[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley firms in no hurry to open up offices ...
___________________________________________________________________
Silicon Valley firms in no hurry to open up offices despite easing
of virus ban
Author : mikesabbagh
Score : 144 points
Date : 2021-03-24 12:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| mabbo wrote:
| Tech workers seem to agree: permanent work from office isn't what
| most of us want. Fair enough.
|
| But here's a fun question: If you aren't permanently in the
| office, do you need a personal, permanent _desk_ in the office?
| Because that is going to be the first cut that comes when we all
| "go back, some of the time". And half the people I pose this
| question to get upset about it.
|
| My own prediction is that teams are going to book sets of desks
| together the same way we book meeting rooms. They're shared and
| you'd better have a reservation.
|
| But "your" desk with your photo of the spouse and kids, your
| knick-knacks, your notebooks and "your" monitor? I doubt you'll
| ever have that again.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Free seating in the norm in a few big corps already. The era of
| assigned seats and desks is pretty much in the past except for
| old style orgs.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| My org tried open seating and switched back. I've heard Intel
| did the same.
| tehjoker wrote:
| They'll have managed to totally wipe away any personal
| attachment people have to the space and even further treat
| people as commodity labor units. Just keep moving, don't stop
| working, and no space is stable or at all personal.
|
| What is the quote again?
|
| "Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted
| disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
| and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
| ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of
| ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away,
| all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
| All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
| and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real
| conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. " -- Karl
| Marx and Frederick Engels
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not valid for everyone, but for me, in the office, I'm almost
| never at my desk anyway. I'm usually booked solid in meetings
| back to back all day, so I'm simply carrying a laptop from
| meeting room to meeting room until I sign off for the day. I
| don't care about having my own desk or even my own workstation.
| zzbzq wrote:
| If I'm part-time in the office I expect nothing from the
| company and some "shared space" type tables or desks where I
| can plug in.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The benefits of coming in quickly fade away with shared
| spacing. It often makes sense to work in the coffee shop
| below your office.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| But I'm told that the benefits of coming in is the face to
| face, networking opportunities!
|
| It's actually amazing how everyone in favor of offices only
| ever talks about how it's better for socializing!
| ipaddr wrote:
| When your team is elsewhere the networking opportunities
| are more with whoever else came in from other
| departments. Which can be informative but rarely does it
| directly relate.
| raldi wrote:
| Why wouldn't you have notebooks? It worked be easy for the
| Facilities team to have your box of stuff (or rolling set of
| drawers) waiting at your assigned desk when you arrive.
| zerkten wrote:
| > be easy for the Facilities team
|
| Have you ever worked on a facilities team? When a company
| removes a provision like an personal office and moves to open
| office layouts they also rationalize their facilities
| spending. Theoretically, it's easier to clean and maintain
| the space. More often it's an excuse to find a way to pay
| less.
|
| I'm not convinced that employees or facility operators are
| motivated enough to deliver your vision of your stuff being
| at your desk in any sort of reasonable way. I can't imagine
| folks being comfortable with packing and unpacking their
| stuff regularly. For a lot of people, although not me, having
| people touch their stuff is the root problem. Having
| different people pack and unpack this regularly would be a
| nightmare for them.
| raldi wrote:
| That's not what I'm proposing. At the end of the day, desk
| workers would put their favorite mouse and notebooks in a
| drawer or box, and at the start of the next day in the
| office they would pull them out at the new desk. Nobody
| else would be touching their stuff.
|
| In fact, the mouse and main notebook would probably go in
| their backpack.
| michaelt wrote:
| Why would a company hire someone to carry your shoebox of
| personal possessions to and from storage when it would
| cost less to just give you a locker or tell you to take
| that stuff home every day?
| raldi wrote:
| Why do they clean the toilets when it would be cheaper to
| make you do it?
| beforeolives wrote:
| I'm still for the full-time office model with maybe an optional
| day a week to WFH and with dedicated office space and necessary
| equipment for each employee. The hybrid models aren't going to
| work. Especially if by hybrid model we mean - here are some
| tables, carry your laptop with you all the time and plug in
| wherever you want on the days when you come in.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| I personally am more than happy to give up a personal,
| permanent desk, to be able to WFH most days. Carting around
| photos, notebooks or knick knacks is an extremely small price
| to pay.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Also, if your family is near you during the day, you don't
| need their photo as a reminder.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| If you work at Google, this is already pretty much your life.
| You will get moved up to a dozen times in your five year career
| there. Companies that feel they can work like this are already
| doing it, and companies that cannot handle the morale hit
| aren't. Google can do this kind of thing because they offer
| really good amenities in virtually any office that you work
| from that somewhat make up for the ephemeral nature of your
| desk.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| This was my experience at a large corp as well. You just had
| your desk packed up and moved whenever there was a re-org or
| someone decided that your team needed to move elsewhere.
|
| Thankfully they took your knick-knacks and set them up for
| you, so it wasn't a really big deal, but the idea of a
| permanent seat seems crazy to me.
| oblio wrote:
| It's one thing to do that * gasp * 10 times in 5 years, and
| to do that * daily *.
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| Not having a permanent desk means that you need to find
| somewhere to sit when you arrive, and you need to leave the
| desk completely clear when you've finished for the day. This
| was how the last company I worked at functioned, and it was a
| nightmare (also pretty common in expensive cities like
| London).
|
| Companies will not want to spend money on office space to
| seat 100% of employees when the hybrid model means that on
| any given day there's only ~50% in the office.
| davio wrote:
| Back in the 2016 era, my megacorp started building out the tech
| facilities this way. No assigned seats. There were reservable
| bullpens for NOC style teams that were persistent. Rest of the
| floor was divided into quiet and social areas with various
| seating and work stations.
|
| They already had a heavy work from home presence, but it was
| typically 2-3 days a week with some scheduled collab time for
| teams in the office.
| 01100011 wrote:
| As a senior software engineer in the embedded space, I haven't
| had to work full-time from an office since... 2003?
|
| AFAICT, most engineers have the option to put in 1-2 days a
| week remotely, and in-office days can be significantly
| shifted(i.e. I know a guy who works 6am-3pm).
|
| FWIW, I might personalize an office, but if I have a cubicle I
| keep it pretty sterile. I'd be happy to share a cube with
| another engineer provided there was a way to switch the
| configuration(monitor positioning, keyboard, mouse) fairly
| quickly.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Does Reed Hastings work remote a lot?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Would the mixed/hybrid model include hoteling? If not, what's the
| advantage to the company if they still have to provide a reserved
| office/cubicle/workstation space for each employee? One of the
| big arguments in favor of allowing remote work is that is saves
| the employer on facilities. While there are other benefits,
| mostly in terms of morale, the bean counters who have a lot of
| control over this aren't going to be happy if they have to both
| provide office facilities and support for remote work to the same
| person.
| nikanj wrote:
| I'd be happy to work in a hub-coworking-office close to home. A
| joint kitchen area so I can socialize with people, and a small
| sound-proofed room for everyone to work on their own stuff. No
| point in everyone travelling to the same large building to work.
| davidw wrote:
| I like this idea. I miss being in a separate environment from
| home, and prefer being around other people. I don't want to
| give up the options remote work gives you, living in a smaller
| town, so I could see co-working spaces and hub offices and the
| like being popular in the future.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, I'm pretty outspoken here about keeping a WFH option but
| thinking more about it, I don't actually care as much about
| specifically working from home as I care about "moving out of
| the Bay Area". If my company let me work from some co-working
| space or a remote office in SmallTown, USA, I'd jump at that,
| too.
| spockz wrote:
| One of the benefits of wfh is that we now do not work on the
| corporate network anymore. Since we have discovered code together
| features pairing is so amazing. You get to work together on the
| same problem. Not needing to sync over git, one person can work
| on the large line and instead of calling out small things to fix
| the other can just in place fix them. It is amazing.
| fossuser wrote:
| I won't go back without a vaccine.
|
| The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the
| vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal.
|
| Without it, nothing has really changed.
|
| Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the
| beginning. It makes sense for companies to protect employees and
| wait for the vaccine - _especially_ now that it 's so close.
|
| In California the vaccine is still restricted, but hopefully
| we'll get wide availability by the end of April. I've see lots of
| people on Twitter get it with nebulous pre-existing conditions. I
| wonder how many people are just lying.
| throwaway122378 wrote:
| What number of the population needs to be vaccinated before we
| are "allowed" to go back to normal? Can you cite to back up
| your statement.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Once you have the vaccine, then you 're free to go back to
| normal._
|
| Only after a critical mass of people are vaccinated, otherwise
| vaccinated people can still spread the virus to those who are
| unvaccinated.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is still uncertain, but accumulating evidence suggests
| that vaccinated people are unlikely to spread the virus.
|
| That said, masks will still likely be common for a while due
| to unknowns around variants and just the logistical hurdle of
| not knowing who has had the vaccine and who is lying about
| having it so they don't have to wear a mask.
| SigmundA wrote:
| If vaccinated people can still spread the virus why would a
| "critical mass" of vaccinations change anything?
|
| Herd immunity relies on the fact that either having been
| vaccinated or recovered from the disease prevents you from
| spreading the disease to those that have not yet been
| vaccinated or can't get vaccinated.
| rconti wrote:
| Agreed. My Silicon Valley tech company had me start working
| from home on March 6. The valley was VERY early on shutdowns.
| It seems silly and insane to go back to in-office in a very
| hurried manner when, for most people, this is working fine.
| Daily infections are many orders of magnitude higher today than
| they were in early March of last year when there were only,
| what, a couple hundred cases in the entire STATE?
|
| I won't discount how hard remote work has been for many people,
| but the fact of the matter is, continuing to do it for a little
| while longer is far less risky from the company's perspective
| than pulling the trigger in the first place, 1 year ago. It's
| largely been a successful move.
