[HN Gopher] 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-offi...
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80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
Author : pg_1234
Score : 583 points
Date : 2023-08-11 20:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >We will be one of those 20% companies
| nforgerit wrote:
| Would be fun to see the whole system going down because most
| nerds decide to quit all this shiny disneyworld of plastic and do
| weird tech things again.
| noam_compsci wrote:
| I'll never understand why people think an office is important for
| any reason other than monitoring time at desk.
|
| The office is a sea of noise cancelling headphones. Globalised
| workforces mean any meeting ends up on Zoom anyway. Random chit
| chat is usually frowned upon by management so "water cooler
| inspiration" is a unicorn - usually it's just a distraction.
| lnsru wrote:
| My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team
| meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and
| talks to the manager who's sitting at home. That's how return to
| the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving
| soon.
| deagle50 wrote:
| If you're leaving, why not stay home like the manager? If you
| start a trend he'll have to explain himself.
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| > Good that I am leaving soon.
|
| I get the impression the manager is thinking the same thing.
| kzrdude wrote:
| In that situation we would use a meeting room. The dynamic
| would make the manager feel like they are the outsider in that
| case, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| They literally are the outsider in that case though
| wildrhythms wrote:
| You seem to think these managers have even a shred of self-
| awareness...
| sharts wrote:
| Rule #1 for effective management from any reputable ivy
| league executive MBA program is to have less self-awareness
| than any of your subordinates.
| ahi wrote:
| The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the
| conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before
| times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this
| practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If you get decent enough video conferencing equipment (e.g.
| microphone/camera designed for this kind of setup) and have
| good internet connections then this can actually work pretty
| well.
| dijit wrote:
| I recently moved in to a new office, centrally located in
| Malmo (which is an incredibly easy to navigate city by
| bike, foot or public transport).
|
| However, my company is remote first, and when I saw there
| was a conference room I didn't even think twice about the
| fact that I would put a large conference table in there and
| the best A/V equipment that I could afford.
|
| Then I went to Paradox's leaving drinks[0] and met a
| founder of Frictional Games[1]; they too are remote first
| but from long before the pandemic, and had a lot of people
| asking for advice.
|
| I was no different and asked what he learned; He told me,
| in no uncertain terms, (and without prompting about what to
| do with my new conference room- merely what worked well for
| him): that a conference room no matter how well equipped
| creates implicit asymmetry in meetings.
|
| When I thought back on my career, I realised he was
| completely right. I have used some truly excellent video
| conferencing solutions (those big Microsoft TVs that fully
| integrate with Teams- JAMF boards, the best that logitech
| as to offer), but it was _always_ more friction than it was
| worth, and often there was a recap once the "meeting" was
| over IRL anyway.
|
| So that room is now a relaxing area.
|
| [0]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/paradox-
| closing-ume-a...
|
| [1]: https://www.moddb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-
| descent/news/in...
| GhostWhisperer wrote:
| lol
| justrealist wrote:
| Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions
| via 1-1 asides.
|
| If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room
| where it's visible but incomprehensible.
|
| And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza
| delivered right as the meeting starts.
| anthomtb wrote:
| > Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as
| the meeting starts
|
| I've been in the position of being the sole remote guy
| (technically in office but working from a satellite site)
| and this happened soooo many times. The meeting would start
| and a box of donuts would be on the table and I'd hear
| "sorry, we'll mail a leftover to you!" followed by
| uproarious laughter.
|
| It almost made missing the 1-1 asides and whiteboard
| visuals worthwhile. Declining junk food in person is much
| more challenging than simply having it 1000 miles away and
| obviously out of reach.
| placesalt wrote:
| At some point say 'ooh, is someone making popcorn?', then
| leave, make popcorn, and come back and share.
| dmoy wrote:
| > If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the
| room where it's visible but incomprehensible.
|
| Bonus points if it's at a steep angle from the camera,
| making only one side of it slightly comprehensible, as the
| other side diminishes into unreadable scribbles
| dylan604 wrote:
| >And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza
| delivered right as the meeting starts.
|
| as if the snacks one has in their own home are so
| undesirable that this is the compelling factor. such a good
| post left on such a weak point.
| justrealist wrote:
| The indignity of getting excluded from free cake is not
| an economic calculus.
|
| Lots of people could go to the grocery store and buy
| themselves a sheet cake. They don't.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But you're assuming that one likes cake/pizza/whatever
| cheap mediocre food product that's been mentioned. If I
| was that manager, I'd raise your cake/pizza/whatever with
| a freshly grilled filet and baked potato with a nice
| glass of wine. Remind them just what possibilities they
| are missing for being in the office like peasants! After
| all, isn't that the point of having direct reports being
| in the office while you're at home?
| justrealist wrote:
| To be clear, I've worked remotely for a decade. It's
| worth it on balance, but there's no need to try to
| sugarcoat missing office food. It's lame!
| hunterhod wrote:
| False title. The article states that they would have approached
| their plans differently. Regret is a much stronger emotion, but I
| guess we wouldn't have clicked on the title without it.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Stories like this make me glad to not work for some prestigious
| MAANG that makes something or another self-important tech
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| For me, there's no money or perks or flexibility that will get me
| into an office. I haven't had covid, don't plan to get it, and
| it's honestly a lot riskier today than it would have been in 2020
| since we've collectively given up on precautions. I need my brain
| to work effectively, and the risk of cognitive impairment caused
| by long covid is just too high to be worth the risk.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| To even have a return-to-work policy one has to be a businese
| that was able to work from home in the first place. But a great
| many of us work in fields that never really had that option. So
| data about working from home being better or worse is inherently
| biased as it comes from only that subset of businesses that can
| easily make such a move. I propose that the people/jobs who can
| even consider the debate represent a minority and so any
| percieved advantages should not be automatically applied to all.
| No blanket statements.
|
| I say this at 0530 saturday morning as i check my email before
| driving to my office. (No busses in my town on a saturday
| morning.)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more biased to include data from those who don't
| have a choice?
|
| Breathing air is overrated, says all fish. Amphibians bias the
| data and should be omitted.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| More like dont make statements such as "all workers should be
| allowed standing desks" or "nobody should work saturdays"
| when clearly such things do not apply to enormous blocks of
| the population. We all need to remember that most people do
| not work similar jobs to ourselves, that our own experience
| is rarely ever applicable to the larger workforce.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Fair. I think as a non-American I'm just already used to
| re-qualifying most of what people say on here when they
| speak for "all" of us.
| adamkf wrote:
| Here's the quote from the [actual
| whitepaper](https://envoy.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...) from Envoy that this
| article references:
|
| > 80% of executives say they would have approached their
| company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had
| access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.
|
| Envoy's not exactly an unbiased source here, since they sell
| software to collect this data.
| jaculabilis wrote:
| So what this really says is that 80% of executives would have
| used a different approach if they had data about the subject.
| Which... is pretty lackluster? If you don't change your
| strategy in response to new data, you're bad at your job.
| MBCook wrote:
| It says they would change their approach. It does not say
| they would change their position.
|
| So while some may have been more open to letting employees
| work from home, others may have just decided they would've
| used different arguments against it instead now that they
| know the ones that used didn't hold up (as widely forecast).
| isaacremuant wrote:
| I know for a fact that many HAD data on employee willingness
| and on Productivity and it didn't lead to 3 days in the
| office RTO but that followed interests in the retail value
| and government taxes due to "reviving" downtown and similar
| ideas of centralized economic growth (which only benefits the
| few who have investments in those dense office zones and
| actually damages decentralization, horizontal growth and
| environmental improvements).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting. While 80% said they would approach it differently,
| 66% felt they would have improved layout and space on-site and
| 52% would have improved amenities. That tells a different
| story.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Envoy sells products for managing hybrid workspaces:
| https://envoy.com/
|
| So they clearly have something to gain here.
| hkon wrote:
| I remember in covid times, everyone was on remote, we would just
| call each other, hang out in teams, discuss work, really
| collaborating. Low threshold for doing some ad-hoc discussions
| etc.
|
| With the "hybrid" solution, when I am at the office "no-one" else
| is, can't really get everyone together anymore, some will be in
| office, others at home. People in the office busy with talking to
| other non-project colleagues etc. Must schedule everything etc.
|
| Also, for international teams, going to an office in a country
| where maybe none of their closest co-workers are located, really
| make no sense at all. Yet due to some company policy people must
| clock-in, and will generally be less available to their
| respective teams.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Things like this are starting to feel like they are requesting
| for people to Quiet Quit and jump jobs.
| JackFr wrote:
| Can we stop promoting workplace consultant marketing masquerading
| as research to the front page?
|
| No one reads the article. They see the headline and jump in make
| to make the same comments which might have been fresh and
| interesting on the first 20 return-to-office "research" pieces
| but now are simply tired and tiresome.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| The problem that I've observed is that far too many bosses made
| their decisions about remote based on emotion, despite the fact
| that it is incredibly obviously a decision that should be made
| based on logic.
|
| Not saying that one answer was right or wrong. Just that it has
| shocked me to hear otherwise smart people using subjective
| emotional decision making on this topic, when it's so clearly
| just an economic / incentive decision.
| kylixz wrote:
| I did software work for most of my career and am a huge fan of
| remote and hybrid arrangements.
|
| But having started a hardware robotics company... it does seem
| more difficult to run the team remotely. When we get together in
| person, everything moves faster. We have more equipment. EEs can
| fix things on the spot. Perception engineers can perceive their
| algorithm's behavior in front of their face. We can mitigate
| safety concerns with proper protections.
|
| I wish we could all be remote, but I think the team does need a
| component of hybrid to pool resources and move faster. I only say
| this as there's a lot of "C-suite bad they just want to
| micromanage" and I feel like it's not that simple for many
| businesses.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Don't feel bad. Working/developing with real hardware seems to
| me a legitimate case where wfh might not work.
|
| This does not mean that the constraints you have apply to
| everyone and most places that are forcing RTO are actually
| optimizing for other things like CRE.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Not every job can reasonably be done remotely. Working with
| specialized and expensive hardware is an area that seems to me
| to have a reasonable expectation that people work in the
| office, at least when they need to test on actual hardware.
|
| Also why I'm avoiding such fields personally, despite thinking
| they're pretty neat.
| whack wrote:
| > _Their plan was put on pause through the end of the year as
| Covid-19 cases ticked up once again throughout the U.S., so EY
| leaders used that time to ask employees about their reluctance to
| come into the office. Common threads stood out to Frank
| Giampietro, EY's chief wellbeing officer for the Americas:
| Employees weren't sure what to do about pet care or child care._
|
| > _In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022 to reimburse
| up to $800 per year for commuting, pet care and dependent care
| costs for each of its 55,000-plus U.S. employees. The fund, which
| is ongoing, had an immediate positive impact on employees' in-
| office attendance, Giampietro adds. Since EY first rolled out
| this benefit in February 2022, EY has seen a 150% uptick in
| office attendance across the U.S. "It didn't take a complete
| rehaul of our return-to-office policies to make employees happy,"
| he says. "We just needed to listen to our people and understand
| what, specifically, was problematic for them, and offer resources
| to address that."_
|
| This is hilarious. $800/year comes out to ~$70/month. That's a
| tiny fraction of commuting/pet-care/childcare costs. And that's
| peanuts compared to the average salary for someone working at a
| big-4 company. We're supposed to believe this is responsible for
| a 150% uptick in office attendance, as compared to any number of
| other factors in play in early 2022?
|
| I have to admire the the "Chief Wellbeing Officer"'s chutzpah. I
| suppose that's the kind of PR spin that lands you a plush C-suite
| job
| smeej wrote:
| I came here looking for this exact comment.
|
| That offer would feel more like an insult to me than an
| incentive.
| MBCook wrote:
| Add a zero. Then it's a real offer.
| Sylamore wrote:
| And make it monthly then it's a real offer
| ggm wrote:
| The article mentions NY costs of $16,000 p.a. per person-space.
|
| This is the underlying problem: Listed Property trusts are facing
| massive write down of value, and many industries at scale are
| partially invested in property assets.
|
| Deciding to unwind a lease has consequences all round. Getting
| staff back "in" may be logistically simpler for the CFO and risk
| committee of the organisation. HR comes second.
| [deleted]
| curo wrote:
| Fyi, CNBC (a news site) is citing a figure in a white paper by
| Envoy, an employee analytics platform, that leaders regret not
| having more employee analytics.
|
| > "73% workplace leaders believe that easier access to data would
| enable them to drive smarter decisions about their space,
| programs, and policies... "
|
| > "80% of executives say they would have approached their
| company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had
| access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.
|
| Here's the source:
|
| https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...
| [deleted]
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| Ancalagon wrote:
| $800 dollars per YEAR was enough for people who had childcare and
| pet care concerns? That's a drop in the bucket!
| gedy wrote:
| My honest opinion after 20 years in industry is in-office
| meetings and "collaboration" is mainly to cater to people who
| don't communicate very well. They have low reading comprehension
| and/or patience, and they require a lot of repetition the same
| thing when in meetings. In person works a bit better for them
| with the extra body language and not having to hand off audio in
| online meetings.
| esskay wrote:
| I keep getting recruiters send me messages on linked in with very
| vague details about the job, often omitting if its work from
| office or home. So I always ask, and often get "The employer
| offers a great flexible hybrid system" or some such nonsense.
| When you dig further its almost always a max of 1-2 days at home
| per week or in some cases per month.
|
| One of them was incredibly persistent and I told them I was only
| interested in remote opportunities. Their reply - "This is
| remote! They allow you to work from home one day a week".
| Er....ok then.
|
| Any employer enforcing ANY length of time in the office is going
| to lose out at this point. Thankfully my current employer has
| adopted a "dont care, do what you want" approach, so long as you
| get your work done they dont care if you're in the office, at
| home or abroad.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| [dead]
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I was recently offered a long-term contract job that was double
| anything I would expect my salary to be. Why? Because the company
| instituted a policy of not hiring new remote employees. So the
| workaround to get the help they need is to hire contractors that
| aren't beholden to silly employee policies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Double what you expect your salary should be is to be expected
| for contracting from healthcare and other expenses alone. Never
| mind the instability premium.
| kkfx wrote:
| The real reason behind RTO is the management needs of a soviet-
| alike economy in cities now, and tomorrow a slave-based service
| economy.
|
| The today need is the fact that offices keeps up many related
| activities, as a proof look at
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/20/bowser-bid...
| who have no economical meaning for the society but are the sole
| activity of many people, like soviet adage of digging holes
| today, fill tomorrow and dig again to state there is no
| unemployment issue.
|
| The tomorrow need is well depicted by
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
| witch means "how to make people owning nothing?" well, living in
| an expensive high-density city means need to earn much just to
| pay their cubicle-based life. More inflation, more people seeking
| owning less to spend less, so are more reliant on third party
| services. Cars too expensive? Well, go for the public transport.
| Homes too expensive? Go for smaller and smaller apartments. Not
| enough room to store and cook food? Go for ready made food,
| possibly delivered directly to you. No room for a washing
| machine? Go for public washing machines services and so on. In
| the end: people living a stressful life not to live but to pay
| services, without enough time to think, but with a vague idea of
| having still much thanks for the availability of such services.
|
| Both today's and tomorrow needs of such small cohort of humans
| who profit form pasturing the masses can't be satisfied if people
| start to spread. In a mild density living economy is mostly made
| by SME, not much by giants with few exceptions possible, and
| people own, know the value of owning, so have enough asset
| backups behind their back to be not so easy to steer using the
| genital garrota of the economy.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor
| in companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says
| Kacher.
|
| I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know
| what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger
| generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent
| money on that you can't get back.
|
| The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to
| use a resource you have already spent money on (sunk cost into).
