[HN Gopher] 'Great Resignation' gains steam as return-to-work pl...
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'Great Resignation' gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect
Author : remt
Score : 327 points
Date : 2021-06-30 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| ziggus wrote:
| Fine, you want to WFH? Awesome, expect a pay cut. Part of a
| modern white-collar salary has some expectations built into it,
| like the fact that people need to be compensated for the
| inconveniences of leaving their homes and coming to the office
| and therefore having to pay for things like childcare, cars,
| clothing, parking, etc.
|
| Don't have those expenses anymore? Then why should I compensate
| you the same as if you did?
|
| Why should I pay you more than some other remote worker in India,
| who'll work for a third of your pay?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >Don't have those expenses anymore? Then why should I
| compensate you the same as if you did?
|
| Because you're paying people to complete a job, not for what
| they do outside of work hours genius. Are you paying people who
| have kids and longer commutes more money? Didn't think so.
|
| >Why should I pay you more than some other remote worker in
| India, who'll work for a third of your pay?
|
| They're 1/3 as good. If that's such a good option then why
| haven't you done it already?
|
| Good luck getting qualified workers with that attitude.
| Capitalism works both ways bud and isn't an employer only
| benefit. Right now employees have the upper hand and if you
| want to bring decent talent in you should probably be
| competitive.
| rblatz wrote:
| What about being Indian makes someone 1/3 as good?
| bluGill wrote:
| Going rate for someone in India that is as good as me is
| about 60% of my pay. So if they are making 1/3 as much as
| me they are not as good as me (though not 1/3)
| rocknor wrote:
| > Going rate for someone in India that is as good as me
| is about 60% of my pay
|
| Ah, totally not an inflated sense of self worth... do you
| have a source for that number? New grad salaries for even
| graduates of top CS programs in India are between 1/4th
| and 1/3rd of $100k [1]. For most other good graduates
| it's lower.
|
| So what you said is incredibly ignorant and arrogant. Do
| better. You're not as special as you think.
|
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-
| Engineer-Ba...
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not a new grad though, I have many years of
| experience, and a history of being worth paying. I'm not
| allowed to see real numbers, but I'm told that real pay
| is around that range by those who do in my company. Note
| that in India people work longer hours, so per hour you
| are getting down to less than 50% of my wages.
| rocknor wrote:
| > Note that in India people work longer hours
|
| Grasping at straws here.
|
| > I have many years of experience, and a history of being
| worth paying
|
| Seems like your ego can't handle it. Why do you think
| that there aren't similar people elsewhere in the world?
| You can't keep throwing random numbers without sources to
| back them up. The reality is that your job can be done by
| many others living in a country with lower COL with much,
| much less money.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >your job can be done by many others living in a country
| with lower COL with much, much less money
|
| Then why isn't it being done by them already? Do you
| think companies hate saving money and just prefer to
| throw it away on more expensive employees who aren't any
| better?
|
| Someone has an inflated self worth and ego issues but
| it's not the guy you're responding to.
| rblatz wrote:
| I'll give you a hint, it's related to the parent topic.
| Companies insisting on people being in the office and not
| remote.
| bluGill wrote:
| The person I'm comparing to is essentially my equal in
| ability, except for the things that are different between
| living in the US vs India.
|
| I know col is better in India, that isn't as big a deal
| as you think because once you get past food and housing
| to luxuries to buy things are more expensive there.
| (Except servants are dirt cheap, while I wouldnt dream of
| one here )
| al2o3cr wrote:
| Why should I pay you more than some other remote worker
| in India, who'll work for a third of your pay?
|
| You know they have plenty of bossy assholes in India too,
| right? Hell, GPT3 could probably do 80% of most managers' jobs
| already...
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Yup. Some annoying middle manager threatens to hire cheap
| labor abroad? Use GPT3 to automate that manager's job so we
| can all get back to writing code. Lol
| yohannparis wrote:
| You are both right and wrong.
|
| Sure, you can hire a remote worker in India for less; go ahead.
|
| But how people are paid as nothing to do on how they spend it
| to work. If someone has a partner that can take care of the
| children at home and walk to work, are you going to pay them
| less than someone who needs daycare, a car, a parking pass?
|
| You pay to get skills executing a task. You put a price on it,
| adjust it to market value, and done. Who cares if the worker is
| in Bora-bora sleeping under the stars or in a suburban house in
| LA commuting in a new leased car.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Exactly. As a software engineer (now for 30 years), I've
| always considered myself a techno-whore. I sell technical-
| skills for money, and I'm fine with that. I'm very good at
| it, my stuff has been in several keynotes where the company
| wants to show stuff off..
|
| I'm not especially invested in my employer, other than the
| stock price going up for all those lovely RSU's, but that
| hasn't stopped me working hard for one company for the last
| 16 years. The thing is though, that I work to live, not live
| to work.
|
| I don't get a free lunch, but TANSTAAFL is as true now as it
| ever was; more important to me is that WFH (for me) is a
| major benefit, and this past year has shown it is (a)
| possible, (b) functional, and (c) oh so desirable.
|
| So, for the first time in 16 years I'm seriously considering
| jumping ship. There's a chance I'll be promoted in
| October/November (one of those keynote things again) which
| comes with a healthy up-tick in bonus/salary so I'll probably
| stick around for that, but thereafter ? Close inspection of
| the market will ensue.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Because you're still competing for me against local companies.
| You need to pay market rate at least for the area , for the
| work you want. Sure market rate in India is cheaper; but can
| they do what you actually need, in the time you need it? AT the
| time you need it ?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| The entire remote worker in India thing is a fear mongering
| tactic. If it was so much cheaper and more efficient they
| would have all done it years ago.
| enoughalready wrote:
| Salaries aren't based on expenses, but that'd be pretty neat if
| they were. :D
|
| With that said, I'd gladly make less than those that have to
| work in the office.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| You don't have to choose - plenty of remote jobs that are
| competitive on pay too. There's lots of code to write.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Why should I pay you more than some other remote worker in
| India, who'll work for a third of your pay?
|
| Because someone as good as me in India makes a lot more than a
| third of my pay. They do make a lot less them me, but not that
| much less.
|
| Because someone in India isn't in the same timezone as me. Call
| me at your local 2pm and I'm wide awake. Call someone in India
| then and you get them out of bed. Of course some reading this
| will discover that India is a better timezone than mine. I work
| with great people in Australia, India, and Mexico - it isn't
| possible to have a meeting with all at the same time because
| the timezones don't overlap right.
| rblatz wrote:
| Your last line is the part most people overlook. Offshoring and
| outsourcing have typically come with quality trade offs, not
| because Indians are somehow inferior engineers, but because
| companies have used in person offices to paper over a lot of
| process and communication issues.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| An anecdote: I quit my soon to be "hybrid" job to move to a fully
| remote one.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Same. Management offered an exception, but I'd rather not be
| the odd one out, so I just left.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _95% of workers are considering changing jobs_
|
| That seems awfully high unless "I thought about it, but decided
| to stay here" counts as "considering".
|
| In my peer group, it's probably closer to 20%. It's probably much
| higher in low paid jobs like service workers, but I imagine that
| most McDonalds workers consider changing jobs every day even
| under normal circumstances.
| staysaasy wrote:
| In my experience people regularly spend years/decades on the
| verge of quitting, occasionally even actively interviewing just
| to confirm whether the grass is really greener elsewhere.
| ladyattis wrote:
| I think this is being over stated. I do think there's a trend
| towards WFH but it's not WFH all the time. It seems the hybrid
| model looks like the most viable model to keep HR and employees
| happy. It's probably due to the fact that there's still a
| childcare shortage which will put more pressure for one spouse to
| stay home even in the summer. So if Google and company want to
| get back to nearly 100% on-site then they'll have to invest
| heavily into supporting their employees outside of the workplace
| in things like childcare to make the transition more sustainable.
| eric4smith wrote:
| I think regardless of the stats, there is a movement of people
| wanting a better work and life balance.
|
| But what will this mean for society?
|
| For one, I see in the immediate future a bit of a reduction in
| commerce for a while. This is simply because people will have
| less money To spend. Duh.
|
| Still... humans always persist and adapt.
|
| Therefore in maybe 5 years there will be more of a Renaissance
| and a big change in how we work, shop and play which could be
| positive in unexpected ways since some people will learn to live
| with less.
|
| Unfortunately though this will lead to a bigger segment of the
| population that won't have enough to live on.
|
| And the segment of the population that are "driven" to create
| will get richer serving that lower segment in innovative ways.
|
| So the wealth gap will increase for sure. And probably pretty
| widely.
|
| I know some of you reading this are getting triggered just about
| now...
|
| But what else do you expect? I'd love to hear how the next 5-10
| years would play out.
|
| But it would be silly to say that so many people stopping work
| will not have some measurable (most likely negative) effect on
| the economy and what we normally expect from society.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > I'd love to hear how the next 5-10 years would play out.
|
| You, me, and every economist, analyst, and investor.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Assuming US military continues to be functional and at the
| top, and US society remains relatively peaceful and
| productive and reliable, then next 5 to 10 years will being
| decrease in price of dollars and increase in price of other
| asset classes.
|
| Just like it has for many decades now. Some things that may
| de-rail this are war, sudden demographic changes, societal
| instability, weather catastrophes and/or changing weather
| patterns, or some other destabilizing force that causes the
| US to no longer be the premiere option for "order" compared
| to the rest of the world.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's hard for people to have less money to spend when there's
| 5x as much M1 [1], and 32% more M2 [2], and for the entirety of
| the last year - the personal savings rate was at an all time
| high [3].
|
| People have more money now than ever before. I wouldn't expect
| a reduction in commerce in aggregate because ~3% of the
| workforce quit temporarily or even permanently.
|
| I won't be surprised if inflation gets so high that there's a
| reduction real terms. But that hasn't happened yet.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
|
| [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
|
| [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
| mahogany wrote:
| How did the M1 supply increase $12+ trillion? That's
| surprising to me, especially when it doesn't include bank
| reserves, and anyway it's much more than even the total
| amount of quantitative easing from what I can tell.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The Fed's balance sheet increased by $4T.
|
| Federal deficit was $3.1T
|
| Bank lending for mortgage originations increases M1 - this
| increased by over $1T.
|
| Total = $8.1T
|
| Since the Fed bought most of the government's debt, though,
| a lot of that $3.1T government deficit should be included
| in the $4T balance sheet increase of the Fed.
|
| So this could possibly only account for half of it. I'm not
| sure.
|
| Other personal debt (which includes auto loans) isn't even
| up another $1T. Margin debt in stocks is up $260Bn. Anyone
| else know what the rest is?
| seneca wrote:
| Meta-response, but what is with the carriage return after every
| sentence, (and sometimes in the middle)? It's a jarring way to
| write.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Haha good point. I learned to do it so it's easier for people
| to read instead of a wall of text.
|
| People usually get bored with a wall of text.
|
| My sentences are longer on desktop - but I was writing on
| mobile now.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I learned to do it so it's easier for people to read
| instead of a wall of text._
|
| There's a new technology call "paragraphs" that a lot of
| people are using these days. I don't know that it'll catch
| on long-term, but it might be a worthy middle-
|
| road
|
| between walls of text
|
| and unnecessary line feeds.
| polynomial wrote:
| I am
|
| really glad
|
| not everybody does this
| okprod wrote:
| Technically their text's line breaks are at the end of
| finished sentences. I don't write as staggered but after
| 20 years out of school I've also shifted toward writing
| mostly in bullet points.
| twic wrote:
| I have separated
|
| the sentences
|
| that were in
|
| the paragraph
| AznHisoka wrote:
| It makes it easier to read. I don't like reading big
| paragraphs and text that span all the way across the screen.
| I wished more people was like OP.
| sn41 wrote:
| Reminded me of good-old Troff pages.
| saiojd wrote:
| In my opinion it's an instinctive response to HN's line
| spacing being too low, and paragraph width being too high.
| But That being said, the people here are disproportionally
| used to starting at packed lined of code so the problem
| doesn't get picked up.
| dalbasal wrote:
| "Great Resignation" is an annoying term, but IMO this is a
| current development worth following. Just.. there must be a
| better way of following than these articles.
|
| These're put together like school projects. Some anecdotal human
| story, some quickly summarised generalizations and speculation,
| some "quick stats" from 3rd party sources that I suspect they
| don't study very deeply. It's rote.
|
| Anyway... the timing of the current labour & money markets to WFH
| necessities throws a lot of cards in the air. The second and
| third order implications of WFH are pretty vast... pretty
| unpredictable too.
| okprod wrote:
| Obviously depends on the sector. I have a number of friends at JP
| Morgan and other banks/funds, none are considering leaving over
| no, or less, remote work.
| aynyc wrote:
| Funny you said that. Two of my friends just resigned. They
| aren't moving to low cost areas, they are staying in NYC. They
| just got jobs with hybrid approach that they like.
| donohoe wrote:
| Am 'flagging' this article. Even if true, it is not clearly based
| on anything substantive IMHO.
| okamiueru wrote:
| Care to explain why you think that? The sources in the article
| are clearly stated.
| api wrote:
| WFH has the potential to end the worst macroeconomic trend of the
| last 20-30 years, which is the "you have to be in one of four or
| five cities to do something" trend. We have to fight for it.
| Resign, resign, resign.
|
| The four of five cities where you "must live" are: San Francisco
| (Bay Area), New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and perhaps Boston.
| Nothing happens anywhere else, or so goes the meme that has been
| deeply embedded into the culture of GenX and younger.
|
| It results in "no good jobs or unaffordable housing, pick one."
| Without good jobs it's impossible to build your career. Without
| affordable housing it's impossible to accumulate wealth or raise
| a family. The working class of the top-tier cities is pushed into
| poverty as well as their housing costs start to become >50% (or
| more!) of their wages.
|
| Oh, and all the interesting culture that made those cities "cool"
| to begin with gets priced out and leaves.
|
| Building more housing in these cities won't work. The fact is
| that if we try to cram all opportunity into 4-5 cities there is
| nothing that will make those cities affordable save some massive
| government-subsidized sci-fi super-arcology housing project (that
| would probably suck to actually live in). If we build more then
| more people will come, the city FOMO feedback loop will intensify
| in the culture, and prices will go even higher.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
|
| The "everywhere else" cities all lose too as their talent base
| leaves, forcing companies to leave as well. Everyone loses except
| property owners and rentiers in top-tier cities.
|
| WFH can geographically diversify. Over time if some returning to
| office occurs, people may look for jobs _in their new local
| areas_ pumping more talent into the talent pools of those cities.
| Capital and VC is already more willing to geographically
| diversify than ever before, so the old "you can only raise money
| in the Bay Area" canard is just about dead.
|
| Edit: this hyperconcentration is also a contributor to America's
| political polarization, since it turns everywhere into a bubble
| where people are surrounded only by people who think like them.
| The physical community becomes a filter bubble.
|
| I also wonder just how large a contributor to wealth inequality
| this could be. It seems like wealth inequality has exploded over
| the same time period that the "you must be in one of a few
| cities" meme became deeply embedded in culture.
|
| Yes there has always been a draw to the big "alpha world cities,"
| but the trend I'm talking about is beyond that. Starting in the
| late 90s to early 2000s it became the idea that if you were not
| in one of those cities you couldn't do anything at all. You
| simply "must" be there.
| ishjoh wrote:
| This is what I've been turning over my head for the last few
| months. This is an incredible opportunity for younger
| generations to build wealth and live the American dream. If
| software folks aren't forced to live in the 5 American alpha
| cities they'll be able to buy houses in more affordable
| markets, they'll be able to have children, and they'll be able
| to save for retirement.
|
| What I've been struggling with is how can we amplify this
| message and get it into the mainstream consciousness. This is a
| huge opportunity for older generations in leadership positions
| to help younger generations.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Keeping in mind the job market has been essentially frozen for
| over a year. We will likely see movements both ways (company
| making redundancies that were on hold because of the pandemic,
| and people making moves they couldn't do because of hiring
| freezes). So the numbers may have little to do with return to the
| office.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| Yea I bet it's just everyone who would have changed jobs anyway
| over the previous 18 months feel safer doing it now
| sgt wrote:
| Great way for companies that allow WFH to gain access to skilled
| employees at a lower price.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Here's a blog post outlining why I left Google this month (June
| 2021) to take a 1-year sabbatical:
| https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue/
|
| (Per AnIdiotOnTheNet's feedback here is a summary of my
| motivations and a compare/contrast with the ideas mentioned in
| the CNBC post) The main thing for me was the prospect of having
| kids in the next 5 years. It doesn't seem like it will ever get
| easier to have a sabbatical than it is right now. It helped me to
| think of the decision as a tradeoff between money, energy, and
| time. When you have a full-time job you optimize for money and
| sacrifice your energy and time. Taking a sabbatical means that
| I'm choosing to sacrifice money in order for more energy and
| time. Maybe this is helpful way to think about burnout: burnout
| is sacrificing too much time and energy for money. Not wanting to
| commute any longer was a secondary decision but not my primary
| concern. The article states "Either they're unfulfilled from
| their jobs or their priorities have changed", I would say both of
| those were relevant in my experience. Last this article is
| suggesting that people are resigning because they have better
| opportunities elsewhere. I do worry that I'm taking this
| sabbatical as a terrible time. It could be a great time to switch
| jobs and lock in a full-remote position. I think there are two
| general groups of people participating in this potential "great
| resignation": sabbatical / gap year people like me who are doing
| it from a "life is short" philosophy and others who are doing it
| to land a better job. The motivations to resign are probably very
| different depending on what group you're in.
|
| Edit: Someone left an angry comment (deleted a few seconds ago)
| stating that I keep linking to this post and it seems like I'm
| doing it as a bot. I will note here that I'm not a bot and I'm
| sorry if my comments are coming off as robotic, but I put a
| tremendous amount of effort into that blog post and I'm just
| trying to share my perspective without spending a lot of time on
| one-off comments. The fact that this conversation is coming up so
| frequently on page #1 shows that a lot of people are thinking
| about it. And because I actually took the leap I figure that my
| post is a good "skin in the game" anecdotal explanation of why
| one person actually participated in this "great resignation".
| (Edit 2: I put in a summary of my blog post and a
| compare/contrast of my motivations with the CNBC article's
| content so this last paragraph is now obsolete)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Personally I don't have a high tolerance for the "look at this
| link" style of post. It's low-effort and feels like an ad even
| if it isn't.
|
| Now, if said link is accompanied by a brief overview of the
| contents or some other insight or commentary, that's much more
| acceptable.
|
| For the record, I did not down vote you, I'm just offering
| perspective on why someone might have.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| That is understandable, thank you for the feedback. I'll add
| some more context to the original comment.
| [deleted]
| gaws wrote:
| I'd like to follow your blog, but I don't see an RSS feed link.
| Will you consider adding one?