|
| As for lying to get the vaccine, yeah. I'd say that once the
| 65+ population had been eligible for awhile, and the state
| opened it up to a lot more people, whatever moral hesitancy
| towards lying that there might have been, has largely
| evaporated. I've heard plenty about strategies, what vendors
| don't check.
|
| I'm no in a huge hurry, so I'll wait. But that's just me.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I'm also just waiting for them to open it up to general
| availability - but it's irritating.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| > Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since
| the beginning.
|
| I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work
| in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early
| vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful,
| that doesn't make the people less susceptible...
|
| <rant> Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected
| from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor
| reprecussions. </rant>
| RussianCow wrote:
| Don't get me started. My state (Oregon) has announced that
| the next wave of vaccinations will go to agriculture and food
| processing workers. I get why those industries are super
| important to protect from a supply chain standpoint, but it
| also seems insane to me that people in those specific
| positions get special treatment while workers in retail,
| restaurants, etc--who interact closely with potentially
| hundreds of human beings daily--won't get the vaccine until
| it's generally available to everyone. And if you're, say, a
| single food service worker in the city, it's not like you can
| afford to just choose not to go back to work.
| colmvp wrote:
| > A survey late last year of 9,000 knowledge workers commissioned
| by workplace chat software company Slack found 20% want to work
| remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a mix of the two.
|
| That's pretty much where I'm at. I like the idea of hopping into
| the office maybe once or twice a week to interact with my co-
| workers, but otherwise I'm extremely productive at home
| especially without having to endure the 1-2 hours commute.
|
| I joined a company last last year and they moved to this hybrid
| model once they found there was practically no efficiency loss
| with respect to moving everyone to remote. But some people still
| missed going into the office so they re-opened their physical
| offices albeit at limited capacity.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is mostly how I feel as well. However, I wonder how well
| the hybrid office thing will work out in practice.
|
| Specifically, if you're in the 63% of people who want to "pop
| into the office sometimes," and you come in on some random
| Tuesday.... is anyone else even there?
|
| It seems like the probability of seeing the people you want to
| see by chance (when 83% are either always or usually remote) is
| very low.
|
| So my guess is that for the hybrid thing to still have the
| social aspect of office work it probably needs to be paired
| with a policy like "we all come to work on Tuesdays." But if
| you do that then the all-remote crowd isn't getting what they
| want (they still need to live in travel range if they have to
| be in the office once a week).
|
| So the alternative is to do something more like "we all come to
| the office for one week every quarter," and in that case it's
| more of a company retreat than normal work.
|
| So as I said, I'm curious how things will unfold as life opens
| back up.
|
| My best guess is we'll end up converging on 2-4 different
| archetypical models which will become part of a company's
| identity and recruiting pitch, and people will self select into
| the work style they prefer.
| drstewart wrote:
| I think many (most) places will return to in-office by
| default with a permissive WFH system, so you can choose to
| WFH on any given day with no/minimal notice. Places that are
| remote first by default - a category which will continue
| growing - will have minimal to no in-office component.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I went through the process before covid.
|
| Your personal desks go away replaced with work stations /
| long tables where anyone can dock. It become more like a
| school libruary where everyone is working on different things
| .
|
| Then you have these community meetings every few months where
| everyone comes in for a meeting but there are not enough work
| stations so everyone just hangs around until people trickle
| home.
| asdff wrote:
| Honestly that sounds amazing. Just to be able to run around
| and get appointments or errands done during the day
| avoiding traffic and work a little longer at home has been
| a godsend.
| chris11 wrote:
| My employer is talking about having a core set of days where
| everyone is onsite and then a few days where you can wfh. I
| like that, it avoids losing my desk and wondering if someone
| is in on a certain day.
| midasuni wrote:
| You have a desk. That's rare. Pre covid it was first come
| first served hotdesking. If you were lucky you got a desk.
|
| My work are now looking at getting rid of a load of desks
| because they are expensive and unproductive.
|
| Far better to spend the money on free beer for
| collaboration days.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| > (they still need to live in travel range if they have to be
| in the office once a week).
|
| True, but I think that range expands significantly if one
| comes in only once a week. Living 2 or more hours away might
| become reasonable, and even getting a hotel room once a week
| can easily pay for itself when taking into account housing
| costs.
| scj wrote:
| One note I have about numbers like these...
|
| Is the question phrased in a way that distinguishes between
| "working remotely as you have during COVID times" vs. "working
| remotely post-COVID"
|
| I think it's important to distinguish that in the mind of the
| responder. At the very least, get people thinking in terms of
| "What would WFH be like if the kids were at school much of the
| day?" or "What would WFH be like if we could meet with friends
| at 17:30?" or whatever.
|
| What we've experienced over the last year is far less social,
| and far more stressful than what WFH could be.
|
| Personally, I'd like to WFH most of the time, with sprint &
| release planning sessions in person.
| packetlost wrote:
| For me, it probably depends on if I have the option to go to
| a cafe and how nice my home office is. Right now, I'm stuck
| in my bedroom basically 24 hours a day because I have
| roommates (1 of which also works from home) and don't have
| room to move outside of my bedroom. This is extremely
| depressing. I absolutely hate it and I'd say I'm probably
| operating at 60% productivity or less and have been for most
| of the last year. But, I'm moving in May and will at least
| have my desk not in my bedroom. Even then, I'd rather be in
| person for most meetings. I think it's extremely important to
| have face-to-face communication the majority of the time both
| for social reasons, but also because it's just more
| efficient. Understanding on what the team is doing over the
| last year has dropped significantly as well, and the (remote)
| barriers to communication are real and have a larger than I
| think people realize impact.
| midasuni wrote:
| So you want other people to go to the office to deliver
| your preference for face to face meetings?
|
| Your company has to pay for desk space and for meeting
| space?
| packetlost wrote:
| > So you want other people to go to the office to deliver
| your preference for face to face meetings?
|
| Yes, I think that's an entirely reasonable expectation to
| be the norm. It's what was the norm/expectation when I
| started and I do not see a reason that should change. My
| boss has said that it will most likely be the expectation
| once it's safe to return to the office, so I am not
| alone.
|
| > Your company has to pay for desk space and for meeting
| space?
|
| Yes, actually. They aren't paying for my home office and
| it wasn't an expectation in the original employment
| contract. Further, we work with specialized scientific
| hardware. We need the space anyway.
| hudsonjr wrote:
| I've been WFH for a few years and liked it. I did not like it
| because of the COVID baggage:
|
| * At home schooling * More people needing help at odd hours
| (nights/weekends) * Lots of normally well adjusted folks
| stressed/angry about minor things
|
| That and there was a lot of corporate "make sure to take time
| for yourself" and "be realistic about schedules", however
| there were clearly roles/orgs where that was not an option.
| dominotw wrote:
| > once they found there was practically no efficiency loss
|
| how did they measure this?
| chanc3e wrote:
| From my perspective we measured by deadlines missed/hit.
|
| We hit all, so no measurable loss on productivity.
| dominotw wrote:
| Nice. Should be interesting to experiment with 4 day
| workweek next.
| kilbuz wrote:
| Let's use binary search instead :)
| tomrod wrote:
| There was certainly a productivity per hour worked hit, as
| people replaced their commutes or more with screen time.
|
| Folks are overall more productive, yes, but at a cost of
| more hours worked. The marginal productivity and its rate
| of improvement is not as high.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/the
| -...
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Even if that's true, I'd certainly rather spend N hours a
| day programming than N-2 hours programming plus 2 hours
| commuting.
| midasuni wrote:
| You spent n-2 hours a day before? Productively?
| rconti wrote:
| I'm afraid of "partial" WFH meaning that I have a schedule
| opposite others, and there are many people I simply never see.
|
| I tend to be a fairly black-and-white thinker, so it's easier
| to envision 100% office or 100% WFH, and harder to get my head
| around a mixed arrangement. Particularly if that mixed
| arrangement means I don't have my 'own' desk and equipment in
| the office.
|
| That said, even though I've done WFH in bits and pieces here
| and there, I've enjoyed WFH this past year a lot more than I
| thought I would. I'm thinking of my post-Covid schedule being
| in the office tues-thurs, so that I still have a consistent
| block of time where I'm going in "every day" for a few days,
| rather than every other day.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Probably because their employees can afford to bring lawsuits
| against their employers should they catch preventable COVID
| infections at work, or spread it to loved ones.
| tazjin wrote:
| And they will lose people over this.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Is that surprising? There is little value in taking on the risk
| of infection (and resulting bad PR and work disruption) given
| that you can maintain your operations with remote workers ...
| especially given the fact that if you wait just a few more
| months, your staff will be vaccinated.
|
| > Box Inc said its reopening is still scheduled for September.
|
| That's probably the most reasonable timeline for tech workers.
| And even then, we'll probably see tepid support for that. Things
| aren't going to go back to normal in 2021.
| matz1 wrote:
| Its nothing to do with the risk from covid because its
| minuscule, its more of does it actually make sense to work in
| the office? For many tech worker, there is little benefit of
| actual office space.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Its nothing to do with the risk from covid
|
| Huh? The reason why offices of big tech companies are closed
| is SOLELY due to covid.
| matz1 wrote:
| if it because of covid then it doesn't make sense because
| the risk are so small.
| kevstev wrote:
| You don't believe the risk of spreading covid is small in
| an enclosed space? Especially when so many of us now work
| in open floor plans?
|
| My first job in an open floor plan (really a trading
| floor setup), we would literally watch colds and other
| ailments work their way up and down the rows each winter.
| rconti wrote:
| Especially because they gave us long timeframes (my Silicon
| Valley company announced "no return to office requirement until
| September 2021" last summer sometime) in order to give us all
| the ability to make longer-term plans, rather than always
| wondering "Will it be this month?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Why do we need offices again? Best time ever to make full
| switch to remote
| brianwawok wrote:
| Because humans are social animals, and many of us enjoy
| interacting with IRL coworkers. It also allows much
| creativity and has various other benefits, both with your
| work - and with your mental well being.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| All the same can be said for wfh. I can socialize with
| people I _want_ to socialize with, not those I have to
| socialize with. I have freedom, no commute, no open office,
| no manager dropping in on me...