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| This is massively pedantic
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know
| what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger
| generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent
| money on that you can't get back.
|
| Depending on how long your office lease runs - and many run
| 5-10 years - it _effectively is_ sunk cost because, short of a
| bankruptcy, you can 't get out of that super expensive office
| space that's now sitting 80%+ empty if you don't find some
| other sucker willing to sublet from you. Best case is you find
| someone with a sublease, but with a heavy discount so all
| you're getting from that is a bit lower running cost.
| MBCook wrote:
| Assuming you're even allowed to sublease.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| What does the younger generation remark have to do with
| anything? Do you think the younger generation not know what
| sunk cost is?
| zuminator wrote:
| I'm not quite seeing your point. Are you saying the article's
| usage is inconsistent with the meaning of sunk cost? In some
| cases companies have multi-year leases for office space that is
| drastically underutilized due to WFH. Does that not count as a
| sunk cost in your opinion? It's true rent is paid on an ongoing
| prorated basis but to quote from Investopedia, "Sunk costs also
| cover certain expenses that are committed but yet to [be]
| paid." [0]
|
| Like I said, maybe I'm just missing the point you're making?
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp
|
| (edit: upon posting I see others have already raised this
| question)
| itronitron wrote:
| My point is that if the companies are locked into their
| office leases then that is a sunk cost, and companies
| requiring employees to return to the office in order to
| justify that expense is an example of decision making under a
| sunk-cost fallacy.
|
| I don't know why the author doesn't point that out in the
| article, hence my pedantic tone which some have noted.
| zuminator wrote:
| Because utilizing a sunk cost isn't a fallacy. Believing
| that you should utilize a sunk cost isn't a fallacy,
| either. As you said earlier, it becomes a fallacy when your
| belief is _mistaken_ , that is, when you continue to
| utilize or invest in the sunk costs despite the cognizable
| fact that doing so is a net detriment. But how can the
| author make a reasoned determination of whether or not
| these business decisions are detrimental? She doesn't have
| available all the financials or other relevant information.
| And even if she did, how to best operate with those facts
| is a matter of business judgment.
|
| For example, a company might reason that maintaining a
| vacant business tower will look bad on their expense sheet
| and lower investor confidence. In that case better to fill
| it up with hybrid workers even if there's no operational
| benefit to doing so. If there's a sunk cost "fallacy"
| there, it's only by proxy perhaps; the business itself is
| making a reasoned decision based upon the shareholders'
| (fallacious) need for the sunk cost to be utilized.
|
| Point being that without knowing all the ins and outs,
| calling the business practice a fallacy would be at best
| premature.
| itronitron wrote:
| The sunk cost fallacy applies to more situations than
| just those that may incur additional investments,
| although that is how it is often explained.
|
| For example, suppose I have two desks that I can work
| at...
|
| Desk A is a rental that costs me $100 per month and I am
| locked into that contract for the next year.
|
| Desk B I've had for years and it cost me nothing as it
| was given to me by a neighbor when they moved into a
| retirement community.
|
| Both desks happen to be from the same manufacturer and
| are functionally identical.
|
| _Choosing_ to use Desk A _because_ it cost $1200 more
| than Desk B is an example of the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| I agree that the author doesn't have all the information,
| and they're just quoting an executive (Kacher). And it's
| completely possible that Kacher is just making
| assumptions or excuses about the thought process for the
| companies pushing RTO.
| suprjami wrote:
| The sunk cost fallacy is that you should _continue_ spending
| money on something you 've already spent money on.
|
| Make a bad expensive investment but give it up and move on?
| That's fine.
|
| Make a bad expensive investment then keep pouring money into it
| because you've already spent so much and can't throw away all
| this money now? That's the sunk cost fallacy.
| itronitron wrote:
| Not just money. Any resource, time, or mental effort applied
| to use something because of it's initial expense when a
| better alternative exists.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Then there is the sunk cost fallacy fallacy. Where you
| throw away investments since making another investment
| would have been better in hindsight.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| I think a lot of weak tech leaders took their RTO clues from
| Elon. When Elon took over twitter he started a very successful
| anti-programmer propaganda campaign, calling us spoiled, overly
| pampered, overly paid, etc.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| I had to do a day in office for the first time in over a year.
|
| The only positive was a feeling of engagement, which would
| quickly go away because my commute was turned into an hour ordeal
| each way.
|
| Seems the city made a lot of changes to encourage bicycling,
| which is great for residents but it really f'ed up traffic.
|
| So while the day in the office did recharge a bit of team
| enthusiasm, doing that daily with the new traffic patterns on my
| own time and dime, would wear thin quickly. I would find a
| different job if forced.
|
| If I can be paged and forced to crack open the laptop and work
| whenever needed, (and I am), it really does not matter where I do
| my work, engagement be damned.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > they would have approached their plans differently if they had
| a better understanding of what their employees wanted
|
| They knew what their employees wanted, they just didn't
| anticipate consequences. Aside from it almost being impossible to
| not have noticed everyone's opinion on this, if a manager
| actually doesn't know what their employees want maybe they should
| try to communicate with them? Or, more realistically, not
| willingly ignore them.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| My [very big] company just mandated return to office 3 days a
| week. My employment contract, signed a little after covid
| stipulates fully remote so I am exempt. I am also very far from
| an office. Its really the people that have been working here a
| long time that are taking the hit. All of these loyal people are
| going to have to start paying for after school care again, tolls,
| gas, lunch, etc. with no raise to compensate them. This is after
| already getting hammered by inflation. I genuinely feel bad for
| them.
| xracy wrote:
| I can't figure this out, but there seems to be some monied
| interests in people returning to work because of corporate real
| estate...
|
| That part makes sense to me, the part I don't understand is why
| every other corporation seems to want to continue buying into
| that when they could, for example, stop and save money on their
| current corporate real estate...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Perhaps it's like stocks? "It'll bounce back", and land is
| traditionally one of the safest investments to make.
|
| It's a weird whiplash to hear about empty office buildings on
| the enterprise side, while also hearing that the real estate
| market for private citizens is absolutely exploding. I've had
| some real estate agent come to my door every month this year
| asking about trying to sell my house.
|
| Maybe enterprise wants to be ahead of some future office gold
| rush (that may or may not happen)
| lucidguppy wrote:
| A portion of office space needs to become more fungible. Work
| office pods of 4-8 offices or desks that are lockable if needed.
|
| Small satellite offices that don't need big commutes would
| probably bring in more people. I like the idea of a small office
| that I can come into if I want - I just HATE commuting. I also
| hate open office spaces - its anti productive.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Poor executives! If only there had been some way to know
| employees would be unhappy about it /s
|
| On another note, I found this note curious - this would imply
| that offices should be 70-80% full not half full. May be a bias
| in their survey data! "59% of full-time employees are back to
| being 100% on-site, while 29% are in a hybrid arrangement and 12%
| are completely remote, according to new data from WFH Research.
| Offices are still only half full compared to their pre-pandemic
| occupancy."
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I had lunch, not too long ago, with a senior executive of a
| silicon valley tech company that was moaning about how much of a
| pain it was to get people to come into the office and how it felt
| like things would never return to the way they were. And I told
| them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their employees to
| return to the office happily. When they asked what this magic
| bullet was I said, "Go back to offices, with doors."
|
| It isn't that complicated. Even if you have to work out of your
| bedroom when you are home you can close your door and focus, that
| just isn't the same in open plan office space.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| I don't want to work in an office with doors any more than I
| want to work in a jail cell.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Yes, if you want to return to office... I better have an
| office. Not a desk in a "modern open collaboration space" or
| what every they used to call them
| rabuse wrote:
| The "everything is loud as fuck and echoes" area is the term.
| Headphones required all hours.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I get to have lunch with my partner every day and see them when
| I take breaks working from home. That'll never happen at an
| office, and it's more valuable than any comp to me. I would not
| entertain on site even at 500k/year (legit offer from a high
| frequency trading firm in downtown Chicago for an infosec
| cloud/iam engineer role). I can always make more money, and I
| only need so much to live well, but I have a finite amount of
| time and I'm spending the time I have left wisely.
|
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Hey, if you're somewhere near Chicago, we should meet up
| sometime. Long shot, but I'm down in Lake Saint Louis.
| (Rather far from Chicago, but I've been looking for an excuse
| to visit anyway.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'll reach out, I'll be in STL in the near future. Thanks
| for asking! Always great to meet other HN folks.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I will take that 500k offer. Got a link?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Drop an email in your profile and I will put you in touch
| with the right folks. No guarantees, but I will make the
| effort.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Not going to lie spending some "quality time" with my wife
| during the middle of the work day has been pretty freaking
| awesome and a very hard perk to cap.
| rabuse wrote:
| I'm the same with this. Both and me my partner work remote,
| and we spend so much more quality time together, and are able
| to take breaks with each other. I can't see giving that up.
| lawn wrote:
| > Go back to offices, with doors.
|
| And invent a teleporter. The commute is absolute terrible.
|
| It's actually a bit more complicated than you think it is.
| esskay wrote:
| Yeah no thats not a solution. Figure out how to get back the
| time and costs lost to commuting, then you'll have a solution.
|
| Of course one does not exist, and theres zero reason
| (especially for a valley company) to force people into an
| office.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Negative. Offices with doors are nice. But the reason people
| don't want to go into an office is _the commute_. You 're
| asking people to just erase 30-120 minutes of their day (or
| worse, spend that time in a stressful uncomfortable
| environment), 5 days a week, in perpetuity.
| cableshaft wrote:
| That might get more people back to the office, but still
| probably not the majority of them. I have a 1-2 hour commute
| each way to the office. I did it for three weeks while I was
| not staffed on a project, but as soon as I got staffed on
| another project I stopped going to the office.
|
| My commute sucks, the office environment is way inferior to my
| home, and the lack of flexibility sucks. The only thing I
| looked forward to while I was commuting was trying out a new
| restaurant in the big city for lunch. I was practically pulling
| my hair out of boredom the last two hours every day (had work I
| could and did somewhat do, but I could no longer focus on it
| because I was so sick of the office).
|
| Them giving me my own office at work wouldn't change anything.
| dudul wrote:
| I would not care one bit about your office buddy.
|
| Working from home I can take my kids to school in the morning,
| sometimes even pick them up, have lunch with my wife, always be
| home for dinner, live in a very nice low cost area, and I even
| get to start work much earlier than I would if commuting.
|
| Your idea would solve nothing.
| refurb wrote:
| I'm not sure that would be the magic bullet, but you're on the
| right track. If you want people to return to the office, _use
| carrots not sticks_.
|
| I personally can't stand virtual meetings with more than 2 or 3
| people. They are wildly more inefficient then in person. Add on
| top a meeting focused on brainstorms or discuss and it's a shit
| show.
|
| Give people a reason to return, and have it actually be true,
| and people won't complain about being asked.
|
| But just saying "you need to be back in the office just
| because" is just going to breed resentment.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The worst is "hybrid" meetings where some are in the same
| room and some are remote. It just doesn't work.
|
| Fully remote meetings work for routine stuff like regular
| team planning etc. Where they fail is what I call the "magic
| meeting" where management types seem to think if they get the
| right people in a room together things will just magically
| happen. But those meetings never achieve much anyway apart
| from making people feel good for a while. A remote meeting
| just removes any illusion.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| that would require folks moving back to the bay area. No way in
| hell I'd want to do that. That would require sacrificing my
| wife's career and our quality of life significantly.
| Libcat99 wrote:
| I have an office with a door at home. Why would I want one I
| have to drive an hour to?
|
| I go in the office every other week for a day when some other
| coworkers will be there. It's my least productive day, but it
| is good for planning with coworkers.
|
| Pay for my commute (on top of salary) and I'll think about it.
| landswipe wrote:
| I worked for over 20 years in open office environments that
| were thoughtfully laid out with over 9m^2 space between
| stations. I then changed to a company where it seems 'space was
| a premium' with a dense open plan workspace with different
| teams mixed in the same bull pen and it is absolutely
| horrendous. There are specific people that don't take social
| cues like turning back to your monitor when you want to try and
| focus on something, yet continue to chit-chat all day. I can't
| believe the c-levels don't see this as a problem. The WFH
| policy is still reasonable but I have heard the occasional
| "see... this is why Elon is strict on RTO for collaboration"
| and I just scoff internally as I know they are desperate to
| revert it all. Fundamentally there is a huge issue of trust in
| these organisations, mostly driven by insecure egocentric
| managers, and I think that trust is satiated only through fear
| and subjugation of the employee, and more often than not a
| fallacy - if they go completely RTO I am looking around and/or
| changing careers.
| pushingice wrote:
| Well that, and a check sitting on the desk for whatever amount
| the employee wants to come back to the office.
| paulcole wrote:
| > And I told them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their
| employees to return to the office happily
|
| I guarantee this isn't true. The remote work lifers would find
| a reason to think that private on-site offices was bad, too.
| doitLP wrote:
| They're not bad. I would welcome the idea. However they
| cannot compare to every other benefit of WFH including
| private bathroom, 0 commute, ability to cook and eat my own
| food, more rested, time for exercise, more personal time for
| kids and sopouse, etc etc etc
| MBCook wrote:
| It's something. It would fix a large complaint with most
| offices, and it shows that you're really trying. You know
| what else would be trying? Offering other other incentives.
| Like increased pay to compensate for the commute time and
| cost.
|
| Bringing in cupcakes once a month it's not trying. Simply
| threatening layoffs is not trying. Saying the word culture 30
| times is not trying.
|
| The pandemic proved work from home works for a large number
| of people and many of them found at a serious quality of life
| improvement. trying to take that away and asking people to
| pretend it didn't exist in exchange for some stupid token
| like adding a couple extra plants to the office so it feels
| more "homey" shows employees that you don't care about them
| AT ALL. Just like it did when you tried to force them back
| into the office during the initial height of a deadly
| pandemic.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's a curve. Your goal isn't to convince people who are
| deadset on never stepping foot in an office again. The cost
| to try and change that mind is so extreme that you're only
| reserving that value to executive or fellows anyway. Who
| already have that flexibility.
|
| But if they really do care about RTO and they want to
| incentivize people with a modest commute to come back... make
| the office better.
| tester756 wrote:
| So, you found simple solution for very complicated dynamic and
| you actually believe you solved this problem?
|
| I don't care about offices with doors.
|
| Sure, they're better, but still it doesn't solve my issues - I
| care about commute - time and money, especially time.
|
| I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't want
| to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x
| nickjj wrote:
| > I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't
| want to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x
|
| I don't think this is even that crazy either. I do WFH but if
| I were to goto the office in NYC, here's what that 9-6 work
| schedule would look like when you're dependent on a train:
| - Wake up at 6am, eat breakfast, get cleaned up, prepare for
| the day - 6:50am, drive to the train station
| - Catch the 7:10am train to NYC which arrives at 8:30am
| - Walk 15 minutes to the office - Work until 6pm (no
| private offices, segments of open floors with desks and
| monitors to plug in a laptop) - Walk 15 minutes back
| to the train station - The next available train back
| is 6:40pm which arrives at 8pm - Drive home from the
| train station to be home around 8:10pm to 8:15pm
|
| Here's the direct costs associated with that:
| - $268 a month for 20 train trips (a business week) with a
| discount applied - $150 for 10 lunches (I'm trying to
| average out things like a slice of pizza sometimes or
| something nicer and maybe you bring lunch half the time)
| - $200 for 10 dinners (half the time you eat near the train
| station while waiting because the idea of cooking after
| getting home is too tiring) - $15 a month in gas (kind
| of rounding here based on miles per gallon, etc. but this is
| close)
|
| That's an extra $633 a month and the food budget is likely
| way lower than it would realistically be. It also assumes you
| never once take an Uber or the subway while in the city.
| Realistically this could easily be $900 a month not even
| accounting for wanting to do fun and cool things after work
| since you're already out there.
|
| That's 6:50am to 8:10pm end to end (~13.5 hours) and you
| still need to handle dinner half the time. You also pretty
| much have to get up around 6am every day so you can't do too
| much at night. You're lucky if you manage to get dinner and
| fall asleep while watching a movie.
|
| Compare that to working from home: - Wake
| up anytime before 8:45am to give you some time to get ready
| - Do whatever you want between 6am to 9pm if you wake up
| early - Work until 6pm (my own private office or
| anywhere within reason) - Do whatever you want until
| you decide to fall asleep
|
| Your food budget is fully up to you. You can do optimized
| meal prepping to your heart's desire or eat out every day.
