[HN Gopher] Turmoil at Bezos' Blue Origin: Talent exodus after C...
___________________________________________________________________
Turmoil at Bezos' Blue Origin: Talent exodus after CEO push for
return to office
Author : gridder
Score : 115 points
Date : 2021-10-03 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| tayistay wrote:
| Usual comments about whether people prefer WFH or not. It doesn't
| matter. We need to stop driving cars so much, and most American
| cities have lousy transit.
| throwme159 wrote:
| Some people like driving cars and having lunch with their
| coworkers.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I began a 100% remote job almost four years ago. I decided that
| being remote was worth maybe 20% of my salary (as in I'd take a
| 20% paycut if that's what it took to keep working remote in a
| future job).
|
| It's honestly closer to 50% now that I've been doing it for
| years. It completely alters what having a career and raising a
| family is like. You'd have to give me a boatload of money to go
| back to the office because wow does that arrangement steal so
| many invaluable memories and times with my family.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| We are at the point where demanding a return to office is
| basically demanding 1-3 hours of overtime compared to other
| options.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Easily 5 to 10+ hours in NYC suburbs, not to mention the
| volatility of public transit.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I think he meant 1-3 per day
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| As a big supporter of wfh for others, I'm personally not a fan.
|
| My home is my sanctuary. It's for sleep, rest, family and
| pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.
|
| I don't want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my
| manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great anxiety
| and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the feeling like I
| can never truly "leave" work. And I love my work and my team and
| the company.
|
| To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords
| invading my home. And yet this is being applauded by many of my
| peers. Time will tell.
|
| I think the work from home obsession is the "open office space"
| debate of our generation.
| tayistay wrote:
| If you want to get out of the house, walk or ride a bike
| somewhere (park, coffee shop, etc.). There's no debate to be
| had: we need to stop driving cars so much, or you might need
| something like a stillsuit, Arrakis2021.
| sandoze wrote:
| That's a fair point about home being a sanctuary. After working
| out of my basement for almost a year I went ahead and built an
| office in the back yard.
|
| I don't think I've ever been happier.
|
| Not everyone has this luxury but a hybrid model or choice of
| working environment is a necessity.. or maybe the real debate
| to a return to office isn't location, but the forty hour work
| week.
| yao420 wrote:
| > the work from home obsession is the "open office space"
| debate of our generation.
|
| There is not much of a debate, open offices are hated by
| knowledge workers and pushed by managers and accountants for
| cost reasons. I get the same feeling from those pushing back to
| office policies, they want control of employees under the guise
| of sparking 'water cooler talk'.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _There is not much of a debate, open offices are hated by
| knowledge workers and pushed by managers and accountants for
| cost reasons. I get the same feeling from those pushing back
| to office policies, they want control of employees under the
| guise of sparking 'water cooler talk'._
|
| The return to offices is also pushed for cost reasons.
| Employers made billions of dollars in investments in
| commercial real estate, signed multiyear leases, and have
| executives, board members and shareholders that are invested
| in commercial real estate, as well.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| There are creeps in the management also supporting it because
| they like to watch people especially women. It's disgusting.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Pre-pandemic, I worked remotely, but rarely from home. In
| normal times, nothing is forcing you to work from home in
| particular if you're working remotely.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I appreciate that despite feeling that way about your own
| circumstances, you still support wfh for others.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I agree with you I started working as a contractor before the
| pandemic and I don't have a spare bedroom for office. It was
| fine before my son was born but at this point it's not very
| productive. If I was living in a house it would be a different
| matter.
|
| Paying for a small office/coworking desk close to home at my
| own expense > commuting to office on a daily basis. And I
| absolutely love that I can work from random airbnbs when I want
| to travel.
|
| Remote first allows a lot of flexibility even if you have
| offices.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > As a big supporter of wfh for others, I'm personally not a
| fan.
|
| >My home is my sanctuary. It's for sleep, rest, family and
| pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.
|
| >I don't want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my
| manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great
| anxiety and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the
| feeling like I can never truly "leave" work. And I love my work
| and my team and the company.
|
| >To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate
| overlords invading my home.
|
| I think maybe your home is too small. Sounds like you don't
| have a separate study or home office.
|
| > And yet this is being applauded by many of my peers. Time
| will tell.
|
| Well, I dunno why the others are applauding, but I can tell you
| why I am: I have a study at home that is private and closed off
| from the rest of the house.
|
| In effect, there is no bleed-over of the workplace into my
| home.