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Thank you for reading and yes I can do that. If you want to
| contact me [1] I will let you know when it's up and running.
|
| [1] https://kayce.basqu.es/contact
| Tyr42 wrote:
| atom also works.
| [deleted]
| a-dub wrote:
| interesting. yolo-inflation.
| null_object wrote:
| I honestly don't know whether these articles are over-stating
| their case, and neither do I know how typical my own experience
| is, but for some reason it bothers me that the tone of the HN
| discussion is so reflexively dismissive.
|
| I understand that a lot of people will respond to a question of
| whether they _intend_ to quit their job with a _' you bet!'_ even
| at the best of times, but I'm seeing a lot of people quitting and
| switching right now, as different company plans are crystallized
| for the 'new normal'.
|
| In my current company (for another 2 months) I was interviewed to
| join a team of 12 tech developers, and a couple of months ago the
| first of the switchers quit to leave for another company
| specifically because they were guaranteeing remote-first work.
|
| Then another _five_ of us quit over the following few weeks. We
| met up last week for a goodbye lunch in the park: half the team
| that I joined a year ago leaving the company over the Spring and
| Summer.
|
| Is a 50% quit-rate normal? Maybe each of us had slightly
| different priorities and plans for the future? But I do know for
| sure that people are reflecting more than I've ever experienced
| before, about their work environment, the balance in their lives,
| and prioritizing other things than 40-50 hours each week sitting
| in front of a screen, inside an office.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I can only speak from personal experience, but fwiw I'm
| currently consulting with 2 non-tech Fortune 500 companies.
| Both have implemented "hybrid" return to office policies where
| employees have to live within 100 miles of the office and be
| able to come in 1 day a week or 1 day a month depending on
| team.
|
| I've talked with executives in charge of large teams at both
| companies about this issue and so far it looks like the actual
| resignation rate due to the policy is less than 10%. Hiring, on
| the other hand, has gotten significantly harder and candidates
| are citing need for wfh as a reason they're not interested in
| open roles.
|
| So, personally I think tech workers are overrepresented in the
| "wfh or quit" discussions, but there's a longer-term shift of
| some kind that's going to play out, especially in hiring.
| notional wrote:
| > employees have to live within 100 miles of the office and
| be able to come in 1 day a week or 1 day a month depending on
| team.
|
| This is much more reasonable than what I've seen most places
| offer. I don't mind the sound of that at all!
| sethammons wrote:
| if one day a month, just fly in. I fly in for a week per
| quarter (pre-covid). My main office is in SoCal, but I live
| several states away. Budgets pay for the travel.
| matt_s wrote:
| Purposefully designed office time would be immensely better
| for folks that need dedicated time to do work.
|
| That means better organized meetings with a purpose rather
| than a bunch of weekly meetings that are there just cuz.
|
| I think it is some personalities just need human interaction
| more than others and when they are in management/executive
| roles they want people in the office.
| quaffapint wrote:
| I would love hybrid. Going in a day a week would be great.
| Enough time to plan things and then get to working on it
| remotely. Unfortunately my company is going full 100% back in
| the office citing that's where everyone will be in a couple
| years.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > "hybrid" return to office policies where employees have to
| live within 100 miles of the office and be able to come in 1
| day a week or 1 day a month depending on team.
|
| This is where I suspect a lot of places are going to end up
| in the medium term. I'm not back to the office in the first
| place, and I'm aware that I have a nice office and moderate
| commute, but I still want _some_ wfh time, as well as _some_
| time seeing my colleagues. A balance.
|
| The problem is that in a hyper-optimizing environment balance
| is something to be eliminated.
| Bishizel wrote:
| The problem is that the req to live within 100mi doesn't
| allow workers to fully engage in location arbitrage in the
| way the workers would like.
|
| I think most people want a better work/life balance, which
| is what all this ultimately represents. I imagine the
| eventual long term settle is somewhere more in the "wfh,
| but with team gatherings for a few days once a month" in a
| lot of industries.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is one exception to your location arbitrage: those
| who want a hobby farm. if you need to go to the office
| every day your hobby farm will be close to the city. If
| you only go in once a week a 1.5 hour drive doesn't sound
| so bad and you can move farther out meaning more land for
| the same number of people who want a horse or whatever.
|
| This is only a tiny subset of people though, and is more
| the exception that proves the rule.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| If you're in a major metro like the bay area, 1.5 hours
| still doesn't get you far enough to afford anything like
| enough land for a hobby farm on anything short of a FANNG
| salary.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I think you nailed it, but an added wrinkle is that I've
| seen a lot of people (myself included) have _worse_ work
| /life balance with wfh. When there's no separation
| between you and "the office" it's very easy to just never
| stop working. The number of night time emails and after
| hours meetings I've gotten skyrocketed after everyone
| started working from home, and it's a similar situation
| across my broader friends & coworkers cohort.
| ta345iuyr wrote:
| That's a personal problem for you to solve by setting
| boundaries, honestly. I doubt those late emails will ever
| not be a thing, I've worked at a lot of places in things
| other than software and it never ends, regardless of
| working from home or office.
| onion2k wrote:
| 10% of people leaving during a time when hiring has gotten
| significantly harder sounds like a _serious_ problem for any
| company.
| mdorazio wrote:
| It's really not. Normal attrition rate is probably more
| than that and a good portion of the people leaving over wfh
| policies probably would have left for other reasons anyway.
| So the added resignations over wfh aren't a huge burden
| _yet_. It will become a big problem if hiring continues to
| be very difficult, but we won't know if that trend holds
| for some time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| A greater percentage than that leave every year anyway, so
| it doesn't sound all that dire. (I'd love for it to be that
| dire as we've gone remote-first with pretty good support
| for that, but I don't think it's actually going to be as
| massive a tailwind for us as this and similar articles
| suggest.)
| akiselev wrote:
| IME 10% turnover is basically background noise of the
| unavoidable "my spouse got a better job and its right
| next to the kid's college" sort. That's practically a
| near-unicorn-level employer with lots of money and
| negligible amount of dysfunction.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| For now tech workers are at the edge, but I think if a
| company lets its engineering team have it, the other roles
| will come for it as well.
|
| We've already seen it before the pandemic: where engineers
| had one day or half a day a week of remote as an exception,
| it generally resulted in a push to have it applied to the
| other roles that could work from home (marketing etc.)
| cableshaft wrote:
| Job hunting right now.
|
| I know if I get two job offers and one is any form of WFH
| Hybrid (or a "you can _probably_ work it out with your
| manager ") and the other is 100% Remote, I'm taking the 100%
| remote position, unless the hybrid is like 2x the pay.
|
| Right now there's a lot of recruiters trying to sell me on
| various nebulous hybrid positions (sounds like the companies
| don't really know or have committed to anything just yet, or
| are afraid to let potential hires know what they're really
| planning), but there's equally as many recruiters contacting
| me for 100% remote (and plans to stay that way) as well.
|
| I don't mind meeting up with other employees on the
| occasional fun team-building outing, but I really don't want
| to work in an office again.
|
| I likely have permanent Tinnitus in one ear thanks to my time
| in open offices and I had to turn music up to block out
| multiple conversations to concentrate, for one reason why I'm
| not in a hurry to go back, let alone there still being
| uncertainty about this or future pandemics (I'm vaccinated,
| but delta or delta plus or the next crazy variant might still
| fuck me up, and I don't want to be stuck having to go to an
| office when I start feeling uncomfortable about the spread of
| those).
|
| Also I don't want to deal with paying and transporting my
| dogs to doggy daycare everyday, or spend 2+ hours a day
| driving to and from work. I've done plenty of that in the
| past, and it always sucked.
| slumdev wrote:
| > Right now there's a lot of recruiters trying to sell me
| on various nebulous hybrid positions (sounds like the
| companies don't really know or have committed to anything
| just yet, or are afraid to let potential hires know what
| they're really planning), but there's equally as many
| recruiters contacting me for 100% remote (and plans to stay
| that way) as well.
|
| A recruiter (household name tech but not FAANG) pitched me
| on a position that was "1 day a week" in an office 300
| miles from my home.
|
| I knew my conditions* wouldn't be met, so I turned him
| down.
|
| *The company covers my airfare and meals. I fly out and
| back same day. The morning outbound never departs before
| 8AM. The return never arrives after 6PM.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > companies don't really know or have committed to anything
| just yet
|
| That is a good point. My company doesn't know or has not
| set a return policy. So I imagine it is hard for recruiters
| and hiring managers to give an honest answer. And I wonder
| if it is better to wait until more companies have set a
| firm policy.
| Bishizel wrote:
| I think a lot of people are doing this same thing (I know
| several personally). Getting 2 hrs back a day is amazing,
| and after having it for a year it is really hard to give
| up.
|
| > I don't mind meeting up with other employees on the
| occasional fun team-building outing, but I really don't
| want to work in an office again.
|
| I think this is probably where a lot of companies will
| settle out; wfh, but with monthly or quarterly
| workshops/meetups for teams.
| beerandt wrote:
| >Both have implemented "hybrid" return to office policies
| where employees have to live within 100 miles of the office
| and be able to come in 1 day a week or 1 day a month
| depending on team.
|
| This sounds a bit too much like jobs that claim 10% or 25%
| travel that pull a bait and switch, or don't hire the 2nd
| opening for your position, so your responsibly to "cover" for
| the dept really means double work, or same amount of work but
| more like 60-75% travel.
|
| Same with jobs the promise of a 40 hr week, but ends up being
| 60 hrs to handle everything that's your responsibility.
|
| So my question is: what guarantees or addl compensation are
| people getting (in writing) to keep the one day a month from
| turning into more?
|
| Excuses like: "oh that one day is for our staff meeting- if
| your team leader wants weekly update meetings in the office
| you need to be there"
|
| Or "you're responsible for coordinating and meeting with your
| team as needed to fulfill the responsibilities of your
| position"
|
| Etc
|
| Extra day off or extra days salary or just compensation for
| extra commute? Or just put up with it til it crosses a line?
| zippergz wrote:
| This is why I am glad to both be 100% remote, and be so far
| from the office nearest that there is no way they could
| argue with a straight face that I need to come in. They
| could fire me if they decide they don't want remote people
| any more, and that's fine. But at least there's no pressure
| to come in to the office "one day a month" creeping to "one
| day a week" creeping to "three days a week."
| redisman wrote:
| It's also not just WFH. Covid made many people think hard about
| their lives with all the extra idle time they had and traumatic
| and world changing events tend to do that. I left my job in
| February because I realized I wasn't happy and could do better.
| I had just slowly gotten used to the insanity but covid snapped
| me out of it
| [deleted]
| foobarian wrote:
| Interesting game-theoretic play: play chicken with return to
| work plans. Big co promises remote-first work indefinitely,
| scoops a bunch of talent from competitors who return to office
| first, then later go back on their word when nobody else is
| offering those terms. Even if some get to stay remote new hires
| may not be offered that.
|
| Corollary I guess is that some of us might be able to lock in a
| remote-only position if we act now.
| whatshisface wrote:
| They could pull the same trick with pay, healthcare, or
| anything else they offer when their employees are starting.
| There's a reason they don't do that.
| foobarian wrote:
| They may not alter the existing terms but they could change
| future offers they make.
| analognoise wrote:
| As someone who wants to stay remote, this theory gave me
| anxiety.
| dougmwne wrote:
| It's not really realistic. Remote workers would often have
| no intention to relocate. If a company changes its policy
| later, the majority of those people will just quit. It
| would also create a ton of bad will and so there is no real
| advantage for a company to self-immolate like that. Hiring
| is hard, but a mass exodus of your best employees is
| harder.
| slumdev wrote:
| Requiring someone to come in to the office when it's been
| promised all along that he would be WFH permanently?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
| fullshark wrote:
| Talk is cheap
| vuldin wrote:
| Many look at this current situation and draw conclusions around
| how much office-centered work employees are willing to put up
| with, which is great. But others are looking at this as an
| opportunity... workers leaving companies means openings at those
| companies.
| vmception wrote:
| Keep boosting those compensation packages
| eigenhombre wrote:
| I have started to go back (my choice) to the office roughly
| 1x/week, to a downtown Chicago hi-rise, still mostly empty.
|
| It's been pretty nice -- 9 mile bike ride, then squatting in a
| small office or conference room with a view over the Lake, maybe
| 1-2 colleagues to have lunch with or a "water-cooler" discussion,
| all on a floor that was laid out to support hundreds of people.
|
| I fully expect this to change once more people are there. The
| layout is mostly open floor plan, with anonymous desks in rows.
| Noise always was a problem before we all started staying home.
| I'm lucky enough that I can choose how often to go in, but a
| reading of this thread shows that many aren't as lucky.
|
| What it highlights for me is that how quality of the workspace
| really does matter (especially acoustics), and that companies
| must compete along this axis, along with many others (location,
| WFH fraction, compensation, etc.).
| iandanforth wrote:
| Mozilla serves as an interesting example here. They are very much
| a Silicon Valley company and have a ton of that same energy. Even
| before the pandemic they had a globally distributed workforce and
| so had to develop processes that brought people together. Twice a
| year, for example, they had a company all-hands event to bring
| everyone to the same place. Usually somewhere fun. Now they
| aren't a _large_ company by any means but if the 'culture'
| you're worried about preserving is a group of fun-loving, hard-
| working, highly talented and motivated engineers committed to a
| goal that's ultimately beneficial for the world then Mozilla is a
| pretty damn good example that distributed can work.
|
| Now, due to both economics and the pandemic Moz had shut offices
| and even more people are fully remote. We'll have to see if that
| crosses some previously hidden tipping point where the culture is
| eroded because the MV office doesn't exist, but I suspect not.
| It's the mission, people, and processes which make it a great
| place to work.*
|
| * My knowledge is second hand, I don't work for Mozilla or speak
| for them.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Anecdotally I personally know several people who have left
| Mozilla in the last year, and not because they were laid off
| but because they were very frustrated with how things had been
| going internally (not necessarily with remote work.) They just
| went through a huge round of layoffs, but I see job postings
| from them constantly. Somethings not right over there.
|
| I interviewed with them a couple years ago and it didn't work
| out; I feel like I dodged a bullet.
|
| As for offices/WFH -- in that case I was specifically attracted
| to a hybrid model (work remotely but go into the local office
| 2-3 days a week). I would have not been interested in a purely
| remote model. I suspect many companies flirting with pure-
| remote will run into this.
| cletus wrote:
| So I have one bone to pick with these posts talking about "x% of
| people _considering_ quitting ". That actually doesn't mean
| anything. People consider doing lots of things all the time that
| will never happen. It's no different to using a Twitter poll as a
| source.
|
| Yesterday I saw someone post about JP Morgan doing this and that
| person was suggesting a "hack" of choosing not to disclose your
| vaccination status to get out of a return to office (or at least
| delay it). It's worth noting that the EEOC has ruled private
| companies can fire people for not being vaccinated so proceed
| with caution.
|
| As for the FAANGs, I do see some value in physical presence with
| your coworkers. This does allow interactions that otherwise
| wouldn't happen. The food and amenities has value. There's no
| doubt in my mind that a physically colocated team, all other
| things being equal, will have a closer team dynamic than a remote
| one.
|
| But... times have changed. As software engineers in particular,
| we're in a fairly privileged position where we have a lot of
| options on where can work. Several big companies have already
| seen what way the winds are blowing and allow permanent remote
| work (eg FB, Twitter and even Google is in the early stages of
| this).
|
| So you as an individual software engineer have the power to be an
| agent for change if this is something you care about and that is
| to vote with your feet if the company you work for forces your
| hand.
|
| Personally, I lived in NYC for 10 years and there's a lot I liked
| about it but it reaches the point where you're choosing to live
| somewhere old, small and probably noisy but convenient or putting
| up with a commute, which really just robs you of time. At least
| in the tri-state area you can read or something. In the Bay Area
| where many have to drive, it's worse. And commutes are often much
| longer.
|
| So I know I've made a lifestyle choice to move somewhere cheaper
| and warmer.
|
| But a "great resignation"? I don't see it. Many don't have the
| options you do working in tech so they'll grumble about it but
| will comply and go back. I do wish we'd stop reporting people
| "considering" quitting as meaning anything at all however.
| lumost wrote:
| It's WFH and higher than expected inflation. As an employee
| you're likely facing substantial cost increases in food and
| potentially shelter. People haven't been traveling all that much
| during COVID - but I'd bet that travel and other expenses are
| going to see higher inflation in the near future.
|
| Companies have grown accustomed to a 2% "performance" raise. This
| year it's suspect that 2% keeps you treading water. Why wouldn't
| we expect employees to move?
| thekingofravens wrote:
| I see everyone quitting jobs like FedEx that honestly have
| nothing to do with remote work (it was never an option) and still
| probably counting towards this statistic. There are larger forces
| at play than that debate right now.
| toss1 wrote:
| Right, so management will insist on ending WFH, key workers will
| resign in droves, management will convene meetings to understand
| the issue, resulting in new more liberal & permanent WFH policies
|
| In short, they could avoid all the high costs related to
| unnecessary employee turnover by doing the same thing up front,
| but will fail to do so.
|
| And the rule of thumb that you must switch jobs to advance salary
| & benefits is still true. The only way around it is to get the
| new offer and ask current employer to match it (this time WFH
| instead of salary), but that only works once per employer.
| acid__ wrote:
| Eh, I love my company and I love my coworkers and I'm
| unbelievably excited to see them in person.
|
| In fact, I've already started going back into the office (since
| April) and 1) my productivity is easily 5-10x what it was before
| 2) I've had amazing so many conversations that never happened
| over zoom -- both productive and personal - and as more of our
| company's employees return over the coming months I'm even
| excited for more.
|
| Most other engineers here that I've talked to have expressed the
| same sentiment. Over 50% of our SF office (hundreds of employees)
| has already voluntarily signed up to return over the next few
| weeks.
|
| Maybe I'll switch to a WFH company when I'm ready to start a
| family or something, but for now -- I love my team and I can't
| wait to all be back together.
| moistly wrote:
| You are super-productive _and_ you are spending a lot of time
| having amazing conversations. That makes sense. Yup. Must be
| working sixteen hour days.
| acid__ wrote:
| You sound overly dismissive and uncharitable. There are many
| opportunities that occur when one doesn't need to turn every
| conversation into a 30 min video call. As one example, my
| office (like many others) provides lunch.
| [deleted]
| toast42 wrote:
| > my productivity is easily 5-10x what it was before
|
| How are you measuring this? Those numbers seem incredulous.