|
| I have extensive experience managing and working remote and
| non-remote and I've never seen any benefit to non-remote
| work. Productivity and creativity are higher with wfh and
| stress and burnout are _way_ lower.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| As someone who was suffering from serious cabin fever last
| April, I can now say that I would find it quite annoying to
| be asked to go to an office full time again.
|
| The option to go as I please (which would probably average
| one or two days a week) would be excellent, though!
| CobsterLock wrote:
| we, small enterprise software company, have opened the
| office under that model. What is happening is that some
| people have refused to return, myself included, some are
| doing the official 2 days a week, and others are going
| back full time. The office actually opened up last year,
| right after the first NYC fizzled out. There have been a
| few week long shutdowns of the entire office as some are
| found to have COVID-19.
|
| My general thoughts are that there are a few people that
| got strong armed into returning, but most that are back
| in the office are happy to be there.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Offices make me spend 4+ extra hours a day on work with 0
| benefit. That's 20 hours/week I could be spending with my
| wife & cats, caring for my home, developing skills and
| software that makes me money instead of some corporation.
|
| That's an entire mini-lifetime I'd be giving my employer.
| And I don't think I ever will have to - I can force myself
| to be remote the rest of my working life. And that mini-
| lifetime is mine..and that's priceless.
|
| I've had 1 or 2 coworkers out of hundreds I became any
| level of "friends" with, and the closest of whom I didn't
| even work directly with. Actually, one of the coworkers I'm
| friends with, I met in a remote team with us living across
| the country from each other.
| bradlys wrote:
| The issue is that almost no workplace in the US is going
| to work like this knowingly for salaried employees. I
| really doubt your current workplace is okay with you
| working 20hrs/week, you just likely don't tell them
| that's the case.
|
| Maybe consider contracting instead?
|
| Just because you haven't made friends doesn't mean the
| rest of us haven't. On top of this, work friendships can
| just be that. Work friendships. Ones that last as long as
| you're at that job, not all of them have to go outside of
| it. And that's okay.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Why contract when I can work as if I'm full-time &
| salaried (with benefits) for 5+ years? Just seems like
| added risk and a lower effective wage to me.
|
| Also - it's springtime which means it's review season -
| the results are in and the entity paying me for my output
| is very happy with my output!
| brianwawok wrote:
| I am glad that is your experience.There is no single
| answer for all people. I think you as an employee are
| making a wise choice. If you can get paid a full salary
| for 20 hours of work, it is in your best interest to keep
| that alive!
|
| As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on the
| same axis. I would personally not hire someone that can
| only work for 20 hours a week, there is too much to do.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on
| the same axis_
|
| If you are hiring salaried individuals on the basis on
| how many hours they put in a week, then you might be
| focusing on the wrong metrics. There were plenty of
| people in tech doing 20 hours of work a week, and
| spending the remaining 20 hours on hacker news.
|
| I bemoan WFH, but not because of work output.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on
| the same axis. I would personally not hire someone that
| can only work for 20 hours a week, there is too much to
| do._
|
| When you're hiring make this known so people can do their
| own filtering on their end, as well.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Yup, we make it known. Plenty of companies in the world
| that you can coast at, it can't be a company with <5
| developers fighting well funded competitors.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I've worked at many remote companies by now. None have
| asked how many hours they're getting out of me. And they
| all got more or less the amount of time mentioned. And
| they were all plenty happy with my output!
|
| Why would they care if the output was the result of fewer
| hours? If they wanted to pay me by the hour, they could
| have negotiated that.
|
| At-will salaried employment cuts both ways :) and in this
| case, everyone is happy. Anyone wanting more hours out of
| me is just trying to exploit my labor. I'm already
| getting paid fair value for what I'm producing.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Thats what you want to believe. In reality after 6 months
| plus of full remote work most people dont want to step in
| the office again at least nowhere near full time. We see
| this in every 1:1 conversation.
| oblio wrote:
| For software developers...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think people who "enjoy interacting with IRL coworkers"
| should absolutely be allowed to return to their offices,
| but don't force people who work better from home or have
| four hour commutes (like me) to come back too.
|
| Some people have been really struggling with WFH and just
| can't make it work well for them, and they understandably
| want to get back to the office. That's great, and they
| should do it! But why not also let people who have been
| thriving under WFH continue to do it?
| supernovae wrote:
| I guess I've learned since the pandemic and finding a new
| job during pandemic that being at the office wasn't as
| fulfilling as I once thought it was and that those social
| interactions were rather fake/short lived and the bursts of
| creativity I did enjoy were destroyed by upper management
| deciding everything we did would be thrown out for
| something new.
|
| What I want is not another day sitting in a god forsaken
| office after sitting in crappy traffic but rather the
| ability to go have a coffee, grab some lunch or just hang
| out and "Talk shop" with people regardless of being direct
| co-workers, friends, peers and whatnot. Those are the kinds
| of people who called me, messaged me and asked me how I was
| doing. THe only other former co-workers who keep up with me
| are ones who quit and found new jobs too - it's like since
| we're not still suffering we're no longer friends and all
| too often we see that as fulfilling social interactions
| without question.
|
| I guess with hindsight I actually see the "office" as anti-
| social - it creates bad/poor behaviors, people find solace
| in common suffering and 9 times out of 10 all of my co-
| workers were actually dicks who only showed up to work to
| avoid their unhealthy home life and again, with hindsight,
| I see they tried making me ancillary to their unhealth work
| life too.
|
| hard to explain it in a small text box, but I guess i just
| see the office environment as extremely fake, demoralizing
| and depressing - even though i've had some great memories
| through it - i'd rather not be captive to sitting in a
| cubicle chair and actually develop much more rewarding,
| enriching and valuable experiences that translate to more
| productivity and creativity in the end.
|
| Often times i don't even get to choose my co-workers and if
| I did, those teams are often short lived and i think that
| corporate disruption to things that matter on a human to
| human level is something we're refusing to challenge/change
| because "it is the way it is". I get thrown on a new team,
| and its not new friends, it's now colleagues to suffer with
| and build empty relationships.
| npsimons wrote:
| I second your whole post.
|
| To try and empathize with a lot of the people bemoaning
| WFH, I believe they are just suffering from _quarantines_
| in general. I truly believe many of them would do fine if
| they could WFH 100%, but be able to go out with friends
| on weeknights and weekends.
|
| You are absolutely right that the office is a pisspoor
| substitute for real comraderie, and I wish people would
| stop conflating the two.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I sympathize with the people who hate WFH but I think
| sometimes their sentiments towards WFF are slightly
| misplaced. They confuse "general quarantine", "kids doing
| school from home", "no good work/office area", and/or
| "unresolved issues with partner/husband/wife/etc" with
| WFH.
|
| Personally I love working from home. It gives me a lot
| more flexibility, I have no commute, I have my dog with
| me, I can cook lunch or prep for dinner, I can do small
| chores on a break or to clear my head, I can take my dog
| on a walk, and the list goes on. That said I don't have
| kids and I have a home office. I was also fortunate to
| start WFH about 5 months before COVID hit so I was able
| to go out with friends and what not which totally
| satisfied my social needs, proving to me that any added
| stress while working from home now is caused by things
| other than WFH itself.
|
| When I used to work in an office there were a number of
| people that were difficult to deal with and/or annoying
| to put up with. While I didn't go full WFH at that job I
| did get to the point where I was working 2 days a week
| from home and those days were glorious. Being able to
| pick who you are actual friends with (verses being forced
| in pretending to be nice to some truly toxic people) is
| so much nicer. I am friends with a handful of people at
| my new (WFH) company but that's because we both wanted to
| be friends and went out of our way to build the
| friendship not because we were forced to work together.
|
| My hope is that people don't "throw the baby out with the
| bathwater" when this is all over and there is a choice of
| WFH or going back to the office. That said, it's not be
| for everyone/every job but one silver lining of this
| terrible last year has been a number of my staunchly
| anti-WFH friends talk about how much they have enjoyed it
| and how they want to continue it at least for part of the
| week if not fully.
| oblio wrote:
| I will probably work for 50 years (~20 -> ~70).
|
| About 11 months a year (~1 month for holidays). Around
| 160 hours a month. So 1760 hours a year. And about 88k
| hours over my entire lifetime.
|
| That works out to <<10 full years>> of my lifetime.
|
| If I'm not socializing at work, albeit a bit constrained
| by the professional environment, something is super
| wrong. Restricting socialization strictly to weeknights
| and weekends seems... super radical to me.
| npsimons wrote:
| Working hours taking up so much of our life is an
| orthogonal, but not totally unrelated issue.
|
| As with complaints against "working from home", I get the
| feeling that proponents of work socializing recognize
| there's a problem, but they have mis-identified the root
| cause.
| oblio wrote:
| > Working hours taking up so much of our life is an
| orthogonal, but not totally unrelated issue.
|
| Well, we can complain about it, but it's a fact of life.
| It's almost like complaining that gravity drags us down
| :-)
|
| Plus, for a lot of people does give them... something to
| do. A purpose, an activity, a place where they can use
| their skills and use their intellect.
|
| It's hard to do this alone if everyone else is working. I
| guess you could try mingling with the rich people and
| join charities?
| btmcnellis wrote:
| Human beings didn't evolve to spend 100% of their time
| staring into a webcam, only interacting over Zoom. Remote is
| great and should be part of the solution, but sometimes, you
| just can't beat face-to-face.
| matz1 wrote:
| Guess what, human as like any other organism can adapt to
| their changing environment. Basic evolution biology.
| ekianjo wrote:
| When we work we dont spend all our time in zoom meetings.
| Do you?
| shock wrote:
| Human beings didn't evolve to sit in a chair at a desk for
| 6+ hours daily. What's your point?
| BruiseLee wrote:
| Well we did evolve big buttocks (bigger than other
| primates) that are apparently useful for sitting for
| extended periods of time.
| yladiz wrote:
| It's likely more to support walking (and running) on two
| legs for extended periods of time.
| shock wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. In people who sit for long
| periods of time the gluteus mucles (buttocks) become
| atrophied. Do you mean the ass fat is useful for sitting?
|
| Maybe you're just making a joke and I'm not getting it.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I asked this very question in my 1st year of fully remote
| working. By the 7th year the answer was very clear in my
| head, so I went back to the office. Two years later COVID
| happened and now I'm stuck at home again.
|
| It took me a few years to realize the effects of loneliness
| and the lack of social interaction.
|
| But I do have one extra point: if work is fully remote (i.e.,
| every employee is remote) things work much much better than
| when only part of the team is remote. You need to at least
| make sure your manager is also fully remote.