| wepple wrote:
| I have a large enough house with a full-bedroom sized
| dedicated work office. I also don't have a work phone (nor
| work email on my personal phone) and don't check my computer
| outside work hours.
|
| I'd say there is still plenty of psychological bleed-over
| _for me_. Not having a 100% physically separated work /home
| boundary has more of an effect than you might imagine. I
| can't fully switch in and out of work mode.
|
| Just my personal viewpoint
|
| Edit:spelling
| throwme159 wrote:
| So I should have to buy a bigger house to subsidize my
| company not having an office with no pay raise? Nah, I'll
| pass.
| hamburglar wrote:
| This is a nice pat answer, but truthfully I need _two_
| studies if I really expect working from home not to affect my
| home life. One will have my work in it and one will be filled
| with my personal projects (raspberry pi, small wood projects,
| electronics, music instruments, etc). My current house is
| sized for _not_ having a dedicated workspace from home, and
| you could argue that that's "too small" but the fact of the
| matter is buying a house with one more bedroom around here is
| no small bump in price, so I get by with my work life
| encroaching on my personal life. For now. If I want to
| continue working from home, my choices are to buy an even
| bigger house or accept that I will never have that
| separation.
| deelowe wrote:
| According to David Niekerk, "Jeff Bezos believes people are
| inherently lazy."
|
| I assume this is a huge factor in him wanting everyone back in
| the office.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Even if you agree with his assessment, remote work let's
| employees do 1-3 hours less of work related activity
| (commuting).
| lancemurdock wrote:
| you can't put a price on the feeling I get when 5-530 hits, and I
| step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding
| for the evening. No wasted time on commute and the options for
| places to live are endless. Not to mention I eat my own food on
| my lunch break.
|
| I miss some interaction/bonding with coworkers and certainly
| acknowledge that "hallway talk" helped clear up requirements but
| the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons. I
| will never go back to an office
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I'm with you 100%.
|
| You would think CEOs would might notice the bump in
| productivity in awake workers?
|
| Spending 2-3 hours going to an office most people despise, and
| listening to that clueless middle manager yap must alienated a
| lot of workers? An alienated worker gets back in weird ways.
|
| I was thinking the genie is out of the bottle, and they will
| never bring us back, but no.
|
| They can't wait until they can bring us back though.
|
| (Maybe using Global Warming as an excuse to stay home? Not
| commuting must be better for the earth? It will be decades
| before we see 90% electric.)
| codezero wrote:
| Ditto. I've been doing a lot of managery stuff during the
| pandemic and the main things I miss are the water cooler talk
| that greased a lot of wheels and filled in a lot of gaps, as
| well as helped new people onboard with many to many learning,
| but we will cope.
|
| What I would like, as a manager who had to do quarterly
| planning would be a week a month or a week per quarter for
| cross functional in office planning. It would help with a lot
| and probably be enough time in office to fill many of the real
| gaps being remote has left without being required full time.
| rewma wrote:
| > Ditto. I've been doing a lot of managery stuff during the
| pandemic and the main things I miss are the water cooler talk
| that greased a lot of wheels and filled in a lot of gaps
| (...)
|
| I'm sure mileages vary, but between wasting a significant
| portion of my life commutting to be able to experience water
| cooler talks, and hugging my wife and children once I step
| out of my home office, you can keep all the water coolers in
| the world to yourself.
|
| Work/life balance shouldn't fall all the way to the work side
| of the scale just because some managers struggle with remote
| work.
| jbhouse wrote:
| Totally agree. I've been getting up to speed just fine at
| my new and (at least for now) fully remote job.
|
| If you're struggling to fill the gaps or onboard people at
| a certain point you have to admit to either managerial or
| organizational failure to adapt. It's called taking
| responsibility
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Filling in at water coolers and difficulty onboarding is
| mostly because companies still don't really think about
| communication and information and have no strategy for either
| beyond "they will figure it out"
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Hired in the middle of the pandemic, worked for one year
| before going in to the office.
|
| It's now impossible to get 3 people in a 15 minute meetings
| to clear requirements.
|
| Before: email -> problems -> let's do a zoom call -> done.
|
| Now: email -> problems -> nobody has time in the office for a
| meeting.
|
| It might be the culture but still...
| basisword wrote:
| That required office time means everyone still needs to live
| within a short distance of the office though. For a lot of
| people that defeats some of the main benefits of remote.