|
| Pants are optional at any point during the work day. I say
| that as a joke but also kind of serious. Your work
| environment may require wearing pants even if it's 90f / 32c
| with 70% humidity.
|
| There's also a huge amount of flexibility in the sense that
| maybe you have something to do between 2pm and 4pm like a
| doctor's appointment. You can still work around those hours
| when doing WFH and maybe eat lunch at your desk and put an
| extra hour in the evening to make it for it. Or maybe your
| job is ok with you just taking that 2 hours to do your thing
| and don't worry about it. That's not really an option when
| you have a long commute. You have to take the full day off.
|
| So now you go back to the person I'm replying to who says
| they would need 2.5x to go back. That's not all that crazy.
| Your work day goes from 9 hours to 13.5 hours which is
| already 50% more. You can't just add 50% to your salary
| because you're going to get taxed on that, and all of that
| will be taxed at the highest bracket you're in. Your life
| transforms from "work with a decent amount of personal time"
| to "I can't really do anything except work and commute".
| That's priceless in value or at least requires a substantial
| increase to consider it given what you're giving up.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Even if you pay me 2.5x. I don't want to. I like living out
| there. No traffic, no people around me. I walk outside an I'm
| in the desert. Solitude.
| samstave wrote:
| I am 1,000% with Chuck...
|
| My best, most productives were in offices with doors and one
| other space-mate and we both liked the door closed and the
| light off. I rebuilt Compaq 4U rackmount servers in the dark
| in that office. I loved it.
|
| -
|
| I hated Intel cubes - even though the cube was ~7' tall and
| the ceilings were ~13' - they still sucked. (I forgot the
| humble brag ;; my cube and Pee Schedule was right next to
| Andy Grove - and for who-knows we always ended up peeing next
| to eachother (never spoke)
|
| But I never went to my cube next to his (SC5)
|
| And we just ran the game lab... (golden gaming of my life
| (about to start BG3) - but yeah I have had surreal tech
| experiences in my life...
|
| I've hated every open office. (fb being the worst)
|
| --
|
| The WAYMO campus should just be little auto-driving "cubicle
| pods" that roam around and find the magnettic connection to
| the person you want to talk to and you both agree to meet -
| and then on the SmartMAC (like tarmac) the little pods just
| route you to eachother and dock.
|
| Think Conways Game of Conferencing - and all the little pods
| can form SNAKE like elements, or TETRIS Rooms - gimme a big
| L!
| dt3ft wrote:
| Only this would make me consider going back to the office: a
| 5 hour workday, paid as 8. The 3 remaining hours would be
| compensating for the commute, which includes the time to get
| dressed. Commuting costs and food should be compensated as
| well.
|
| Nothing else. Even with the above, I would still prefer a
| hybrid or remote positions as long as I have a choice.
|
| Standing on a crowded train is not something I want to do
| every day (once a week is plenty), there is simply nothing
| the company can offer to make me reconsider.
| laserlight wrote:
| > which includes the time to get dressed
|
| Thanks for mentioning this. It drives me crazy how people
| think of commute time as the time their engines are
| running, whereas the overhead of doing so is relatively
| significant.
| namrog84 wrote:
| Not just dressing or engine running but everything.
|
| When wfh I can prepare breakfast during morning meeting
| wearing wireless headset. When going into office I either
| had to make food before I leave or go out of my way to
| buy something (on way to work or at work).
|
| It's not hard to listen in on daily morning meetings and
| prep breakfast or same with lunch.
| Thlom wrote:
| Do you guys actually WFH in your underpants?
| namrog84 wrote:
| Generally yes. I typically prefer just being in my boxers
| at home. No shirt or pants. Always strip down to that the
| moment I get home too.
|
| Many times if I needed to be on camera I'd only put on
| shirt long enough to be on camera and make sure my camera
| was positioned high enough that if I stood up. My boxers
| wouldn't be seen. Buy even then it did happen from time
| to time.
| laserlight wrote:
| I'm always in my home wear, t-shirt and shorts.
| rabuse wrote:
| Not to mention the people who have children at home, and the
| massive savings of not having to pay for daycare. That's
| major.
| seneca wrote:
| How is working from home able to replace daycare? That's a
| new one to me.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Yea that makes no sense. Maybe during the pandemic it
| made sense when daycares were closed down and people were
| worried about the health risks. But now, there is no way
| you can tend to a kid and be a productive remote employee
| at the same time.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| I'm a relatively young parent and I've had (childless)
| friends tell me similar things. Some people don't
| understand how much work it is to keep a 4 year old
| entertained.
|
| The article funnily mentions "pet or child care", with EY
| handing out 800$ per year for it. What's 800$ of
| childcare, like two weeks? One week?
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Based on what I know, $800 is roughly two weeks depending
| on where you live. A full month at $1600 is not
| unreasonable for an 8 hour work day, 5 days a week at a
| reasonably good daycare. It can be perhaps as much as
| $600 lower a month in low cost areas and hundreds higher
| in major metro areas. This is for one kid.
|
| But these costs are dwarfed by hiring a legal nanny for
| watching a single kid. To do it legally in most states
| requires making them a full time employee with benefits
| and insurance, which I suppose is nice and all except it
| makes the entire thing unaffordable for even upper middle
| class incomes. So of course plenty of people do it under
| the table, which has its own set of problems.
|
| Childcare and modern parenting is actually fascinating
| and depressing. The answer tends to be money and/or
| leaning on family.
|
| Also the government does some kind of tax savings account
| for daycare expenses but the total amount falls far short
| of enough to cover services for a full time job. An
| obvious policy tweak would be to do a means tested
| daycare spending account with caps that reflect realistic
| full time jobs and help low income folk. The current one
| is a joke.
|
| Back on topic: an underrated benefit of WFH is you can
| set your own hours with some clever time management with
| a partner. A parent can get up early and do work, have
| the other parent drop the kid at daycare, and then the
| first parent can pickup the kid from daycare so the
| second parent can work longer. And there can be trading
| of time between the parents to accommodate deadlines.
| Having to physically go into an office on a regular basis
| screws this entire system up. The forced nature of in-
| office work is something I will fight against as much as
| I can, even though I very much enjoy gathering with
| others to work in person when it makes sense.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| When the Children are basically old enough to be alone,
| but not old enough to be alone all day. Like 9-13
| vladslav wrote:
| Can't agree more. I don't care about a personal cubicle with
| a door. But I care how much time I spend in traffic on my way
| to and back from the office.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I think this is a great comment.
|
| > I care about commute - time and money, especially time.
|
| I'm assuming you have done the whole draw a circle around
| where you live that represents your maximum willingness to
| commute and then apply for jobs in that circle thing? It was
| very popular in silicon valley during the dot com boom. When
| the commute circle comes up empty though, what do you do?
|
| Not snark, 100% serious. Hired a consultant who was fairly
| specialized and she spent 6 months working for me and at the
| end quit but offered to come back in 6 months. Her solution
| was she would live in the Bay area for 6 months, renting an
| apartment, save her money and then fly back to Hawaii and
| live there for 6 months on the money she had saved. She had
| worked out what was, to me, an ingenious solution to the
| conundrum that there isn't anywhere near where you want to
| live that you would like to work.
|
| There are a lot of reasons why people won't work in the
| office, and I get it, working from home is way better for the
| employee. One of the more interesting things COVID did was
| switch the "balance of power" from employers back to
| employees and so far it has been pretty awesome. In my lunch
| discussion my message was more "You are gonna have to make
| people be willing to work in your office if you want to
| compete for the best ones." The unemployment rate is low, but
| employees are a population, not a single type, their
| effectiveness falls along a standard distribution like most
| things. To compete for the talent you want is making
| management "cave" to things like offices. It has been
| relatively minor so far, but as work actions go the whole "I
| don't wanna go back" movement has certainly been felt in the
| Bay Area.
|
| Organizational dynamics is a really well studied topic and
| co-located organizations are able to respond faster, and more
| effectively, to changing conditions. Consider firefighters
| who used to respond to a call from home, get to the station,
| and then head out. Versus ones that are living in the station
| and can start out immediately. It is a dramatic illustration
| of the principle but one worth considering if you are
| managing a large organization.
|
| Reading the comments (which are great btw!) I have observed
| that a number of people haven't contextualized work yet.
| Specifically, an employer is an enterprise that employs
| people to achieve its goals. The employer has factors they
| can change and factors they cannot when creating an
| attractive place to work for people who can (in theory)
| choose to work anywhere. Some of those employers will say
| "work at the office or quit, your choice." with the
| expectation that some will quit but presumably most will stay
| (change is really hard after all and it's scary to jump into
| the abyss). They _want_ you to stay of course, it is better
| for them, and this is a rare opportunity to suggest /demand
| they revert some of the things that made working in the
| office so awful. Yes, making such demands forces them to
| decide, and their decision might be one you don't like, but
| if you are true to your goals and needs you will be happier
| with either decision. It is just harder to recognize that
| future happiness in the moment when you're crushed by them
| saying, "Okay then, we will call Friday your last day then."
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Her solution was she would live in the Bay area for 6
| months, renting an apartment, save her money and then fly
| back to Hawaii and live there for 6 months on the money she
| had saved.
|
| so her solution was a gamble? get a job and hope they care
| enough to compromise in 6 months when she tries to move
| back? It's an interesting strategy, but not an ironclad one
| without a lot of street smarts. stuff that's hard to
| research when you're not a local.
|
| >he employer has factors they can change and factors they
| cannot when creating an attractive place to work for people
| who can (in theory) choose to work anywhere. Some of those
| employers will say "work at the office or quit, your
| choice." with the expectation that some will quit but
| presumably most will stay (change is really hard after all
| and it's scary to jump into the abyss).
|
| but it sounds like the executive of interest more or less
| lost this gamble as well. they hoped most people would
| stay, and they either didn't or it fell below expectations,
| perhaps lofty ones. I feel it's a two way road here:
| employers won't sympathize with an employee who wants to
| WFH when the company doesn't, why shouold it work the other
| way around?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > When <critical QOL factor> comes up empty though, what do
| you do?
|
| As for anything, we settle.
|
| Now, the physical circle example feels weird to me as we're
| talking about remote work. Sure no one is guaranteed to
| find a good remote work opportunity when looking for a job,
| but there is enough of choice for someone who was
| successfully employed for a while to find a decent remote
| position with reasonable trade-offs. It's at least a lot
| easier than finding employment at 200m of one's home.
|
| > Consider firefighters
|
| I'm not sure how relevant it is to our field, where very
| few people still have to physically move to a common place
| to do their job. Data center maintainers still have to go
| to the server racks to actually plug/unplug machines, but
| for most other roles we kinda see the reverse, where people
| can react to a crisis way faster from home than when having
| to go to an office in the middle of the night.
|
| > this is a rare opportunity to suggest/demand they revert
| some of the things that made working in the office so awful
|
| What's lost on me is this tireless search for a middle
| ground, when we have better options all-around. To get back
| to your firefighters example, there was a time they had
| contracts for specific buildings and wouldn't extinguish
| fires on places out of contract. Should we try to find a
| middle ground to bring back these contract systems in some
| way, removing some of the most awful parts ? Or are we ok
| to move on to a completely different system that better
| benefits the city as a whole ?
| paulmd wrote:
| > Some of those employers will say "work at the office or
| quit, your choice."
|
| Haha, god no, that's constructive dismissal. "Quit or I
| make your working conditions worse, require relocation to a
| new area, or reduce your salary" is not something the law
| or the courts treat as a voluntary choice, they're not
| _quitting_ , you're _laying them off_ not-for-cause due to
| a shift in organizational strategy. You'll be paying these
| people to go away.
|
| The whole "RTO as a backdoor headcount reduction" has sort
| of been sold as this whole thing where it's do or die, and
| the proper response is "well, if I choose not to do it,
| what does the severance package look like"?
|
| The fact that you are making this offer org-wide and you
| don't know who's going to take it is _your problem_ , it's
| still a layoff like any other change in strategy.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That's a fair point. Depending on where you work you
| might have even more power than it seems at first.
|
| A friend at IBM when they said "Okay, come back to work
| in the office" just nodded and gave positive sounding
| responses but never really went back to the office. Their
| manager decided not to push it to a point of separation.
| I suspect that IBM's understanding of their obligations
| in that situation were part of the equation.
| morby wrote:
| Sorry but I can't help but feel this comment smacks of
| consultancy. The facts of WFH don't align with management
| desires. Management may think it's the business but the
| business is bigger than management. This is true in two
| ways: 1) employees make a business and 2) investors begin a
| business.
|
| Employees are happy to have a work solution that works for
| them. If you want the talent to make them productive you
| should come to terms with reality that WFH jsut works for a
| lot of people.
|
| Investors are happy when a company is making money and a
| company is making money when it's employees (not its
| management) are productive. Employees are productive when
| they are given a work solution that works for them
|
| Saying "put a door" on their office completely negates what
| makes employees happy to come work for you given the new
| reality.
|
| Adapt or die.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I always wondered (although never tested) if you could do
| this unilaterally. Which is to say, assuming you work 8AM to
| 5PM "nominally" (with an hour for lunch = 8 hours) and each
| morning got in your car at 8AM and got to the office
| whenever. Then when your favorite map application said "leave
| by x PM to arrive by 5PM at your home address" you left. It
| would certainly create some interesting tension right?
|
| At one time Google was discussing live-in housing on campus
| so that people could live there. It was a non-starter due to
| zoning issues but their reasoning was they could create
| dormitory style housing like Foxcon did and pay people less
| actual money for more hours of their time. At its heart it
| was profoundly evil but the pitch was all "they are young,
| single, they don't want to bother with renting and keeping
| house they loved their college environment and they will love
| it here." And through the lens of the founders, for whom the
| best times of their lives was living in college working
| through the night on cool technical problems, it no doubt
| seemed like heaven.
| berkes wrote:
| I also don't care about offices with doors.
|
| For me the main reason is I want to keep living where I live.
| Village near a small city in western Europe. Cheap living,
| lots of nature. But no big tech around. The closest "hub"
| with some tech corps is too far to commute daily.
|
| There's no way I'm selling my house to go live in a shitty
| noisy, overpriced appartment in or near Amsterdam Paris,
| Berlin or whatever and spend double the current amount on
| groceries, dining etc. I imagine in the US this is way more
| the case even.
|
| So if you insist on RTO, regardless of doors, you'll miss out
| on a large group of individuals who live too far away to
| commute.
| macintux wrote:
| I haven't had an office with a door in 20 years, but you're
| absolutely right. Somehow a white noise generator isn't quite
| the same.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that
| is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have
| this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so,
| employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important
| enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their
| lives just for the opportunity to be there in person.
|
| 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have no chance at
| becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers like
| to delude themselves that their company is some big important,
| cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact in the world.
| People just work because they need to. Claiming that WFH is bad
| because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into
| the real world-changing "deep work" is silly because that's just
| the employer overvaluing the importance of their company. Those
| companies do exist, but they're in the minority, and employers
| smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of companies usually
| are smart enough to see the merits of a hybrid policy.
| water9 wrote:
| Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are
| supervised vs unsupervised is completely naive
| itishappy wrote:
| Completely agree!
|
| I work _way_ harder unsupervised.
|
| It's probably also naive to believe all humans respond to
| supervision the same way...