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| Whiteboards, space, and low ping communication.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Huh, the companies in one of the highest cost-of-living (and thus
| highest cost-of-labor) places in the country, want to keep with
| the remote-only thing a while longer? Interesting. I'm sure this
| is nothing to do with "maybe we could take advantage of this to
| relocate a lot of our jobs to cheaper places". It's probably just
| "being safe". Because that's what motivates top executive
| thinking at large corporations.
| varispeed wrote:
| Companies that require employees to work from home, should pay
| them extra compensation for use of their property as their
| office. Probably they should be paying a comparable market rate
| to what would be the cost of renting an office space for that
| employee on the market. I get that many employees find it very
| cool that they can WFH and just that fact makes them happy, but
| they forgetting that this way companies exploit them. You are
| essentially sacrificing part of your home for the company you
| work for and you don't ask to be compensated for that?
| 01100011 wrote:
| If my company forces me to WFH part-time while still coming to
| the office a couple of days a week, sure. If they let me go
| full time WFH I'll just move to a cheaper market and pocket the
| difference. Yes, they might adjust my salary, but that's a
| different issue.
| Arrath wrote:
| If I could offload a portion of my utility bills, property
| taxes and so on onto my employer, proportionate to how much
| time I spend WFH I would be a very happy camper.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| That's ridiculous. WFH is huge benefit to employees. Are you
| also going to charge employers for the time it takes you to
| cash a bonus check?
|
| Let's not get overly greedy.
| [deleted]
| webdood90 wrote:
| companies are not people, so why are you advocating for them?
| we should extract as much money from our employers as
| possible.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's hard enough to WFH as it is (pandemic aside). I was
| surprised how rare and competitive fully-remote work was
| when I was looking for a job two years ago, especially once
| you try to be even a little selective in the work you'll be
| doing.
|
| Making it more unpalatable to companies just removes the
| option entirely and we're stuck with the status quo.
|
| I value my time so much that I've taken decreased pay to
| work fully remotely without Zoom meetings. Freedom is part
| of my compensation and not something you can buy
| retroactively.
|
| Trying to squeeze some bonus fees from employers for a
| little justice boner does nothing for me.
| fossuser wrote:
| If you have equity as part of your comp for the company you
| work for you may disagree with this.
|
| There's also a reasonableness part to any business
| relationship. The extreme entitlement of demanding work pay
| for your home because you're able to WFH during a pandemic
| just comes across as obnoxious.
|
| It's like the employee that complains, "sushi again?!" in
| the free lunch cafeteria. Not everything is a zero sum
| game, your relationship with your employer doesn't need to
| be adversarial.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| I know of a couple SV startups that went from <100 employees to a
| couple hundred during the pandemic. Which means that these
| companies are now essentially distributed across the country and
| the employees have mostly never met each other in person. I can't
| imagine these companies forcing their new workforce to move to SV
| so they are almost forced to be fully remote going forward.
|
| As an aside, I kind of really like working in central time for a
| company operating in pacific time. Works well for my sleep
| schedule and gives me a couple hours of pure productivity in the
| morning before the rest of the company "wakes up."
| NeverFade wrote:
| > _I can't imagine these companies forcing their new workforce
| to move to SV so they are almost forced to be fully remote
| going forward._
|
| Yes, that's not going to happen.
|
| Employees who were hired remotely during the pandemic, or even
| those who moved away during the pandemic, are not just going to
| move back once the pandemic is over.
|
| It's especially clear for those who never lived in SV. These
| folks were happy to live and work locally in remote locations
| for their entire career so far. They chose to stay in their
| location for years, over moving to SV.
|
| If you try to force them to move to SV, they'll just quit and
| continue working locally as they've done before.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Yeah, it's great to watch the sunrise, check overnight markets
| in Euro and Asia, and get ahead of the day. I like the East
| Coast time zone. And find colleagues on West Coast generally
| like to hack late into the night their time. "While the rest of
| the world sleeps". Many don't even saunter into work until past
| noon. There can be a bit of a disconnect when trying to
| synchronize. But EST also aligns with Brazil as its same
| latitude. And Tokyo is exactly 12 hours diff so 8am in Japan is
| 8pm in New York which makes late night chats fun as well ;)
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Been doing a few interviews recently and the narrative I'm
| hearing is different. Most companies want to go back to the
| office because of "company culture", and are very happy I'm still
| in the Bay Area. Personally I miss going to the office and seeing
| my coworkers and friends in person. If WFH works for you that's
| fine, but it's not for everyone.
| kodah wrote:
| I think this attitude will be okay as long as:
|
| - people get equal access to important projects
|
| - businesses do not try to cut the pay of remote workers
|
| - in office folks work to be inclusive of their remote
| counterparts
|
| I now have a multi-office hybrid team and these are the things
| I'm focusing on.
| stirlo wrote:
| > businesses do not try to cut the pay of remote workers
|
| Until businesses provide free transport to work and pay
| employees for their commute time I'd say it's reasonable to
| offer lower pay for remote work than on-premise work. This
| doesn't have to involve cutting pay but could rather take the
| form of a commuting subsidy or an on-premise bonus. The lack
| of a commute is a real tangible benefit and should be
| included in any compensation package.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > businesses do not try to cut the pay of remote workers
|
| This sounds great in theory, but in practice I feel like it
| actually encourages and even rewards those that choose not to
| come in to the office. Which might not be inherently bad, but
| I don't think companies should be expected to do that if
| those aren't the things they want to reward.
| bradlys wrote:
| Pay will be cut. It's definitely the norm for any companies
| that are allowing WFH for new hires.
|
| I have yet to interview with a company that offers a truly
| competitive SV TC while allowing the employee to be remote
| forever. Most every says, "you need to choose where you will
| be based as your pay is dictated on that, remote pays less
| than in-person in our SV office". If you think you're gonna
| get $400k+ tc in BFE, you're mistaken. There are much cheaper
| people in Romania available to do that.
|
| Honestly, I'd prefer full remote and full in person teams. I
| hate dealing with remote workers when the majority is in
| office and I hate being remote when the majority are in
| office. I've had to deal with both before and it's always
| bad. I'd be cool with remote teams but I pray we don't have
| to mix. It's such a huge drain to accommodate both styles in
| one team.
| varispeed wrote:
| > businesses do not try to cut the pay of remote workers
|
| This is what I don't understand - company essentially gets a
| worker + office in one package and they think this is of
| lesser value than a worker in their office?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Comments here seem to be missing the point. "Reopening" just
| means allowing people to come back to the office if they want to,
| but the cat is out of the bag and there is never going to be a
| practical way to force everyone to come back to the office. The
| biggest upshot of the pandemic for me personally is I was able to
| go work for a Silicon Valley company, except I live in Texas. And
| I'm not moving. I made it clear to anyone who ever tried to hire
| me that relocation is not an option. These companies took
| advantage to open up their nets to the entire country if not the
| world. They can't make their actual remote workers move, so there
| is no fair way to force the people who live nearby to come back.
| If some people get to work from home, you have to give everyone
| the option or they're going to revolt.
|
| If they want to put an office near me, I'm glad to show up every
| now and again. But I'm sure as shit not moving to San Francisco.
|
| Companies have to weigh the tradeoffs between whatever benefit
| you get from people being physically together when they're
| working versus the benefit you get from being able to hire anyone
| and not just people who either live within X miles or who are
| under 25 with no house and no family and will gladly move across
| the country for you without you needing to pay them seven figures
| for it.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I hope you're right, but all it takes is one economic downturn
| and we're all back to begging for whatever job we can get,
| willing to jump through nearly any hoop. Things can change a
| lot over the years. I hope you're right though. 20 years ago I
| had to wear a tie and slacks to work(embedded s/w engineer for
| Casio).
| d3ntb3ev1l wrote:
| Given adequate and safe public transportation I'd love going into
| an office.
|
| Yet imho that exists nowhere in the US. Companies might as well
| provide a car to commute in
| blacktriangle wrote:
| As much as I love remote work, part of me wonders how much of
| this is a temporary effect. Yes, we can take a functional in-
| person organization and transition it to remote. But now as time
| marches on and that organization needs to change and grow and
| learn, will that be as effective remote as it is in-person?
| rorykoehler wrote:
| It should be more effective because it forces you to write
| which institutionalises your knowledge and processes.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| That is a big win for existing knowledge and process. How
| about creating new knowledge and process?