| Swizec wrote:
| For a quarterly 1 week meeting the company can just fly
| everyone in who needs to be there. They already do this for
| board meetings so why not important plannings?
|
| Hell, put it in a fun location and call it a retreat.
| mayneack wrote:
| Use the money saved on maintaining an office for peak
| capacity and pay for travel/temporary space.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Sure, but your job isnt _Astronaut_ and the "office" isnt
| meant to be _Space_ rather than what used to be the guest
| bedroom and is now the "home office".
| pavlov wrote:
| I feel the opposite and would gladly go back to the office.
|
| It's hard to keep working after five when the kids are home and
| making their usual racket. But it's also hard to disconnect
| because the line between work and home is nonexistent.
|
| The free breakfast and lunch at the office were much better
| than anything I can make or buy myself. Talking to random
| coworkers during the breaks made me feel more like part of
| something.
|
| I didn't even mind the "standing in a packed subway car" part
| that much. That's just city life; I want more of it again.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's a very personal decision though. For example, if I may
| offer up some counterarguments:
|
| > _I step outside my home office to see my family and start
| unwinding for the evening. No wasted time on commute_
|
| I find the commute (by train, I'm lucky enough to get a seat)
| far more effective for unwinding to be honest. And once I'm
| home, I'm far more engaged with the family due to having that
| buffer time between work and home.
|
| > _the options for places to live are endless._
|
| That never actually stopped me before. Hence the commute
|
| > _Not to mention I eat my own food on my lunch break._
|
| the biggest thing I miss about not commuting into London is the
| food. The variety, the quality, and above all, not having to
| cook it myself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind cooking. But a
| lot of eateries do a lot better job of their signature meal
| than I could.
|
| That all said, I'm in no rush to go back. And when I do, it'll
| be a hybrid approach. Some days in and some days from home.
|
| edit: why am I getting _heavily_ down voted for discussing
| personal reasons why I enjoyed working in the office? It 's not
| like I'm telling you your opinions are wrong or that you should
| go back to the office. All I'm doing is voicing that there are
| some who do enjoy travelling into the city most days. Is it
| really that offensive a view point to read? Some people on here
| don't deserve to have moderation privileges.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| I have been 100% remote for years and am content to continue
| to be so, but I totally see where you're coming from. I was
| never thrilled by my train journey into London, but the short
| walk I had on the home end was some of my best "thinking"
| time. One of the ways my mental health has suffered most
| since moving on from that time in my life is a steady decline
| in enforced personal time, and a lack of willpower to re-
| introduce it. Not made easier by our shitty weather
| discouraging impromptu walks.
| eCa wrote:
| > impromptu walks
|
| Make them non-impromptu. Since the pandemic started I have
| made a 20 minute lunch walk, and a longer (30-90 minutes)
| walk part of my work-from-home routine. I have maybe
| skipped one if them five days the last 18 months.
|
| This evening I walked 7k in 12C and a light drizzle, so the
| weather isn't great here either.
|
| On the other hand, I live alone and enjoy walking so I
| realize that it is perhaps nit as easy for everyone.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| This is so true. Sometimes when I WFH I feel depressed after
| realizing I haven't been out for like two days.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I find the commute far more effective for unwinding to be
| honest_
|
| No one is stopping you from unwinding after work if you work
| from home. Hop in the car when you're done with work and
| enjoy a relaxing "commute" on your own terms.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I should have specified that my commute is a train ride.
| Taking the train somewhere for no reason and back again
| wouldn't be particularly relaxing. But if you have to take
| the train (and you're fortunate enough to get a seat like I
| can) then you do find ways to make the most of that
| commute.
|
| But the real point I'm trying to make isn't that everyone
| should commute. No. What I'm saying is I'm as entitled to
| enjoy my commute to work as you are to enjoy working from
| home. A good company will offer flexibility rather than
| applying the same rule to everyone universally.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| This is an important detail. A huge proportion of those
| in the US are going to be commuting by car (which is
| really unpleasant for me personally), or paying a lot of
| money to live somewhere with good transit options.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| And an even larger proportion of those who work in
| technology don't live in the US. I know this is a very SV
| orientated forum but discussion companies are having with
| their employees regarding remote work is happening right
| across the globe.
| stefan_ wrote:
| I actually think city dwellers are entitled to not have a
| horde of office workers invade every day and demand roads
| and parking spaces be built for their utterly superfluous
| _unwinding commute_.
|
| They call it _congestion charge_ but it 's more _your
| suburban commuting habit is making everyone that actually
| lives here miserable_.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The London earns millions every day from office workers
| coming into the city, paying for food, drinks, and other
| local services. It's not like us commuters are draining
| money from your local economy.
|
| Plus if you didn't want your home town to be invaded by
| commuters each day then a city, any city in fact, is
| absolutely the worst place you could chose to live.
| hamburglar wrote:
| If I move to London now, I'm entitled to demand all the
| commuters stop "invading" my city?
