. And if there was one recurring reason I left, it wasn’t necessarily the work.
It was management.
I’ve had bosses who were difficult to work with. I’ve experienced being disrespected. I’ve experienced working under someone whose management style became so toxic that being jobless in the middle of uncertain times was a much better deal. And that experience taught me something I probably should have known much earlier: a good job can become unbearable when you have a terrible boss.
And the opposite is also true. A good boss can make you want to become better at your job.
My current boss and I had been working remotely for years. We were essentially an outsourced marketing team, working together from different places. Then one of our clients decided they wanted us in-house, so suddenly, we became employees—and part of the requirement was that I report to the office twice a week.
That transition scared me a little.
Look, commute is ugly and I know for a fact it wasn’t just that. Because suddenly there was gonna be a bigger corporate structure around us. There were other departments, other people, stakeholders, expectations and, of course, corporate politics. And I’ve experienced enough office politics to know that it can be vile and disgusting. So I wondered what would happen to our little team once we became part of a much bigger organization. Would things change? Would we have to start playing politics? Would my boss still have my back?
Then came one of the smallest things that, for some reason, stayed with me. My boss remembered the hours of commute I spend whenever I go out. I mentioned to him some time ago that everything is far from where I live. So he bought me a pair of walking sneakers.
No, it wasn’t work-related. And it wasn’t some grand gesture. He simply thought I needed comfortable shoes to get to and from work. Even though I am just required to report to the office twice a week.
And that’s probably the reason it meant so much to me. Because he remembered. Even though he was in Singapore and I was in Manila, he knew what my new work arrangement meant for me. It reminded me that I wasn’t navigating this change completely on my own.
But there were other little moments that made me realize how much trust mattered to him. Like when I first started reporting onsite, I realized that he wasn’t particularly concerned about where I was working. He already knew how I worked, and that was enough for him.
Again, we had worked remotely for years. We didn’t see each other every day, but he knew I was doing my job. He wasn’t measuring my productivity by how long I was visible to him. He trusted that I would do the work. And that kind of trust is surprisingly much more freeing. And something that makes me want to live up to it.
I think that’s another thing I’ve come to appreciate about having a good boss: you don’t feel like you have to constantly prove that you deserve to be there. You know that someone has your back, but you also know that they trust you enough to handle yourself. And that’s especially important when you’re entering an environment that is completely new to you.
My boss knew when to shield me from stakeholders when I needed it. But he also knew when it was time to step back and let me talk to them on my own. And that distinction matters. Because for me, being a good boss means standing in front of the subordinates. Other times, it means standing beside them. It also means taking a step back and saying, “You’ve got this.”
I think this is the reason why I’m more motivated to work under someone like him. I want to grow. I want to prove that the meetings we’ve had weren’t a waste of time. That the opportunities he gave me to learn weren’t misplaced. That the things he saw in me were there for a reason. Even when the changes are scary, my willingness to try and to step up and to prove that I can do more than what I am doing now will always be there, ignited and warm.
And maybe, that’s something we don’t talk about enough when we talk about workplace perks. People talk about flexible schedules, remote work, free coffee, office snacks, leaves, and all the other things companies put on their recruitment posters. And while those things matter too, there’s something different about working for someone who trusts you. Because when your boss doesn’t trust you, even WFH doesn’t feel like freedom.
And I have experienced that too.
I’ve had a boss who would constantly ask what I was doing, following up the entire time about the task he asked to be submitted by the end of the week, and eventually look at laptop activity monitoring to determine whether I was actually working. He couldn’t see me, literally and figuratively, and the absence of visibility became a reason to question my productivity. Suddenly, WFH wasn’t so great anymore. Because working from home without trust is just working under surveillance from a different location.
But give me a boss who trusts me, though, and something changes. Because I don’t spend my energy trying to prove that I’m working. I spend it trying to do better work.
And after years of working for different companies and different bosses, I’ve learned that the best work environment isn’t necessarily the one with the most convenient setup. It’s the one where you feel trusted enough to do your job and supported enough to learn and challenged enough to grow. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to work alongside a boss who understands me and makes me want to be better at what I do. Someone who knows when to shield me. Someone who knows when to challenge me. And someone who knows when it’s time to let me stand on my own.
So yes, WFH is great. Especially when it’s raining this hard. I will happily choose my bed and my coffee and the absence of flooded roads whenever I can. 😂 But after everything I’ve experienced, if you ask me what the best work perk is? I’ll still choose a great boss. Because for me, the best part of having somewhere to work is not the fact that I get to stay home. It’s knowing that wherever you are, you don’t have to face it alone.