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Doesn't that happen naturally as circumstances change and
| therefore needs too? I've never had an issue with this. In
| fact I've helped transform my company from my home. It's
| barely recognisable to the company I joined (in a good
| way). People are happy and employee churn is way down,
| we're still shipping new features, sometimes even with new
| technologies, sales are up, revenues are up even breaking
| records during the pandemic, stock price is up etc etc
|
| If creating new knowledge and processes is important to you
| you just have to invest time and money into it. I'm not
| sure what worker proximity has to do with this? To clarify
| (a simplified version of) my management approach is to find
| the current organisational bottleneck and remove it ad
| nauseam. This can drive immense amounts of new knowledge
| and processes creation.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| That sounds like you've had an awesome experience and if
| you're into blogging I think it's a topic many people
| would be interested to hear about.
|
| I do think you write off the value of worker proximity
| too quickly though. Particularly many other comments in
| this thread are talking about the real struggles junior
| devs and interns are facing getting up to speed without
| in-person mentorship. Those are the long-term impacts I'm
| worried about. By moving to full WFH has an organization
| just broken their hiring pipeline and thus is now doomed
| to fail as people retire and they can't grow?
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I don't discount your perspective at all and it's true
| that it could become the most pressing organisational
| bottleneck at which point I would focus all my efforts on
| solving it. Cloud IDEs and pair programming come to mind
| as a potential solution.
| npsimons wrote:
| > How about creating new knowledge and process?
|
| Judging from how academics across the world, and even
| across decades if not centuries create new knowledge all
| the time, I'd say it's not a barrier to work remotely,
| whether that's in time or space.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I would never work in an office again. The one good thing about
| covid is that it definitely transitioned us away from and
| industrial revolution model to the Information Age.
| brink wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but people working together in the
| same building has been around long before the industrial
| revolution.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not really anything like in the metropolis we have where
| millions of people used to commute in and out. This was never
| a thing in History for pretty obvious reasons.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| The 20th century work model of offices and managers was very
| much an industrial revolution by-product. People were working
| together on farms, the battlefield... before that. I don't
| think there was any consideration to worker health or safety.
|
| I'm saying now that we're in the info age, we can do away
| with that and for the first time work from home or the
| environment of our choosing.
| slt2021 wrote:
| not in the same density though.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| My company's campus very large, and the RTW plan involves a slow,
| phased rollout.
|
| My assumption is that one important driver has been the company's
| legal team. Imagine the potential workers comp claims if there
| are covid flareups directly traceable to your jobsite.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons
| learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.
|
| Silicon Valley has high salaries and very long commute times. But
| how does this apply to medium sized cities with low commute times
| and lower salaries?
|
| How much more productive will employees be if they don't have a
| dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes
| instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?
|
| How productive is it for workers who have to work from home in
| their bedroom?
|
| I've noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have
| higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus
| others lower on the totem pole who don't.
|
| Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even
| more than they already were, which is a problem especially in
| larger organizations.
|
| And the odds of fortuitous interactions drops dramatically while
| the latency for some red tape processes increases as well, since
| you have to fight an email chain with people with more and more
| disparate work schedules (and less tacit knowledge transfer and
| trust-building).
|
| I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by
| the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute
| times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan) and who
| either function well with very little guidance or who don't but
| dislike the guidance.
|
| But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices,
| just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may
| discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many
| places where it's a bad idea.
|
| (Still a huge fan of having the option of WFH, but there have
| been massive productivity losses in my workplace from strict WFH
| requirements... in part because we do a mix of fundamentally
| physical lab work, not just sitting in front of a computer.)
| taurath wrote:
| People at my company work longer hours, have completely
| multiple very difficult high profile deadlines due to WFH. That
| your office is unproductive because you need a physical lab
| shouldn't inform those who don't, IMO!
| cheschire wrote:
| I noticed that in my organization the senior folks stayed in
| the office but sent all the workers home to create the safety
| buffer. They continued to show up and network with each other.
|
| I believe MBAs are going to love this new world order. The
| privilege to show your face in the office will become a sign
| that you've "arrived" and all your time before that will be
| working towards that privilege.
|
| Any office will be the new corner office.
| refurb wrote:
| Interesting take.
|
| Related to that I'm interested how office cliques will work.
| It's pretty damn easy to exclude someone if everyone is
| working from home. Unless they are scouring calendars they
| may not even know they were left out of an important meeting.
| Seems like a nightmare for a office with more passive-
| aggressive types.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Trust me, this already happened and it's an easy way to get
| rid of your workers after you "relocate" without paying
| unemployment.
|
| Offer remote work and then offer no advancement
| opportunities until they quit, so you don't take the
| unemployment hit. Voila, you have shifted the costs unto
| them to go find a new job.
| macintux wrote:
| Any mixed remote/office work company suffers from this,
| even with the best intentions.
|
| Face-to-face conversations have such a huge
| latency/throughput advantage over online discussions that
| the remote employees are typically left out of the loop.
|
| (At least, that's been my observation at dedicated remote
| vs hybrid companies. Maybe things will change post-
| pandemic, but I'm not optimistic.)
| adkadskhj wrote:
| > How much more productive will employees be if they don't have
| a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15
| minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may
| spend?
|
| Yea, i'm very pro-WFH, but i've built my life around it. I own
| a house with an office. I can't imagine trying to WFH on a
| couch or some desk in my living room while my wife
| cooks/watches TV/etc.
|
| With that said i still hope people see more chances to WFH, and
| can start buying/renting homes with this in mind. I have a
| three bedroom house, turned into 2 offices 1 bedroom, and it
| worked wonderfully for my wife and I during these WFH times. My
| wife fwiw was not a WFH person before Covid, but she is
| currently, and she has adapted quite easily with a dedicated
| office. One of her coworkers however lived in a tiny apartment
| with two children and no office. Her QOL was miserable.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| we inadvertantly made exactly the situation you couldn't
| imagine happen, as our house is very new but purposefully
| small, and the TV and noise with no office is distracting.
| Honestly wouldn't wish it on others, because it's frustrating
| when one is accustomed to being able to totally focus.
| beforeolives wrote:
| The move to remote work has made me both less productive and
| personally unhappy. I've mostly just been grateful that I still
| have a job and trying not to complain considering so many
| people have been laid off or have had to risk their health when
| going to work. But the idea of permanent long-term WFH is very
| unappealing.
| 0x0203 wrote:
| It seems like the majority of people prefer working from
| home, and I understand why, but I still prefer having a
| dedicated place away from home to work. It seems to put me in
| a different frame of mind that is much harder to get to when
| I'm at home. I've found it much harder to actually work on
| hobby projects for some reason; since it's all done from the
| same place, it just feels a bit like work and motivation has
| certainly waned.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| I could be wrong, but my impression is that a majority do
| want to go into the office at least some days per week.
| Yeroc wrote:
| That's definitely my perspective. I certainly like not
| having to commute (25 minute drive one way) but I would
| still like to get out of the house for the day 1-2 days
| per week. I'm introverted though and my commute is
| relatively easy. WFH is much more daunting for other
| personality types and situations.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think my ideal would be work-from-anywhere, plus travel
| to the office for maybe 5 days every month or two. It
| would be the perfect balance of in-person collaboration,
| AND allow me to live somewhere affordable.
| oblio wrote:
| They're not the majority. Maybe they're close to it, among
| developers. But outside of developers, it's not the case,
| by far. For a lot of people work is an important part of
| their social life.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| While I mostly agree with you, one of the health institutions
| in Germany that I know of(and probably plenty others), only had
| laptops and VPN's available for middle and upper management. So
| while upper and middle management got to WFH, older folks and
| plenty of people with preexisting heart and lung conditions got
| to work in cramped 3-5 people offices.
|
| I agree that a lot of people can't afford a full size home
| office. Nonetheless most of them will probably also only have a
| small cubicle or less at work.
|
| My statement doesn't negate what you said, but do keep this
| perspective in mind also.
| tartoran wrote:
| Absolutely this. If a company wants people to come into the
| office but does not have enough space for them they should be
| forced to allow those employees to work remotely or pay for
| adequate space. They can't have both.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons
| learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.
|
| Don't worry: It won't be the last time it happens. How many
| shops have I heard say they are "Just like Google" only to find
| out that what they mean by that is that they have beanbag
| chairs?
|
| > But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have
| offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear
| MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in
| many, many places where it's a bad idea.
|
| They'll learn that they need a higher caliber of employees to
| make it work. Incidentally, these employees are also now
| hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them.
| sombremesa wrote:
| > hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them
|
| That depends. As an ex-FAANG employee, I happily add a
| sizeable premium to my salary at the prospect of working at
| one of those again.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees
| even more than they already were, which is a problem especially
| in larger organizations.
|
| The large organization I am consulting at right now had a
| larger than average number of employees (also higher level
| employees) quit over the lockdown which has given management
| the idea that WFH frays the social ties and makes it easier for
| people to consider leaving.
| oblio wrote:
| > has given management the idea that WFH frays the social
| ties
|
| It does fray social ties. We're social beings, made for face
| to face interactions. That's how we operate. There's a reason
| almost every language has a proverb along the lines of "out
| of sight, out of mind".
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Many would argue that it's unhealthy to rely on your work
| for social bonds. I much prefer keeping my social circle
| and my work circles completely separate. Wfh means I can
| spend more time socializing with those I care about.
| Guest42 wrote:
| We had a rather average amount of turnover which might be
| high considering the concerns about the economy. I think one
| possible contributor is that more remote roles are available.
| ipaddr wrote:
| "who either function well with very little guidance"
|
| That's the definition of a senior developer and senior
| employees.
|
| For junior developers I've worked in pre-covid with juniors in
| wfh environments and success rates are lower. For everyone 1
| developer who finds there way you have another who can't setup
| there environment. If someone held your hand in school or if
| you relied on working together I could see things falling apart
| quickly online. I feel like the new grads will have wfh school
| experience from this year will adapt well.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yeah, I definitely think it's a senior vs junior thing.
| Experienced folk already know the ropes and keep their head
| down without interruptions from underlings or junior
| developers. Junior developers have a harder time with
| acquiring tacit knowledge and need more handholding, which
| they don't get because the experienced folk have their head
| down.
|
| I've had a couple interns lately, and the WFH experience with
| them has been much less successful than past in-person
| internships have been. They're able to basically moonlight on
| a remote project, and there has been actually MORE
| handholding required as it's much harder to judge when
| they're struggling or if they have things under control.
| There are a lot more non-work distractions for them and they
| have developed less camaraderie between each other as lunch
| times, social activities, and fortuitous interactions have
| been rarer. The lack of established trust also has
| significant overhead.
|
| So I agree that this is in many ways a senior vs junior and a
| maturity divide, however these are digital-native students
| and they're still struggling, so I'm not sure I agree it's
| going to get much better. I think some of the WFH
| productivity gains are coasting on pre-pandemic trust and
| implicit knowledge transfer that aren't happening as much any
| more. You can see how hard it is for young people in
| particular by seeing the drops in performance due to school-
| at-home.
|
| (However, WFH is indeed forcing some familiarity with remote
| work for many institutions that resisted technology and
| teleworking arrangements, so there definitely has been some
| improvement in some areas. It has been a godsend for some
| people, and that will be a lasting benefit of 2020's forced
| WFH experiment.)