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I pay my taxes and I'll use the services I pay for as I
| see fit.
| rewma wrote:
| > why am I getting heavily down voted for discussing personal
| reasons why I enjoyed working in the office?
|
| My guess is that there has been chatter on how discussions on
| WFO, specially in tech forums, are brigaded by shills to sell
| the illogical idea that getting back to the office is
| fantastic and awesome, and the hallmark of these shills is
| the fact that their arguments in favour of returning to
| office are simply unbelievable. And quite frankly you post
| reads like that.
|
| I have to say that I found it very weird, and outright
| unbelievable, that someone was arguing that commutes were
| "far more effective for unwinding". To me that makes no sense
| at all, because when working from home you are free to pick
| whatever you'd like to do with that time, instead of being
| forced to sit in a car or public transportation and waste
| away your life while you endure traffic. I mean, if suffering
| commutes is something you enjoy then if you work from home
| nothing stops you from hopping into your preferred means of
| transportation and go anywhere you'd like. But you can also
| do any other thing. Is driving to/from the office during rush
| hour the most pleasurable and relaxing thing possible? I
| quite doubt it.
|
| So why claim that being forced to do something is more
| effective at unwinding than actually pick whatever you'd like
| to do? It makes no sense.
| hellisothers wrote:
| I'd never call my old ride home nuts to butts on BART
| "unwinding" but it certainly created a coda between work
| and home. Now when I walk out of my office at home I'm
| still in problem solving "work talk" mode and it takes a
| bit to get out of it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I commute by train. I'm lucky enough to be guaranteed a
| seat. And it is a very comfortable ride. That time can be
| spent meditating with my favourite music playing in my
| earphones. There isn't a rats chance in hell I'd get that
| same quality time at home with two noisy kids running
| rampant throughout the house.
|
| Have you considered that perhaps people making comments
| like mine are not shills, they just have different personal
| circumstances that you hadn't encountered before?
| wdb wrote:
| I wish commute by train would work in London. I had to
| commute for years out of London (living in Zone 1) and
| most of the time I didn't had a place to sit. Trains are
| also crazy loud in this country, and not really reliable
| and quite expensive.
|
| They charge pricing here that could get me a year
| country-wide travel first class card in Switzerland.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Regarding London trains: it very much depends what line
| you go on and how far down that line you are as to
| whether you get a seat. The reliability and expense
| problems are very real though :(
| throwme159 wrote:
| I doubt they have, given the way their post was written.
| Expecting tech people to have empathy is a bit much.
| devnulll wrote:
| > [...] found it very weird, and outright unbelievable,
| that someone was arguing that commutes were "far more
| effective for unwinding".
|
| Ex (multi) FAANG engineering director here. I personally
| find that a 30 minute commute home is more effective for
| separating work and home than just the clock. The data
| published (by MSFT) shows employees are working more hours
| now than ever before.
|
| Now, those pale in comparison to things like on-call
| rotations, email on Cell Phones, Slack & Team's
| notifications on mobile, etc. The Amazon practice of
| "DevOps SDEs are always on-call" that's spread across the
| industry makes disengaging from work in order to engage
| with family & friends generally impossible, even on
| vacation.
| wdb wrote:
| I like to go for a short walk after work to the local
| supermarket or walk to the local parks (like Hyde or
| Regent's Park)
| rewma wrote:
| > Ex (multi) FAANG engineer here. I personally agree that
| a 30 minute commute home is more effective for separating
| work and home than just the clock. The data published (by
| MSFT) shows employees are working more hours now than
| ever before.
|
| Current FAANG engineer here. I totally disagree, and the
| numbers support my case. My organization saw a jump in
| productivity when switching to WFO accompanied by a
| considerable increased in job satisfaction.
|
| WFO, accompanied by flexible work hours, allowed everyone
| in my team to benefit from more personal time and also
| opportunities to research topics of interest, which
| already paid off in the product we developed.
| devnulll wrote:
| > Current FAANG engineer here. I totally disagree, and
| the numbers support my case. My organization saw a jump
| in productivity when switching to WFO accompanied by a
| considerable increased in job satisfaction.