| frumper wrote:
| well he gets done by 11am(8am-11am?) so 8 hours into 3 hours,
| 8/3 != 5x let alone 10x, sounds like maybe an exaggeration
| acid__ wrote:
| Wait, who in tech is starting work at 8am? My average day
| starts around 10. 10x is an exaggeration to be sure, but I
| will happily defend 5x.
| [deleted]
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's BS propaganda.
| acid__ wrote:
| "BS propaganda"? What would I possibly have to gain by
| lying...? Other people are allowed to have differing
| perspectives and opinions.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Oh, get a grip. Have you considered that other people might
| have different experiences from you?
|
| The switch to WFH _destroyed_ my productivity and made me
| extremely depressed. At a previous company I switched to
| remote because of a move and the same thing happened, so
| it's not the pandemic that's causing it either.
|
| Different people are different. For me, WFH is absolutely
| soul sucking.
| acid__ wrote:
| I'd maybe get 1-2 hours of semi-productive time per day in.
| Write code 1 or 2 times per week. Honestly, I was pretty
| shocked at how I could get away with that and it was very
| demotivating to not have any reason to do more.
|
| Now I'm firing on all cylinders for 7-9 hours a day,
| completing the entirety of a previous WFH day by 11 AM, and
| it feels _really_ good.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Glad it's working well for you. I'm the polar opposite and I
| hope we both will continue to have a plentiful choice of
| workplaces where we can work in the style that's best for each
| of us.
| acid__ wrote:
| >I hope we both will continue to have a plentiful choice of
| workplaces where we can work in the style that's best for
| each of us.
|
| 100% agreed! The sudden industry-wide acceptance of WFH is
| very welcome, and I'm glad that you and people like you are
| gaining many more options for WFH-friendly employers.
|
| There's a good chance I'll develop a strong WFH preference
| over the years as my life priorities change, too. Always nice
| to have options.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Lovely. When I quit my job and started searching for new work the
| Covid-19 pandemic began. Now that I quit and begin searching
| again everyone is quitting. My timing is impeccable.
| 6510 wrote:
| I imagine mobility to do a lot of economic optimization. All
| those jobs held by overqualified people who would be more
| valuable elsewhere.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| >>a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs,
| and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right
| position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com.
|
| This seems very high to me and little suspect, what is even more
| suspect is that they didn't link the report.
|
| I have seen a few of these articles, but no good report that
| tracks this over time and all the articles dismiss or omit the
| possibility that more people are quitting because there is build
| from the past year and half where people were afraid to switch
| jobs. I think this is most likely.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >This seems very high to me and little suspect, what is even
| more suspect is that they didn't link the report.
|
| does a jobs site have a reason to maybe exaggerate that number?
| Bombthecat wrote:
| It could be true, if asked, a lot of people will be like : yeah
| yeah, sure i will change jobs! Any moment now!
|
| Did you apply?
|
| No no
|
| Do you plan to?
|
| Any day now!
| KyleBrandt wrote:
| I think from a fanicial perspective this is because salaried
| (or salary like) positions are sort of illiquid. Kind of like
| houses, moving is a pain so people often do not want to sell
| unless the profit is significant.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I mean, if the poll was on the monster website it makes perfect
| sense. People are only going there to post or apply to jobs. 5%
| posting and 95% applying sounds about right to me.
| [deleted]
| enoughalready wrote:
| My work had plans to return to the office, but it's looking like
| the delta variant is going to allow us to kick the can down the
| road a bit longer. Looking at the UK numbers ramp up, despite 80%
| of their population being vaccinated, it seems likely the US will
| experience a bigger wave of infections.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think WFH is also primed for abuse, but I haven't heard
| anything from companies of what they are going to do, or what
| employees are going to do, about preventing and avoiding abuse.
| it's easy and rather flip and just say well if you don't do your
| job you're going to get fired, what does that mean exactly, and
| how long would it take? I think there's also a trust issue, a lot
| of people who want to return to the office just don't trust their
| colleagues to actually do the work from home.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| What abuse? Do you think people sitting the office are actually
| doing work at all time? Anyone who pays attention at the office
| knows people are constantly wasting time socializing and
| surfing the web. It's all a facade to pretend like more work is
| being done. If anything COVID uncovered the fact that most
| modern jobs are unnecessary, or can be completed in very little
| time and don't require a 40 hour work week.
|
| The focus should be on whether goals and projects are being
| completed not how much people have their asses in office
| chairs.
| dangus wrote:
| It's only primed for abuse if your company is so incompetent
| that it has no idea what your actual job is supposed to be.
|
| For a company like that, how hard is it _really_ for someone
| inside the physical office to hide the fact that they 're
| watching cat videos all day? What does the physical office
| space have anything to do with it? We basically carry around
| portable entertainment devices that can fit in our pocket.
|
| On top of that, a lot of companies have sophisticated HR
| software that monitors employee activity, some that even takes
| periodic screenshots.
|
| It's hard for me to pin "abuse" on working from home.
| nklop wrote:
| The whole "don't trust employees to do the work" thing is an
| interesting statement. It reveals a lot about how the business
| measures and keeps track of its own performance.
|
| Just how much was being done in the office pre-pandemic? Those
| businesses likely didn't actually know. well they sure looked
| busy, right?
|
| The abuse aspect is also interesting. Friend of mine got
| verbally abused. On zoom video _with_ audio. While it was
| recording. So that was an experience when HR got involved.
|
| Overworking is another aspect. That is still being explored.
| Plenty of scope for that to blow up as well.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I think WFH is just a symptom, but not the cause. The pandemic
| working situations exposed some truths about work for probably
| quite a few people: the rather pointlessness of many tasks was
| previously masked by camaraderie in the office or the new
| impressions from travelling.
|
| So folks might want to do something else but might be difficult
| to actually find something that isn't the "same", really.
| sakopov wrote:
| Interestingly, yesterday I had a conversation with someone who
| works in HR at a tech company and they said that it's been
| incredibly difficult to lure candidates away from existing jobs
| because most are afraid of jumping ship in current economic
| climate. I know it's anecdotal, but this is currently how I feel
| myself as well. I realize that there are numbers and stats behind
| the so-called "Great Resignation" but it does make me question if
| this is a micro event when looked at on a larger scale.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I just gave in my resignation at a college I worked for. Part of
| my decision was the fact that I'd have to go back to the office
| and teach in-person. I know in person learning is superior for
| students vs online but I got too used to working from home.
| jordache wrote:
| I wonder how much of this dynamic applies to us in the technology
| space?
|
| Within our job market, are we seeing similar 'great resignation'
| patterns? Anyone with direct insight?
| himinlomax wrote:
| Hypothesis: an underestimated reason why people don't want to go
| back to the office is not (just) because they like WFH, but
| because offices suck hard for knowledge workers when they need
| not. The reason why is based on a major historiological mistake,
| see the book Deep Work
| (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work)
| seneca wrote:
| Completely agreed. I like working from home, but more to the
| point I can't work in an open office plan.
| sylens wrote:
| This is it. Who wants to go back to open office floor plans?
| Give me a shared office and maybe my answer changes
| fartcannon wrote:
| They sent around a form at my work asking everyone what their
| preference would be. The first guy replied to everyone with his
| preference: 100% wfh. Since he replied-all, so did everyone else.
| We got through about 20 employees, all stating their preference
| as WFH before a manager shut down the reply-all.
|
| A week later we got an email saying people wanted 2-3 days in
| office.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yep, a blatant and botched attempt at manufactured consent
| right there.
|
| If you want to stick it to them you should put out an informal
| poll with all employees and publish those results separate,
| show everyone how the company is lying to you.
| frumper wrote:
| That sounds about right, except my organization landed on full
| return to office for nebulous "business reasons"
| ryandrake wrote:
| Hilarious! I wonder (not really) if they would have kept the
| reply-all going if the consensus response was "2-3 days"...
| Sounds like a case of a survey with only one correct answer.
| apozem wrote:
| This reminds me of a saying I read on Stratechery: Workers
| tweet, managers email.
|
| Public discussions are good for, you know, the public. Keeping
| things private just means the manager is the only one who knows
| the whole picture.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yeah, never did the chain email in my old job, but every single
| person I talked to wanted to stay remote. Management said
| "We're hearing that people want to come back to the office".
| After that, headcount dropped from ~40 to ~28, including me.
| ffggvv wrote:
| i remember at my first job we had company wide satisfaction
| surveys yearly. there was one question about whether employees
| planned to leave within the next 2 years. the results always
| showed greater than 70% saying yes.
|
| yet the attrition rate was way lower. in the time i was there
| almost no one left
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| When 95% are trying to switch to a better job, what are the
| chances of actually finding something better?
| okareaman wrote:
| I was extremely lucky to WFH during the first 12 years of my
| software career. When I finally got a job in an office I was
| shocked at how awful it was. The 2 hours commuting every workday,
| the flickering fluorescent lights, the noise of coworkers, the
| smell of burnt coffee or popcorn, the boss that drops by to see
| how you're doing and causes you to lose a hour of concentration
| so I might as browse the web until quitting time. I couldn't
| function in an office, so I was lucky to do my best work at home
| which I am still proud of. I'm not proud of anything I
| accomplished while sitting in office jail.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > the flickering fluorescent lights, the noise of coworkers,
| the smell of burnt coffee or popcorn, the boss that drops by to
| see how you're doing and causes you to lose a hour of
| concentration so I might as browse the web until quitting time.
|
| Was this at a "tech" company of any kind, or a non-tech company
| with a small number of software engineers? This sounds more
| like an archetype based on Office Space rather than a real
| office that I have been in any time in the last 6 years.
| standardUser wrote:
| I think the inability to control light, noise, temperature,
| scents and walk-up bosses/coworkers are more of less
| universal among offices.
|
| But all of those things are trivial and unimportant in the
| shadow of the miserable 1-2 hour of commute every day, which
| is truly a waste of time, resources and our limited human
| lives.
| handrous wrote:
| This basically just describes the offices of most small- to
| large-sized tech companies that aren't part of West-coast
| tech culture (some of which has spread beyond the West coast,
| but does not dominate like it does there).
|
| There are _lots_ of them and they may well represent a larger
| proportion of dev employment in the US than either stodgy-
| old-established-bigtech (IBM, telcos) or ones that are a part
| of the aforementioned West-coast tech culture. They tend to
| develop industry-specific products (or, often, a whole bunch
| of industry-specific products) but are _definitely_ tech--and
| often even purely-software--companies.
| okareaman wrote:
| These were all software companies in or near Silicon Valley.
| Cube farms, not open office. Maybe you are one of the lucky
| ones to get your own office (with a door)
| astrange wrote:
| The one time I had an office with a door it was my worst
| location, because it didn't have a thermostat so it got too
| hot to leave the door closed.
|
| It's surprising how bad smelling the coffee from a
| Starbucks iCup machine is though.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The 2 hour commute is your fault, not the fault of office
| job's. My commute is 10 minutes.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I mean, that's a pretty harsh way to put it. It takes a very
| flexible lifestyle to be able to move 10 minutes from your
| office every time you get a new job. That is also likely to
| severely impact your finances. For some workplaces, it would
| be a financial impossibly to live that close for anything
| less than an executive salary. Often it's far more optimum to
| work remote if you want to minimize your commute.
| handrous wrote:
| Plus, lots of business/office districts don't have _any_
| public schools of even middling--let alone good--quality
| within a 10-minute commute radius.
| okareaman wrote:
| Move closer. Why didn't I think of that?
| delecti wrote:
| I think "get a job closer to your home" is a reasonable
| suggestion, even if that commenter was a bit blunt about
| it. In my most recent job search I avoided applying to
| positions that were further than I was willing to commute,
| even though they're in the same metro area.
| cronix wrote:
| So, 2 hours a day. That's 10 hours a week. That's 40 hours a
| month. That's 480 hours a year, or about the equivalent of 3
| entire months working 40 hrs/wk, sitting in traffic, doing
| nothing productive. Napkin math says you lost a lot more than
| ambience.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Cube farms of the 80's/90's were the worst. Cube etiquette was
| in its infancy. Loud talkers, ice chewers, farters, snifflers,
| oversharers, too much A/C, too little A/C, awful ergonomics,
| 6'x4' compressed cubicles, shared cubicles. Then there was the
| crappy cafeteria food, enormous parking lots with 15 minute
| walks to your car if you showed up after 8am, ... oy.
| bootlooped wrote:
| But didn't they make the office even worse by going from
| cubicle to open office? Often less space per person, less
| privacy, noise travels further, visual distractions, etc...
| mng2 wrote:
| Yeah, I never expected to feel nostalgic for cubes.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| I wish data and statistics weren't so frequently abused.
|
| This article told me nothing concrete of value.
|
| "Hey this number is big" - Yes, but was it also big before? How
| much bigger is it now? 2%? 10%?
|
| Is the cumulative number larger than just the sum of months under
| quarantine? Ie this is just pent up demand and if we averaged it
| across months it'd look normal? Historically what percentage of
| people thinking about changing jobs at some point in time
| actually do within 12mo? 10%? 70%?
|
| Without any context to me this article is just as likely to be
| the precursor to a follow up articke about "the major job
| resignation that never materialized" as is it to be about an
| actual change in positions.
| nr2x wrote:
| The survey is also from a job website, this isn't Pew.
| steelframe wrote:
| I'm now working at my 4th Big Tech company and am about 20 years
| into my career. At this point I have absolutely zero interest in
| socializing with any of my co-workers outside of official
| capacity.
|
| Maybe it's because I'm in an "return to IC" phase of my career,
| but I'm finding that 90% of the other ICs are at least 10 years
| younger than I am. Then there are the managers, who are primarily
| people who have been with the company for 15+ years and all seem
| to be at least 10 years older than I am.
|
| I'm thinking this "everybody back to the office" push is going to
| be the thing that gets me to finally leave the Big Tech scene.
| That, and the fact that I can probably get a comp bump of at
| least 10% by going with a smaller company that has a desperate
| need for my skillset. (As it turns out, no Big Tech company seems
| to ever have a "desperate need" for anything.)
| nklop wrote:
| Hey thats me. I quit my office job to go remote. Don't regret it
| at all
|
| Office work is weird and too political. It was like game of
| thrones every day. The boring bits with pointless drama to
| determine who sits on an uncomfortable chair.
|
| Key question I have now when I have a face to face meeting: why
| exactly am I sharing oxygen in close proximity with this person?
| Especially after this silly commute just to do so.
|
| BTW I now make more money than my boss's boss. Why would I want
| to go back? There's that pragmatism as well.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I think too much of the blame here gets put on the
| "executive/managerial" and capital class for the back to office
| drive and not enough gets put on the soulless HR machine at these
| mega companies. A huge amount of the value and work the HR org
| does is manage things in the office, mange in person conflicts,
| manage relationships, etc. With remote work, so much of the
| impetus for these busybodies is gone, and the scope of the chief
| of HR role is decreased quite a bit. I think a lot of the "back
| to work" chatter is these type of people making up more or less
| baseless justifications for the amount of influence they had 18
| months ago.
| aspaceman wrote:
| The "Return to Work" process is also a huge project for their
| resume line :)
| jonahbenton wrote:
| The Departed said it best:
|
| "World needs plenty of bartenders."
|
| Every employee- and every manager- at every not-trivially sized
| firm is replaceable.
|
| Resigning is ABSOLUTELY THE WORST response, both individually and
| collectively, for those interested in enshrining a more remote
| friendly ecosystem.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Resigning is ABSOLUTELY THE WORST response, both individually
| and collectively, for those interested in enshrining a more
| remote friendly ecosystem.
|
| Not if you are refining in favor of entrepreneurship providing
| remote-friendly work, or taking available remote-friendly work.
| Heck, even just withdrawing labor from the market arguably
| helps.
|
| Reducing the supply of workers who treat remote-hostile work as
| acceptable is the only way to enshrine a more remote-friendly
| ecosystem.
| tl wrote:
| CNBC's primary sources are one anecdote and an opinion piece from
| NBC. This is a garbage article in support of a narrative of a
| fight between labor and capital over remote work. And my anecdote
| suggests that it doesn't exist.
| tqi wrote:
| Assuming this is an unusual spike, I think it's good people are
| self sorting into companies based on whether or not they are
| embracing WFH. It seems clear from data and the conversation here
| that there are several different camps of people. If every
| company went fully remote, wouldn't we just end up with the
| inverse of the old situation, where there will be some % of
| people miserably working from home while wishing to be in an
| office?
|
| Isn't the ideal scenario that we have a mix of companies with
| different models, so people can choose what works for them?
| simonh wrote:
| I think there's going to be a bit of a disconnect between worker
| retention and new hiring. Companies are going to want existing
| workers to go back to the office. Yes I think most will
| accommodate an increased proportion of working from home, but
| they're going to want to hold the line that if they want you in
| the office they have the right to insist.
|
| On the other hand when they're hiring new workers they're going
| to have to face up to the fact that a lot of workers are going to
| want to work from home, or do so for a substantial part of their
| working time. They're going to need to meet that expectation to
| be competitive for talent.
|
| It's not as if 95% of workers are going to be able to just walk
| into 100% wfh roles. The roughly 95% of companies these workers
| currently work for are also the ones hiring people.
|
| So this is going to take a while to work itself out as each
| company or worker figures out their best way to navigate through
| this transition, but the transition is going to happen.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| WFH-friendly employers will lose less staff AND hire more
| easily than places that insist on returning people to office
| for no perceived good reason. But competition isn't the strong
| point of badly managed companies.
| bluGill wrote:
| But in person companies believe that personal interactions
| will make the people they can hire better than the WFH
| companies so it works out.
|
| WFH is hard to manage. A lot of things that get shared in
| "hallway communication" become formal meetings. I make no
| claim as to who is right, but there are downsides to
| everything.
| bregma wrote:
| It's hard to have a hallway conversation when you're
| constantly being watched to make you keep your bottom in
| your seat.
| jq-r wrote:
| To add two points to that. First, people here always
| point out about the boss looking over the peons in their
| open space office. That may be true for a lot of
| situations, but what is also depressing is that even if
| there is no boss/manager/whatever overlooking the
| employees, those will watch each other.
|
| Second, I can second the hallway conversations, those
| never happened at the places I've worked. If anything, it
| was more akin to "send me an e-mail/message" about it.
| simonh wrote:
| At most of my employers useful conversations in hallways,
| at the kitchen, or just dropping by someone's desk
| happened all the time. It's an incredibly valuable
| opportunity. In the last year there are many people I
| used to talk to regularly I've either not talked to, or
| only talked to once or twice that otherwise I'd have
| checked in with on an almost weekly basis. I really miss
| those chats and I know I'm poorer for not having them.