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| Unsupervised and left to my own devices, I tend to spend my
| time on what I actually think is the most valuable
| contribution I can make. Selfishly, perhaps, because that
| tends to lead me toward what I find to be the most
| fulfilling and enjoyable work. This tends to upset some
| people, because my maximum effort is not funneled toward
| advancing their immediate metrics. But others get it.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| That only makes sense if the employees in question don't
| produce anything measurable
| _gabe_ wrote:
| What's the difference between producing something
| measurable that gets scrapped before ever hitting prod
| regardless of the several months spent working on it and
| not producing anything measurable at all? Unfortunately,
| these are the thoughts I'm left with, especially now that
| my current job is deprecating the years of effort some
| other guys spent building the last system.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| It's also naive to assume that the work people do when
| supervised is always valuable and not optimizing for the
| appearance of work, rather than work itself.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Would those people be working significantly more without
| supervision? I find it hard to believe.
| MBCook wrote:
| I don't think that's their point.
|
| The kind of person who isn't going to work when not
| stared at all day by a manager is also probably the kind
| of person who is going to try to LOOK busy at the office
| without actually having to do a lot of REAL work. Surfing
| the web, playing games, chatting with their friends,
| whatever they can get away with when someone's not
| watching. Or maybe doing their real tasks really slow.
|
| They're just not a hard worker.
|
| Where is an employee who tends to do a good job is going
| to try to do it whether they're in the office or not
| (assuming that's possible for their position). They don't
| really need to be monitored at home or at work. They
| would do basically the same either way.
|
| So all you're left with is you need to check real
| productivity instead of the appearance of productivity.
| THAT'S what matters, not where the employee is physically
| located during the day.
|
| Some people are exceptions and will work significantly
| better in one environment or the other. But if you have
| an employee who took remote work to mean "watch TV and
| occasionally jiggle my mouse" i'm willing to bet they
| weren't a good employee in the first place.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| > is also probably the kind of person who is going to try
| to LOOK busy at the office
|
| I disagree. The vast majority of people benefit from
| basic supervision and accountability.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I've definitely seen juniors who need attention to
| succeed.
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| The question for management is, are you hiring,
| cultivating, and retaining the best people? And are you
| defining "best" appropriately? If management's concerns
| around remote employees slacking off are at all valid,
| it's management's own fault in the first place.
| deprecative wrote:
| It's also naive to assume that optimizing for productivity
| is some goal we should work toward when zero reward
| structures are in place for it. The thing to optimize for
| is just enough productivity.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > when zero reward structures are in place for it.
|
| we used to have them. Pension is long dead, however.
| Hell, promotions and raises are arguably dead as well in
| certain industries. It's practically common knowledge
| that it's easier for tech jobs to change jobs for a 20%
| raise than to ask the current company for a 5% raise. And
| then that company you left after 2 years proceeds to pay
| someone a 20% raise in order to ramp up someone doing
| your same job.
|
| Companies need to reward tenure and actually budget for
| employee bonuses if they don't want to keep doing this.
| But from what I've read, they don't care and HR may even
| be incentivize to do this song and dance: https://old.red
| dit.com/r/datascience/comments/uo589a/why_are...
|
| or if you want a TL;DR for the TL;DR:
|
| >HR / recruiting "wins" when hiring, and does not "lose"
| when employees leave. Their incentives are in most cases
| at the fastest possible rotation of people.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Particularly when pay increases in this craft are largely
| found by job hopping until you possibly land a FAANG job
| or approximate
| r00fus wrote:
| Thing is, I'm just as supervised at work, honestly (which is
| to say, not at all).
|
| I still have 1:1s with my manager, am still accountable for
| my targets and organizational goals, and generally do the
| same thing whether I'm WFH or in office.
|
| Office work has several advantages: 1) I like discussing in
| person with coworkers - sometimes coming up with
| fun/interesting ideas 2) office itself is more conducive to a
| particular type of work 3) I get some isolation from the
| family
|
| But that commute...
| Plasmoid wrote:
| I think RTO would have been a lot more palatable if most
| offices weren't intentionally built with 1hr+ commutes from
| residential areas.
| e_y_ wrote:
| I think it's more that residential areas are 1hr+
| commutes from offices/downtowns. You could build an
| office next to a residential area, and some do, but many
| of the job applicants will be in a _different_
| residential area -- often even in a different city.
| Suburban sprawl, y 'all.
|
| You could have smaller offices in different
| neighborhoods, but there's usually not enough people in
| any given suburban area to justify an office. Co-working
| spaces are one compromise but larger companies dislike
| them for security/secrecy reasons.
|
| I would also add that many people have reasons for not
| moving closer to work even if they could. Also people are
| no longer working for decades at the same job, and moving
| is a hassle if you're changing jobs every few years.
| imbnwa wrote:
| What is the intention?
| ajkjk wrote:
| Lol. The intention was to build the suburbs far away from
| the offices, not the other way around.
| sesteel wrote:
| To look and feel important. I worked for a company that
| moved to a building simply because the CEO wanted the
| sign to be seen from a major highway. My 20min commute
| would become 1 hour or more. I left upon hearing that
| rationale.
| r00fus wrote:
| That I think gets more to the point that our housing
| economy is completely irrational.
|
| Used to be, you could live close but maybe not the best
| neighborhood.
|
| Now everything that's not some new exurb 1hr+ away from
| medium-large metros is insanely priced.
| rconti wrote:
| My last 3 managers (since 2020) have all been in a different
| office than my "home" office.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| That's only if you work at big companies with several
| offices where teams are distributed anyway, so in-office
| work was remote-work anyway except done in the office
| instead of in your home. Big international companies were
| already basically remote even before the pandemic and had
| plenty of inefficiencies already built in.
|
| What I notices small companies in my area (here in Europe)
| with only one office, put a lot of value in having all
| employees coming to the office so they can react faster and
| cooperate easier than distributed teams, rather than saving
| on rent and letting everyone WFH 100% of the time from
| wherever they are, seeing it as one of their strengths over
| big distributed companies where things move slower.
|
| While there's some truth to their arguments about the
| response time and cooperation in the office, I find they're
| selecting for people who drink their cool-aid and buy into
| "the mission" of the company instead of seeing the work as
| a simple transaction of "I give you my time and mental
| labor, you give me money, period".
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| In-office work isn't the same as supervised work. If you have
| managers/cameras hovering over your shoulder at all times in
| an office, that's a toxic work environment.
|
| People have always found ways to be unproductive even in the
| in-office era: going to the bathroom while on the clock,
| constantly hanging out in the break room under the guise of
| getting coffee, office small talk, or just old fashioned web
| browsing on their computers/phones. Pretending like every
| white collar job was at 100% efficiency in the pre-pandemic
| era was just pure delusion on management's part.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Most office workers really aren't supervised unless you count
| a manager glancing across the open-plan office to see how
| many butts are in seats.
| MBCook wrote:
| Which is also where you get pointless busywork. Doing
| things on your computer to pretend to look productive
| because if you were to just sit and think or take a five
| minute break a micromanager would yell at you or nosy
| teammate would rat you out as "unproductive".
|
| Even if you're thinking through a heart problem or just
| finished something mentally draining from complexity.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by
| employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH
| employee
|
| Which is also a hilarious self-own on the part of the company
| because they:
|
| 1.) hired the person
|
| 2.) have such a shitty remote work structure that the same
| employee is somehow more productive in the office
|
| All of these companies that aren't remote first, or were forced
| into remote because of the pandemic have put in roughly 0%
| effort to make remote actually work.
|
| It's not like you can just pick up the office culture and move
| it to slack. You have to actually make an effort to build the
| process, tools, and workflows that allow employees to be
| effective remote workers.
| tester457 wrote:
| > Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off
| other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep
| work" is silly
|
| Ironically it's easier to get into deep work at home because
| you don't have to worry about coworkers bouncing ideas on you.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is particularly amusing to me as I sit in bed, right now,
| at 6 AM on a Saturday morning, having just figured out how to
| do something and done it in an isolated staging environment,
| after bouncing ideas of a co-worker in another time zone who
| happened to also be online and thinking about it right now.
|
| And if the idea of working on a Saturday morning at 6 AM sounds
| toxic, I also logged off at 2 PM yesterday to spend the
| afternoon with my wife, who'd come home early from her office,
| and went to sleep by 8 PM, so it's not like I'm hustle
| culturing it working 80 hour weeks. I just happen to like early
| mornings.
|
| So suck it, dumbass CEOs.
| didibus wrote:
| I've also found it's all just a matter of processes.
|
| For example, open source is often all online, and it creates
| innovation all the time. People bounce off ideas on forums, on
| issues, often with a high level of thought going into it all.
| Great exchanges can happen in written form.
|
| But I think a lot of companies that went remote just had no
| clue how to organize processes, discussions, and decision
| making for a remote environment.
| avereveard wrote:
| For me it's not even about the office I quite like there it's
| quiet compared to home, but the one hour commute back and forth
| heavily impact my quality of life
| denkmoon wrote:
| If my boss implied that I'm some lazy git taking advantage of
| WFH he could find a new employee. It's just insulting. Maybe
| others are, but don't make unfounded accusations.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their company
| is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's making a
| real impact in the world.
|
| to be fair, the center of talk on this site are usually in fact
| the cutting-edge enterprise that is making a real impact on the
| world (whether that impact is positive or negative is
| arguable).
|
| >employers smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of
| companies usually are smart enough to see the merits of a
| hybrid policy.
|
| so far, I believe Google and Microsoft and Facebook haven't.
| Twitter sure hasn't but that's honestly the least of their
| problems.
| godelski wrote:
| > Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off
| other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep
| work"
|
| What is a bigger hindrance to this to me is an open office
| plan. Being distracted by watching everyone walk around, no one
| respecting my headphones being on, walking over to me for a
| "quick question" that disrupts my flow and ends up being 60
| minutes of work which I get no credit for but they do. At least
| over slack I can not respond to messages, though the ping is
| still disruptive.
|
| What helps create deep work is a fucking door which I can
| communicate to people that I am in the zone and do not bother
| me unless you really need me.
|
| The truth is that people are just justifying their previous
| decisions. They made open offices because it is "cheaper"
| (short term, but arguable long term) and have to come up with a
| reason that it is "better" other than cost. The same shit
| happens with WFH because they are still paying for office
| space. This is crazy since silicon valley was known for crazy
| perks like laundry and free food and all that but still
| wouldn't give you an office with a door. But now all that is
| going away as all their stocks are still going up. The reason
| those companies got big in the first place is that they
| realized that there were diminishing returns on financial
| compensation and that giving other perks actually boosted
| performance, created loyalty, and keeps people happy. So why
| stop doing something that is working? (gotta get those stock
| prices up somehow, right? And a quarterly level, not long term)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > a "quick question" that disrupts my flow and ends up being
| 60 minutes of work which I get no credit for but they do
|
| I ask which project this is for and log my hour on that. At
| least my boss sees I'm not slacking, and if it happens a lot
| can take action. Perhaps the other person needs more guidance
| or maybe was a poor fit for that project.
| Sai_ wrote:
| You're missing the fact that work/job _is_ life changing for
| someone who needs it to put food on the table. Just because no
| one is inventing anti-cancer medication every other week
| doesn't mean that person's internal world is not improved by
| having a job.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| > food on the table
|
| That point has nothing to do with WFH. If you get paid you
| can afford food, regardless of where you work. In fact WFH is
| better because you can save up to 2 hours a day not commuting
| and instead can spend it on cooking, grocery shopping, food
| prep, gardening, or any other food on the table related task.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Complete tangent: I wonder if it's uniquely American to believe
| that people can/should only be passionate about jobs that are
| world-changing. Or maybe it's just very common in the tech-
| world and HN.
|
| I'm absolutely guilty of this. I'm a software engineer, and I
| feel proud of having worked on products that millions of people
| use. Steve Jobs's challenge to "put a dent in the universe" is
| axiomatic for many of us.
|
| Yet I know that in other countries (e.g., Japan) there is a
| belief that any job, no matter how humble, is worth doing well
| and that passion for excellence is a virtue inside us and is
| not conditional on the perceived pecking order of the job.
|
| If we had such an attitude, maybe it would be easier to feel
| fulfilled--if you're holding out for changing the world before
| you can be happy, you're (statistically) going to die
| miserable. On the other hand, maybe a culture in which we give
| 110% to meaningless jobs is just another chain for the rich and
| powerful to keep us productive.
|
| I honestly don't know.
| bassclari wrote:
| [dead]
| Macha wrote:
| It's funny, because my perspective as a European is American
| culture places more value on the performative idea of "love
| your job" even for the entry level jobs where here it's much
| more honest about it just being a job
| petre wrote:
| > Yet I know that in other countries (e.g., Japan) there is a
| belief that any job, no matter how humble, is worth doing
| well and that passion for excellence is a virtue
|
| That's a reason why the quality of most Japanese products is
| superlative. Another nation that is passionate about their
| stuff are Italians, but they value good looks and good food
| above all. The US values profits and growth and China values
| high output volumes.
|
| If one works in a Fortune 500 company they're probably
| creating value for shareholders instead of _changing the
| world_. What they are primarily changing is the income gap,
| by making the rich richer.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > Another nation that is passionate about their stuff are
| Italians
|
| At least where I am from, Italians have a reputation for
| shoddy products, laziness, and not caring. As you say: They
| are happy as long as the facade looks good. Behind the
| scenes is a mess.
| petre wrote:
| You're probably from Germany, the Nederlands or Denmark
| then. It's a common Northern European prejudice to
| consider southerners "lazy".
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Yea, Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks are some of the
| hardest working people in the world..
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| >if you're holding out for changing the world before you can
| be happy, you're (statistically) going to die miserable
|
| You bring up Japan yet they're known for being excessively
| and pointlessly overworked to the point of depression and
| suicide. It is a culture that rewards obedience and
| prostration to your job above everything else. So many were
| peer pressured into finding meaning in their work to such an
| excessive extent, and of course didn't become happy because
| its a system that optimizes for cohesion and stability, not
| happiness and meaning.
| eulgro wrote:
| I find it very difficult to find meaning in a large portion
| of the jobs available today. Most workers are just another
| cog in the wheel. The system is so large that one cannot
| directly appreciate the effects of their work, or even know
| whether they are positive at all.
|
| This contrasts with say, a subsistance farmer who produces
| food for their family and lives in a small community where
| every product of their labor has a known and appreciable
| impact. In that case, the equivalent goal of "changing the
| world" is "helping the community", which is much more
| attainable.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| At some point you have to just like your job. No amount of
| "you are changing the world" feeling is going to keep you
| motivated for a job you hate.
|
| I get joy from figuring out how to solve a tricky UX issue,
| or from finally discovering the root cause of a difficult
| bug.
|
| The work itself can be fulfilling, regardless of any
| potential deeper meaning.
| mgrund wrote:
| > I find it very difficult to find meaning in a large
| portion of the jobs available today. Most workers are just
| another cog in the wheel. The system is so large that one
| cannot directly appreciate the effects of their work, or
| even know whether they are positive at all.
|
| My experience is that the same job also has a large range
| for meaningfulness depending on how well leadership manages
| to facilitate it.
| hintymad wrote:
| > this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee
|
| I thought performance management was all about managing
| results. So, I don't quite understand how "lazy WFH employee"
| could be a management headache.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > employers who have a delusion that their workplace is
| important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion
| of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person.
|
| Being in the office only works with others in the office, so
| it's a balancing act between this (likely minority) group of
| both people managers and employees that want RTO, and the group
| that excels when working in their own curated, controlled
| environment.
| paulcole wrote:
| What about the group that thinks they excel when working in
| their own curated, controlled environment?
|
| Companies can probably get more out of average and below
| average people easily by forcing them into an office. That's
| good enough for some companies to get by. And I say this as
| an average person who would get more done if I didn't work
| remotely.
| re-thc wrote:
| > One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by
| employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH
| employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their
| workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a
| large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be
| there in person.
|
| If only it's all the "employers" fault. I've seen plenty of
| employees post on social media about how their office is
| "alive" again and feeling the "vibes" of their team with photos
| sharing them and their co-workers in-office.
|
| It's the pro-office crowd in general that wants to crush
| everyone. Some employers are guilt-tripped or forced to support
| these loud people. They would complain that it's lonely and no
| 1 is coming to the office with them.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee
|
| It's not a straw-man, I've seen behavior in the past year that
| I've never seen in my entire career things as absurd as someone
| working 7 other jobs while pretending to work for us.
|
| Frankly it isn't worth the risk or waste of time or money
| anymore. Thankfully just by saying you need to be in the office
| a few days a week will weed out 90% of timewasters.
|
| >employers who have a delusion that their workplace is
| important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion
| of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person.
|
| Employers don't owe you a living, you're welcome to go work
| somewhere that's fine with you not showing up.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > someone working 7 other jobs while pretending to work for
| us... Thankfully just by saying you need to be in the office
| a few days a week will weed out 90% of timewasters
|
| Either they're not producing enough output to warrant their
| salary - in which case you have good grounds to fire them
| regardless - or they're perfectly productive - in which case
| why does it matter?