|
| You're moving the goalpost on this. For me, as someone
| else stated, the separation between home life and work
| life is a bit easier with a commute. That's not touching
| on productivity, overall job satisfaction, or anything
| else.
|
| I'm not even talking tradeoffs here - there's no "I
| prefer to work from the office because XYZ". I prefer
| working from home, for a variety of reasons. However, I
| do recognize that in this one specific area - separation
| of work/home life, the commute was beneficial.
|
| Were I to list 50 pros/cons of working from home (which
| I've done), the winner is WFH. That doesn't mean an
| absence of positive aspects to the "work from the office"
| column.
| rewma wrote:
| > You're moving the goalpost on this. For me, as someone
| else stated, the separation between home life and work
| life is a bit easier with a commute.
|
| The point is that separation from home and work life does
| not require or mandate a commute or even getting back to
| the office. That position is indefensible. Being forced
| to endure something unsavoury against your best wishes
| ever single work day is not easier nor the only effective
| way to get some separation between your personal and work
| life. That's something you do, not something that's done
| to you.
|
| Some people are quite happy with a home office, some
| people opt to work anywhere. I have a team member that
| works by the pool, and another team member who worked
| while travelling through Europe. If you are not forced to
| be present on a specific cubicle in a specific building
| for X hours a day then you have quite literally the whole
| world at your disposal, and your imagination is the only
| limit.
|
| And you know what? That reflects on quality of life
| work/life balance, and overall job satisfaction. Your
| life matters and enjoying how you live it matters. That's
| the whole point of working, not a whimsical position
| where a post happened to be moved.
| yojo wrote:
| I used to commute ~40 minutes each way by streetcar. I
| spent the time sardined in with the other unfortunate folk,
| one hand on a strap, the other on my Kindle. Every day I
| cursed SFs oversubscribed transit system.
|
| Switching to WFH was way better. But I was reading a sci-fi
| book a week on the commute, after the shift I was lucky to
| get in four a year.
|
| In theory I could set aside 80 minutes a day for personal
| reading, but in practice it feels incredibly selfish to not
| help with the family and housework.
|
| Do I want to go back to muni hell? No. But I can understand
| how someone might have enjoyed their (non-car) commute. I
| will shoot myself before I ever go back to driving an hour
| each way on the 101 though.
| hahajk wrote:
| For those who are worried that they'll miss the commute, you
| should consider ending the work day with exercise. You still
| get the alone/unplugged time but combined with endorphins and
| a general feeling of wellness. And it's way better for you
| than sitting in a car!
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The commute was a form of exercise, I'd clock up several
| miles each day (most people don't drive into London. They
| usually take the train).
|
| However I do completely agree with you about going for a
| run. That was the one commute replacement activity which I
| did find worked for me. Unfortunately the UK's weather
| often discourages one from non-mandatory forms of exercise.
| When it's raining, it is far easier to be motivated to walk
| home from the train station than it is to leave the house
| to go running. This is obviously a poor excuse but it is
| still the pragmatic truth of the matter.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > I find the commute far more effective for unwinding to be
| honest. And once I'm home, I'm far more engaged with the
| family due to having that buffer time between work and home.
|
| I've found myself taking the car for a quick drive downtown
| where the grid locks, after I finish working from home. Can't
| wait for it to be mandatory again!
| bboylen wrote:
| So this shows why flexibility is important, so you can
| satisfy the different preferences of employees.
|
| From the article, it sounds like the CEO wanted to get rid of
| remote work all together.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Indeed. I've seen some companies say they want people back
| in 100% of the time but I've seen others close their office
| and have all their employees work remotely 100% of the
| time. I feel both are toxic policies to place on your
| entire workforce and the best approach is flexibility
| because different employees will have different preferences
| and needs.
|
| Thankfully there are a good number of companies (in the UK
| at least) who are allowing their employees to make this
| decision themselves.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I've been thinking about this and perhaps the most
| appropriate solution is to not have onsite companies vs
| remote companies, and also not companies with a random
| mix of the both; but having a company consist of onsite
| teams and remote work teams - so both preferences can
| work well, but you can optimize the day-to-day work
| process (which usually happens within a team) to the very
| different needs of in-office vs work-from-home
| environment.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I disagree. I think the best solution is giving your
| employees flexibility. People who want to travel into the
| office can do so. People who want to work remotely can
| also do so. And people are able to come in as often or
| infrequently as they want.
|
| There will always be instances where fully remote people
| might still want to come in (eg someone leaving social).
| And there will be reasons why people who normally like to
| come in every day might chose not to (eg a doctors
| appointment at lunch time).
| jboy55 wrote:
| I have experience with a company that went 'ROW' back in
| the 10s. If a majority of your company is remote, you can
| forget about the office, its a dead space. There's no water
| cooler talk, no games after work. I can see why some
| companies are going to try the hybrid model.
|
| I do agree with the GP, there is something about the
| separation between work and living. I miss the feeling that
| when I did work from home "after hours", it was for special
| cases, rather than the "same old".