|
| Having said that, I used to work for a big international
| bank and apart from a few people in my direct team, most
| if the other people I worked with were in other
| countries, let alone other offices. They had outstanding
| collaboration and communications software and
| infrastructure though. By far the best of any company I'd
| worked for. They were very well set up for remote
| collaboration and I learned lessons there I've found very
| useful in the last year. You work with what you have.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being
| so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will
| grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe
| it _wont't_. There's a very real possibility that you lose a non-
| negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most
| talented who have other options), handicap your ability to
| recruit replacements, and destroy morale for the remaining. For
| companies who's entire value is the intangible human capital of
| their workforce, this seems like a pretty big fucking risk to
| take.
|
| I get it. Maybe you think WFH is long term unsustainable and it
| will erode corporate culture and what not. But the point is it's
| pretty clear that it's not _short-term_ unsustainable. Obviously
| companies have survived for a year without the train swerving off
| the tracks. Why would any rational company want to be the first
| back? Why not just wait six months after the other FANGs go back
| to see what happens? At worse you lose a half year in the office,
| which clearly isn't that bad. At best, you potentially save the
| entire company from collapsing.
|
| Making such a big push to go back in September instead of waiting
| until January just seems reckless to the point of irrationality.
| throwawaynumber wrote:
| Like most of hacker news, I think you vastly underestimate
| really how replaceable smart and skilled people really are.
| There are literally millions of them, most with far lower pay
| and conditions than offered by FANGS.
| lmilcin wrote:
| You are forgetting how _expensive_ it is to replace smart and
| skilled people.
|
| There sure are millions of them, sure, but not necessarily
| millions of them available when you post your opening. I know
| because I am searching for senior Java devs for a stable,
| global, wealthy corporation and yet it takes months to fill
| positions.
|
| Then to the expense of searching you need to add the expense
| of the guy having to spend at least a year on the job to
| _really_ become productive, learn the system, the
| organization, learn the problem to be able to effectively
| design quality solutions, etc.
|
| If this guy leaves in 2 years on average you have spent most
| of the time basically searching for him and waiting for him
| to warm up.
|
| Smart and skilled people spend a bunch of time learning your
| problems, figuring out solutions, only to take all that
| knowledge and experience with them to be replaced for a green
| guy who will have to start mostly from scratch.
| zerr wrote:
| Even more, as it is measured, the more replaceable you render
| yourself in your work the smarter and skillful you are, and
| the quality of the work is considered higher.
| rajacombinator wrote:
| Have you ever tried hiring these people? At FAANG scale? Good
| luck ...
| pc86 wrote:
| Not directly addressing your point, but how common is it for
| someone to be a FAANG developer - extremely well compensated
| and smart by all accounts - and _not_ have other options? An
| argument like this makes sense for the random dev shops and
| non-tech company dev departments across the country. For many
| of those, the top 1 or 2 people are arguably good enough to
| switch over to FAANG or HFT or some other very highly
| compensated thing if they really want to.
|
| I would expect everyone at a FAANG to basically walk into a
| comparable or better role at a more "traditional" employer.
| endtime wrote:
| Sure, there are always other options. But there's also
| inertia - switching jobs is stressful and risky. Forcing
| people back to the office provides a push that might get
| people to think, "Y'know what, maybe <competitor> will hire
| me at L+1, _and_ let me work remotely. " The employees who
| can actually get the L+1 offer are the stronger ones.
| phreeza wrote:
| As a FAANG employee myself, I think your opinion of the
| average FAANG developer is perhaps a bit too generous.
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| As a fellow FAANG, I completely agree
| sumtechguy wrote:
| What many miss is also these large companies are doing
| something very interesting in the labor market. They are
| starving the competition. They spend a bit extra on labor
| but they get a long term benefit of lower number of
| effective competitors. MS did this for years in the 90s.
| Apple/Atari/Sony/IBM did it in the 80s. Being in office
| ('free lunch', perks, etc) is part of that lock in. If
| people are at home then they are more likely to wander off
| and find another job as at that point the only real
| difference between jobs is the kind of thing you work on
| and money.
| phreeza wrote:
| I agree with the first part, not so sure about the
| conclusion though. What makes you think that WFH
| increases attrition? The FAANGs could easily spend some
| additional dollars to make "their" WFH more attractive
| than the competitions, similar to what they did with
| offices.
| bluGill wrote:
| Depends a lot. WFH when most companies won't allow it is
| a perk that will keep people around. However once WFH is
| a common thing it is much easier to switch. If you WFH
| you can work anywhere in the country (in theory world,
| but there are tricky issues there that I don't know much
| about) which means you can switch from a job in the Bay
| to NYC with no problem, then jump to the one job in some
| tiny village in Montana - all without leaving your
| family.
|
| Family is the key above. I moved to a different state
| from my family and I often feel the loss. It is now a big
| deal to go visit. I can't "call in a few favors" when I
| need my house painted (I'm also not called upon to help).
| Once you don't live near friends/family moving is just
| about the relocation package. Once you have friends and
| family around it is personally hard to move as you throw
| all of that away. By WFH you can ignore all that and live
| where it works best for your life.
|
| Now yes FAANG can give me a bit extra money if they want.
| However I've reached the point where money isn't my only
| motivation. I want interesting/fulfilling work, which if
| I decide they don't offer they can't really change the
| offer to give me.
| phreeza wrote:
| I guess I was unclear in my comment. I meant that FAANG
| can spend money on WFH related perks (premium equipment,
| food delivery, whatever) that second tier companies are
| maybe not willing to pay, thus retaining the same
| advantage they had in the office work era that was
| mentioned by the grandparent in their post.
| bluGill wrote:
| But they can't create a culture of WFH like that. For WFH
| to really work it needs to be first class in the company,
| otherwise those who work from home are cut out from the
| day to day office politics. In that environment WFH
| people are less valuable.
| pc86 wrote:
| That's certainly possible :)
|
| Even as someone with over a decade of work experience it's
| somewhat aspirational to work for a FAANG and get that big
| paycheck and all those RSUs. But no WFH is a deal-breaker
| unless they start opening up offices in Milwaukee soon.
| BooneJS wrote:
| Google and Amazon are both in Madison.
| pc86 wrote:
| I actually did look them all up after posting this
| comment, and you're right. And Microsoft says they have
| offices in Waukesha and Wauwatosa but it looks like they
| both point to a sales-only office in downtown Milwaukee.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| I doubt a lot of people would commute between Milwaukee
| and Madison when the Amtrak Hiawatha is 1.5 hours from
| Milwaukee to Chicago, within walking distance to Google
| Chicago.
| jhickok wrote:
| I know the Google building but I was not aware Amazon was
| in Madison in any substantive manner. Is it an Amazon
| building or a company they acquired?
| BooneJS wrote:
| Shopbop. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/location/madison-wi
| randcraw wrote:
| It's probably like Google's office in Ann Arbor -- 450
| people in advertising, marketing, and sales.
| cnzac wrote:
| You may walk in because of your CV, but the new employer may
| find out that an elite university and FMAGA resume does not
| guarantee programming and software design skills.
|
| Some of the stacks at these companies are quite horrible.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| ==Making such a big push to go back in September instead of
| waiting until January just seems reckless to the point of
| irrationality.==
|
| Maybe the goal is to get the type of expensive, experienced
| employees that inhabit HN to resign?
| rajacombinator wrote:
| It seems to mostly be driven by managers who are not part of
| the productive class and therefore can't perceive the hit to
| productivity and WLB the office incurs. If you spend your
| entire day in pointless meetings anyway, then yes, maximizing
| your commute time and "random office conversation" time is a
| rational choice. And it's not like you can measure the
| productivity of the code monkeys anyway so who cares?
| lkrubner wrote:
| "destroy morale for the remaining"
|
| This depends on how you define morale. Morale can be thought of
| as the willingness of people to make difficult sacrifices to
| maintain community ties, in the sense offered by the essay "Why
| Strict Churches Are Strong":
|
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230409?jou...
| .
|
| In that essay, they make the point that there are no
| freeloaders in a strict church, and that is what draws people
| to strict churches. Strict churches will be smaller than non-
| strict churches, because non-strict churches allow a lot of
| members who do not participate very much in the life of the
| church. In a strict church, people obey a large number of
| rules, and make substantial sacrifices, to belong to a group in
| which everyone else is also making sacrifices, and therefore,
| in a sense, everyone earns their place. And by most definitions
| of "morale" strict churches have better morale than non-strict
| churches.
|
| It's the same with any organization, including the military,
| and including corporations. Asking people to show up to an
| office means you're asking people to make a sacrifice to
| continue being a member in good standing. Such a request can
| weed some people out, but that is the point of the request. For
| those who are left behind, morale is higher because everyone is
| known to be making that sacrifice.
|
| There are several qualifiers that are normally added at this
| point, raising questions over the fairness of the rules, the
| fairness of the enforcement, and the group perception of the
| fairness of the enforcement. I'm not going to write all of that
| out in a comment on Hacker News, I think the essay I linked to
| above covers most of the details.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| I mean, your examples of organizations are homogeneous in
| their nature, and borderline cult level communal. Unless
| you're in management or one of those workers who's an over
| zealous corporate kool-aid drinking yes-man who screams about
| company culture and has substituted any outside social life
| with the office and coworkers, these examples might be
| extreme and irrelevant.
|
| We're all slowly dying, and personally, I value having more
| control over what little time I have left alive while getting
| done what needs to get done to make a living, and do it right
| without being tied down, more or less against my will, to any
| office.
| lkrubner wrote:
| You're confusing your personal feelings about some
| hypothetical organization with the separate question of
| what the definition of "morale" is. That organization will
| have a level of morale even if you are not a part of the
| organization.
|
| As to this:
|
| "We're all slowly dying"
|
| That is a double-edged sword. Many people find meaning
| through the commitments they make: marriage, the military,
| the nation, their religion, children, parents, friends. Why
| make a commitment? Because we are all dying and so we
| wonder "What is the meaning of life?" And for those who
| find meaning through their commitments, then the fact that
| we are all slowly dying would be a reason to make more,
| deeper commitments, not less.
|
| "I value having more control over what little time I have
| left"
|
| Unless someone puts a gun to your head, no one is taking
| away your control over your time. Whether you decide to
| make any kinds of commitments to marriage, the military,
| the nation, your religion, children, parents, or friends,
| those are your choices, both if you reject all such
| commitments or embrace them.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| > I value having more control over what little time I have
| left alive
|
| This right here is the entire argument. It's about
| _control_ , and nothing more.
|
| The pandemic displaced a large group of socially successful
| people from the social hierarchy. Those people want to
| return to the old normal because they want their status
| back. They want control back. _" You'll do what you're told
| because I said so, that's why."_ lies at the heart of it.
|
| Some of those displaced people have been revealed as
| frauds: they don't actually contribute value that is
| commensurate with their position in the hierarchy. And some
| of those who report to them have had just about enough of
| their shit.
|
| We're collectively asked to give up our lives to these
| companies. To willingly give over our ability to determine
| how we order our days. To look the other way as our various
| employers build a literal dystopia.
|
| Yeah, no thanks. I'll stay in control of myself from now
| on.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't necessarily mean this in the context here of
| "work for a corporation" but one thing I have learned
| recently (thanks, therapy) is that one can lean too far
| in the direction of individual autonomy.
|
| At a base level, everyone wants a meaningful, fulfilled
| life. A key component of that is having enough autonomy
| and control to feel that your decisions matter because
| they are _your_ decisions. But another important
| component is to feel that your decisions matter because
| they matter _to others_. We are a social primate species
| and for most of us, our emotional systems are wired to
| feel the greatest peace when we feel we are helping our
| tribe and being supported by it in return.
|
| Being part of a group (job or not) where you feel your
| efforts help not just you but the entire group is deeply
| important for most people. There's a reason that male
| suicide rates skyrocket not long after retirement. We are
| not happy alone and disconnected, even though being in
| that state in theory maximizes our personal autonomy.
|
| Obviously, this is not to imply that a job is the only or
| best way to find that kind of tribe or group identity.
| But there _are_ meaningful jobs out there and _working
| together_ can be an important part of a fulfilling life.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > There's a reason that male suicide rates skyrocket not
| long after retirement. We are not happy alone and
| disconnected, even though being in that state in theory
| maximizes our personal autonomy.
|
| That seems to be a completely artificial problem of the
| modern corporate first-world that discards or isolates
| anyone it doesn't find useful (the elderly and children)
| when, for a most of history; the elderly never stopped
| working in a meaningful capacity ever until they dropped
| or were incapacitated; children were working with their
| guardians much much more of the time without dipping into
| exploitative child labor of industrialism.
|
| > But there are meaningful jobs out there and working
| together can be an important part of a fulfilling life.
|
| It's like we're making the best of having our village
| raided for resources and saying some of the raiders don't
| take all the stuff (and they don't take nothing). What we
| need are appropriate walls so that our relationship with
| these outsiders can be one of trade/negotiation.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Some of these "in control" managers are just extreme
| extroverts, who can't comfortably live without a steady
| stream of victi^W "direct reports" to cater to their
| weird habits. Instead of simply creating a policy and a
| monthly report for a trivial daily process easily
| accomplished by a particular employee, it's so much more
| satisfying for such a manager to drop in unannounced
| every day to "supervise". These managers have been stuck
| at home long enough that all the maids and gardeners have
| quit and the third spouse has suggested a separation. An
| omnipresence of such people surely justified the
| invention of the guillotine...
| throwaway743 wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more.
|
| > Some of those displaced people have been revealed as
| frauds: they don't actually contribute value that is
| commensurate with their position in the hierarchy. And
| some of those who report to them have had just about
| enough of their shit.
|
| Oh boy, I could share quite a few relevant stories (as I
| think many of here could too) that'd make your head spin.
| It's crazy to think of the number of these fraudsters out
| there and how awful it is for those who are forced to be
| stuck dealing with them/their actions day in day out.
| Been in that situation with a few managers in the past,
| and it's an understatement to say my time was stolen by
| them.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is an uplifting example, however, in business, it is not
| sacrifice in the same way. Business is about making profit,
| and extracting profit is what they do.. I was told by a
| retired consultant with decades of experience -- fifty
| percent of companies manage through fear. That is, you work
| hard there, or require others to work hard, because, you will
| be punished or terminated. End of story.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in
| being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| WARNING: ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
|
| I manage a team of 12 people at a FAANG. One team member just
| quit working entirely until offices open again. Any information
| about offices opening is immediately pounced on and celebrated.
| While most folks have stated that they enjoy working from home,
| a few others hate it. Interestingly, zero people are interested
| in being fully remote, even though our org has a stated goal to
| get more people to go remote.
|
| That said, EVERYONE is excited at the formalization of a hybrid
| policy that allows up to a 50/50 split between home and work.
| That policy also leaves it up to individual teams to decide
| what, if any, restrictions they want to place on that.
|
| I'm sure it's very different in other teams and companies,
| which is why I prefaced with the warning.
| tonfa wrote:
| Same context, same anecdote here.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Your baseline assumption is that everything is peachy with full
| WFH. It's not always the case.
|
| The people who are going to leave are people on the fence
| anyway. COVID accelerated stuff like retirements mostly, or was
| the straw the broke the back of people driving from rural
| Pennsylvania to Manhattan every day. Other than childcare
| issues that are timing-related, the non-medical objections to
| this are mostly just noise, and people will show up to work.
| sg47 wrote:
| There are always H1Bs to abuse. They are going to do the
| employers' bidding. I think FAANGs will be fine.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| In my experience at least talking to some younger people there
| is a clear dichotomy: despite all the talk about Gen Z being
| "digital natives", people new in their career are _much_
| hungrier to get back into the office because they don 't yet
| have good career networks built up and they're eager for
| mentorship. It is older, or at least more established workers
| who are less keen on that.
|
| I don't think FAANGs will have _any_ trouble hiring a boatload
| of eager, hardworking college grads in September even if they
| lose multi-digit percentage of their current workers.
| ProjectBarks wrote:
| This is the exact sentiment I hold as well. I think the
| demographics of hacker news may be slightly swayed towards
| people who already have established networks and industry
| experience.
| burlesona wrote:
| Not just slightly skewed.
|
| Also the HN audience is far more remote-oriented than I've
| encountered among my coworkers over the course of my
| career, including > 4 years working full-remote.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Anonymity probably accounts for a decent portion of the
| discrepancy (meaning some of your co-workers would
| probably be anti-WFH in person, and pro-WFH anonymously)
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Very few are anti-WFH in person. That would be publicly
| admitting that you can't be trusted to work
| independently.
| burlesona wrote:
| We'll, I can't prove or disprove that claim, but most of
| my coworkers have always been very candid with their
| preferences. I find it difficult to believe that there's
| a large number of people who regularly say one thing
| while secretly believing the opposite.
| TheCanuckster wrote:
| If this is the case, what are the forums people with less
| established networks and industry experience use?
|
| It would seem prudent to be aware of these other "HNs".
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Reddit would be my guess.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| The handful of Reddit programming communities I've seen
| are also very uninterested in returning to work. I have
| to wonder if the difference isn't so much "established
| career" vs "newbie" and is more simply self-selection,
| with people who are comfortable working remotely more
| likely to engage frequently in online communities, and
| those more interested in in-person work less represented.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Also anyone who has been earning a FAANG salary for 5-10
| years should have enough FU money to feel a lot less
| pressure to conform to unreasonable employer demands.