|
| The biggest issue many managers have is that they have no
| idea how to measure employee output, separately from time
| spent at the desk imor in meetings.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Many employers feel very insecure when their employees
| don't spend the majority of their waking hours fixated on
| their job.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| >I've never seen in my entire career things as absurd as
| someone working 7 other jobs while pretending to work for us.
|
| I'm sure I don't understand. You were paying someone for 40
| hours a week and getting ~5. Why was this not apparent to
| their management? Or, if it was, why was nothing done about
| it?
|
| The problem that your organization pays someone for 8x the
| output they're getting is definitely a problem, but if your
| management's only solution to this problem is to force the
| entire workforce to commute to an office, I think the bigger
| problem that should be addressed is that your management
| sucks.
| Alupis wrote:
| There's a lot of nuance that isn't discussed in the WFH
| circles. I don't believe the cynical claims some offer of VC's
| losing out on real estate deals, or mid-level managers needing
| to boost their butts-in-seats numbers or whatever. For some,
| perhaps, but on average?
|
| What percentage of long-distance relationships work out long-
| term? Do you become more or less close with friends after they
| move out of town? Do you still "know" them the same as you did
| when you regularly met in person for lunch or drinks? Is it
| awkward when you do see each other in person that one visit a
| year?
|
| Human beings are social creatures - yes, even we introverts
| need interaction. A pure voice-only relationship can feel
| close, but it's not the same thing. Current technology like
| Zoom and similar is just not a good replacement for in-person
| interactions.
|
| How many times have you spoken right over someone on a Zoom
| call or Discord server? The social queues are erased, and
| things become awkward and less productive. Creativity (which
| applies even in engineering) is diminished when you have to use
| online whiteboards and planning tools vs. a real physical
| whiteboard with everyone holding their own pen and bouncing
| ideas around in real-time. To use Zoom et al effectively, the
| pace of thought and contribution are greatly diminished into a
| sort of per-turn dance.
|
| WFH is fantastic when you have a head-down, concentration-
| demanding task that is very clearly defined. For most other
| things, it's actually harder to get work done.
|
| WFH is simply not a replacement for team cohesivity. There is a
| great deal lost when you do not meet in person with the people
| you work with on a regular basis - we can't just sweep that
| under the rug because we'd prefer to sit in our home office. We
| have to acknowledge the real tradeoffs - the loss of the
| "team".
|
| That's not the say WFH _doesn 't_ work. Some people make an
| entire career working from home after all. It is simply an
| acknowledgement that WFH isn't as beneficial in all situations
| as _you_ might believe.
| laserlight wrote:
| > Do you become more or less close with friends after they
| move out of town?
|
| Do you continue doing what it takes to be close with those
| friends? Do you talk every other day, for instance, like you
| do with your teammates? Do you share your experiences, think
| together, have plans and commitments?
|
| Geographical proximity is not the most important contributor
| to closeness. I feel closer to random strangers on the
| Internet than how much I feel close to my neighbors.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I agree the conspiracy theories don't add up. The potential
| benefits of WFH for employers are substantial. Lower real
| estate costs is direct money saved. Ability to recruit from a
| much larger candidate pool means they can hire faster and for
| lower salaries than otherwise.
|
| There have to be meaningful downsides that CEOs and the like
| believe is outweighing all that.
| skydhash wrote:
| We are social animals and having in person interactions would
| probably boost the team's cohesion. But it's not a
| requirement and we'd have plenty examples of projects built
| over virtual meeting and async communications.
| re-thc wrote:
| > For some, perhaps, but on average? > What percentage of
| long-distance relationships work out long-term?
|
| If only you believe you have this "relationship" at work
| that's even remotely close to things being equal. For some,
| perhaps, but on average?
|
| - Do you get to decide what to do or your boss? Even if you
| know better ways of doing things or see issues you might not
| have the politics to pull it off. Does this happen in a
| relationship? If so, it's pretty poor.
|
| - Can you "unfriend" a co-worker and choose not to work with
| them? Do you choose your team? You can certainly quit your
| relationship or even friendship. In a company you get
| assigned a team. You can't pick and choose.
|
| > Human beings are social creatures - yes, even we introverts
| need interaction.
|
| And you will get it? You assume your co-workers are your
| friends. Friendship and relationships common together on
| common things they like. Co-workers come together to work and
| may not actually have anything in common. So you prefer being
| forced together and fake friends than not have any? It can be
| worse. Being professional is all it is.
|
| > We have to acknowledge the real tradeoffs - the loss of the
| "team"
|
| That's not a WFH issue. Your whole argument sits on that the
| only way to build relationships is in-person, even by quoting
| how long-distance relationships fail. Well do you hug and
| kiss your "team"? If not, then maybe it's fine. And it fails
| because there aren't ways to enforce the long-distance
| relationship to spend time together. Are you forced to spend
| time together with your co-workers? Yes.
| parineum wrote:
| Coworkers are much more like family. You don't get to
| choose them and you don't have to be friends with them but
| come thanksgiving, you just need to get along.
|
| In that context, wfh makes it a lot easier to just get
| along.
| lumost wrote:
| Different skills dominate in WFH vs. in-office cultures. It
| should ultimately be unsurprising that people prefer to work
| in an environment conducive to their strengths.
|
| Some folks focus on deep work, and benefit from working
| remote - others focus on collaboration. There are cons of
| remote work, there are also cons of in-office work. Remote
| workers who work best with deep stretches of focus are
| unlikely to be as productive in office. Collaborative workers
| who focus on long brainstorming meetings etc. are unlikely to
| be productive remote where people can just go on mute.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I think framing as deep work vs collaborative is a bit too
| assertive. It's people who prefer working solo versus
| working socially, and there are different types of work
| that naturally lend themselves to one personality or the
| other, but the preference is "lower level" than that.
|
| For example, brainstorming we pretty much know to be
| ~ineffective at this point, but people who love socializing
| continue to do it. Inversely there's definitely work that's
| ridiculously hard to accomplish solo/async, but people with
| a strong preference for solo work want to muscle their way
| through it solo anyway.
|
| Solo workers are willing to _give up_ some collaboration
| and social workers are willing to _give up_ some focus.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >What percentage of long-distance relationships work out
| long-term? Do you become more or less close with friends
| after they move out of town? Do you still "know" them the
| same as you did when you regularly met in person for lunch or
| drinks? Is it awkward when you do see each other in person
| that one visit a year?
|
| that's the crux of a lot of people here. You are comparing
| coworkers to friend and some people don't care about
| friendhips at work. They just want to do their work, stay in
| good graces, and get back to their leisure ASAP. It's not
| their job to care about overall company productivity, so as
| long as they feel more productive it's a win. Any inefficies
| is irrelevant because it means the ball is in their court and
| they still get more time for said leisure.
|
| As of now, the WFH initiative is the cloesest we got to a
| wide scale 32 hour work week that many desire.
| xedrac wrote:
| It's more like a 52 hour work week for me. I think it
| depends on your personality. I have a hard time stopping my
| work, but I still think the benefits outweigh that.
| jurassic wrote:
| The sweet spot in my experience has been for WFH orgs to get
| together periodically for extended offsites. A one week
| gathering twice a year has forged some incredible bonds on my
| distributed team.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Ugh. Multi-day work offsites are the worst. Along with
| conferences. You have to make arrangements to be away, (try
| to) sleep in a hotel room, end up eating and drinking too
| much, getting a workout in is nearly impossible, they just
| completely disrupt all your routines and responsibilities.
| F-W-M wrote:
| It's harder 2 weeks a year, but that is so easily offset
| by the 50 other weeks that make your workout, eating
| habbits, routines and responsibilities so much easier.
| sneak wrote:
| It sounds like you are perhaps just inexperienced at
| traveling, or don't like it.
|
| All of your complaints are (usually) easily solved by
| experienced travelers. It's okay to not like travel, but
| it doesn't condemn the concept of a weeklong company
| offsite a couple times a year.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm not crazy about travel, that is true. But I'd concede
| it might be worth it if the offsite or conference
| provided exceptional value. I my experience, they don't.
| Never had an offsite meeting where the actual information
| being communicated could not have just been in an email.
| The social component of it is something I'd rather manage
| for myself on my schedule and with people of my choosing.
| Work relationships should be professional and collegial,
| I don't need or want to be in an egg race or play
| charades or go hiking or do some other stupid "team
| building activity" with Betty from accounting.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Is 2 weeks of travel a year that unexpected? A job I got
| hired at said to expect quarterly travel for various
| conferences. Not week long arrangements, but we're
| talking about being ready with a few week's notice to fly
| out for a few days to some different part of the world.
|
| of course I got hired in that place in 1/2020, so we know
| how that turned out.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The social animal bullshit is a myth. You can see it around
| you everyday. People in public places everywhere spending
| time on their phones rather than talking to people around
| them
| [deleted]
| 7952 wrote:
| Phones and social networks are so heavily used because they
| are addictive.
| wtarreau wrote:
| It's true that we can see them everywhere but you'll
| probably notice that you don't know what jobs such people
| do and that those who you know and who need to benefit from
| others' experience typically do not do this. I tend to
| think there is a class (and a large one) of people who live
| only for their phone and social networks just because they
| have no life and they're trying to get one in such
| superficial stuff. Or maybe they just feel that nobody
| looks at them because they're not redefining the world and
| are not interesting, and they're trying to exist through
| groups of other people like them. It often makes me sad to
| see how they can be absorbed by these non-sense activities
| instead of simply being proud of what they are.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| "It often makes me sad to see how they can be absorbed by
| these non-sense activities instead of simply being proud
| of what they are."
|
| ....because "being proud of what you are" doesn't work
| when no one cares about what you do or who you are. Then,
| your options are two-fold: you either become an isolated
| loner who doesn't care about socialising, or you
| participate in those superficial activities in hope of
| human connection.
| wruza wrote:
| Maybe it's not a myth, in a sense that without a phone they
| _had_ to interact and learn how to do it, but that is too
| bad compared to what phones give for free.
| Icathian wrote:
| You ever see that old black and white picture of folks on
| the NY subway in the 1940s, all reading their own
| newspaper?
|
| Forcing conversation on random people you happen to be
| sharing a space with has always been psychopath behavior.
| mfitton wrote:
| I think you're right about this, but there are companies that
| are putting distributed teams back into open offices just so
| that... they can sit in zoom meetings with their team. But
| now, they're less likely to have ad-hoc collaborations over
| Zoom because it's a pain in the neck to find a conference
| room and feels borderline disrespectful to one's neighbors to
| carry on a long call when they're trying to focus.
|
| It's all situational. I agree with you that in-person
| collaboration is beneficial, but bringing people to the
| office doesn't necessarily do that without restructuring
| teams that were built on a distributed basis, which can be
| super disruptive and lose a lot of organizational context.
| wtarreau wrote:
| It's not necessarily the case, it happens that most of the
| people who come are happy to be in the same room for a
| meeting, but often they still have to endure one single
| distant coworker that preferred to stay home and selfishly
| forces all other ones to use the shitty tools.
|
| At work we've bought small PCs for the meeting rooms so
| that all those present can be in the same room, and have
| the rare distant ones participate to the call remotely
| without preventing other ones to discuss in the room. It's
| obvious the quality of the participation is much reduced
| for the remote one in this case, which proves how poor such
| exchanges are when they're all remote. At least here we can
| preserve a good communication between those who make the
| effort to meet in person.
| sharts wrote:
| These very same employers will never take a pay cut for said
| "passion" that they have for their product (which they probably
| don't even use much either).
|
| They want to only pay others per keyboard keystroke but can't
| accept that often the most efficient/productive workers don't
| need to be busy. They spend a lot of their time thinking so
| that they can generate more impact with fewer keystrokes.
|
| Treat people like adults and, surprisingly, get adult results.
| Set strategic goals, not daily quotas for minutia work.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| There are two issues in the psychology of employers that keep
| them from doing this.
|
| 1. They care more about control than doing the right thing.
|
| 2. They don't get satisfaction from improvements that don't
| come directly from their doing
|
| Very stringent quotas, asinine team building activities, and
| of course, mandatory in-office policies construct a narrative
| for the company that no good thing that happens is from
| anywhere but the top-down. They can look at improvements in
| the bottom line and concoct a much more salient narrative
| that they were responsible for it; that their employees were
| nannied and hand-held to success. It's much more satisfying
| for an egomaniac to reckon with this conclusion than the
| still gratifying albeit less viscerally satisfying one that
| granting workers respect and independence will merit the best
| outcomes.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Astute observations. +1
| kneebonian wrote:
| > 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions"
|
| I'd also like to add that even if you are in a field and doing
| work you are "passionate" about you'll spend between 25-75% of
| your time doing boring administrative bull hockey that no one
| is passionate about. Whether it's feeling out a time sheet, or
| watching HR videos on harassing coworkers.
| zer8k wrote:
| My passion for my job is limited regardless of salary. I am
| not going to break my back for someone who makes me jump
| through arbitrary hoops for everything. Want that promotion?
| Here's yet another 3 things this review cycle we want to see
| changed. Just do the work of the title before you're awarded
| the title! No problem! Take unpaid pagerduty shifts that are
| forced upon you to resolve problems we wouldn't have if we
| allowed developers time to do anything!
|
| I work because I have to. There's nothing to be passionate
| about. Employers are just mad because it takes a little more
| talent to do as little as possible when remote. If you're
| smart, optimizing your work to exactly the requisite sprint
| points (maybe a little more occasionally to show
| "initiative"), making the appearance of availability, etc
| will net you the same effect as zoning out at 2pm and staring
| at your monitor for the next 3 hours when in office. Even
| better if you learn to exploit PM's miraculous ability to
| expand into any time available for work. Now you can reduce
| your sprint obligation commensurate to the amount of time the
| PM needed you to "plan". Employers never realized often the
| smartest most talented employees were mentally checking out
| way before clocking out. The physical appearance of "work"
| was enough to trick these morons.
|
| I made this realization when I realized how Cxx's, sales, etc
| view engineers. Just "pie in the sky" dreamers who want
| "perfect" everything. After making a VP particularly mad at
| one company (for formally criticizing his dogshit work during
| an audit as the source of a sev0) I got a reaming that
| included these exact words. It didn't take long after that to
| make the connection between engineering and labor, the solid
| titanium ceiling to progress, and the subsequent solution.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing
| that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers
| who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and
| more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is
| important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion
| of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person._
|
| Also the acceptance of that by employees who have no personal
| life or live for office drama, and are anti-WFH.
|
| God forbid people miss the wondeful brainstorming opportunities
| of BS meeting -that-could-have-been-an-email, or the wonderful
| backstabbing and gossip watercooler camaraderie.
| joj123 wrote:
| My cynical take is that HR teams don't know how to manage or
| engage remote teams. Instead of picking up that skill, they are
| forcing a return to office.
| troupe wrote:
| I find it funny that when people were required to be home,
| employers talked about what great productivity they were
| getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required
| anymore, they want everyone back in the office
| for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have
| no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so
| managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now
| we are back to where managers will look better with lots of
| people running around the office.
| gdilla wrote:
| Maybe that's what they said but they were also on the hook
| for rents or big real estate assets collecting dust.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I find it funny that when people were required to be home,
| employers talked about what great productivity they were
| getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required
| anymore, they want everyone back in the office
| for...productivity
|
| Whatever management's current whim is represents not only a
| reasonable but the only effective way to serve shareholder
| interests, amd to do anything differently would be a
| irresponsible and anyone disagreeing is objectively working
| against the interest of the firm, and any prior contrary
| statements about what is best for the firm are nonoperational
| and any reference to them is a bad faith distraction.
|
| Oceania, Inc., has always been at war with EastAsia, LLC.
| Xelbair wrote:
| I think that there's something else at play - mostly two
| major factors:
|
| - real estate agencies push for return to office(as they own
| a lot of office space that's now empty)
|
| - Turns out.. you don't need so many middle managers -
| without their direct oversight everything just kept working
| fine. So now you have internal vested interest in return to
| office for people in power.