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is one of several reasons for a lot of the emotion
| around the question. People are already discovering that
| if you're largely a pre-pandemic office person, that
| doesn't work if most of your co-workers are only
| wandering in maybe a day per week if at all.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's not like you don't have the option of burning
| $duration_of_commute on personal time when you're already at
| home. _You_ set the boundaries, enforce them.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's one of those things that's _much_ easier said than
| done.
|
| It's also not always about personal time, sometimes it's
| just catching up on sleep on the train. Without wanting to
| go too much into personal circumstance, that sleep was
| really valuable in a way that trying to have a nap at home
| isn't. And that energy went directly back to the kids.
|
| While I might have gained an hour during the week by not
| commuting, in practical terms that hour doesn't always
| translate into more engagement with the kids -- much as I'd
| love it if it could (again, not wanting to go too much into
| personal circumstance here).
|
| Anyhow, I'm not trying to paint the picture that I'm better
| off commuting. I'm definitely better off working from home.
| I'm just trying to illustrate that some people do extract
| value from their commute.
| ipaddr wrote:
| There is a group of people who a 5 hour commute would be
| preferable because they hate their homelife. There are
| always people better off working more or staying out
| longer would make life easier. Trading 10 hours of
| commuting time for 10 hours of naps is something that
| could be addressed by going to sleep earlier and now
| those 10 hours can be family time. We shouldn't be going
| into offices for these secondary effects.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _something that could be addressed by going to sleep
| earlier_
|
| Please don't make bullshit assumptions like this when
| I've already said I didn't want to go into personal
| circumstances. In my case, the problem is medical, not
| motivational. And that's all I want to discuss because
| it's personal and, frankly put, none of your fucking
| business why I'm tired on an evening.
|
| > _We shouldn 't be going into offices for these
| secondary effects._
|
| I'm not advocating that people should be going into
| offices. What I'm advocating is that people should be
| allowed to decide for themselves if they want to go in.
| Having someone like yourself tell me I should work from
| home is just as toxic as any discussions arguing that
| employees should go in. What I'm suggesting is companies
| should offer flexibility because people will have
| different preferences.
|
| Also you've just latched on the sleep thing as if that's
| the only benefit I get from going into the office. That's
| simply not the case. It was just a detail this tangent
| zeroed in on.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Doesn't work like that when your coworkers are working
| extra hours because they're also not commuting.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What's the difference there from workers who lived very
| close to the office? If a coworker is working harder than
| you, good for them. If that makes them more valuable,
| promoted faster, or whatever, so be it. At least with
| remote work, you could choose the same path as them if
| you wanted to.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| Because, like everything else in this country, this
| discussion is super polarized. I am with you in that i
| actually enjoy my commute. Without it, the days blend in a
| very unsettling way.
|
| But there is a vocal minority of people who do not want to go
| back to the office and they consider our position to be
| threatening. There are benefits to the hybrid model, which is
| what I'll be pursuing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, many companies do actually take employer feedback. So
| it's not unreasonable that people who want to come into the
| office regularly and may in fact want to live or have
| already moved somewhere they can't do so, at least react to
| pushes for environments that don't accommodate them.
| kiba wrote:
| The article isn't about remote work, but about Blue Origin's
| utter failure to thrive.
| rewma wrote:
| From the article's summary:
|
| > _The central sticking point, and cause cited by many people
| who recently left, was Smith's strong push this year for all
| Blue Origin employees to return to the office._
|
| This is without a doubt about Blue Origin's call to return to
| office.
| downrightmike wrote:
| RTO is just so 20th century
| kgwgk wrote:
| You can definitely put a price, or you would have never wasted
| time on commute, etc.