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| This is my experience as well
| bregma wrote:
| This week it's TikTok.
|
| There is a really funny one where the guy goes back to
| work and hits his head on a door.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised by how many people don't
| really engage in outside-of-work anonymous programming
| forums, vs their personal contacts/friends/coworkers/ex-
| coworkers.
| some_hacker wrote:
| Slightly?
|
| If you're suggesting HN is old and cranky...
|
| You'd be correct.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| A lot of domain knowledge and momentum might be lost due to
| such reshuffling. Losing competitive edge and whatnot.
|
| But maybe they have excellent documentation, knowledge
| sharing and mentorship, unlike all multinational corps I've
| ever worked for (where was generally a cost center and
| frowned upon).
| throwawaynumber wrote:
| Monopolies don't need to be as competitive.
| randcraw wrote:
| Exactly. This is overlooked to an insane degree when
| extolling the accomplishments of the FANGs and their
| founders.
| achow wrote:
| From a single, young:
|
| I miss the office for..
|
| - Free and convenient food.
|
| - Social chatter & engagement.
|
| - Making friends with employees who I don't know and
| connecting with new employees.
|
| - Work life separation (balance).
|
| - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment.
|
| - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers..
|
| - Intra and inter company sports and games.
|
| - Meeting potential dates.
|
| [Not me. Just empathizing]
| wil421 wrote:
| Sounds like you need some hobbies. Most of the things you
| state I get from my hobbies.
|
| Do you not live in a place with climate control? At home I
| make the temperature decisions not the facility folk.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I have lots of hobbies and plenty friends through those.
| I also really enjoy my workplace and the social
| interaction I get there. Either one of those alone would
| definitely be insufficient for me.
|
| I sort of feel like these discussions are just
| (oversimplifying here) extroverts and introverts arguing
| back and forth about the best way to find satisfaction
| socially when they just have profoundly different social
| needs.
|
| Also FWIW I've never lived in an apartment with climate
| control past radiators and window AC units. I don't think
| that's too unusual if you live in older buildings.
| adflux wrote:
| Spoken like a true 1%er
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/
| air...
|
| >The latest results from the 2009 Residential Energy
| Consumption Survey (RECS) show that 87 percent of U.S.
| households are now equipped with AC.
|
| That was 12 years ago.
| marshray wrote:
| Note that data doesn't break down the region 'North
| West'.
|
| I don't have AC and neither do many of my coworkers.
|
| Seattle has the lowest percentage of home AC in the
| nation. It's not installed standard in new construction.
| stouset wrote:
| 100%.
|
| Work is a decent place to meet people, but I don't think
| it's particularly healthy as your only or even primary
| opportunity for social connection. That might not be the
| case here but it sure sounds like it could be.
|
| My own life improved immeasurably when I finally started
| having interests outside of pushing buttons into a
| glowing rectangle of light.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well, the PNW just had record temps for three days
| straight (100+ F is unheard of with avg Seattle July
| highs of 77) and AC is an uncommon residential amenity
| that is usually offered at large offices.
|
| Does the office run the AC a bit cold? Yes, but to be
| honest when you reach almost too hot to sweat that's a
| nice problem to have.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Given someone is working a white collar, air conditioned
| office job, I would guess their probability of having AC
| at home is north of 90%.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/
| air...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Seattle has an air-conditioning rate of about 44% as of
| 2019.
|
| I know plenty of AMZN and MS employees without AC.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume those numbers will skyrocket up pretty quickly
| for AMZN and MS employees, or anyone else who can easily
| afford to have AC installed.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's not super easy. A lot of these are apartments that
| are not easy to retrofit. And a lot of Seattle buildings,
| houses or apartments, have casement windows that swing
| out from the bottom to protect the interior from rain,
| but also are probably the worst type of window to install
| any type of portable or window AC unit into because they
| don't swing out very far but the opening is absolutely
| massive.
|
| There's also the matter of the fact that because Seattle
| doesn't get very hot or cold, there aren't that many
| people or companies that do AC installation. Anecdotally
| I've now heard that they're booked out for months,
| possibly a year, and with tight local housing and job
| market that is unlikely to change. You certainly haven't
| really been able to buy fans or portable units anywhere
| in the area since May.
| astrange wrote:
| This is regional. The Bay Area and PNW have a lot of
| buildings without AC, typically no need for it, and the
| landlords don't have any reason to install it.
|
| I used a portable AC in the past but they barely work and
| are very loud.
| joefife wrote:
| Several of your reasons for wanting to return to the office
| are the very reasons I want to stay at home.
| icedchai wrote:
| I'm not so young any more, but I miss getting out of the
| house more during the day. The separation between work and
| home spaces is pretty important. After almost 16 months of
| this, working from home has simply become old.
| tedivm wrote:
| There's a huge difference between what we all did over
| the last year and a normal remote working situation. A
| lot of the worst part of WFH for most people really is a
| combination of WFH and pandemic pain, rather than purely
| being a WFH issue.
|
| I've spent most of my career doing remote work. Since I
| planned on it, rather than being forced into it, I was
| able to do things like rent an apartment with space for
| an office and set it up how I like. That actually adds to
| my balance as I can "go to the office" and then "leave
| the office" when I'm done. A lot of people in the
| pandemic era aren't as lucky there since it was so
| unplanned.
|
| More importantly to your point though is that remote work
| normally doesn't mean "only work from home". Outside of
| the pandemic I would regular take my laptop to parks,
| libraries, or other spaces for a change of scenery. With
| the pandemic that wasn't an option as places were closed.
| I'm hoping to continue this now that things are
| reopening.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yes, this is true. It would be different if it were
| planned for. I hope to get back to coffee shops soon. I
| am somewhat hesitant at the moment given there's still a
| decent percentage of unvaccinated folks in the area.
| Luc wrote:
| > [Not me. Just empathizing]
|
| You made it all up, right? Not cool to wait until the end
| to say so.
| xj9 wrote:
| i'm not anti-social at work. i'm friendly and it can be fun
| to shoot the shit, but i've rarely had workmates turn into
| real friends. i don't know why, but the people i tend to
| connect with don't often work in the same industry. i know
| how to keep work and home separate (i have a couple of ways
| of setting work context for myself so i have a way to leave
| when i'm done).
|
| the only good thing about working at an office is the free
| food, but food isn't terribly expensive anyway. i could
| probably use transport savings to buy myself a nice food
| every week or two.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Not criticizing you, but almost everything in that list is
| in direct contradiction with work/life separation, which
| you also listed.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| For more than half of those, the actual thing you're
| looking for is a bar or pub. Y'all are confused.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| I experienced all of these to a much better degree during
| college. Are you sure you don't just want to live in a city
| that provides plenty of shared spaces? Relying on your
| employer for these items seems unwise.
| padobson wrote:
| _Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise._
|
| This is a brilliant sentiment and can be tide to
| multitudes of other items. The more that can be
| voluntarily decoupled from the employer-employee
| relationship, the more should be.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| > Making friends with employees
|
| This is a lesson I learned in the last year. Even though
| I've made real friends with colleagues and I wouldn't
| change that, I would still advise caution. It can be
| tempting to make friends at work because spontaneous
| regular encounters and shared experiences are the natural
| basis for cultivating friendship. However, making friends
| at work has hidden hazards.
|
| Most (but not all) colleagues are like fair-weather
| friends. It is easy to confuse someone being friendly
| with someone being a friend. If you couldn't imagine
| spending time with this person outside of work, they are
| probably friendly but not your friend. If it would be
| weird for them to call you outside of work to ask how
| you're doing, they are probably friendly but not your
| friend.
|
| Why wouldn't you want to cultivate true friendship in the
| workplace? Don't expect workmates to continue to be
| friendly when you switch workplaces. If you're not
| engaging with them outside of the workplace, their
| friendliness will simply fizzle out. Secondly, confusing
| friendliness for friendship makes it easier to be
| exploited. I've stayed at a dysfunctional workplace far
| too long because I liked my "friends" there. However,
| when I finally did switch and these "friendships" fizzled
| out, it became much more clear that these were simply
| friendly people. This doesn't make them bad people, it's
| just a social lesson I learned. Finally, the last hazard
| of workplace friendships has to do with the insulating
| effect of selection bias. Especially in the tech sector,
| workplace friends will tend to be a much smaller slice of
| class, race, and gender and it's easy to have a narrow
| worldview as a result. Maybe the importance of that
| differs from person to person, but it makes it easier to
| wake up one day and realize, "Huh, I have only middle
| class white guy friends. What's up with that?"
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It's unwise to rely exclusively on anything, but if I'm
| going to devote half my waking hours to something, I'd
| _better_ be able to rely on it to provide more than just
| money to spend on the other half.
| taylodl wrote:
| This. So much this. Young professionals need to learn the
| difference between friends and colleagues. When working
| from home it's hard to blur that line.
|
| As far as chatter goes, nobody wants that. It's
| distracting to those around you. When we were at the
| office we were chatting over IM to cut down on the noise.
| Guess what? We're still chatting over IM while WFH.
|
| Besides, many companies are adopting a hybrid plan
| anyway. My team, which includes many young professionals,
| wants to go to the office once per month. Make good use
| of that time to build your network.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > As far as chatter goes, nobody wants that.
|
| I interpreted "social chatter and engagement" not
| necessarily to mean people are yapping at their desk, but
| that people say hi in the break room, have lunch
| together, etc.
|
| > Young professionals need to learn the difference
| between friends and colleagues.
|
| I hear that a lot on HN, and I'm sorry if I have to roll
| my eyes a little. _TONS_ of humanity make friends at the
| place where they spend nearly half their waking hours,
| and there is nothing wrong with that. It 's fine that not
| everyone does, but this "rule" people like to spout about
| "your co-workers are not your friends" - well, maybe your
| coworkers are not _your_ friends, but I 've made plenty
| of deep, lasting friendships through work.
| forz877 wrote:
| Not everyone you meet at work needs to be your "Best
| friend forever and always."
|
| I just like talking to people. I like being able to go
| down the hall and solving a problem in 5 minutes that
| would take 3 days and 3 meetings WFH. I am "friendly"
| with many people in the office. I socialize with them.
|
| They aren't dear dear friends but they are acquaintances
| that have helped me out of tight spots and I helped them.
| I can't tell you how many times I've been helped through
| these sort of relationships.
|
| If you're introverted just say it. There's nothing wrong
| with it. But there's nothing wrong with socializing
| either.
| porker wrote:
| They sound like colleagues. As distinct from other
| employees or friends.
|
| Some of my best times were working in a university
| department. We did all this, though the talking to people
| outside your team was at proscribed coffee times in the
| staff lounge and sometimes over lunch.
|
| But they remained colleagues not friends. Outside the few
| parties a year we didn't go round people's houses. We
| collaborated and fought over work, as that was what
| brought us together.
|
| I make the distinction between colleagues and other
| employees as not all employees are colleagues. Colleagues
| help each other out of tight spots and talk beyond "Nice
| weather". Friends could be either, but in my experience
| once everyone is married and has kids, the closest will
| be "friendly" rather than "friends".
| forz877 wrote:
| This is just pedantic. I'm sorry in your experience you
| didn't meet lifelong friends, but many do (I have.)
|
| My point is, there isn't a right or wrong here. It's
| frustrating see the WFH warrior brigade come out and
| diminish other's experiences just because they had a bad
| experience. It's simply not universal.
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm extroverted, actually. We have several slack channels
| for each of the departments and hierarchies of our org.
| People say good morning. You can "go down the hall" and
| ask a question. We still do pair programming. In short,
| not much has changed from when we were in the office.
|
| Once allowed we'll be going out to lunch again. I always
| made it a point to go out to lunch with people - people I
| work with now, people I've worked with in the past, and
| people I've met through meetups. I like going out at a
| minimum every other week and prefer once a week.
|
| Maybe it's company culture? We're in multiple states and
| have multiple locations within the same state - and I
| need to work with people from all these different
| locations and so we've solved this "working together
| remotely" problems ages ago. It's an important part of
| our corporate culture. WFH just solved the problem of
| working in a big, noisy area.
| forz877 wrote:
| The point I'm making is that people are different.
|
| Some people make friends at work, others don't. While you
| may struggle blurring friend from colleague in the
| office, others may struggle WFH with separating their
| house and leisure from work. Not everyone has a luxury
| office to walk into. Some work in their dining room.
|
| There are pros and cons, and those pros and cons change
| depending on individual circumstances. But ultimately you
| are working for a company that needs to make money and
| they need to make a decision. You can choose to stay or
| leave.
| topkai22 wrote:
| Work, like college, provides directed activity and
| identity to bond over. Just having shared space isn't the
| same. Finding/developing institutions that provide that
| and aren't work is difficult and will take time
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I'm more-or-less the person described in the GP, and I
| live in Manhattan. Being in a city doesn't mean crap if I
| spend the day sitting alone in my tiny studio apartment.
|
| 40 hours a week is a huge chunk of my life. I don't want
| to just be a robot during that time, I want to be part of
| a community of some sort. (Even as I do try to maintain
| connections outside of work too!)
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Now that others are not working in the office, I hope
| that communities realize that we are drastically under-
| creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of
| them.
|
| As these offices are sitting empty and are no longer
| required, instead of letting them sit empty, let them be
| free to all. Community involvement is the only way to get
| this done.
| tgragnato wrote:
| Dating at work is especially a bad idea.
|
| Things could be perfect, but (with high probability) a
| relationship will abruptly end and managing every social
| aspect can be difficult.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Dating at work _can_ be a bad idea. But also, a very
| large proportion of the married people I know met their
| spouses at work.
| nafix wrote:
| Maybe for you it is. I know tons of people who do this
| with 0 issue at multiple places I've worked.
| astrange wrote:
| Most people don't care about their jobs more than they do
| about their relationships.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Especially looking for dates in the workplace as a
| selling point.
| gowld wrote:
| Sounds great, but there's nothing like college and work
| for bringing people together all day. Without the
| structure, most people won't come together.
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| > Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise.
|
| Why? Work is where you spend one third (or more) of your
| time during your adult life. Why the hell would I not
| want such a significant portion of my life to not also
| provide great benefits like opportunities to make
| friends, meet people, eat great food, and have fun?
|
| If you scoff at people who want to make their workplaces
| more welcoming and happier, _no shit_ the workplace is
| going to turn into anti-social, work-only hellholes that
| nobody wants to go back to. This attitude is a self-
| fulfilling prophecy, and a root of the problem.
| nklop wrote:
| Friends are friends and workmates are workmates. A lot of
| people confuse these groups and think they are somehow
| the same.
|
| Workmates might become friends but more likely they are
| work colleagues that vanish after a contract ends,
| especially if they didn't mesh with your network.
|
| In my circles we as a group often get work at a company.
| At least do referrals etc. We also leave together to find
| new opportunities when the place goes feral. This is
| partly why we think office work is less than good a lot
| of times.
|
| I'd argue most offices devolve into hellholes as
| management forget about people and treat them as things.
| spfzero wrote:
| Your employer is not really motivated to provide those
| things for you. They have a different motivation, which
| is to get you to work productively on a job they think
| needs doing.
|
| They may provide some of those either explicitly as an
| incentive, or as a side-effect of putting a bunch of
| people in close proximity, and that's great. But when
| profits are looking iffy, I don't think you can _rely_ on
| it. It makes more sense to be less dependent on your job,
| which might go away, and to build those social
| experiences outside of work so you still have them to
| fall back on if you change jobs.
| drclau wrote:
| Let me be the devil's (to be read corporate) advocate for
| a moment here. You say:
|
| > Why? Work is where you spend one third (or more) of
| your time during your adult life. Why the hell would I
| not want such a significant portion of my life to not
| also provide great benefits like opportunities to make
| friends, meet people, eat great food, and have fun?
|
| I say: aren't you supposed to, you know, work while you
| are at work? The office is not a social club!
|
| Jokes aside, I always wondered how much time people
| actually do proper, productive work while in office, in
| software engineering. My view is rather restricted to my
| own experience (personal + people around me). I'm asking
| because if it's, say, 4h a day, I'd rather just spend 4h
| a day in office, and spend the other 4h however I choose
| to (alone, with family, or with colleagues, friends
| etc.), instead of watching YouTube or listen to
| conversations I don't want to (thanks open plan office!),
| or whatever people do when they are not productive.
|
| Maybe one day we'll collectively figure out the right
| amount of time we are actually productive, and get back
| the rest of the time.
| stemlord wrote:
| But part of the value of WFH is the ability to lower
| work-time to something even less than one third. I've
| always found it extremely difficult to foster worthwhile
| relationships and have truly fulfilling fun in a
| corporate PC environment anyway.
| rytcio wrote:
| Well, that's the other side of it. If a company is paying
| you for 40hrs a week, they want to make sure they're
| getting their moneys worth.
|
| Of course you can argue about how employees, despite
| being "in the office" are only productive for 2 or maybe
| 3 hours of their 8 hour shifts. But that's now how
| management sees it. Having a person visibly in a chair
| makes management feel like they are getting their money's
| worth.
|
| I also don't get how people expect to get paid a full
| living salary for working less.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Ultimately, at the market level pay rates are tied to
| productive value. We have a theoretical assumption of
| 40h/week, but almost everyone understands that it's
| fictional (and more people are learning that). Most
| people who are going home and getting the same work done
| in 2-3 hours aren't working less -- they're working more
| efficiently, or doing fewer _other_ things (e.g. chatting
| at the water cooler).
|
| For many types of thought work, 3-4 hours is pushing it
| anyway; the default assumption of 8 hours doesn't make
| sense with the heterogeneity of what different types of
| work actually entail.
| weakfish wrote:
| PC environment?
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Work is where you spend one third (or more) of your
| time during your adult life.
|
| I surely hope this is rare. Even a 40h work week is less
| than a quarter of work per week and that doesn't account
| for holidays, vacation etc.
| triceratops wrote:
| Not if you take out 56h/week for sleeping.
| lowercased wrote:
| and commute. even a 'quick' commute (and attendant
| 'getting started for the day') is going to put you closer
| to 50h/week. Then another... ~50h/week for sleeping, as
| you say. The 'commute to an office' is closer to a 1/3rd
| of you week, and ~1/2 of your waking life for many folks.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Why?
|
| Because if you live in a great place, all those things
| are available to you without discontinuity regardless of
| WHO you work for. The reason that there's such a
| disconnect between 20-somethings and everyone else on
| this issue is because everyone else has been through it
| already. Sure, there's a possibility that you will remain
| friends with people at your former place of work after
| you leave. There's also a VERY strong possibility that
| the people who are at that workplace are socializing with
| the people AT that workplace. The longer you stay away,
| the more people you DON'T know, and the less you fit into
| their social crowd.