| renecito wrote:
| I wonder how much of is just about getting local cities tax
| breaks, or even state taxes in some cases.
|
| Governments are not ready for the majority of people having
| the freedom to work anywhere.
|
| The whole foundation of our local and state governments
| control is based on manageable demographics, we are red or
| blue, we embrace the old or the new ways, etc., they are not
| ready for a sudden change in the mix, every local government
| had worked really hard to keep the status quo.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| Our company is mandating a 3-day in office starting soon.
|
| I'm a bit of an exception because I'm in a city that only
| has a couple hundred employees, but when I do return to the
| office, it won't be to collaborate with teammates: I will
| be joining zoom calls with people in other cities (which
| was my day-to-day pre-pandemic). Pre pandemic I would
| travel every 2-weeks to company HQ to be in-person for demo
| with stakeholders and sprint planning, but even then many
| people would join via zoom anyway.
|
| I don't think return for office has anything to do with
| productivity and more about anxiety around investments in
| commercial real estate.
| MBCook wrote:
| The few times I've been back it's worse. Since everyone
| is on zoom meetings anyway, everyone is just talking all
| day long making it hard for the other people on zoom
| meetings at the office to hear what they're doing. So
| productivity actually goes down.
|
| All of which makes things worse for the people at home on
| the zoom meetings.
|
| As soon as a significant fraction of your employees
| aren't in office, it starts to become a productivity
| problem to force people to stay! Well, unless you gave
| everyone their individual offices with doors. But you
| can't do that can you. Because then what would make the
| senior people special? So you have to use cubes so
| everyone can hear each other on zoom calls.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Public statements about productivity are rarely negative. No
| one wants to hire a business with lazy workers who might not
| fulfill their contract. So public statements have to be
| positive.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's reasonable to think in retrospect that, even assuming
| companies had reasonable measures of productivity and
| related metrics (which is by no means a given), OF COURSE
| during the pandemic, they were going to make statements to
| the effect that "everything is fine/better than we
| expected."
|
| And, even from a somewhat less cynical perspective, it's
| reasonable to see a more complicated picture where many
| things, but not all things, are indeed more or less OK.
| Overlaid on this is that a lot of companies have cut back
| on travel etc. budgets so one of the alternatives to people
| getting together in local offices is at least somewhat off
| the table.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's not about productivity just like it's never about "the
| children."
|
| It's about the desire to control thier investments. They want
| their investments to work out, so they try to force people
| back into the office.
|
| Conflict of interest.
| Natsu wrote:
| > I find it funny that when people were required to be home,
| employers talked about what great productivity they were
| getting with people at home.
|
| In our case, we do have good, long-standing metrics: we
| measure how happy our customers say they are with our
| service. Since the whole point is to have happy, repeat
| customers and they have no reason to lie about being happy,
| we can trust this. That went up significantly and sustained
| itself during the pandemic.
|
| While my employer did initially want to bring people back to
| the office, they relented after the push back and have been
| relatively soft and flexible about this, actually opening up
| a dialog to talk to everyone about what they need and want.
|
| It doesn't hurt that they're looking at some significant cost
| savings by significantly downsizing our office footprint.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, thankfully they weren't trying to play Jack Welch by
| renting from themselves or some other distracting financial
| "strategy" involving your office space.
| mattw2121 wrote:
| One point to remember is that during the pandemic,
| customers were much more sympathetic to everyone. The
| overall quality of customer service has gone done since the
| pandemic (even in companies that returned to office) and
| we, the customer, are forgiving of that. Pre-pandemic, we
| were not nearly as forgiving.
| Natsu wrote:
| That doesn't seem to have regressed much, though. I do
| feel like people are more forgiving of home office
| interruptions since they became more common, but I don't
| think it makes that much difference. At the end of the
| day they still need their stuff fixed quickly and want
| good advice. And at least the current management believes
| in human capital and keeps good people for a long time,
| so people generally get that and turnover is rather low.
| [deleted]
| ulfw wrote:
| It's all about PR to keep stock prices up.
|
| Which employer would ever say: "ah man it's all fucked up.
| Our productivity is completely gone. We're not getting
| anything done"
|
| Imagine what that would do the stock prices
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Changing to work-at-home increases productivity.
|
| Changing to work-at-office increases productivity.
|
| .
|
| Maybe the Hawthorne Effect actually is real?
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Management and entrepreneurism is incredibly cult-like and I
| find it increasingly difficult to quietly sit through all
| their ridiculous sermons.
| ascotan wrote:
| I think the definition of "productivity" is part of the
| problem. Managers view "productivity" as the ability to
| bounce ideas off each other and working collaboratively to
| get traction on hard problems.
|
| This isn't how most engineers write software at the ground
| level though. Engineers need quiet concentration, free from
| distraction. Yes, there are hard problems that need
| collaboration to solve, but that type of interaction can be
| scheduled when needed. Far from needing to "bounce ideas" off
| other engineers, most senior engineers are pretty self-
| sufficient.
|
| There is a different issue at play with junior engineers.
| They need supervision and that's hard to do unless your on a
| zoom call with them all day long. This isn't a new problem -
| it's simply a problem exposed by being remote. When we were
| in the office, all these junior engineers, were pulling
| productivity away from your senior engineers. Moving
| everything back to the office didn't increase productivity,
| it's actually decreasing it. Commute + sidebar conversations
| + mentoring junior engineers = less productivity out of your
| senior engineering staff.
|
| There's definitely a "managers are from mars and engineers
| are from venus" sort of vibe happening here. Managers need
| that interaction and collaboration in order to provide
| oversight and provide direction. Senior engineers need a
| place to concentrate - and typically that isn't in the office
| where we have noisy open floor plans.
| josephd79 wrote:
| You can't "manage" people who work remotely the same way
| you manage people in the office. That's the issue.
|
| Also, you shouldn't have to watch newer employees like a
| hawk if you've given them clear tasks / projects and
| expectations. No need to micromanage people.
| frostiness wrote:
| It's not about managing. It's about the friction to
| reaching out for help and lost productivity from having
| to schedule meetings combined with inexperience making it
| hard to decide which problems are worth the friction of
| reaching out and which ones aren't. There's also the
| sense of isolation that being remote gives, because
| asking for help over a private message makes it look like
| you're the only one that needs help. All of this is still
| a problem regardless of clarity of expectations and
| tasks.
|
| My preferences are likely going to change once I get more
| experience under my belt but I absolutely feel there are
| some facets of remote work that benefit senior engineers
| at the expense of junior engineers.
| karmelapple wrote:
| There can be friction scheduling and holding meetings,
| absolutely. Starting a meeting friction can be overcome
| through tools like Slack huddles which basically require
| one click to join if people are around fairly
| predictably, but scheduling friction can be reduced with
| some techniques.
|
| Our remote-first company has a daily standup everyday
| which shifts everyone's brain into talking/collaboration
| mode for that bit. If someone - especially newer or
| junior engineers - have a question, that is a great
| opportunity to either have an impromptu discussion, or to
| have scheduled a discussion about it the previous
| afternoon jf it wasn't particularly urgent.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I've started talking about crystals to attract hot chicks
| that are already into crystals. Many are, or want to believe,
| just like researchers want to believe in a room temperature
| superconductor.
|
| The alpha is that pedantic and over-analytical guys dismiss
| crystal energy at the expense of their reproductive
| opportunities, and the way around it is literally just not
| doing that.
|
| One thing I quickly noticed is that the purpose of _all_
| crystals are expected to be the same.
|
| "It absorbs energy and gives out good energy"
|
| So I same the same thing everytime.
|
| Employers must be encountering something similar from some
| form of stakeholder, such as the board for an analogous self
| preservation or reproductive opportunity, so the answer is
| always "increase productivity" every time.
| [deleted]
| logical_ferry wrote:
| Not sure I follow the logic.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's because you are over-analyzing it.
| conductr wrote:
| It's because meetings and full calendars of check ins and
| touch bases is constant and actually is the productive work
| for an executive. They are the ones wanting productivity for
| themselves. The byproduct of this executive productivity is
| it causes the busy work for the people who are lower in the
| org chart. Busywork for them is a big source of their
| nonproductive time and what was freed up during mandatory WFH
| generating the productivity boost.
|
| Then what happened was a lot of the pending and backlog of
| projects and busyness got moved over to a completed status.
| But the lack of productivity at the executive levels meant
| that the project funnel wasn't keeping up. So the company was
| at risk of having a ton of people with not enough to do.
|
| This is purely my personal anthropological perspective of the
| situation having been an active participant working closely
| with executives making these decisions the past few years as
| well as talking with colleagues that do the same. I'm aware
| it's probably completely BS.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > I find it funny that when people were required to be home,
| employers talked about what great productivity they were
| getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required
| anymore, they want everyone back in the office
| for...productivity.
|
| The decades of evidence that open office plans are utter shit
| for productivity already proved that the emperor wears no
| clothes and they have no idea what makes for better
| productivity.
| userbinator wrote:
| The only real reason for open offices is cost saving.
| Everything else is just an excuse to make it not seem like
| it is.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That makes sense but the ultimate in cost savings is...
| WFH, which they hate.
| philipov wrote:
| And you know what's a bigger cost savings than open
| office? No office!
| petre wrote:
| Actually, the employers should really pay us rent for WFH
| because they are using our own facilities to make
| profits.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| My last job did give me a stipend that more or less
| covered my internet bill. That was nice.
| arkey wrote:
| Same here, add to that some office equipment at a huge
| discount, when they had to close the office during the
| pandemic, a one-time fair amount of cash for spending in
| home office equipment, and a smaller but nice yearly
| amount for the same.
| azmodeus wrote:
| In Germany you can tax deduct your rent for an office
| room with a door and a proportion of your utilities for
| the office
| Tomte wrote:
| Only if you don't use the room for anything except work.
|
| You've got a computer in there that you're also using for
| private stuff? Not tax-deductible anymore.
|
| Private books on the bookshelf? Not tax-deductible
| anymore.
|
| You've got a wardrobe with some clothes you're only
| accessing once per season (to store off-season clothes)?
| Not tax-deductible anymore.
| prasoonds wrote:
| This is correct and I'm not sure why it's been downvoted.
| In Germany, you'd better only every use the work-room for
| work only. As people have pointed out, you're not likely
| to get audited for this but often, with apartments, it
| can be quite obvious that you're using the space for non-
| work stuff too (for eg, if you're living in a 50 sqm
| apartment, it's pretty easy to say that you can't
| possibly have a dedicated work only room).
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, my accountant always (and as I understand it,
| the rules have gotten stricter) recommended against
| taking a home office deduction unless you _really_ had
| dedicated space for equipment etc. and didn 't have an
| office you could reasonably commute to. The way more
| typical "office space you often use for doing work" was
| long seen as a red flag for a deduction and, in the
| typical case, as you say, truly dedicated space is rare
| absent a large place and/or specialized needs.
|
| I _could_ make a room a dedicated day-job office but it
| would cost me way more to do so than I would ever get as
| a deduction and it would almost certainly be inferior to
| the mixed-use setup I use.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Depending on the state they allow to deduce a room
| partially and during corona they were a lot more
| tolerant.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Like you will declare those...
| Tomte wrote:
| Sure, many don't. And many people have found that the tax
| office does inspections from time to time. That's not a
| pandemic issue, the laws and the jurisprudence have been
| in place for decades.
|
| But you just have to love how HN endorses tax fraud.
| generic92034 wrote:
| It is not nearly handled so strictly anymore, in my
| experience. Of course, it could vary by tax office.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Some sort of do. Mine pays for my wifi and cell bill.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| That might work if the job is fully remote and doesn't
| have a physical office for you to work at, as most
| companies will simply say "you can come to the office and
| use the facilities there for free".
|
| Most decent companies will give you some money though for
| WFH or let you borrow stuff from the office like chairs
| and monitors.
|
| While I'd love to have the financial burden of
| commuting/WFH be imposed on the employer instead on the
| workforce, that would require another labor revolution,
| so far I'd just be happy to have 100% WFH possibly.
| Internet I use anyway, and I can pay for the extra water,
| energy and heating by myself, the extra difference is
| insignificant compared to the time I save commuting to
| the office.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Why not just 1099 everyone at that point? Oh because then
| you can't bullshit people with career carrots and
| establish sunk costs and healthcare anxiety to retain
| people.
| losteric wrote:
| Debatable, a full HQ brings sizeable direct and
| transitive economic influence over city politics that
| typically cannot be countered by residents.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Empire builders love to see and display their
| footsodiers. Nothing like sweeping a gaze over a big
| plateau with a few 100 serves to affirm your confidence.
| stodor89 wrote:
| Yeah, I think people often underestimate the role of ego
| in this kind of stuff. Hell, it can even be used as a
| philosophical razor: Never attribute to necessity that
| which is adequately explained by egomania.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Open offices are the literal reason (after
| commuting/traffic) that I no longer want to go into the
| office. My work doesn't require a ton of person:person
| engagement and it's much easier for me to just zone out in
| my own headspace to do it.
|
| When I was required in the office, I would just wear
| headphones to avoid distractions, but I would have to deal
| with 2-3hrs of driving/day on top of it. This meant that my
| employer generally only got those 8hrs out of me, period;
| because I had none of my personal time to spare. Working
| from home, on the other hand, gives me more flexibility for
| meetings, to work at different hours, to be on later in the
| evening, to put in more time (when needed), etc; and I'm
| happier.
| 0xblinq wrote:
| The headphones thing reminds me of a big events ticketing
| company I worked for that, when people complained about
| noise, distractions, etc they came up with the amazing
| solution of using your health and wellness budget to buy
| noise cancelling headphones.
|
| Most full of bullshit company I've ever worked for.
| gambiting wrote:
| Hahahaha same as my work - they said we understand
| concerns you have about coming back to the office - as a
| solution to these concerns we decided to buy everyone
| noise cancelling headphones.
| ornornor wrote:
| I'd be outraged.
| stevezsa8 wrote:
| Reminds me of one job, my boss was looking to leave, and
| was handing over portions of her job to the rest of us. I
| said I don't have time to do more additional work... she
| said they can send me on a course to better manage my
| time. haha.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _" You guys had a health and wellness budget?!"_
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Open offices are terrible. Management knows they are as
| well because Sr. leadership almost always have their own
| offices. The peons sit in the pit. Until the CEO is
| sitting next to everyone else they are all speaking lies
| when preaching the benefits of an open office. The only
| benefit is that its cheaper and they can keep an eye on
| you.
| ascotan wrote:
| it's a millennial thing. they grew up working on laptops
| and their dream office is to make the workplace look like
| starbucks. Open seating, no cubicles, a barista. It's a
| knee-jerk reaction to the old office place standard of
| 'cubes'. Managers hire out to consultants that hype this
| type of office layout because it will supposedly attract
| a talent.
|
| To be fair, cubes weren't any better. I remember having a
| guy slerping tea sitting across from me. I couldn't see
| him but I could sure hear him and there was no way for me
| to get up and move.
| captainbland wrote:
| Speaking as a millennial: open offices were there when we
| got there! If we did anything it was to keep hybrid/WFH
| arrangements where we could.
| derefr wrote:
| > To be fair, cubes weren't any better.
|
| Cubes, _with hot-desking_ , is pretty great actually. IBM
| has it in their drop-in "business centers" for WFH
| employees.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It's more a new way to cut costs further. Plenty of
| boomer leadership hopped on the open office trend despite
| plummeting employee productivity and satisfaction
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Rigghht... It's the millenials, not like corpos haven't
| been doing this for decades. As soon as there were
| cubicles, there were people rejecting them.
|
| See SC Johnson HQ for one of the most famous versions of
| this. (https://youtu.be/yb-kYt1lpnI)
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| For sure, and like he says near the beginning of that
| video, "Most employees have moved to other buildings."
| I've been in some of those other buildings and guess
| what, they're almost entirely private offices... no open
| office plan.
|
| They learned their lesson from the Frank Lloyd Wright
| building. It's a wonderful piece of architectural
| history, but it's not wonderful for productivity.
|
| He doesn't mention one of the most interesting things
| about that building -- the building has no square
| corners, everything is round (even the elevator).