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >Yeah, I definitely think it's a senior vs junior thing.
|
| Also, an existing vs new employee thing (which is not the
| same). I'm doing fine with WFH because of the relationships
| I have built here over the last 5 years and my knowledge of
| the company culture/organization/processes. If I were a new
| employee (even coming in as a senior level experienced
| hire) I would not have any of that and it would be far
| harder to get established. Usually by the 5 year mark I'm
| looking to hop, but I've been holding off for exactly that
| reason.
| porb121 wrote:
| I interned remotely last summer and it was a disaster. I
| had very little direction, couldn't stay focused on work,
| didn't meet anyone, and really learned very little. Not
| looking forward to doing it again this summer.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Yep.
|
| MOST technology knowledge involves a good deal of tacit
| knowledge which an only be transmitted person-to-person
| in an intern/mentor/supervisor mode.
|
| So simpler tasks that have zero barriers-to-entry for
| automation can be done without this. But for more complex
| stuff, not so much. This is the same for B2B sales - that
| will ALWAYS be person-to-person - it simply can't work
| via e-commerce like selling books or CDs on Amazon.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yeah, I used "handholding," but that's really an
| unnecessarily pejorative term for providing direction and
| knowledge transfer to less-senior employees. I.e. senior
| employees and managers actually doing their frakking
| jobs.
|
| What advice would you give to an intern's mentor to
| improve the remote internship experience?
| slt2021 wrote:
| let interns meet or communicate and share onboarding
| experience with each ither. so kne senior dev can "hold
| hand" of a single intern, so to speak, and that intern
| will hold hands of other interns
| DC1350 wrote:
| I was a 2x WFH intern. Micromanage the intern a bit more.
| Ask to see code that's being worked on and don't let them
| go too long without interaction. It's way too easy to get
| distracted when the only interaction we have is a 15
| minute stand up in the morning, a few slack messages, and
| 8 hours of time to manage ourselves. There were a lot of
| days where I could get done more work in the hour before
| a 1:1 meeting than the rest of the day. When I'm not
| learning much and the feedback is still positive even
| when I slack off then it's really hard to stay motivated.
|
| Also remember that interns don't have a home office and
| most are in their bedroom at the same desk they relax and
| play games at. It doesn't feel like I'm actually at work
| unless there's frequent interaction
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I think some of it is a "senior vs junior and a maturity
| divide" as you said, but some of WFH effectiveness has to
| do with experience in the current role/project. I've got
| something like 18 years of software experience, have often
| been the senior guy who doesn't require handholding, etc.
| But I got a new job during the pandemic, and joining a team
| with a complex system and various environments and
| deployment methods, etc, takes some time to come up to
| speed on. I definitely felt that I picked that stuff up
| more slowly from Confluence pages and Slack conversations
| than from previous transitions where you can sit next to a
| co-worker and effortlessly watch what they're doing, talk
| about what they're doing, shout over to the person in the
| next cube with a question, etc. Not saying WFH doesn't or
| can't work, but I do think that people who are already up
| to speed do well WFH and people who are still coming up to
| speed are at a bit of a disadvantage.
| macintux wrote:
| Bootstrapping is definitely a process that's much easier
| when you have instant, low-friction access to the people
| with the knowledge.
|
| Often you don't even know what questions you need to ask,
| and the give-and-take of a 1:1 face to face meeting
| provokes all sorts of useful tangents.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I'm CTO in a software company but I don't have a proper home
| office. I was using a small coworking space a 2 minute walk
| around the corner instead. During the pandemic i'm working in
| the kitchen for 4 hours before the kids get up and then in the
| afternoon when my wife takes the kids out. We were always
| partially wfh as a company anyways and tbh I get zero work done
| in the office when I go. I only go for morale and relationships
| (though I do need to take a 20 hour flight to get there). I
| couldn't imagine this working in lab based companies but for a
| company like ours offices are bad or neutral for productivity
| but useful for mental health.
| reader_mode wrote:
| > I was using a small coworking space a 2 minute walk around
| the corner instead
|
| This was something I wanted to do as well - only to find out
| that the local coworking doesn't let you do calls in the
| space - you have to walk out into halls or limited number of
| "booths". And I found this common in coworking spaces around
| here. Which is a stark contrast with how open layout offices
| I worked in worked (you were expected to keep noise down to
| tolerable levels but if you didn't want to be disturbed by
| noise you had headphones).
|
| The idea sounds excellent - I live 5 walking from a nearby
| coworking space that's really well equipped - but in practice
| it's not ideal. + having to leave my equipment around
| strangers isn't the best either and I don't want to meet
| randoms in a coworking space before I can feel comfortable
| leaving a wallet on the desk when going to the toilet.
|
| I might end up renting a private office there - but the
| smallest office they have is 2 people and that's a lot more
| expensive than a coworking desk.
|
| I agree with everything else you said - I love walking out
| with my wife and son around lunch time and flexible work
| hours are much better - I tend to be most productive later in
| the day anyway - which usually meant I spent mornings in the
| office socialising and procrastinating and then having to
| work late - I get to spend that time with my family now.
| kristianc wrote:
| > Which is a stark contrast with how open layout offices I
| worked in worked (you were expected to keep noise down to
| tolerable levels but if you didn't want to be disturbed by
| noise you had headphones).
|
| People who thought they could talk as loud as they want /
| hold an impromptu meeting by your desk and thought it was
| your problem to sort out if you didn't like it are a lot of
| the reason why I hated open plan offices so much.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I use afternoons for focused work, no calls, so it works
| for me. In the morning I usually work from the kitchen
| taking calls etc as I can make coffee etc and everyone is
| still asleep anyways. Calls are definitely an issue for
| coworking. I even considered designing and developing
| modular call booths for coworking space at one time (when I
| ran a space).
| wikibob wrote:
| Taking calls in open plan workspaces is so incredibly
| thoughtless to others working.
|
| Wildly distracting and frustrating when people do this.
|
| No noise canceling headphones do not block out voices.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Closed headphones do a better job, because a thick hunk
| of plastic doesn't need to predict the incoming noise. I
| found HD-280 to be pretty comfortable.
| jmcphers wrote:
| There often just isn't a choice. When I was shopping for
| co-working spaces I'd see tons of open plan space, with
| maybe 1 or 2 tiny phone closets for 50 - 100 people. They
| were always in constant use. I don't know why open
| offices don't set aside more space for private
| conversations when they need to happen.
| bsder wrote:
| > Taking calls in open plan workspaces is so incredibly
| thoughtless to others working.
|
| This is why that old, stuffy, sclerotic behemoth named
| IBM used to have individual offices with doors.
|
| Funny that.
| watwut wrote:
| > I only go for morale and relationships (though I do need to
| take a 20 hour flight to get there). I couldn't imagine this
| working in lab based companies but for a company like ours
| offices are bad or neutral for productivity but useful for
| mental health.
|
| It is like that when people go there to socialize. It is
| different if company culture treats offices as places to work
| in.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Many of my colleagues work from there but afaict only
| support type roles perform well in that environment.
| vpmpaul wrote:
| I really don't get this are you in some super poor country?
| No offense intended. I'm an IT manager of a mediocre real
| estate company and I have a decked out home office with all
| the new toys and with a mini data center that could power a
| medium size office. In all probably totaling in the mid 5
| figures. All company paid and I doubt they remember I exist
| most days. Where are these tech first companies that barely
| allow a CTO to scrape by with no resources?
| sidlls wrote:
| Not to say it applies to the OP, but there are "CTOs"
| (poorly compensated, ramen startup engineer with a fancy
| title) then there are CTOs (well compensated--cash and
| equity, and C-Suite or C-Suite adjacent individuals at a
| well-capitalized real business)
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Between the two extremes mentioned there is the engine of
| the global economy. That's where we are.
| razorfen wrote:
| Remember: "CTO" sometimes means "I am the technical founder
| of a 3 person company"
| noodlenotes wrote:
| If you're in a high COL area, then the constraint is
| usually an extra room away from your family, not the
| equipment. Not always an option to buy or rent a place with
| another room once you start working from home. My company
| sure isn't paying an extra $500-1,000 per month to cover
| rent/mortgage.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Not the GP, but my guess is probably Canada?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| High pay does not imply that you live in a large house with
| ample space for an office even if you can afford it.
| Someone living in a $1M+ condo in an urban high-rise for
| the lifestyle is unlikely to have space for an office if
| they did not plan on needing one when they bought it. Most
| people aren't in the habit of spending lots of money on
| things they don't plan on using. Even if you wanted to move
| to a larger house since COVID means you now need an office,
| in many regions there is no housing available to buy.
|
| I don't have a home office either and no one would confuse
| me with being poor. Until COVID, I had no use for one.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I only go for morale and relationships
|
| As somebody who seems to be in a leadership position, you
| need to realize that building relationships and improving
| morale _are_ part of your work.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My impression is that other industries are often already back
| to the office, ignoring state guidance.