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| >Because if you live in a great place, all those things
| are available to you without discontinuity regardless of
| WHO you work for.
|
| And how is this an argument for not also getting those
| things through work?
|
| I have many hobbies outside work. I live in a great place
| where I am able to spend my free time meeting people and
| doing things outside work. I still want those things from
| my workplace, too.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Because you have a limited amount of time to invest in
| certain things in life, and it's better to invest that
| time independently of your work environment. Not saying
| that you can't ever have it, just that some day will be
| your last day at wherever you are, and those
| relationships don't always follow you to your next job.
| pawelduda wrote:
| The root of the problem you descibe are incentives for
| why workplaces exist. They exist so employees can go
| there and work. There's nothing wrong with that, as long
| as it's an explicit contract between employer and
| employees that both sides agree on.
|
| Some employers will be very happy with blurring
| work/personal life boundaries: employees make friends
| (but the real quality of friendships will only surface
| after you've changed jobs, unless you plan to stick to a
| single job forever), eat great food (because maybe it's
| cheaper than simply paying the employees more) and have
| fun (enough to make impression of a laid-back place but
| not too much, because it would hurt company's
| performance).
|
| It's because all these 'perks' are built on completely
| different goal. I used to think they're mandatory for me
| to feel satisfied with the job - looking back they now
| seem artificial.
|
| That's why I personally love WFH - it let's me focus on
| the essence of working which to me is providing value for
| my client. For everything else, there's time outside of
| job.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Because you might get fired or laid off or burnt out and
| leave and only then discover that you have invested too
| much of yourself into this faceless entity that does not
| care a whit about you. This is one of those things where
| peoples' warnings to the young come from hard won
| experience, but where it doesn't sound right to people
| who have not themselves yet gained the experience. So we
| fail to impart the lessons and each generation is forced
| to relearn them on their own. It can be maddening to know
| something is correct but unable to convince someone who
| must experience it themselves in order to see. But it's
| just life and humanity, it just works that way.
| acchow wrote:
| > Because you might get fired or laid off or burnt out
| and leave and only then discover that you have invested
| too much of yourself into this faceless entity that does
| not care a whit about you.
|
| I think how much you invest into this faceless entity is
| independent from whether you WFH or the office, no?
| sanderjd wrote:
| In theory, yes, but in practice many offices are designed
| to draw employees into the company being a lifestyle
| rather than a place to work, in a way that is difficult
| to accomplish without the office. (This is why there is
| so much hesitance from these companies to ditch their
| offices!)
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| >This is one of those things where peoples' warnings to
| the young come from hard won experience, but where it
| doesn't sound right to people who have not themselves yet
| gained the experience.
|
| Speak for yourself. I am very experienced. I have worked
| at many companies, some of which I left abruptly, and
| others where my close friends were fired/laid off.
|
| But guess what? None of that matters. Just because a
| friendship starts at a workplace doesn't mean it ends
| when the employment ends. Some of my best, life-long
| friends are people I met at work. My current SO, who I
| will marry, is someone I met at at a past employer. My
| wedding party is going to be half-filled with people who
| I met at work, even though I no longer work with them. I
| currently mentor (and am mentored by) people from past
| jobs, one of which was actually fired.
|
| This is also a self-fulfilling prophecy that I see in
| these conversations. People begrudgingly make nice with
| people at work, and restrict those relationships to only
| happen at work... and then are surprised when those
| relationships end when employment ends. If you only
| interact with your "friends" at your employer, then no
| shit those interactions will stop when your employment
| ends. But they don't have to, and for many people, they
| don't.
|
| It's not any different than any other part of life. I'm
| no longer in college, but I'm still close friends with
| people I met in college, and I don't regret at all the
| fun activities I did during college. I no longer go to my
| old gym (I switched to a new gym), but I still keep in
| touch with someone I met at the old gym and I still
| benefit from the exercises I did there. I no longer live
| in my old apartment, but I still keep in touch with my
| friend who lived across the hall from me. Why should my
| workplace be any different?
| throwaways885 wrote:
| You have to be careful, because work friends can suddenly
| vanish when you change jobs, but anyone with a bit of
| social awareness can navigate this.
|
| WFH has changed work from a social experience into
| something boring. I get it, work _is_ work, and maybe
| treating it as a more significant part of life isn 't a
| shrewd move, but I am definitely missing out something in
| this current state.
|
| (That being said, I do understand that I may change my
| mind in 10 years, assuming I have a family. But I can
| only talk about how this seems today.)
| sanderjd wrote:
| There are two different statements one can make: "don't
| make friends at revolve one's life around work" vs.
| "don't _only_ make friends at and revolve one 's life
| around work". I'm making the latter statement. Edit to
| add: I think you're also making the latter statement, so
| I don't think we disagree.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Enjoying the convenient food, comfortable workstation,
| and low level social interactions you get from a good
| workplace is not an investment at all. If you get fired
| or quit then you just get the same thing at the next job.
| I speak from experience having done this multiple times.
|
| Your point about not over-investing into a company that
| doesn't care about you is valid, but not relevant.
| sanderjd wrote:
| It is relevant because many people in our industry
| _replace_ hobbies, diversions, and friendships outside
| the workplace with those within. If they instead merely
| _augment_ them, that 's great. But there can be many
| temptations to transition through augmentation into
| replacement.
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| I think a lot of the benefits you (can) get from this you
| can take with you after you leave the company. I have
| good friends I still hang out with from my previous work
| places 1 and 6 years ago. If it would have been
| all/mostly virtual interactions, I'm sure things would
| have been OK, but I don't think it would have resulted in
| the same level of connection with some of my coworkers.
| YMMV, different people form connections differently.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| We've learned in this pandemic that for knowledge work
| the workplace is no longer a requirement for
| productivity. Work should be what you spend one third of
| your time doing, but it should not be where. During
| college I did my homework in the computer labs where
| other students were doing their work and we chatted and
| built a rapport despite working on different tasks. I
| look forward to working out of the office and out of my
| home and building relationships with people that are not
| contractually obligated to be with me.
|
| I expect to treat my co-workers with respect, but that is
| no different than what Open Source projects have done for
| decades.
| Lammy wrote:
| - Making friends with employees
|
| - Work life separation (balance)
|
| Does not compute.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| It is possible, much in the same way that making friends
| at school does not require you to be glued to a textbook
| all day. But it requires self control and thoughtful
| boundaries.
| jordache wrote:
| Sure it does. You're seeing this as a binary thing.. It's
| anything but that.
|
| You can integrate certain aspects of work and personal
| life (social circle) while keeping other aspects siloed
| cpursley wrote:
| Sounds like you just need to put some effort into building
| a social life outside of work...
|
| And dating a co-worker in today's climate? No way, to much
| a risk -at least in the US.
|
| The rest of them (comfortable space to work, food) are easy
| to solve with minimal effort. Especially on a dev salary.
| itronitron wrote:
| For many people the office only provides work life
| separation.
| jancsika wrote:
| How does
|
| > Work life separation (balance).
|
| jibe with
|
| > - Social chatter & engagement.
|
| > - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers..
|
| > - Intra and inter company sports and games.
|
| > - Meeting potential dates.
|
| ?
|
| * "Single, young" "person" rips off its mask out of
| ravenous anger to reveal a 400 year-old lizardoid smacking
| its chops at the humans in it's vicinity.*
| tqi wrote:
| Work / Life separation doesn't mean "Work life" is devoid
| of social aspects, and while "Work life" is different
| from "Life life" it can share many of the same
| activities.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Can't replace senior engineers with a bunch of college grads
| though ;-)
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yup, I am glad I worked _in_ office during the first ~7 years
| of my career. I couldn 't even imagine my life not doing
| that.
|
| I've been working remotely since 2015. Do I want to go back
| now? Hell no.
| bhub wrote:
| I'm 45 and have been working partially remote for 4 years and
| fully remote since the pandemic. I really enjoy working from
| home. Spending more time with family and finding a good
| work/life balance and not having to commute are great perks.
|
| I have recently started a new job and was interviewed and
| onboarded entirely remote. The process was fine and in the
| future I am not required to be in the office a lot either.
|
| However I am eager to get into the office to meet the new
| people, have them at hand to ask questions (not just on
| teams) and generally assimilate into the team.
|
| The problem with teams and other such tools is that I can't
| see if someone is available or not. Their dot might be green,
| but they might be in the zone or otherwise not easily
| interruptible. In an office I can see whether or not this is
| the case.
|
| I'm not keen to work in the office 100% but I am also aware
| of some of the benefits of being in the office at times.
| Especially planning meetings etc.
|
| I also don't think each case suits everyone and IMO flexible
| location is a good compromise allowing people to work where
| they would like. Let people come in when they need or for
| meetings but also let them work from home as they need.
| zffr wrote:
| IMO what's great about slack is that you can send someone a
| message and they can choose to respond whenever they're
| free. If async communication is too slow, you can always
| ask do to a zoom call for a few min.
|
| In an office I think it is pretty hard to tell when someone
| is actually available. If you make a mistake and interrupt
| someone while they are actually thinking deeply about a
| problem, you can cause a pretty big dent in their
| productivity.
| randcraw wrote:
| Assuming your kids are in HS now, and will depart for
| college soon, it'll be interesting to see how you like
| working from home when your home occupancy drops to only
| two (or to one, if your SO is often away).
|
| I'm a soloist, and I've found WFH to be a mixed bag in the
| past 16 months. I love that I can set up my home workspace
| exactly as I'd like it. But I very much miss routine social
| interactions and don't care much for the daily isolation.
|
| If I could return to an office/cube, I think I'd prefer
| that. But alas, my clueless F100 employer insists we IT-
| types occupy an open space without personal- or group-
| reserved seating, so I'll rarely be able to find or sit
| with anyone I know. NOT something I'd prefer.
|
| Perhaps the exodus of those seeking greener pastures will
| include me too.
| hintymad wrote:
| This is what I got from 1-on-1s with my coworkers too. Clear
| separation: Single people want to go back to office. People
| who have families do not.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Agreed. I'm a college student and have a remote job at a
| company out of DC, and I don't think I'll be staying there,
| at least in a remote capacity, after I graduate.
|
| While I'm in school, remote work is actually super useful
| because I can work wherever, whenever, and working around my
| coursework is incredibly easy. When I'm not in the middle of
| a term though, it becomes more of a chore. Working 40hrs out
| of my bedroom isn't ideal by any means (I go out and work at
| a coffee shop for a few hours each day to combat this), but
| the work-life separation has been really hard for me to form.
|
| I just got swapped from 1099 to W2 so now I'll at least have
| a work machine that I can keep separate from all my personal
| stuff, but I feel like it'll still have more of a blurred
| line than it should have.
|
| I might feel differently about this when I eventually have a
| house with a dedicated office, etc. but living out of an
| apartment with no formal workspace is really difficult, at
| least for me. Definition of spaces is incredibly important to
| how I work.
| flashgordon wrote:
| This. My observation (and mine alone) is that the FAANGs have
| commoditized software engineering roles, eg via standardized
| interviews, disregarding experience - unless you have a
| "creator" brand etc. This has increased the pool of
| candidates who are still clamoring to get in (and recent IPOs
| just made it busier). The FAANG calculus sounds like betting
| on all this. Infact they are probably calculating this
| attrition even contributes to some of the unregretable kind!
| InertBrake wrote:
| Exactly this. The sudden all-remote arrangement last year
| wrecked my first big summer internship in every possible way.
| I take responsibility for a good deal of how it affected me
| emotionally and my subsequent lack of productivity. However,
| I also wasn't given the physical hardware lab projects I
| signed up for or any meaningful support. I felt deeply
| disconnected and unengaged, but pressured to pretend
| everything was okay.
|
| At this point in my life, I'm one of those people who is
| screaming to get out of the house. It's a place of comfort to
| me for sure, but also distraction and stagnation. Couple this
| great start to my career with having a critical third of
| college plus youth in general being ripped from me, I think
| its pretty clear why I am against pure WFH. People in
| different situations and stages with different needs will
| want different arrangements, but I am not going to apply for
| remote positions as a new grad.
| majormajor wrote:
| My take on HN is that there's a very vocal and fervent anti-
| office crowd here that cares _more strongly_ about it so will
| dominate conversations about it, and that the "typical line-
| level engineer" employee will roll their eyes, not engage,
| and just continue waiting until they can get back to normal.
| tolbish wrote:
| Vets with 5+ years of specific subdomain experience within
| the company's ecosystem (along with experienced engineers who
| have experience from elsewhere) are much harder to replace.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| A big part of the rather documentation and process-heavy
| development model at FAANGs and other large corporations is
| to ensure that other people can take over a project if any
| individual leaves. Much as people will hate this analogy,
| "cattle, not pets" is a concept managers and HR knew long
| before the software industry stumbled on it. The people at
| FAANGs are highly-talented but, even at that level, only a
| handful are truly irreplaceable (and those people were so
| valued that they were allowed to work from anywhere they
| wanted even before the pandemic).
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| As an individual engineer, I think it's inherently
| valuable to make my projects easy to hand off (in
| addition to as maintenance free as possible). The company
| is less impacted if I leave, sure, and it also means I
| can take a vacation without constantly getting messaged.
| Long term, it means that I end up working on more
| bleeding edge "cool" projects, since I'm not bogged down
| with years of making myself irreplaceable, and folk want
| new work to benefit from the same level of redundancy and
| maintainability.
|
| I believe that I have a perception of being
| irreplaceable, but it's because of my future value rather
| than past value.
|
| I've never felt like I was being treated like cattle at
| work, though, so maybe I've just been lucky enough to
| work at good companies.
| gowld wrote:
| It doesn't really work though, thanks to "move fast and
| break things". Losing a team member on an important old
| system is a big loss.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| FAANGs have 10s to 100s of thousands of employees. "Vets"
| are a lot less irreplaceable than you might think.
| tolbish wrote:
| Technical debt is technical debt.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Who is doing the mentoring then if only early career people
| are in the office?
| brightball wrote:
| Yea, this makes perfect sense to me. I had WFH as an option
| at my first job. After 3 weeks the cool perk wore off and I
| was in the office by choice everyday.
|
| Now I have a family at home and life is much easier working
| out of the house.
| ikerdanzel wrote:
| Most young one doesn't have experience. Once a good
| experienced senior tech guy left, there usually a lost of
| know-how. I've seen this happened where the product
| development stalled for years because a couple of good one
| left. It took numerous year to get back to track from mass
| hiring. And even that was largely helped by 2nd or 3rd best
| tech persons still left in companies in the first place to
| mentor the new hires. If a huge chunks of good experience
| persons gone, development will stall even for Apple. There is
| a reason why FAANG are competitive even when their pays are
| insane compare to the lower ranks companies. And nowadays the
| East actively seek out know-how. None of FAANG IP is
| enforceable there. Any experienced tech guy can just start a
| new life over there happily. Give it 2-3 more years and
| Huawei will be back like pre-Covid.
| pm90 wrote:
| They might be able to hire boatloads of new/early grads but
| attrition of senior staff is no joke. Maybe they're large
| enough to throw people at the problem and survive, IDK.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Where are all of these senior people with large, cushy
| BigCorp paychecks and benefits going?
| pm90 wrote:
| Startups (both early and late stage)
| [deleted]
| zippergz wrote:
| My purely anecdotal experience is kind of the opposite. My
| friends and co-workers who are eager to get back to the
| office are mostly the ones who have kids and want to get away
| from them during the day (which I am sympathetic to).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| FWIW, I have a kid (and a second on the way), and I want to
| go to _an_ office, _my_ office - not back to _the_ office.
| That is, I want a separate place to work from, to make
| work-life balance easier and better insulate myself from
| the kid-related chaos during work hours.
|
| But this can be solved with just renting a separate flat
| and using it as an office; something I actually considered,
| except small flats are the new fad for real estate
| investors (at least where I live), so prices are
| ridiculous.
|
| Going back to _the_ office, the company building, removes a
| lot of the flexibility and freedom that are important to
| me, and bring in heaps of crap that I don 't want to deal
| with.
| nklop wrote:
| Not me. My career networks are online. Offices are full of
| people trying to give each other eating disorders through
| passive aggression, politics and generally pointless power
| games.
|
| That's the perception we have in our groups. We meet up
| weekly face to face to share air when possible.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Offices are full of people trying to give each other
| eating disorders through passive aggression, politics and
| generally pointless power games.
|
| Seriously, does half of HN work in the real-life equivalent
| of "The Office"? Yes, office politics exist, but this idea
| that it's some sort of scheming, back-stabbing environment
| is a caricature I have never experienced in my nearly 30
| year career.
| nklop wrote:
| So you've not seen layoffs? I have. It was a mad scurry
| of people running around looking busy and indispensible.
|
| Bullying? I've had it done to me and another time had to
| sit in with HR on someone else's behalf.
|
| People being performance managed just because? I saw a
| bunch of 40 somethings get targeted and zeroed out. It
| got ugly.
|
| 30x1 is not the same as 1x30 or 6x5 or 15x2 or 10x3. They
| all look like the same equation but the experiences can
| be vastly different.
| forz877 wrote:
| None of these things are solved by WFH.
| gowld wrote:
| Is WFH layoff-proof somehow?
| nklop wrote:
| Why would you ask that? I didn't imply that. No
| guarantees with WFH either.
|
| Inserted edit: I notice you didn't comment on bullying.
| That's awkward over a zoom. At least one boss of someone
| I know has found out the hard way. Especially on
| playback.
|
| The mind set changes when you start self organising
| because you're alone in a room. It's a different dynamic.
|
| The gig economy has a lot of twists and turns. Less old
| guarantees but some interesting new ones.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| The inverse is also true- I've found it significantly
| harder to get to know my coworkers over Zoom at my
| current shop than I have in the past. Granted, this is my
| first "office job," but at the jobs I've worked in the
| past it's been super easy to meet other people and get to
| know each other.
|
| I get that some people want to put their head down and
| grind for 8 hours a day then move on with their lives,
| but I tend to prefer at least knowing who I work with. I
| work at a small company, well under 100 people, and
| haven't met half of them.
| nklop wrote:
| I think the future for a lot of businesses will still be
| in-office. Having the team in one room has its own
| benefits. Plenty of others will be remote since that also
| has benefits. A lot more will be somewhere in-between. I
| think that will be more common. 100% remote won't suit a
| lot of businesses.
|
| But 30% of the time? Or 20%? For plenty of people this
| won't seem weird. Spending two days per week working from
| home won't be strange.
|
| I work remote now. While I still see a need for in-person
| catch-ups this doesn't include any need for the classic
| daily commute. That, for me and many others, at least, is
| now dead.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Exactly. My ideal setup would be a flexible week where I
| could come in between 2-4 days each week and work from
| home the rest. Maybe have everyone on the team in on a
| specific day and the rest are up to me.
| [deleted]
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| They could also play the slow game by tempting some people back
| and then letting social and career pressure take care of many
| of the rest. You'll have a much easier negotiating position
| when half the company and half the world are back at their
| desks.
| CPLX wrote:
| > For companies who's entire value is the intangible human
| capital of their workforce
|
| Yeah no. The core value of these companies is the fact that
| they've managed to establish a monopolistic position within an
| important high-margin market segment and now find themselves
| stewards of a massive money printing machine.
|
| Yes, eventually, without a competent workforce they'll start to
| face threats and crisis, but I think you're wildly
| underestimating the usefulness of that money printing machine
| to solve any problems that crop up in the next year or three if
| they find they've miscalculated slightly.
| glitchc wrote:
| Reminds me of Research in Motion.
| bregma wrote:
| Who are still around, calling themselves BlackBerry, and
| have not yet declared their return-to-the-office policy.
| handrous wrote:
| > For companies who's entire value is the intangible human
| capital of their workforce, this seems like a pretty big
| fucking risk to take.
|
| Which are those? I'd say e.g. Google's value has more to do
| with incumbent market position. Google and others (Facebook,
| for instance) derive a _ton_ of value from access to massive
| amounts of data and scale-required-as-table-stakes advertising
| revenue that make it damn near impossible to compete with them
| unless you 're _already_ an enormous corporation, even on some
| minor product that 's not part of their core business.
| Arguably, exclusive access to and ability to leverage data is
| much of Amazon's value. Microsoft's, too, increasingly.
|
| Granted they need some number of competent people to keep that
| going in much the same way that any business does, but "entire
| value" is significantly overstating labor's case here, I'd say.
| Their historical-data moats and exclusive visibility into
| valuable data streams are what make them so damn hard to
| compete with. It'd be more accurate to say that their _users_
| are their entire value, than their human capital (though still
| wrong, I think).
| Grim-444 wrote:
| In my experience the quip about the "train not swerving off the
| tracks so far" is mainly just because of the momentum we had
| from years of working closely together in the office. The
| longer it goes on, the further my group/department/org fall
| apart. Communication isn't as good, the new hires aren't
| trained well and aren't integrated with the team well, a
| percentage of the employees are obviously just slacking off and
| not getting much work done, etc. Yes you could argue that those
| things could be fixed/improved but the reality of the situation
| is that they're real problems that we're really facing. From
| what I can see of my situation, it isn't sustainable in my org
| for much longer.
| thorwasdfasdf wrote:
| it's just supply and demand of labor. when there's a vast
| oversupply of talented labor, you don't need to cater to the
| desires of that talent pool. there's a long list of potential
| candidates that would love to work at a FAANG even if they have
| to go back to the office.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Especially since they are throwing out mask requirements and
| vaccination verification for folks returning to work - who
| wants to expose themselves to that?