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know. I'm certainly not a millennial and I've
| never had any real issue with ambient coffee shop or
| equivalent background when reading/working/etc. and I'm
| rarely putting earphones/headphones on or playing music
| in general. People probably just have different
| tolerances and types of tolerances for distraction--not
| sure how generational it is.
|
| As I've said before, people here pine for private offices
| a lot but, in my experience, typical workplace private
| offices have tended to be door open by default absent
| private meetings/phone calls/some urgent deadline thing.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Even with the door open, it still blocks a lot of ambient
| sound. Sound also isn't the only problem with open
| offices. The other problem is with visual distractions.
| It's hard not to interrupt your work whenever the
| constant stream of people pass by, especially when they
| greet you
| Zigurd wrote:
| There is an exception to this observation about senior
| management: Andy Grove used to sit in a cubicle. It was a
| big cubicle in a labyrinth of his assistants' cubicles.
|
| It didn't make cubicle farms any better though.
| Joeri wrote:
| There is one model even worse: when leadership claims
| that they too sit in the open office like everyone else
| ... only to take up a big meeting room all day as if it
| is their personal office, causing the actual meetings
| booked there to have to move to the middle of the open
| space, making everyone an unwilling meeting participant.
| treespace8 wrote:
| Open office look great! Just like TV. I don't think I've
| ever seen an office environment that has not been open on
| TV. A TV show with everyone in a private office would not
| work, no drama!
|
| But to work in them is a noisy hell. I had a lawyer
| friend talk about how great these open offices must be to
| work in. So productive and dynamic he would say. But of
| course this is coming from a profession where having a
| private office is an absolute requirement.
| WWLink wrote:
| Ahh my employer does this. The founding CEO had his desk
| over by the front door, and back in those days we all sat
| in the same big room.
|
| We have multiple big rooms now but the current CEO still
| has his desk out in the open. Last time I was in the
| office we talked about anime lol.
| re-thc wrote:
| > When I was required in the office, I would just wear
| headphones to avoid distractions
|
| That doesn't work for everyone. Some offices are louder
| than headphones and some people come around tapping your
| shoulders regardless.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Totally agree. It is also bad for your hearing to have to
| wear loud headphones all the time to drown out a loud
| work environment. Your ears do wear out.
| kadoban wrote:
| > That doesn't work for everyone. Some offices are louder
| than headphones
|
| Depending on your budget, you can block out anything
| short of jackhammers with either IEMs or earbuds+noise
| reduction earmuffs.
|
| > and some people come around tapping your shoulders
| regardless
|
| Do they expect to continue living? What monsters.
| re-thc wrote:
| > Depending on your budget, you can block out anything
| short of jackhammers with either IEMs or earbuds+noise
| reduction earmuffs.
|
| Perhaps more a personal thing but it induces a dizziness/
| drowsiness with extended use. It's fine when watching say
| a movie but I could never work for long periods with my
| ears blocked. Wonder if I'm the only 1 but I have heard
| of similar cases.
| bombolo wrote:
| I get pain from the hears not being in their natural
| position.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| That problem went away for me once I found headphones
| that are actually over-ear and not only marketed as such.
| I can wear them all day every day because they're large
| enough to not even touch my ears, very light because of a
| plastic case and open headphones so they don't feel as
| "pressurized". Bad for noisy environments, though.
| bombolo wrote:
| My hears are perpendicular from my head
| d-s wrote:
| It's quite common. I own only open headphones due to this
| andelink wrote:
| I wear them all day during work and also then a couple
| hours in the evening without any issue. Pure bliss
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think specific problem is high density open plan
| offices. At about 20sqm per person, and keeping quiet and
| noisy professionals in separate rooms, it is not too bad.
| [deleted]
| ornornor wrote:
| > When I was required in the office, I would just wear
| headphones to avoid distractions
|
| Sometimes I just want silence. Not music, not $color
| noise. I also get itchy ears after wearing headphones for
| hours on end, and noise canceling headphones give me a
| headache... or, you know, I could work wherever I prefer,
| with little to no commute, and an office arranged how _I_
| like it.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Yup, this too. Half the time I had headphones on, I
| didn't even have them playing anything. I just had ANC
| turned on to muffle the background noise (and deter
| people who didn't actually needy assistance with
| anything). But I definitely had ear stink/itch at the end
| of most days.
| roland35 wrote:
| Ear stink... I never knew my ears smelled so bad before I
| started using airpod pros!
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The worst place I worked I needed industrial earplugs,
| then chuck white noise on top of that to get almost
| distraction free. The way to get the desired peace was to
| leave
| skirmish wrote:
| I used to do that but then every 15 minutes some coworker
| would tap me on the shoulder to ask some inane question,
| and I would spend 5 minutes taking things out of my ears
| before I could hear them. Fun (not).
| synecdoche wrote:
| I see it as a fairness and reasonableness issue. It's
| unfair and unreasonable that the ones polluting the space
| with noise are the ones that get to enjoy the freedom to
| use the space without restrictions, while the victims of
| the noise are the ones that suffer the restriction of the
| full use of the same space. The same with smoking, which
| fortunately has been recognised to some extent in recent
| years.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Open offices are the literal reason
|
| Bumping this up a notch, I have co-workers who work
| together 4hrs/day on the same meeting but cannot sit
| together because our Zoom calls all collide when any one
| person is speaking. Core issue is the lack of conf rooms
| in a zoom-centric organization.
| everdrive wrote:
| I remember the first time I was in an open office. I was
| flabbergasted. We'd all get on a call so we could talk to
| some remote vendor. Other people would have their mics
| on, so I'd hear my own voice repeated and delayed through
| the Zoom call. I could barely talk, and barely hear
| anyone. It was a self-evidently terrible decision that
| everyone was just going along with. Sometime later we
| were moved to a different open office space. It was
| deafeningly loud in there, and I eventually discovered
| that there was a white noise machine on the ceiling above
| every single employees head. Apparently this was meant to
| help with the open office design, but it did the
| opposite: much like a busy cafeteria, everyone had to
| shout over top the all the extra noise in the room. (the
| combined sound of about 100 white noise speakers + the
| sound of about 100 employees talking or working) Again,
| such a stupid decision I can barely understand how
| someone could set it up this way. I eventually just
| waited 'til no one was around and unplugged most of the
| speakers. It was a huge improvement, and no one
| complained.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| 100%. And don't forget about the useless standup meetings
| which are nothing more than a complete waste of time.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Mine are also useless. Communicating with your team is
| super important but the mandatory status checkin when
| team members are working on unrelated things is pointless
| and draining.
| arkey wrote:
| Why do you think standup meetings are useless? Maybe they
| are not run properly? I find them to be a pillar of our
| workday, within our team.
| TheGRS wrote:
| I don't find mine useless, but I focus a lot on
| prioritizing and un-blocking people. The tasks we have
| are usually very different between engineers though so I
| can see why someone would find that useless time.
| miyuru wrote:
| depends on the place of work. mine is also useless. the
| manager is clueless so some team members just tells every
| single thing they did for 15 minutes for clout with the
| manager.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Just my experience. A work culture where people approach
| each other without somebody telling them to do so is much
| better. Respect of each others time is also crucial. Get
| the motivating factors right and you dont need to bore
| the x out of everyone.
| dboreham wrote:
| Discussions that should be 1:1 become 1:N, wasting the
| time of (N-1) people.
| mcv wrote:
| Discussions, yes, but discussions aren't for the standup
| meeting. Those are for informally updating everybody on
| what you're working on and whether you're stuck on
| anything. They lead to 1 on 1 meetings to solve those
| issues.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Discussions, yes, but discussions aren't for the
| standup meeting.
|
| What actually happens in a standup meeting tends to be a
| mix of:
|
| (1) What theoretically belongs in a standup meeting,
| which is a meeting that should have been a kanban board
| plus identification of blockers that have been deferred
| for the standup rather than properly addressed when
| encountered and,
|
| (2) tangents into discussions which should be 1:1 (this
| especially happens when blockers are discussed, because
| people want to help get them unstuck.)
| vitaflo wrote:
| Anyone who cares what you're working on can look at Jira.
| And if you're stuck you shouldn't be waiting for a
| meeting to tell people this. Standup are a total waste of
| time.
| bshacklett wrote:
| That's the problem. Most teams don't have stand-ups. They
| have gigantic status meetings on a daily basis, which is
| rarely valuable.
|
| Give me a meeting every day to get people to talk about
| blockers, but it should be 15-30 seconds per person at
| most, and it should be scheduled outside of productive
| hours (easier said than done).
| stevezsa8 wrote:
| When we returned to the office, my boss decided even a
| single day WFH was frowned upon. Having to beg to stay home
| for a dentist appointment became a big ordeal. But my boss
| was a bit unhinged before covid.
|
| I found it funny that my lockdown productivity suddenly
| counted for nothing.
|
| I have friends at other companies who have been 3 days per
| week WFH for 2 years and really appreciate the flexibility.
| pennaMan wrote:
| I hope the past tense means you're not working at that
| hell hole anymore
| stevezsa8 wrote:
| Yeah I did in fact quit that place.
|
| My main gripe was that my manager seemed to be having
| mental health issues (manic over-talking and occasional
| hints of psychosis). WFH was what helped me last through
| the covid years as I could avoid her being sat near me.
|
| I was good friends with many people there, some of us
| still occasionally meetup. And I hear of a steady stream
| of other developers leavings because they can't work from
| home any more. Usually it's the younger guys who just had
| a kid or people with long commutes.
| vitaflo wrote:
| Our team is still fully WFH even tho the corp expects us
| to come in 3 days min. My manager (and his manager) know
| we are waaaayyy more productive at home and don't want to
| upset the apple cart so we don't need to come in.
|
| And I gotta say stuff like that gets me even more
| motivated to do work cuz I know they're catching heat
| from the higher ups but we're just producing too much
| work for them to really complain too much.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Oh, l@@k:
|
| "Meta ditches open plan office structure to bring back
| cubicles"
|
| https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2023/02/21/meta-office-
| space...
| nucleardog wrote:
| > My guess is that most employers really have no way to
| measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers
| are just reporting what makes them look good
|
| My money would be on that being half right. They have no way
| to really measure productivity, but they were very afraid
| that productivity would drop to zero--and that is something
| they would be able to see.
|
| Before COVID I don't know how many times discussions around
| WFH basically stopped at "we can't know that people aren't
| just watching TV all day". I think in a lot of places that
| was a genuine fear--nobody will be working.
|
| So seeing productivity not go near enough to zero to be
| noticeable was... really good productivity compared to some
| people's initial expectations.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Honestly, when I work from home, I watch TV all day. Not
| literally -- I mostly read HN and other sites, do personal
| email, do household tasks, walk the dogs, do a load of
| laundry. I still get my work done, to a "meets
| expectations" level, which takes me a few hours, normally
| right after lunch, and that's good enough for me.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I start work around 6:00 AM and frequently am still at it
| at 8:00 PM. I've always been a top performer, but I still
| worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll get laid
| off. I still prefer this arrangement to going to the
| office.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| This used to be me until I burned out for the second time
| about 4 years ago. Got a new job and now for the most
| part I "work" from 9 - 5 but in reality a solid 3 hours
| of that is just surfing the web. Still get good reviews
| but I'm not on the verge of collapse so thats pretty
| good. I just genuinely don't care so much anymore and its
| worked wonders for my outlook on life.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I still worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll
| get laid off
|
| that's the neat part; you get laid off anyway. Layoffs
| are rarely actually about keeping the most productive
| people on board. If they want your wing of work to be
| marked as a redundancy, there's not much you can do from
| a purely productive standpoint.
| xp84 wrote:
| And supposedly, layoffs aren't legally allowed to be
| performance or merit-based! You're supposed to lay off
| only for eliminating a position. When projects are shut
| down, that's a natural one, but when it's a X% cut of all
| engineering staff, for instance, it's meant to be almost
| random, on paper at least. Of course in real life nobody
| would lay off the absolute most genius 10x developer, but
| nobody's supposed to be _laid off_ because they're
| slackers. If they're slackers that should be a separate
| issue and a PIP.
| eulgro wrote:
| Is this satire? If not I don't think that's a sustainable
| lifestyle.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| You've never met a workaholic... it's sustainable for
| quite a while, for some.
| ghaff wrote:
| Much as many people here have a deep abiding dislike for
| executives, that's probably a pretty typical lifestyle
| for successful executives at a large company (or a
| startup) to which you can probably add months of every
| year on the road.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I know enough people in real life who are doing that
| regularly to know that isn't satire.
|
| Some of them never seem to get much accomplished, though,
| so I've often wondered if there is something else at
| play.
| sneak wrote:
| I encourage you to visit Japan. With enough alcohol and
| caffeine, you would be astounded what the human body can
| sustain.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The people two rungs up the ladder from me in my
| consulting job work like this, if not more so.
|
| They all have families and are PTA presidents and things
| so def not absentee parents or spouses. Some people just
| have a seemingly unending source of energy and ambition.
| re-thc wrote:
| > Before COVID I don't know how many times discussions
| around WFH basically stopped at "we can't know that people
| aren't just watching TV all day".
|
| Before COVID I've seen plenty of people shop online, chat
| to friends or play games all day in the office.
|
| What difference does it make? Those that do will anyway.
| It's pretty delusional to think sitting in-office =
| working. If that's the case all the kids at school should
| pass, right?
| mkl95 wrote:
| > My guess is that most employers really have no way to
| measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers
| are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are
| back to where managers will look better with lots of people
| running around the office.
|
| My guess is that CEOs and VCs have some obscure reason to
| force people back into the office. Perhaps related to real
| estate, especially considering how hard to sell it is and how
| much higher the interest rates are. Middle management will
| typically eat up whatever narrative C-level feeds them.
| also23throwaway wrote:
| In my company's case, RTO is because of tax cut deals with
| the city/state. They need butts in seats to maximize profit
| after taxes, so they are passing the cost onto their
| employees.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's one of the few non-productivity/collaboration/etc.
| rationales that may actually make some sense. States
| (e.g. NH and MA) have had tiffs because workers living
| out of state are no longer commuting into an office and
| are no longer paying income tax to the state they used to
| commute to as a result. I'm sure there are many local
| cases where there was some agreement about creating jobs
| in some town which have been essentially thrown out the
| window now that very few people are actually working in
| that town except maybe on paper.
| hamburglar wrote:
| I've heard this "tax impact / tax break" idea floated as
| a _theory_ about what's going on, but if municipalities
| are putting that type of pressure on companies, shouldn't
| we see some concrete evidence of it? What is the actual
| mechanism by which such force is being applied? I have a
| little bit of a hard time believing that such large
| company policies are frequently being set based on deals
| that we have no actual evidence of. Is there actual
| evidence that I just haven't seen?
| lacrimacida wrote:
| That and wouldn't the saved rent expenses offset those
| taxes anyway? Second companies would have the freedom to
| move the main location freely to cities/states with lower
| taxes.
| spacemadness wrote:
| HN keeps telling me it's sunk cost and it's not real estate
| so stop saying that. Then this article also mentions it's
| real estate. Guess what HN? It's partly real estate costs
| and having few people fill those spaces.
| rabuse wrote:
| I honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex with.
| "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is, and look
| at all of these people working for ME!"