| ziftface wrote:
| I think a lot of people hadn't seriously considered the
| option of working from home before. Now that a lot more
| people have done so, they are starting to weigh the pros and
| cons as the parent comment is doing.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Sure. And one of the cons of working from home may be lower
| pay/increased competition. So if they are told to go back
| to the office and they don't want to they may need to put a
| price on it.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons
|
| The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your
| employers. The labor market is finally shifting to the laborers
| having the leverage :)
| shrimpx wrote:
| Mostly in digitized white collar work.
| [deleted]
| jbhouse wrote:
| "the cons are mostly your employers"
|
| I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better
| monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and
| I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for
| the sake of politeness.
|
| My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home
| AND turnover is reduced.
|
| I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if
| they don't care at all about their employees and even if we
| weren't in a tight labor market
| ashtonkem wrote:
| You're measuring the cons in terms of labor productivity,
| which I am no longer convinced is what is driving executive
| behavior.
|
| Frankly, I think that executives get a big ego boost seeing
| hundreds of workers working in an office of their design,
| and they miss that. I think that's why their arguments for
| returning to the office come across as ... strange and
| unpersuasive; they don't actually have a productivity based
| argument for returning to the office and they're trying to
| shoe horn one in anyways.
| gpm wrote:
| > and the cons are mostly your employers.
|
| This sounds like nonsense to me.
|
| If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less
| and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to
| adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm
| going to be working for a less successful company, which is a
| lot less fun.
|
| Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative
| relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as
| wrong.
|
| (And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not
| and have never run a company or anything like that)
| rewma wrote:
| > If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth
| less and can demand less salary (...)
|
| During the industrial revolution, some employers saw that
| there were significant pros in employing children and
| working them 12 to 14 hours a day for a fraction of a grown
| man's salary. Not being able to employ children was a
| significant con.
|
| How did "the market" handled that?
|
| There's more to life than what's convenient to
| corporations, and the despair of self-hating employees to
| think that self-deprecarion is a competitive sport.
| gpm wrote:
| Government regulation is different because it forces
| _everyone_ on the even footing, there is no-one to out
| compete you.
|
| Eliminating competition on the labor side of the market
| is also different, because while it hurts companies, it
| also makes employees be in higher demand. That's _also_ a
| relevant difference here.
|
| So, your analogy is just a poor one...
|
| But while I'm at it, you'll notice that for the kinds of
| business that are easily shipped over seas (where the
| government regulations don't apply) and you can be
| outcompeted by people using child labor and paying below
| minimum wage (another case of government regulation) that
| did happen to an extent, see textile manufacturing for
| instance.
| rewma wrote:
| > Government regulation is different because it forces
| everyone (...)
|
| It really isn't. It just stops unscrupulous employers
| from abusing their employees. There are already plenty of
| tech companies that went full remote, and clearly they
| don't interpret that as a competitive disadvantage. The
| lockdowns also showed productivity increases and
| improvements in the quality of life and work/life
| balance. Therefore, returning to the office has
| absolutely nothing to do with productivity or company
| culture or dedication. At best, it's just lazy thinking
| enforced by strong-arming employees into positions that
| is overwhelmingly against their personal interests and
| quality of life.
| gpm wrote:
| > > Government regulation is different because it forces
| everyone (...)
|
| > It really isn't. It just stops unscrupulous employers
| from abusing their employees.
|
| If you're objecting to my use of the phrase "forces
| everyone", fair enough, but the point stands. If you're
| objecting to the point being made, I'm afraid I've missed
| your point.
|
| > There are already plenty of tech companies that went
| full remote, and clearly they don't interpret that as a
| competitive disadvantage.
|
| Indeed, one imagines that's because they don't see the
| (total) cons as outweighing the (total) benefits, and
| they (like me) don't see much use in separating out
| "benfits to employees" and "harm to the employer"... this
| is basically my original point (though going in the
| employee->employer direction as well as the
| employer->employee direction).
| pyrale wrote:
| I'm not even sure about this, tbh.
|
| At my work, like most other works, productivity didn't go
| down with remote, and the company saved massively on office
| space.
|
| It seems the people pushing for more office-time are in
| management, and this situation leads me to question the
| extent to which this change helps _their_ role rather than
| the company, and by extension their ability to manage their
| own conflicts of interest.
| ser0 wrote:
| I have to disagree with this.
|
| Working for a flexible work arrangement employer has made me
| appreciate the following alternatives to what I used to
| consider pros of working in the office.
|
| - Hall way chats are now Slack chats. These are more likely
| to be in the open and allow more participants. When gathering
| feedback or ideas this allows interested parties to
| participate asynchronously, which they may not have been able
| to do in person.