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| It's about power. How will FAANG get 22 year old college grads
| to stay at work 12 hours a day writing advertising software if
| they don't have them eating dinner and playing ping pong in the
| office?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Can't speak for the others, but Google is not being aggressive
| about return, frankly. Return will be based on regional case
| numbers, and the expectation is only for 3/5 days, low office
| capacity at the start, and I'm sure plenty of flexibility will
| be given.
|
| I personally can't wait to go back, and that's the same
| sentiment I hear from most people on my team. HN seems to have
| become a bit of an echo-chamber of people who prefer WFH, but
| frankly I'm looking forward to the hybrid model.
| nr2x wrote:
| I was of the same mind until I saw the iOS/macOS reveal and now
| I'm fairly certain whatever WFH system Apple is doing isn't
| working.
| notatoad wrote:
| disclaimer that this is completely anecdotal, but what i've
| heard from a few people in fortune-500 oil&gas companies is
| that 30-40% attrition is an acceptable side-effect of returning
| to offices, because productivity has been down by even more
| than that during WFH.
|
| the push to get people back in the offices is because people
| aren't working from home. there's no point retaining your staff
| if they aren't actually getting anything done. maybe it's
| different for software engineers at FAANG companies, but keep
| in mind that even if software engineers are productive, those
| companies employ thousands of people in sales, marketing, HR,
| accounting, and other office jobs. and pushing people back to
| the office in one department while letting another department
| continue WFH isn't going to play well.
| weezin wrote:
| Having spent so much money creating billion dollar campuses has
| them in a sunk cost fallacy IMO.
| _red wrote:
| Well...FANG products have largely reached the point in
| development where new features are incremental and not closely
| tied to growth or churn in a meaningful way.
|
| Not being dismissive, simply pointing out...what fundamental
| leverage does a developer have against inelastic customer
| demand? Are customer going to stop using FANG products because
| advertising feature 3.2.97 isn't added this quarter?
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The market is neither that local nor that global. I don't
| mean this in a "threat from China" way, but if US companies
| just look at the offerings of other US companies and the US
| labor market they might get blindsided again when it turns
| out that there's good money, good programmers and good
| designers in Europe and China as well, as it happened with
| TikTok.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| It's feature 3.2.97 missed this quarter, but serious general
| stagnation in the medium and long term: if junior office
| dwellers replace senior workers from home moving somewhere
| else very little is invented, let alone implemented.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| And with no one mentoring those juniors, it's very unlikely
| they will ever reach the same level of experience and
| knowledge to actually start making those kinds of impacts
| on the product or company.
| polynomial wrote:
| In "theory" yes, as measured at scale. Whether or not such
| correlations really hold is up to a) your data science group,
| and b) the complex and political negotiation of optics by
| stakeholders.
|
| I'm sort of kidding here, as I find your point sensible, but
| it may be a tough sell that demand is inelastic.
| breatheoften wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it's not largely driven by personal
| profit motive/asset exposure of the decision maker class ...
| executives, boards, and upper management at such companies are
| nearly uniformly composed of wealthy individuals who probably
| have diversified investment portfolios including tons of
| commercial and residential real-estate interest in places like
| the Bay area ... what happens to real estate prices in the bay
| if tech becomes remote? Personally I can't imagine choosing to
| live in San Francisco in the first place -- but how many of the
| folks who did for work, then left during the pandemic to live
| in more livable places, would really want to go back if given
| the option not to ...?
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so
| aggressive about pushing an end to WFH
|
| I think the divide between WFH and return to the office boils
| down to something surprisingly simple: how much longer does
| your current lease last and/or how much office property do you
| own.
|
| Companies that are about to have a lease expire, or are growing
| at a rate that they would need to soon lease an even larger
| building are going to be surprisingly friendly to WFH.
|
| Companies that have 5+ years on their current lease and aren't
| planning rapid growth, or companies that spend enormous capital
| building mega-offices that they likely can't recoup the losses
| from unless people keep working in offices are going to be very
| resistant to wide spread WFH.
|
| The company I currently work for has an office, is not giving
| it up (so I assume long term lease) but has nearly doubled
| since the pandemic. They are very WFH friendly. Another company
| I know had a shorter lease, shrunk considerably and is now too
| small for there old office: also WFH friendly.
|
| I know a few other companies that aren't growing or shrinking
| and either own or long term lease several large offices in
| expensive cities. All of them are pushing a return to office.
|
| Any company that _owns_ commercial real estate is going to be
| very aggressive about a return to work, not just for their
| employees, but for everyone.
| drclau wrote:
| > I think the divide between WFH and return to the office
| boils down to something surprisingly simple: how much longer
| does your current lease last and/or how much office property
| do you own.
|
| Something I need to point out: the office is still cheaper to
| run when empty, even if the corporation pays the lease. And
| as far as I know, no company pays extra for working from
| home, in fact the opposite seems to be sometimes true. So I
| don't think your assessment holds.
|
| I think the most important factor is... management. Managers
| just feel they lose the control. Maybe some are even afraid
| they will become irrelevant.
| vaidhy wrote:
| I am missing something that connects real estate ownership to
| WFH policies. Let us assume you have committed to real-estate
| and you cannot sub-lease it and you are on hook for paying
| for it. It does not matter whether it is occupied or
| unoccupied, right?
|
| Is there something that reduces the cost if the building is
| fully occupied rather than mostly empty? If so, companies
| could remodel the buildings to have lower density, but more
| comfortable working spaces - turn all available spaces into
| small meeting room/working space.
|
| In fact, it might be cheaper if your employees WFH rather
| than come to office since you can avoid paying for subsidized
| lunch, snacks, coffee etc. at office, power and cooling all
| of which I would think are substantial.
| acwan93 wrote:
| Apple is the prime example, touting the massive $5B+
| investment into its new campus. Google might be in the same
| boat with its Downtown San Jose expansion work.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Here in Cambridge Google began work on an expansion before
| the pandemic, and it is now almost done. Do they now
| actually need it? Will be interesting to see.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I agree with this line of reasoning. Owners of real estate,
| either directly or indirectly via owning interests in a
| company with real estate will have an incentive for everyone
| to return to office. Middle management may also have an
| incentive to return to office, lest they be found redundant.
|
| Otherwise, I am sure most people by and large would enjoy
| would enjoy not wasting their life transiting back and forth
| to work.
| jhickok wrote:
| >Otherwise, I am sure most people by and large would enjoy
| would enjoy not wasting their life transiting back and
| forth to work.
|
| I personally find this true, but I think there are a lot of
| younger tech people that use the workplace to fill a social
| gap that is hard to fill otherwise. I have nothing but
| anecdotal evidence but my company sold quite a few
| properties-- their leases were either up and they didn't
| renew or they outright sold commercial properties they
| owned-- and our younger employees have openly expressed
| concern that we are full time wfh.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Exactly, this is why you're seeing such a push for returning
| to the office from financial institutions -- commercial real
| estate makes up a large portion of their portfolios.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You're glossing too quickly over the "corporate culture" part.
| It's not about sustainability or gaming out disaster scenarios:
| they're pushing for an end to WFH because they try to cultivate
| a culture where people _want_ to go to the office. (That 's
| what all the amenities are for!)
| alexdias wrote:
| > I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in
| being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| Yes, aggressive measures such as:
|
| -Allowing employees to apply to be permanent remote employees
|
| -Allowing 2 WFH days per week
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| The policy for applying for wWFH at the FAANG I work at
| involves seniority and VP approval.
| gliese1337 wrote:
| ...which policies were only implemented after significant
| employee pushback over the originally-announced "everyone
| will be going back to the office full-time" plans.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Google never announced anything like that. The moment they
| started talking about return to office there was talk of
| flexibility, lower capacities, and WFH. And in reality WFH
| at least 1 or 2 days a week was _always_ a possibility, at
| least in my Google office.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > Allowing employees to apply to be permanent remote
| employees
|
| We'll see how this plays out, but I'm expecting this to be
| just a ploy to keep people from leaving right away and 95%+
| requests to be remote will ultimately be denied.
| nly wrote:
| The 2 day WFH thing will fade away as well.
|
| My company has put those optional 2 days WFH to TLs to
| arrange amongst their teams, with the expectation that the
| whole team will have the same schedule.
|
| Basically if your TL doesn't care or want you to WFH, or
| the team can't agree on days, you're done.
|
| It'll be a major inconvenience and staff will ultimately
| not see the benefits of full WFH with 3, so it won't last.
|
| I think there will be increased churn once the "wait and
| see" crowd clears
| thebean11 wrote:
| As someone who's company is doing exactly that (albeit
| with only 1 day per week) I can't see that happening
| here.
|
| Agreeing on a day between 6 people isn't that hard
| (disagreement can just be solved by the TL making the
| decision) and once the policy exists it's hard to put the
| genie back in the bottle.
|
| Forcing everyone to come in seems like a huge political
| blunder for a TL, why would they do that?
| pc86 wrote:
| Anything but allowing permanent WFH without any approval,
| never requiring any on-site visits, and never requiring the
| camera is "aggressive" to a lot of people for some reason.
| hnthrowaway2021 wrote:
| I work at a FANG (hence the throwaway), and I agree.
|
| Frankly, the COVID-19 pandemic is simply _not over yet_. Not in
| the whole world, and not even in the U.S. Especially with news
| about a new variant, it feels like a safety risk to re-open
| offices so early.
| jstepka wrote:
| i work in sf. i'm in florida right now for the nhl finals and
| covid is fake news here, and it's utterly refreshing.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Many of these companies are letting more senior people stay
| remote while requiring L4 and below to be in office. If they
| lose a ton of L3's and L4's to other companies its a loss but
| much less of a loss than losing L5's+
| holdenk wrote:
| So one of the things to remember about Google is the desire to
| increase attrition of senior employees (e.g. those with the
| most flexibility to move elsewhere). It's.... weird, but it
| would totally match.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You seem to make very very bold assumptions without any data
| backing them up: 1. That current WFH isn't degrading company
| productivity. Some people love WFH, some hate it, and some just
| don't have space for that. And for FANGs, that are heavily
| concentrated in high-COL areas, having huge house with extra
| bedrooms that give you space for work isn't that common. 2.
| That brining people back to the office is the most horrible
| thing that can happen to the company. 3. That talented people
| prefer to WFH.
|
| I get it, you like to WFH - that's great. But your anecdotes
| aren't data.
| swiley wrote:
| Introspection is very hard for anyone running the world. That's
| why revolutions happen and there isn't a single dynasty
| stretching back to ancient times.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Pretty sure if revolution breaks out in the western world...
| it won't be started by overcompensated engineers upset that
| they have to go back to attending an office with free
| snacks/food and on-site massages.
| astrange wrote:
| That's a likely class of people to start revolutions - if
| anything, they might be too low. See elite overproduction
| theory.
| swiley wrote:
| I now see the irony of my comment.
| jandrese wrote:
| One dynamic that has become apparent to me recently is that at
| my company everybody has to justify their building space. If
| too much sits idle we can be penalized for inefficiency. If
| half of the employees switch to mostly wfh then the corporation
| would need to sell off/rent out half of the buildings to avoid
| this.
|
| As a result they announced that everybody has to be in the
| office at least 3 days a week, and also most people would be
| losing their permanent offices and only have access to hotel
| office space. I've heard rumors that employee retention is
| becoming something of a concern.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I suspect it's individual managers who've never quite got past
| "if you can't see someone how do you know they're working?"
| Never underestimate human irrationality in these things.
| jfim wrote:
| This varies on the manager. There are managers who do want to
| see butts in seats, but there are also managers who want to
| know their directs outside of "what's the status of JIRA
| ticket X-1234" in a scheduled zoom meeting. Sure, there are
| 1:1s if the agenda isn't too full, but it still feels kind of
| contrived as opposed to bumping into someone in the break
| room and asking them about their weekend, hobbies, or recent
| projects.
| aikinai wrote:
| This is the most blatantly ridiculous straw man, I can't
| believe people on HN keep trying to make it especially
| against FAANG. Do you really think these companies are run by
| middle managers that just want to watch people work?
|
| At least at Google, a huge number of employees already work
| in a different floor, office, city, or even country than
| their managers that this couldn't even be a factor for them.
| loopz wrote:
| In Scrum, Scrum Master is a contributing member, just as
| everyone else. It's a role without power, but servant
| leadership and can be rotated.
|
| This doesn't work in practice, as people are too bogged
| down in their work to take on this. So the role is left up
| to the nearest manager, ex-manager, clueless business
| people who're not contributing or otherwise people who just
| reports upwards. This defeats the role, and it's very very
| rare to see a contributing member being scrum master, ie.
| taking up slack and do the necessary stuff around the team.
|
| So you end up with such role, or manager, overseeing the
| desks in open office, of the servants. Such a one-sided
| arrangement is both intentional, ignorant and about
| dominance. Feng Shui explains why it is bad for knowledge
| workers to have eyes over their shoulders all the time.
| sircastor wrote:
| It's not hard. It's not as though Sundar Pichai sends out a
| survey to all Google employees. He asks the VPs, and the
| VPs ask their reports and so on and so forth. I have no
| doubt there's data from middle management that is getting
| weighed more than that of the people they manage.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > It's not as though Sundar Pichai sends out a survey to
| all Google employees.
|
| They actually send surveys to everyone. They also talk to
| the VPs, but surveys have weight.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| No, they do. And you can see the aggregate scores of
| everyone in the company on a dashboard afterwards.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| As a non-fang employee, I will gladly scab any of them that are
| not willing to go back to the office.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>It's pretty clear that it's not short-term unsustainable
|
| I wouldn't rush to this conclusion. Robustness and
| sustainability are related, but not equivalent. Being wrong the
| other way might be higher consequence, in their estimation.
| gaws wrote:
| > I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in
| being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| A lot of people want to work for FAANG. If a current employee
| resigns because of WFH policies, those companies can likely
| find a replacement who is more receptive to returning to the
| office.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| The pattern I've observed is that younger and more junior
| people want to work in the office, and older, more senior
| people with established networks, family life and nice
| accomodation with a home office are more likely to appreciate
| working from home.
|
| This means that if you lose a lot of people because you start
| being stricter about working from home, then you'll probably
| disproportionately lose the senior people who are hard to
| replace and not lose very many of the young juniors who are
| easy to replace.
| tazjin wrote:
| I'm at a FAANG and for any of these categorisations that I
| think about I can immediately come up with enough
| counterexamples (across age, marital status, role, ...)
| that I don't believe there's any easily pinpointed uniform
| grouping.
| jordache wrote:
| >I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in
| being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| There is a general acceptance that for the vast majority of
| teams, they are most productive when individuals are
| collaborating face to face, in realtime. I've found that to be
| true as well.
|
| There is still a gap in remote collaboration tooling that
| results in this differential. Perhaps if the tooling becomes
| more robust, the difference can greatly diminish.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| > I'm honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in
| being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH.
|
| Many just built multi-billion-dollar campuses that, in the WFH
| economy, are big useless pieces of real estate
| wayoutthere wrote:
| The same can be said of Wall Street banks -- they have
| significant real estate holdings that would be devalued in a
| scenario where a sizeable percentage of the workforce never
| goes back to the office. They have a vested interest in
| driving utilization of physical spaces.
|
| Meanwhile in tech, I would say folks have been _more_
| productive over the pandemic. I certainly have been. So
| there's no big push to go back.