| ryandrake wrote:
| "Ignoring State Guidance" was pretty much one of the main
| themes of 2020 and likely will be for 2021. Which is one
| reason we can't seem to claw our way out of this mess without
| throwing people under the bus to die.
| packetlost wrote:
| I think an underrepresented problem with WFH is that even among
| senior engineers collaborating on a project, overall
| communication goes down and it results in less cohesion among
| the team. It results in a small, but quite noticeable amount of
| siloing within a project. I've also found I don't really know
| my coworkers as _people_ much anymore because we don 't have
| much of any off-topic discussions which leads to strained
| social dynamics.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Well said. I like how you laid out both sides. For employees,
| this is a _preference_. I 'm tired of the "best" narrative.
| Everything has trade-offs that are not calculated in.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Who is actually calling for permanent, "close the office" WFH
| for everyone? Nobody I know. It seems like a strawman. I would
| argue it's just as unreasonable as forcing everyone to work in
| the office or quit, whether they like it or not. Different
| people work better in different environments, and ideally WFH
| would stay optional.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Are you being serious? A very vocal portion of HN has
| advocated this for years. At least for their own positions,
| if not "forced" onto all employees.
|
| For YEARS now, the #1 most reliable way to see your username
| on the front page of HN is to post a link about David
| Heinemeier Hansson promoting remote work, or a story
| skewering Marissa Mayer for squashing it at Yahoo.
|
| It's only after 12 months of sitting at home in our
| sweatpants going crazy, that I'm starting to see more people
| discuss offices a bit wistfully.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > At least for their own positions, if not "forced" onto
| all employees.
|
| There is a huge difference between advocating for the
| option to WFH for yourself and arguing to force everyone to
| WFH. Few if any are advocates for the latter.
| oblio wrote:
| > There is a huge difference between advocating for the
| option to WFH for yourself and arguing to force everyone
| to WFH. Few if any are advocates for the latter.
|
| The thing is, 100% WFH means that you probably kneecap
| your career if the others don't do the same.
| macintux wrote:
| I've worked for remote-only, local-only, and mixed
| environments.
|
| Mixed environments are significantly more difficult to
| sustain. FTF discussions are such big wins when it comes to
| volume of information shared and ability to quickly redirect
| to other topics as needed, that the employees who are remote
| will often find themselves cut out of the loop entirely.
|
| So, given the choice, I'd much rather work for a remote-only
| company than be left out of the important conversations. It's
| not a deliberate decision to exclude the remote workers, it
| just happens naturally.
|
| (As I said elsewhere, it's possible that will change post-
| pandemic, but I think that it's mostly an inevitable outcome
| of the typical office dynamics.)
| l72 wrote:
| You cannot have a mixed environment unless the company is a
| "remote-first" company. A remote-first company means that
| all policy is designed for remote work, but still has open
| office space for anyone who wants to come in.
|
| Remote-first companies have specific policies about
| meetings and unscheduled conversations. For example, all
| meetings must be announced, available over video, recorded,
| with a write up at the end. All spontaneous chats happen
| over email, slack, or a wiki to make sure they are
| documented.
|
| This levels the playing field for anyone working remote, so
| that they aren't completely isolated or left out of
| important decisions by those in the office.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> Who is actually calling for permanent, "close the office"
| WFH for everyone?
|
| REI sold their corporate campus in a move to 100% WFH:
|
| _We have made the decision to pursue a sale of our buildings
| and land in Bellevue's Spring District--and, with that sale,
| to step toward a new model for our headquarters that will
| better serve the way we live, work and act as a force for
| positive change._
|
| _Remote working will move from a temporary solve to a more
| engrained, supported, and normalized model for many of our
| headquarters employees._
|
| Target recently sold its downtown offices as well:
|
| _Minnesota-based Target says that flexibility is behind the
| decision to shut down the company 's City Center operation in
| downtown Minneapolis, and relocate 3,500 employees to other
| locations in the city and elsewhere._
|
| _" None of us knew what the future would hold or how long
| we'd be working from home, but in just one year we've proven
| that we can drive incredible results, together, from our
| kitchens and basements and living rooms," Kremer wrote in her
| email._
|
| _With the end of the pandemic hopefully in site, Kremer says
| Target is moving toward a hybrid system called "Flex for Your
| Day" that will incorporate both virtual and on-site work and
| collaboration when employees "gradually return to
| headquarters later this year."_
|
| Capitol One is doing the same thing:
|
| _Capital One Financial Corp. said the majority of employees
| at its U.S. call centers for cards will work from home even
| after the coronavirus pandemic ends._
|
| _For the rest of its staff, the card giant extended remote
| operations until the end of March, according to an internal
| memo. Capital One had previously said employees would work
| remotely until at least the end of this year._
| mullingitover wrote:
| > I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven
| by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long
| commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan)
|
| Who _doesn 't_ have open plan offices? There are about three
| people left in the tech industry these days who still have a
| private office.
|
| > But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have
| offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear
| MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in
| many, many places where it's a bad idea.
|
| Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working
| remotely, except in rare cases where your team is in a bullpen
| and working full time on a specific project together. It's
| inferior for engineers because of distractions, and it's
| inferior for the company because of real estate costs.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| > Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working
| remotely
|
| "Simply inferior" is a bit of a bold statement. Lots of
| people want to go back to their office for various reasons.
| For me it's wanting to see my co-workers (which are my
| friends at this point) in person every day. It's certainly
| not rare.
| asdff wrote:
| The real estate costs don't go away, they just are paid for
| by the worker instead of the employer. Now you need to either
| dedicate square footage to an office setup, or get a bad back
| working from the couch or the bed or other common home
| furniture ill suited for long work hours. Maybe you
| legitimately don't have room in your apartment for this, and
| now need to invest in another bedroom. Maybe you need to buy
| faster home internet, or move apartments entirely due to a
| lack of ISP choices at your address. I've never heard of a
| business offering a stipend or remote assistance subsidy of
| any sort to their workers to cover any of this, from whatever
| great savings are reaped from saving on real estate costs.
|
| I think there is a happy medium, where maybe offices cut back
| to about 25% capacity or so. People would instead drop in and
| work like a university library. You could go there and print
| stuff out if you didn't have a printer at home. If your
| laptop blew up, you could go there and get a replacement from
| IT. If you preferred, you could rent out a substantial desk
| with several monitors and a good chair if you didn't have the
| space at home, or focused better in that environment. You
| could schedule in person meetings with your team in a well
| appointed conference room if you wanted. You could host
| social events. Maybe even a gym or childcare facility. I
| think that's my ideal for the office environment going
| forward: less a sweatshop and more a clubhouse.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > The real estate costs don't go away, they just are paid
| for by the worker instead of the employer.
|
| I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some
| kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to
| imagine it's a miniscule number.
|
| > I've never heard of a business offering a stipend or
| remote assistance subsidy of any sort to their workers to
| cover any of this, from whatever great savings are reaped
| from saving on real estate costs.
|
| My company does, I'm sure it's become pretty standard
| lately.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Software engineer here who before the pandemic had a
| setup on the sofa or kitchen table. That's fine for doing
| a few hours work in the evening. It starts to get
| ergonomically painful as a full time setup. It's also
| annoying sharing a room with my partner who needs to be
| in meetings all day while I'm trying to write code.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already
| have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home
| but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number._
|
| I thought the same as you, and then I saw a _lot_ of
| people at work not have home setups, either because of
| space or other reasons. It was surprisingly common!
| codemac wrote:
| > I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have
| some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I
| have to imagine it's a miniscule number.
|
| Once again, in SV/NYC/etc very few due to real estate
| costs. Most of my peers who aren't married have room
| mates.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > I've never heard of a business offering a stipend
|
| I recall Shopify was in the news early last year for
| offering employees $1000 stipend for WFH supplies.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-shopify-gives-
| em...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Who doesn't have open plan offices?
|
| Oracle is one company in the Valley with private locking
| offices with permanent full soundproof doors and outside
| windows with mountain views. I had one as an _intern_!
| mullingitover wrote:
| This reminds me of a story about early open plan offices in
| the 80s, where an up-and-coming Microsoft poached talent
| left and right by offering perks like offices with doors. I
| wonder if we'll swing the pendulum back in that direction
| again.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Shhh - don't tell them the secret!
| mrtksn wrote:
| Wow, if that's what interns get what do the lawyers get?
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| I actually feel and work much better in an open-plan office.
| The energy of other people being present keeps me very
| focused and I really like that it's so easy to collaborate. I
| think it helps prevent me from being burned out.
|
| However this is all predicated on open office being a layout
| where your desk is made of wood, hardwood flooring instead of
| carpet, your coworkers Aeron is 5' or less from yours,
| massive windows close by, and there aren't any forms of walls
| other than computer monitors. Cubicles require me to attend
| therapy.
| m463 wrote:
| I think introverts do not thrive in the environment you're
| describing.
|
| Unfortunately introverts are not well represented in
| management or the types of people who make decisions about
| seating.
|
| Also unfortunately, many (most?) software developers are
| introverts.
| sib wrote:
| >> Who doesn't have open plan offices? There are about three
| people left in the tech industry these days who still have a
| private office.
|
| There's a big range from true open-plan space (long tables
| with employees sitting shoulder-to-shoulder next to each
| other) to private offices with doors.
|
| Somewhere in between are traditional "cube farms" which
| provide some amount of semi-privacy, less distracting
| nightlines, noise reduction, and feeling of personal space.
| Most of the companies I've seen are still more like this.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| SV isn't as unique as you think it is. A lot of the problems
| that plague the SF area plague LA, NYC, medium-sized cities and
| the metro areas surrounding them. I've even lived in small
| cities with less than 80k people that have similar problems.
| vl wrote:
| >I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons
| learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.
|
| At the end of the day markets are efficient. Some will make
| mistakes and loose, some will do the right thing and prosper.
| sidlls wrote:
| I think this is an oversimplification. There isn't one
| uniform market for labor, even within an industry. What is a
| mistake for one company might not be for another, but social
| and other non-economic pressures may cause less weight to be
| given to such distinctions and work against both.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I worry that MBAs of other companies will take
|
| Sorry just want to nitpick - this really has not a whole lot to
| do with MBAs or any degree specifically. I think it would be a
| little bit more beneficial to swap MBA with management. Many of
| the things you're discussing are true of engineering managers,
| researchers with PHDs, and accountants and not specifically one
| group of people with one degree - they don't run the whole
| world and have exclusive ownership of "all the bad decisions".