|
| - Quick tap on the shoulder assistance or conversations.
| These were always a little disruptive. With Slack statuses
| and huddles, I'm finding we can have explicit do-not-disturb
| signals and when everyone is ready, a quick low-friction way
| of having a discussion.
|
| - Group meetings. There was always a limit to the
| effectiveness of this depending on the make up of the group
| and the size of the group. Being forced online means it's
| even more obvious when people are not comfortable
| participating. The solution being more async collaborative
| RFC-style processes before meeting in Zoom to discuss only
| the points of difference.
|
| - Recordings. Often we would need to take notes, etc. Now
| everything can be recorded. Minutes are still good, but no
| longer need to be taken all the time. If the meeting was a
| bust and nothing of value was gained, you don't need to type
| it up. If something important was discussed, you don't have
| to rely on memory and can transcribe off the recording.
|
| All of the above I consider to be a benefit to both the
| employer and employee as it allows for greater flexibility in
| how and when we interact and automated digitisation means a
| much easier process of persisting and communicating
| institutional knowledge that is being created among a group.
| [deleted]
| ajkjk wrote:
| Every single article on HN that is remotely related to WFH has
| the same two camps coming out to.. state their case.. again.. to
| the crowd.
|
| Group (1) loves WFH and can't understand how anyone would ever
| want to work in an office and will only work remotely from now on
| if they can. Group (2) hates WFH and desperately needs the
| interactions an office provides and will be quitting any job that
| permanently works from home.
|
| These two groups are two totally different types of people. They
| will never understand each other. It is probably not productive
| for each of them to keep rehashing their stances to each other. I
| don't know what the relative ratios of the two are, but I imagine
| we're gonna live in this two-types-of-employees world forever and
| ought to get used it. And we should probably stop belligerently
| pontificating to each other; nothing is going to change and it is
| just going to keep being a cycle of failing-to-communicate.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The interesting thing for me is that I deal with group 2, but I
| work in a place with multiple head offices, and they've been
| like that since the early 90s.
|
| Remote working, in the sense that very few medium or large
| businesses have a single location, is the norm. It always has
| been. What has also been the norm is shitty ways of dealing
| with that - creating a de facto priveleged class of decision
| makers in one location, flying people around, and the like.
|
| I agree there's not going to be a reconciliation between people
| who mostly want to work where-ever suits them (whether that's
| home or a satellite office) but a rational response to reality
| would be to do a better job of dealing with what was already
| there before COVID.
| draw_down wrote:
| Yes, I don't understand why they still do it.
|
| The story is about a company in turmoil over this issue and
| someone posts a big long thing about how much they love being
| around their family all day. What is the point?! It has
| basically nothing to do with the rocket company.
| mabbo wrote:
| This is going to be the tech version of The Dress[0]. We're all
| seeing the same thing, yet half the population sees it one way
| and the other half sees it the other, and no one can understand
| why anyone wouldn't see it that way.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
|
| (It's white and gold, I don't care what reality has to say
| about the matter)
| COGlory wrote:
| It sounds less like this is about remote work, and more like this
| is about everyone there hating the CEO. And boy does the article
| do a good job of making him sound like an arrogant, micromanaging
| prick.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Chances are it's both. When you have a bad boss, there's always
| one triggering incident that's the "straw that breaks the
| camels back".
| kiba wrote:
| Jeff Bezos need to put his ego in check, fire Mr. Smith, and run
| the company himself or find someone who can.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Is the work life balance at Blue Origin akin to Amazon?
| conspiracist wrote:
| Those that do not work in the office will be replaced by those
| that do.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Wage slave engineers are starting to wake up? Talent is well
| underpaid and treated like commodity.
| imglorp wrote:
| The no-remote mandate is just a symptom. The root cause appears
| to be Smith.
|
| > broad internal distaste for Smith [...] reflected in the job
| site Glassdoor, which shows that just 19% of employees approve of
| Smith's leadership. That's sharply below the approval for other
| space executives, as Glassdoor shows 91% of SpaceX employees
| approve of CEO Elon Musk and 77% of United Launch Alliance
| approve of CEO Tory Bruno.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Good. Insisting on forced commute is like insisting that horses
| are superior to motor vehicles. It's living in the past. The
| sooner these companies are punished the sooner we can move on. If
| you work for a company that's making you go back to the office
| AND you have other work options, I'd highly recommend quitting.
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