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| FAANGs don't need that much monster "talent." They need some,
| like the Jeff Deans and whatever. But most of the jobs at a
| place like Google require just basic top 10% software
| engineering skill which they make too much money to ever have a
| problem hiring.
| eplanit wrote:
| Handicapping FAANG companies could be beneficial to society,
| overall. Covid-19 brought a few positive outcomes -- less
| pollution last year, more WFH, ... Following that up with a
| decline or temporary slowdown in FAANG would be another.
| klipklop wrote:
| What slowdown? My FB stock is up 100% since March 2020. Seems
| to me they are expecting even more power coming out of covid.
| Their influence on society has grown even stronger in the
| past year and a half.
| Tycho wrote:
| Maybe their plan is to have all the workers on big-city mega
| wages, currently working remotely, quit, and then hire
| replacement workers in remote locations at much lower local
| labour market rates.
| burlesona wrote:
| As a hiring manager, a lot of candidates I've been talking to
| lately have been telling me they are looking for a new job in
| part because their company has decided to stay all-remote and
| they hate it. The first thing they want to know is if we have
| an office and/or will open one soon.
|
| People just have different preferences.
|
| I think what we're seeing right now is a significant expansion
| of remote roles. Previously if you worked remote, chances are
| it was a lesser job than you could get in the big tech hubs.
| Now the quality and quantity of remote work jobs has
| significantly increased.
|
| As a result, there will be a big shuffle as a lot of people who
| previously would have preferred remote but couldn't find an
| actual remote job they wanted soak up the new opportunities.
|
| As for the space they leave behind, there are some people who
| have been hungry for a taste of Silicon Valley in-office life
| who will happily take those jobs, as well as TONS of tech
| workers already settled in the Bay Area but working at smaller
| companies who might jump at a chance to move into FAANG.
|
| The question is just one of supply, demand, and market-clearing
| prices.
|
| If FAANG collectively decide they want everyone back in the
| office and after all the turnover they struggle to replace the
| people they lost, then they'll have to raise pay to compensate.
| But they have plenty of room to raise pay further if needed, so
| there's no real reason to think they can't fill up those roles.
|
| The bigger impact is on startup formation and any other smaller
| business that doesn't have the budget room to compete. I think
| that is increasingly being priced out of the Bay Area, almost
| exclusively because of housing shortage, which does not bode
| well for the long-term. But we'll see.
|
| As to your point on the cultural and institutional knowledge
| impacts of said turnover... I know it sounds crazy but I don't
| think they care. So long as you can survive the turnover, it's
| often easier, faster, and less impactful to just "rip off the
| bandaid." When you try to drag out a transition you end up with
| a lot of people unhappy and grumbling internally, but who don't
| leave yet. Those people kill morale, and letting them go is
| often one of the best things that can happen to the team's
| productivity. So yeah, it hurts, but if you know that you're
| going to lose a survivable percentage of your team due to some
| policy change, it's often better to just get it over with
| quickly than to let it drag out. You see this all the time with
| companies offering enhanced severance packages, exit bonuses
| etc. when they need to make a big change.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > People just have different preferences.
|
| I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_
| superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is
| claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their
| employees to come into the office.
| sjm wrote:
| I don't think anyone is arguing that WFH is "_obviously_
| superior" for everyone, but there are clearly companies who
| are angling to push all of their employees back into the
| office (and back to the Bay Area specifically), and this
| isn't going to work for all of their employees, especially
| given the new competitiveness with other larger tech
| companies offering much more flexibility.
|
| From what I've seen, people aren't advocating for strict
| fully-remote work, but rather flexibility for teams within
| larger companies to decide what works for them and what
| remote hiring policies makes sense within those teams,
| rather than having strict guidelines passed down from
| executives indiscriminately.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| That's not how I read it. Rather, I read it as the
| _ability_ to work from home is _obviously_ superior. As
| some people do better remotely and some do better in the
| office, requiring that everyone come into the office is an
| inferior choice. Admittedly, even that isn't unambiguously
| true (and neither would be the reverse).
| yupper32 wrote:
| > requiring that everyone come into the office is an
| inferior choice
|
| For many, going into the office is their preference
| _because_ everyone is required to go into the office.
|
| For a while I may be the only person going into the
| office on my team, which defeats the whole point. I want
| to be in the office because I work better when my team is
| around in person.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > I want to be in the office because I work better when
| my team is around in person.
|
| That's pretty much why I said that allowing remote work
| isn't unambiguously the best choice. There's negatives to
| every arrangement, and your scenario is one of the
| negatives to allowing remote work. Personally, I don't
| think it's enough of negative to counteract the
| positives, but it's enough that it's worth having the
| discussion.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a bias towards tech company and startups here.
| Those are concentrated in places like the Bay Area, NYC
| Metro, Boston Metro, Atlanta Metro, DC Metro, etc.
|
| Those places are all commuting hellscapes, so there's
| almost no scenario where you wouldn't do WFH if you could.
| My dad did the Queens-Manhattan bus/subway/express
| subway/walk treadmill for most of his career -- not fun.
|
| I live in a small city with a 6 minute commute, my
| preference for WFH varies by weather (I mostly work
| outside) and whether my wife blocks my car in the driveway.
| Overall, I like both -- WFH has advantages for focused
| tasks, but I tend to work longer hours. Interacting with
| colleagues in person is much more productive in an office
| setting, and it's easier on my family. It's tough for my 8
| year old to not be able to talk to dad when he gets home
| from school.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| The ability to choose, on a daily basis and on the needs
| of your work and coworkers, whether to work from home or
| the office is, in my experience, far and away the best
| possible arrangement. Even when my commute was 2 hours
| each way, I still chose to go into the office once every
| week or two (and worked from home the rest of the time).
| burlesona wrote:
| The commute thing depends on where _exactly_ you live and
| work. I worked in SF for years, but lived in the city and
| biked to work. It was a nice commute, a great office, and
| I loved our neighborhood.
|
| These kinds of things are just really hard to generalize.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Yes and no. Lots of exceptions exist.
|
| But you can look at data like stuff from the Census
| Bureau and see detailed comparisons of commute times in
| different locales that give you a sense of the variation.
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| It makes sense when you consider that a lot of employees
| never had a home office or budgeted space for it when they
| got their living space. It can also be stressful if you have
| family home all day too.
| atlgator wrote:
| Also consider that FAANGs (and other firms) likely receive
| considerable tax incentives from the local or State government
| for having offices in particular locations and the resulting
| high-paying jobs it brings. If you suddenly let everyone work
| from wherever, the government isn't generating the income taxes
| they bargained for.
| klipklop wrote:
| Nobody wants to give up a something once it becomes a part of
| their life that they enjoy.
|
| The FANG workers got a taste of not having a daily long commute
| and don't want to give this small life improvement back.
| Getting back several hours of your life is pretty big.
|
| FANG companies however have gotten a taste of nearly unlimited
| power and have not heard "no" in years. They too don't want to
| give this up. This is why they demand the butts back in the
| cramped open seating office. Does anyone buy their "we will
| allow you to apply for remote work" BS? That is just something
| to get you back in the office. They will quietly deny your
| request later.
|
| People can call these FANGers spoiled, but I really hope they
| win. It would benefit everybody, but the CEOs of the world.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Where I work, those who want to continue to WFH can and those
| who want to go back to the office can; living 10 minutes
| away, I'm happy to go there two-three days a week and be
| physically in the same space as the colleagues who also want
| to be there (mostly those who live close by and also want to
| go to the office); also I appreciate the coffee machine, HVAC
| and opportunity for lunch and coffee breaks with the
| colleagues. While those who live 1h+ from the office or
| prefer to WFH can continue that way. Of course upper
| management isn't clear on if it will continue to function
| this way (I certainly hope so for my colleagues who are happy
| to avoid their commute).
| acituan wrote:
| > This is why they demand the butts back in the cramped open
| seating office
|
| It is also the _astronomical_ real estate money they had
| sunken into new office spaces.
| rcpt wrote:
| I don't think that's true. 1B is a big office but it's only
| a couple days of revenue
| claudiawerner wrote:
| My pay stinks (from what I can tell looking around on the net
| and at some former friends from university) and I'm going to
| have to move to the office for the first time soon. I'm
| unmotivated to work at home, and I'll be even less motivated
| at this pay to go into work and write C and Python all day on
| projects that don't interest me in the least.
|
| I don't want to have to move.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I found that meetings of dubious utility grew to fill every
| working hour and then some. I'm quitting and accepting a long
| commute to reclaim lifespan.
| philote wrote:
| Before the pandemic FANGs seemed to want everyone in the
| office as much as possible. That's why they have their own
| cafeterias/restaurants, daycare, workout rooms, etc. They
| wanted employees in the office, working a minimum of 40 hours
| a week. I'm guessing even though remote work is going fine
| for now, they're concerned they're not going to be able to
| keep getting over 40 hours of week out of employees. (This is
| conjecture on my part, I have no idea how many hours FANG
| employees tend to work).
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > (This is conjecture on my part, I have no idea how many
| hours FANG employees tend to work).
|
| Then don't conjecture. Speculation doesn't add to the
| conversation. In the absence of evidence, it just spreads a
| misinformation virus.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| > . Speculation doesn't add to the conversation. In the
| absence of evidence
|
| This is an interesting claim. Do you have evidence for
| it?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I listened to a Cartalk or maybe This American Life
| segment many years ago that asked the question "Are two
| people talking about something they do not know anything
| about better or worse off after talking about it?"
|
| The consensus was that the downside risk is the two
| people coming to various conclusions even though they
| knew nothing about it simply due to our cognitive biases
| and how we interact with each other. Therefore, two
| people talking about something they do not know anything
| about might very well be worse off than had they not
| talked about it at all.
| echelon wrote:
| I hate every time this mandate is slinged around as if
| this is the only way humans can operate intelligently.
|
| Humans are deductive creatures and we're not terrible at
| constructing and testing hypotheses. A lot of value can
| be derived from discussing inconclusive topics, and an
| understanding of new subject matter can be established
| for those unfamiliar. It's a valuable exercise to walk
| through supporting facts.
|
| I wish we didn't cry every time we conjecture.
| acituan wrote:
| Without due speculation we could only talk about fully
| established facts. That would make a very infertile
| conversation.
|
| Also you should have more trust for your fellows in
| dialogue here, that they do have some immune function
| against misinformation viruses.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| My experience in the software industry is that engineers
| are just as susceptible to misinformation as everyone
| else. It is the exact same process which reinforces
| beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic,
| homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such
| nonsense.
|
| A number of folks are asking the question, "why does the
| HN consensus appear to be so far away from my
| experience?" I think the answer is really that noise is
| being amplified and echoed above the signal.
|
| If you _know_ you 're just guessing based on what "seems
| reasonable" and "matches what other people are saying"
| you need to _stop_ and re-evaluate the validity of your
| beliefs. That 's an important part of critical thinking
| which is sorely lacking in this forum right now.
| philote wrote:
| I hope you see the irony in this. Many of your comments,
| including this one I'm replying to, have "I think ..."
| which is really just speculation.
|
| I mean, you say "It is the exact same process which
| reinforces beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic,
| homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such
| nonsense.". But is that true? How do you know? Do you
| have all the facts? I'm sure it seems reasonable and
| matches what others think...
| acituan wrote:
| Thanks for your input regarding critical thinking skills.
| Below are my suggestions for you, inspired from CBT
| skills. Normally it is a faux pas to point out cognitive
| distortions in other people's thinking, but looks like
| you're up for a direct conversation so I'll reciprocate;
|
| - don't read minds; dialectic can only happen if we allow
| the flow of conversation back and forth. Cutting that
| flow prematurely happens for example when we assert that
| _we know_ what the other person is thinking.
|
| - don't use should statements; don't enter the scene with
| imperatives and normativities. At best it is insulting to
| fellow adults you're talking to, at worst it again kills
| the dialectic. Conversation _requires_ trust in the other
| person being able to unpack and reality test what is
| being said. It requires an assumption of good enough
| character. Talking down to people is a self fulfilling
| prophecy; when you show you have very little expectation
| in having a good faith conversation you have already
| created it.
|
| - let go of black and white thinking; simple categories
| are useful but have serious precision errors. I invite
| you to consider "truth", "knowledge", "validity" as
| shades of gray instead of discrete categories while
| talking to people, because it allows parties of a
| dialogue to puzzle together the subsets of truths they
| have.
|
| - don't overgeneralize; don't take a comment and
| overgeneralize that to a person's essence e.g "they are a
| person who always does this". Don't take a few comments
| and overgeneralize that to the entire forum. Don't use
| labels.
|
| - don't discount the positives and filter in only the
| negatives; instead of focusing where people might have
| missed your expectations in critical thinking, see if
| you're downplaying or outright ignoring when they _are_
| in fact demonstrating it.
|
| Hope it helps.
| philote wrote:
| Many comments in this thread are speculation/conjecture,
| I was honest enough to label mine as such. We're not
| running studies or experiments here, this is a place to
| converse. My comment allows others to provide additional
| evidence for or against my theory.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| At my FAANG they did studies and on average people are
| working MORE hours each day since the switch to WFH. If
| they were concerned about maximizing hours then they'd
| leave it as in. I suspect there are other concerns.
| philote wrote:
| There could definitely be other concerns too. Such as
| security. It'd be much easier for someone to copy a code
| base, or get evidence of wrongdoing by your employer, or
| whatever, when at home rather than in an office. It's
| also harder to secure all your employees' home networks
| than one office network. But I wonder how many people who
| work at offices still bring their laptops home to use.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have to wonder whether they're available for more hours
| or actually putting in more work. Home distractions tend
| to extend the work day for people who have pride in their
| craft.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| At least for me, the hours I used to spend driving my car
| are now spent doing actual work, because that's what I'd
| rather be doing anyway. The only reason I don't work more
| hours as it is is that I have other obligations. Just
| seems like a total waste of resources along multiple
| dimensions to have me driving around my brain.
| klipklop wrote:
| Sure it's N=1, but I worked more than 40 hours every single
| week when I was at a FANG. I used to laugh at all the perks
| because who actually had the time to use most of them other
| than interns.
|
| Times I used a climbing wall or nap pod: 0
|
| In the end even the free lunch was annoying. (Yes I am
| going to complain about "free" food.) It just lead to short
| lunches where people go back to their desk as soon as they
| could.
|
| I love the social aspect of lunch and it's the highlight of
| my day to eat with friends. When you are trapped on campus
| that rarely happens. I was immediately happier when I left
| and got the social aspect of the middle of my day back.
| Went from taking like 20-30 minute lunches to like 70.
| Leaving the office and eating lunch with good friends a few
| times a week is a huge moral boost over waiting in some
| silly named tech cafeteria.
|
| Don't get me wrong pre-FANG I dreamed of how nice it would
| be to eat at on campus free cafes. Later on I realized it
| was mostly there to keep you from taking a long lunch stuck
| in traffic.
| yupper32 wrote:
| See I was the opposite. I had no time as an intern but
| have plenty of time as a full timer.
|
| It seems like it's almost completely self-inflicted if
| someone doesn't have time as a full timer (at the 2 Big-N
| tech companies I've been at). I didn't have time as an
| intern because I wasn't confident and felt I needed to
| prove something. Now, many years into it, I know I can
| work my 40 hour weeks, enjoy the perks for what they are,
| and relax most of the time.
|
| I've never understood why people consider perks like food
| as traps to keep you on campus. Nothing stops you from
| leaving campus for lunch, as long as there's not some
| meeting you scheduled. Nothing stops you from working 40
| hours a week, unless you choose to work more to get ahead
| faster.
| klipklop wrote:
| I agree with you there about some interns being very
| busy. I do remember interns that had a lot of self
| imposed pressure to perform. If they even had say a minor
| issue with their work issued laptop they would be in a
| panic because of the time lost.
|
| Also totally agree with you not having to work so many
| hours, but this is exactly why they love the college grad
| pipeline. So many fresh workers with something to prove.
|
| The problem with nothing stopping you from leaving campus
| for lunch is that it's hard to convince your work-buddies
| to join you. Free is very compelling to some. And all
| your co-workers plan their meetings around this truncated
| lunch break.
| totalgeek wrote:
| Let's not also forget the ability to take your pay from say a
| major metropolitan area like San Francisco, and work remote
| where you get more bang for your buck like Wyoming.
|
| When I was working in the bay area I would've happily taken a
| 10-20% pay cut in order to work remote from anywhere. I
| would've been happy with a mandate of 'come into the office
| for a week (on the company dime of course) once a quarter,
| bi-annually or whatever'
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think many of the companies that have announced remote
| options will also be adjusting salaries based on the local
| area's cost of living or cost of hiring or some other
| similar factor.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Of course, a lot of people taking their big tech paychecks
| to some lower-cost place will just be exporting the problem
| to another place. A sudden big inflow of cash into a low-
| cost area is going to raise prices.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Some people earning more money and reducing the
| income/wealth gap is not a terrible problem to have. The
| rapid-ness might cause some friction in the short term,
| but the alternative of stagnation and deflation in the
| long term is a far worse problem.
| jstepka wrote:
| Since before anyone on this board was born companies,
| have adjusted pay based on location using charts like
| this;
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/25/us-
| dollar-ho...
|
| To think this time is different is to be ignorant.
| imtringued wrote:
| You're assuming that every city refuses to build housing.
| That is true in California but not in the US as a whole.
| 8note wrote:
| the economics are there for every city.
|
| Who's going to let housing be built if it devalues the
| houses they own?
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| Simply put: It's easier to to restrict WFH policies and then go
| lax on them later, as opposed to the opposite which would build
| a workforce accustomed to WFH that would revolt.
|
| I think there's a chance we'll see WFH loosening up eventually.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Of the FAANG companies, aren't Facebook and Netflix saying that
| people can work from home forever if they like?
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| Quitting is good. It shows confidence in the overall economy and
| a certain economic vibrancy. We should be much more afraid when
| workers feel trapped by employment.
| herewhere wrote:
| The tech stock appreciated a lot during this pandemic. For
| example:
|
| - FB stock is up ~75%. - GOOG almost up 100%. - AMZN almost up
| ~50%.
|
| Stock portion of the compensation could be big enough carrot to
| keep the talent.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I think the obvious problem is that the people who make the
| decision of office vs. WFH are the people who benefit the most
| from working in office: people managers
| minikites wrote:
| It's hard to feel sorry for employers that have been treating
| employees like garbage for decades. I hope this new freedom
| awakens the spirit of collective action in enough employees that
| labor unions make a comeback.
| avelis wrote:
| There is a massive loss of productivity to commute to and from an
| office for large durations of time. Cities actually calculate
| this loss per year in the millions.
|
| I find it so odd that with the endemic ending that there is a
| call to return to an office without the commute problem solved.
| If productivity is lagging at home it's signs of other issues for
| the employee and the office doesn't magically solve them they
| just temporarily remove them.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right
| position
|
| I'm increasingly convinced people not switching industries is a
| huge barrier towards equity in the job market. If another
| industry/location treats workers much better, but the cost of
| switching is too high, then the industries/locations aren't
| really competing for your labor. Competitive labor markets seem
| to be table stakes for fair work.
|
| COVID just lowered the cost of switching, so I'm hoping the built
| up differences can finally equalize.
| [deleted]
| mirrorlake wrote:
| I want to see genuine competition between businesses to try and
| make their offices better. People got off the treadmill long
| enough to realize that their workplace sucks. But many issues are
| completely fixable.
|
| Make workplaces better. Ask people what they want improved, and
| then actually improve it.
|
| The future can't be about squeezing out every ounce of
| productivity at the expense of happiness and autonomy--it has to
| be about increasing every ounce of happiness to make small gains
| in productivity. The equation was looked at backwards for far too
| long.
| quaffapint wrote:
| These posts are silly. Sure there are some that will leave their
| full time office to a more flexible one.
|
| I myself do not want to go back to our open office layout full
| time and Im checking out my options. Still though its going to
| just be a small percentage. Of course there might be more slowly
| over time as more remote/hybrid opportunities become available.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think this will be temporary. Eventually the WFH crowd will get
| so demanding that it will be easier and cheaper for a company to
| hire less qualified people. Eventually the wfh crowd will have
| to..get a job... and we'll be back to where we started.
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