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yes, management generally.
| justapassenger wrote:
| MBA hate here is ridiculous.
|
| Blaming MBAs for how companies behave is like blaming people
| with software engineering degree for writing buggy code. Not
| having people with MBA degree won't magically make your
| company better, same as employing developers without a
| diploma won't magically make your product more stable.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| MBA myself, and I can happily contrast the hate here with
| how much ridicule of engineers there was from business
| professors when I was in college. I just knock off a few
| points of my perception of the speaker's competence either
| way.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| What kinds of anecdotes did your business professors
| offer?
| tehjoker wrote:
| People without business degrees tend to consider more
| variables than simply optimizing the business for profit
| extraction at any cost. No guarantee, but that's what an
| MBA trains people to do. For some reason, doing that causes
| all kinds of social problems that were completely
| unanticipated by philosophers in the 1800s.
| justapassenger wrote:
| My software engineering classes taught me really well how
| to implement red black trees. They shouldn't, so I don't
| use them when they aren't right tool for the job and I
| should use linked list instead?
|
| That's the main problem I have with MBA sentiment here.
| Somehow knowing about something is bad. That's a very
| naive viewpoint.
| ericmay wrote:
| That might be what _some_ MBA programs do for _some_
| graduates but I can at least give you a data point that
| the MBA program I attended spends a lot of time focusing
| on how that type of extraction is bad for long-term
| business.
|
| There are some cases where it actually is perfectly ok to
| extract value from a business before winding it down. But
| that doesn't mean that all of a sudden anybody with an
| MBA degree is some sort of ruthless capitalist.
|
| I got an MBA because I wanted to learn more about
| business, network, and hopefully adjust my own personal
| career path.
|
| I can say for Fisher (Ohio State) we spent a lot of time
| focusing on not just great ways to make money or improve
| a business, but on people too. At least that was my
| experience. I'd guess if you spend a lot of time around
| "ruthless MBAs" you should take a look at what
| universities they're coming from and see if they have
| anything in common.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _MBA hate here is ridiculous._
|
| It indeed is. Just the other day, when the news came out
| that Backblaze is sending private info to Facebook, the top
| comments on HN were along the lines of "I guess some MBA
| decided it was going to make more money, so they did it."
|
| It really takes a special level of blind hatered to blame
| an MBA (where there is no evidence one was involved) for
| sending one's information to a company founded and lead by
| a Harvard computer science major. But yes, let's blame all
| ills in this world on MBAs.
|
| EDIT: Another example I remember was that commenters here
| started the usual MBA-bashing on an article about how GE's
| financial engineering became their downfall, until other
| pointed out the person behind it was GE's former CEO, whose
| BSc, MSc, and PhD are all in chemical engineering.
| closeparen wrote:
| The fundamental critique of an MBA is that presumes
| "management" or "business" is a thing you can be an expert
| in, independent of the domain you are managing. If you're a
| domain expert in something and also an MBA then sure,
| whatever.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Business is very similar to software engineering. To be
| great, it's an art, that most of the time often requires
| more broad skills.
|
| But you most of the time need also basic knowledge of
| fundamentals, and that can be enough to be just ok at
| your job.
| walshemj wrote:
| That was the original point of an MBA it was for a small
| number of highflying midcareer executives in large
| companies who had several years of real world experience.
|
| Now a lot of the time its gamed for points on immigration
| systems.
| tharne wrote:
| That's exactly it. There are too many MBA's who have
| never had a proper job, but will authoritatively tell
| others how to run a business they know nothing about. An
| MBA, to the the extent the degree should exist at all,
| should be something one attains later in life after
| getting some real world expertise and a hefty amount of
| domain knowledge.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm commenting on this small thread a lot because it's
| interesting so I do apologize for that - but where are
| these MBAs who have never had a proper job getting hired
| at?
|
| I read this and think damn I've had a proper job that I
| worked at for years before doing my MBA (which I did
| while working) + 4 years on active duty in the military -
| and I've really struggled in the job market as it
| pertains to working at some top companies or startups and
| it scares me to think maybe I'm getting outcompeted by
| other MBA program graduates that haven't even held a job
| before. Not that they can't be capable, but still....
|
| I can't even get a job or interview as a product analyst
| at this point. No " _1-3 years of formal product
| experience_ " on my resume... guess I could never do that
| job! (sorry /rant I've been going through a rough patch
| with this lately)
| refenestrator wrote:
| Management consulting, where they also do not develop
| deep experience in any field, and then somehow they're
| qualified in some general 'business' field and can be
| hired to senior positions.
| zsmi wrote:
| I was thinking the exact same thing.
|
| I don't have an MBA myself but I've been asked to write a
| number of recommendation letters to business school over
| the years.
|
| https://teach.com/resources/how-to-get-into-business-
| school/
|
| It seems in general one needs a degree, a passing GMAT,
| 2-3 years experience and a recommendation letter.
|
| But then again, maybe successfully gaming the entrance to
| business school is how one demonstrates they're ready for
| a leadership position in the business world... Just
| kidding. Kinda ;)
| mdorazio wrote:
| It varies by school, but here's the list for Wharton [1].
| In general, it's a lot of consulting and finance followed
| by various types of roles at Fortune 500 companies.
| Plenty go to FAANG as well, though.
|
| [1] https://poetsandquants.com/2019/10/25/these-
| companies-hired-...
| mancerayder wrote:
| > MBA hate here is ridiculous. > > Blaming MBAs for how
| companies behave is like blaming people with software
| engineering degree for writing buggy code. Not having
| people with MBA degree won't magically make your company
| better, same as employing developers without a diploma
| won't magically make your product more stable.
|
| I think there's a current trend -- perhaps not entirely
| unjustified -- of skepticism towards academic elitism and a
| bit of a divide, in the U.S. at least, between those in
| ivory towers who issue edicts, and boots on the ground. Not
| taking a side, here, especially being that I'm in
| management.
|
| I do have to say, when I hear of "ethicists" and I recently
| spoke to someone who taught "medical ethics" while at
| Google they fired a controversial "AI Ethicist" I have to
| raise an eyebrow. Ethics are morals. Somehow someone
| studied them and can tell us the correct ones. Maybe I've
| mischaracterized this in my head, but it sounds awfully
| similar to a priesthood.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Also: the MBAs are probably salivating at the fact that they
| won't have to pay SV-level wages for developers anymore.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It sounds like a lot of the issues you are describing could be
| screened for. Making having an office at home a requirement to
| become a remote worker. Remote work only for certain levels of
| employees.
|
| Is that a perfect fix? No. But many remote friendly companies
| are already doing something like that. In 2020 people didnt
| really have a choice and many had kids at home. That is not a
| normal WFH situation for many.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > In 2020 people didnt really have a choice and many had kids
| at home. That is not a normal WFH situation for many.
|
| Similarly, people who homeschool their kids often remind
| others that having your kids at home learning remotely
| because the school is closed, is not the same as the usual
| homeschooling. (And similarly, many of them hope that current
| experience will make more people consider homeschooling as an
| option.)
| oblio wrote:
| How can you home school while working full time? I don't
| believe it's possible.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| One parent works from home and one home schools. It's
| easier to do with wfh because you can live in a low cost
| of living area where one tech salary supports a family
| and buys a large house with dedicated rooms for work and
| school.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Almost everyone I know has been working 20-30% more than usual in
| the last year, are available basically at any/all times (and
| weekends), and getting the same salary. Plus, we're paying for
| the electricity of our work laptops now, and fridge, microwave
| oven, etc. Plus, no more paying for expensive company trips and
| meetings in expensive hotels. The fact that you can hire
| basically anyone, anywhere, means more competition and more
| pressure on the employee to work more and expect less from the
| employer.
|
| Why the hell would they open up again?
| kaesar14 wrote:
| This is one of the only comments I've seen that so perfectly
| captures the raw deal WFH will actually end up being for most
| people. Also, salaries will go down, not up, as employers
| pressure employees to move to lower cost of areas or emphasize
| hiring in those areas.
|
| In a lot of ways I dream of a job I could well and truly leave
| at the office.
| johncessna wrote:
| This. I'm sure more than one of these companies saw a
| productivity _increase_ when they went to 100% remote. Why?
| More hours worked.
|
| I'm curious how it'll play out in the long run.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| Why would someone choose to work more? I close my laptop at 4pm
| on the dot and don't think about work until the next morning.
| bookmarkable wrote:
| Are they still "Silicon Valley firms" when the employees are
| spread out around the country, and world, or can we finally
| retire this tedious, self-perpetuating myth of the elite workers
| of the golden coasts of California and New York, doing incredible
| and smart things the rest of the world can scarcely understand?
|
| Good riddance to the Valley. Maybe having everyone go home will
| create an actual diversity of opinions, not the myopic
| progressive echo chambers that give rise to one Facebook after
| another - keep up the stock value, society be damned, but make
| sure no one gets offended in the process.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Wait, I thought that California was good because it keeps all
| those progressive near each other and away from the other
| states. Do you want all that California money flooding into
| your cities property market? Are you ready for legal marijuana?
| Gasp! They might pass strong environmental regulations! Oh no!
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