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > I honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex
| with. "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is,
| and look at all of these people working for ME!"
|
| This may sound like a joke but having gleaming, globally
| distributed offices is absolutely is a matter of great
| pride and ego for the C-Suite. They absolutely fantasize
| about how they are jet setting from one office to another
| and how all the employees roll a red carpet for them.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| And of course the mountains of deductions and balance
| sheet games you can play with a lot of real estate.
|
| We already know the C-suite is oligarchical in nature
| with wage suppression in Silicon Valley, so we know they
| meet and communication. And things like corporate real
| estate is garden variety MBA stuff that these guys can
| freely talk about at the get-togethers.
|
| Not having employees in buildings means those buildings
| aren't really worth anything. A collapse in the value of
| office space is something none of these companies want.
| It would impact share price, options, and executive pay,
| because these things are 30-50 year investments at a
| minimum.
| MBCook wrote:
| Don't forget that a lot of offices are leased for many
| years or even purchased/built.
|
| Do you know what looks REALLY bad? A giant fancy office
| with five people in it.
|
| Better force people to fill it up. We are stuck, we spent
| the money, can't have it look bad.
| ornornor wrote:
| Maybe they could hire all these movie extras who will
| soon be replaced by AI generated alter egos and be out of
| work?
|
| Everybody wins: extras get to not be homeless and pay
| their bills, companies look busier than ever, extras can
| act whatever fantasy management wants to show off,
| offices have some kind of purpose again, we get to work
| wherever we like and do actual work... What's not to
| like?
| petre wrote:
| That would totally be a thing in Japan where you can pay
| people to act like they are your family.
| rs999gti wrote:
| Bernie Madoff staged busy trading floors to fool auditors
| and investors, so this is not far off the mark
| ekianjo wrote:
| Who cares what it looks like. Sunk cost fallacy
| MBCook wrote:
| Executives who dream of big fancy offices?
|
| Workers certainly don't.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Even if your firm isn't exposed to real estate, its
| probable that a lot if its shareholders are and are
| interested in ending the slump in commercial real estate.
|
| Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong, the
| tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can get
| people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having to
| officially have layoffs.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong,
| the tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can
| get people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having
| to officially have layoffs.
|
| Are you sure announcing layoffs hurts share prices? I
| mean, companies only recently were doing it while still
| being highly profitable.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Yeah pretty sure the opposite is true.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Are you sure announcing layoffs hurts share prices?
|
| I'm relatively sure losing people without severance and
| without WARN Act and similar notice issues, is easier on
| the financials for the same number of positions cut than
| the alternative.
| generic92034 wrote:
| So why did SV companies fire a lot of employees recently,
| if the severance and WARN act outweigh the positive
| impact on the share prices?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So why did SV companies fire a lot of employees
| recently, if the severance and WARN act outweigh the
| positive impact on the share prices?
|
| I didn't say they did.
|
| I said that _if you can get people to leave voluntarily_
| , that's _better_ for the financials.
|
| That doesn't mean that there aren't conditions where the
| best available option (from a serving the shareholders
| perspective) is layoffs. Just that, _ceteris paribus_ ,
| its better to shed the headcount without the added costs
| imposed by layoffs; the _benefit_ (when there is a
| benefit) of layoffs is reducing the headcount, not
| bearing the severance, WARN Act compliance, and other
| costs particular to layoffs.
| [deleted]
| ngneer wrote:
| I heard a story of high up executives stepping into an
| Uber, only to discover that the driver was actually an
| employee for their firm.
| berkes wrote:
| The article mentions "sunken cost [fallacy]" as a driver to
| fill the offices again. Where office space is paid for, and
| hence has to be filled or else this investment is wasted.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Not obscure at all. They are also invested in all the other
| lucrative service businesses that feed and clean and move
| and supply all those offices. And then there's the leases
| on the office buildings they own that are under threat etc
| etc.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I doubt that very much. Most likely it's because unlike
| before, in WFH when nothing is happening it feels like
| there's nothing they can do about it.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| The conditions aren't the same. When COVID caused many
| workplaces to go full WFH, most employees had nothing to do
| except work and hang out with those in their household. A lot
| of the increased productivity came from working instead of
| doing other things. Once things opened up, in aggregate they
| stopped working as many hours. Ultimately, it was never
| sustainable.
| mkl95 wrote:
| > Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their
| company is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's
| making a real impact in the world.
|
| Pretty much. The only time I've considered going back to in-
| person work since the pandemic was for a FAANG. If you think
| your employees want to go back to the office, you are either a
| big tech company or you are deluded
| okaram wrote:
| Actually, I work for one of the FAANGs. The vast majority of
| employees don't one to go back to the office either.
|
| What makes it even worse is the one-size-fits-all mandate,
| with strict enforcement, like you didn't come in to the
| office Monday, so you have to come on Tuesday.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Realistically most FAANG employees are not doing anything
| that will be written down in history either. For example,
| whichever division at Microsoft is responsible for Teams.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's a small point, but we bounce ideas around just fine on my
| fully remote workplace.
| [deleted]
| ecshafer wrote:
| "Hybrid" is just in office work with a fancy name. A company I
| worked for pushed heavy for RTO and said "Its part time
| Hybrid". But we already had 1+ days (at managers discretion)
| WFH a week before covid hit. Hybrid was In office Tuesday
| through Thursday with remote Monday and Friday. This was
| actually less flexible than 1 or maybe more as you need it WFH
| that we had it prior.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| YMMV. two of the companies I worked at mid-post pandemic were
| truly hybrid when they opened back up. Some people never ever
| came in and a few came in everyday. Others still were very
| far away so it was never an option.
|
| But I've also heard of old co-workers at later jobs where
| hybrid was just flowery words and really meant "mandatory
| remote time and mandatory office".
| placesalt wrote:
| > 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have no chance at
| becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers
| like to delude themselves that their company is some big
| important, cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact
| in the world.
|
| They're not completely to blame; the hordes of people who claim
| their 'passion' is analyzing widget sales or what have you
| share some of it. Going along with what are essentially lies
| about motivations to fit in with the perceived trends of the
| crowd is understandable (people want to get and keep jobs), but
| still immoral. And, n=1, but in my experience, it isn't
| actually necessary.
| throwaway72957 wrote:
| We have a generous hybrid work policy: you can WFH, but you may
| be required to attend on-site sessions and meetings, for
| example if we're doing architecture brainstorms or design
| reviews. We've not found this to work well over zoom. Overall,
| this works out to a day or two a month, but most people choose
| to come in at least 1 day a week for various reasons (mostly
| social).
|
| We casually observed there seemed to be a split in employee WFH
| performance, with most performing as expected or better when
| WFH, but a minority performing MUCH worse. That is,
| significantly less than 50% of the productivity they have while
| in the office.
|
| We've had casual one-to-one meetings with those individuals,
| and while a few will sort themselves out, most just flat out
| deny a difference. So we resorted to adding some very basic
| anonymised monitoring tools to a random subset of staff laptops
| (hence throwaway account).
|
| What we found was that the majority are indistinguishable which
| days they are working from home and which days they are in the
| office, but a minority basically do no work when WFH. By this I
| mean, behaviour such as their laptop is idle for 20 minutes
| then active for a few seconds. As it's anonymised we can't be
| sure, but I'm guessing those are the staff we've identified as
| having a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a second
| job.
|
| The problem is: what to do about it? We're in the UK so just
| firing people without cause isn't an option. HR are saying it
| would be unfair, humiliating and potentially constructive
| dismissal if we forced the problem staff into the office but
| not everyone else. There's also a lot of valid discomfort and
| GDPR-related fear around the idea of installing heavy
| surveillance tools on laptops to collect evidence, and a
| concern that it will make for a hostile work environment. Even
| if we just used it very selectively on staff suspected to be
| breaking their contract, they would undoubtedly tell their
| colleagues which would lead to discontent. But without that
| evidence, it's very difficult to legally justify sacking
| someone.
|
| The HR people are trying to force us back to the office because
| these issues are too challenging to deal with, but we (the tech
| team management) are trying to find a way to deal with staff
| who are taking the piss without upsetting everyone else in the
| process.
|
| What's the play here? Genuinely looking for a good solution as,
| like many others, I personally enjoy WFH and don't want to have
| to give it up.
| cgio wrote:
| They just procrastinate on their own rather than corporate
| laptop when at home. The solution is to make work about
| delivery rather than hours on a chair. If someone can do it
| in 20 seconds then good for them, less good for you (not
| personally) in terms of how efficient you are in allocating
| work and managing its delivery. Very few employees are
| motivated to do more than asked for them. The rest are not
| the exception but the norm, and getting them back in office
| with unchanged work management will only help in having them
| look elsewhere. That's a motivation perhaps but if you have
| work to do you still need to improve because the next round
| of employees will be similarly distributed.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| Why not have the managers of the underperforming employees be
| straightforward with them? Tell them that, as far as the
| manager/company is concerned, they're underperforming (no
| need to single out the WFH aspect here if you don't want to).
| They may deny that their performance while working from home
| is different from their performance in the office, but the
| manager can dismiss that. It's unpleasant, but better than
| resorting to surveillance software, and better than making
| things worse for everyone just to help out this minority who
| underperform while working from home.
|
| Once they've been notified that they're underperforming, try
| to help them out. If they can't be helped, fire them with
| well-documented cause (their history of poor performance).
| Plasmoid wrote:
| Start with how you know they're under-performing. What
| externally visible indications do you have that they're not
| working?
|
| Eg, if bob was working well at WFH he'd do X, Y, Z, but he
| only did 0.3 of X. You could even compare that to other
| employees to show that it's just this one person.
| watwut wrote:
| > We're in the UK so just firing people without cause isn't
| an option
|
| It seems to me that if they are working few seconds every 20
| minutes, there should be drop in their actual productivity.
| If these people have half functioning managers, they should
| be able to figure that out.
|
| Dismissing people for having almost no output is dismissing
| for a cause.
| mickelsen wrote:
| See if embracing async work does it for those individuals,
| with some pressure on the deliverables but instead of end-of-
| day of that day, you let them deliver the next morning prior
| to chatting. Basically the same pace, but you shift on them
| the accountability of meeting the deadline for whatever
| widget you need, so if they didn't do anything that day, the
| expectation would be that they log in sometime during the
| night or very early in the morning to do it in one shot,
| because of the pressure being used as a motivator. If you
| identify that pattern, you have a procrastinator with
| potentially an attention/motivation disorder.
|
| With a little of handholding and outcome motivation
| management, you should be able to hack into their dopamine
| cycle, keep their interest and those deliverables coming.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| You can't assume that people who are not on their laptop all
| the time aren't working. I frequently research stuff on my
| own devices as the web proxy at work blocks too much stuff.
|
| I also have slow days where my energy is low, and intense
| days where I work longer than normal. People are not
| machines. Regardless, I get all the things that need to be
| done done, and usually a bit more on top.
|
| You should measure productivity, not laptop utilisation.
| [deleted]
| buzziebee wrote:
| Yeah this is a problem with specific employees, not with WFH.
| If people aren't adult enough to manage their own time and
| perform their duties without someone over their shoulder then
| that's a them problem.
|
| I worked at a company which had a similar approach to the one
| being considered , i.e. force everyone in. Every decision
| there was based on the lowest common denominators. This meant
| that the really good high performing people all quit. It's a
| ghost town over there these days.
|
| Set expectations, support people with meeting them, fire them
| if they continue taking the piss. Don't ruin it for all of
| you high performers because you can't be bothered going
| through the process to fire someone. You'll have better
| overall performance, satisfaction, and retention if you work
| to get the slackers either performing or out.
| ilaksh wrote:
| You do have cause: decreased productivity.
|
| Make sure you have good ways to measure work product. For
| example, you can see if people are pushing to git repos.
|
| Set aside a couple of times where people are required to log
| into chat or voice room every day. Have them type in a report
| on what they are working on and be available during that
| narrow window to answer follow up questions.
| gorbachev wrote:
| "A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office
| decisions and say they would have approached their plans
| differently if they had a better understanding of what their
| employees wanted"
|
| _sigh_
|
| The problem here isn't RTO or anything else relating to where
| people sit when they're working. These idiots didn't even talk to
| their employees before making grand decisions affecting their
| work situation.
|
| This is, btw, exactly what's happening in my workplace right now.
| I guess more accurately they are talking to employees, but just
| straight up ignoring what they're hearing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't think that return-to-office is driven by executives, I
| think it's driven by owners. They simply have a religious belief
| that a slave you can't see is an indolent slave.
|
| They think that WFH is an "obvious" inefficiency that they can
| pull back from and be rewarded with "free" productivity. The
| scare quotes around "free" are because they know that returning
| to work is done _at the worker 's expense rather than the
| company's,_ so they're running literally no risk even if it
| doesn't improve a thing.
|
| Return-to-work is essentially giving everyone a pay cut based on
| an ideologically-based wager that it might help the bottom line.
| It's gambling for yourself, staked with employees' personal time
| and money, because you can.
| system16 wrote:
| My company forced a three day a week hybrid, despite major
| pushback from the employees and a lot of resignations after it
| was implemented. They're now trying to nudge people to come in
| every day.
|
| On Mondays and Fridays the CEO comes in, pacing around, unamused
| the big fancy space is sitting empty.
|
| All the executives want to force full time RTO but of course they
| come in late (if at all) or leave early whenever they want as
| nobody monitors their schedule. Rules for thee and not for me.
| dudul wrote:
| We can slice it the way we want. We can talk about office space
| cost or "decreased productivity" or whatever. The _real_ reason
| these execs are pissed at remote workers is because these
| filthy peons now get to enjoy a bit of the freedom /flexibility
| that was until then reserved to them.
| MBCook wrote:
| A friend of mine works at a company that keeps pushing full
| time RTO. One of the big arguments is the CEO is always there
| every single day. "Setting the tone".
|
| For an hour or two. The rest of the time he works from home.
|
| You can guess what the employees think of that. It is
| absolutely not a secret. The big believer doesn't follow his
| own rules.
| nprateem wrote:
| But even if he did, so what? Someone with skin in the game on
| life changing money or equity will have different motivations
| to someone just doing a job to get by.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Not necessarily saying this is invalid, but this is a submarine
| article: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Most (tech) jobs involve huge amounts of co-ordination and
| creativity. This is waaaay easier in person, so having all the
| people needed in the same location makes a huge difference.
|
| But the "same location" is almost an inverse square law. Same
| room - great. Really strong. Same _floor_. pretty good. Same
| building. Well that 's starting to hurt. Different building,
| different town, different time zone. At the different time zone
| level the "gravitational interaction level" is something you need
| LIGO to pick up.
|
| If you have a "team" of people answering first line support
| calls, spread them across the globe and get them to read off the
| same wiki.
|
| If you just launched a 10M dollar project to fix "something
| vaguely defined that the board know is important but cannot agree
| on", welcome to hell. It's possible if you lock the best tech and
| rising business stars in the same room. Good luck otherwise.
| dudul wrote:
| Where do you get that coordination and creativity require in
| person time?
|
| I would argue that most creative activities are better done
| alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And I coordinate
| just fine with tools available online.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think you might be mistaking the kind of co-ordination that
| is possible with CI/CD tools to the co-ordination possible
| with shouting at each other in a room or having coffee or
| just being part of human interactions
|
| If you are emailing people and co-ordinating that way you are
| already part of the political in-group.
|
| If so then co-ordination is fine. But who is part of the
| political in-group, especially for constantly evolving
| projects and setups is a human activity and those are best
| done in person, walk bye, conversations that just happen.
|
| Maybe your company culture does everything over email utterly
| in the open. Maybe the linux mailing list is the right way to
| do things.
|
| Maybe I am missing something
| dudul wrote:
| I was not talking about CI/CD tools, but things like slack,
| tickets, wiki, shared calendars, etc.
|
| I "shout" at my coworkers through slack and I feel like it
| achieves the same result as if we were in an open office.
| Better even since they can wait until they reach a stopping
| point in their current activity to answer me.
|
| I do not believe in the magical "water cooler"
| conversation. I worked almost 10 years in an office before
| going full remote 6 years ago and I've never seen or heard
| this amazing conversation over coffee during which the next
| Gen product is discussed. Just my empirical experience, but
| lunch conversations are usually about batching about the
| clueless PM, or deciding where to get a drink after work,
| or stuff like that.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| They're not regretting the decisions. They're regretting the fact
| their poor decision making capabilities are on full display.
|
| Most of these "bosses" would still be caught doubling down on the
| RTO narrative and threatening people to show up to work.
|
| Bosses with Elon style of management, please take a warning. A
| weekly email threatening to fire people if they don't show up in
| the office 5 days a week only works the first three times you
| send it. After a while, half the people leave and the other half
| don't show up to work anyway daring you to fire them all the
| while laughing at how ridiculous you sound.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Doe these threatening emails convey any kind of warning to
| prospective new employees? Not just in the WFH/RTO topic, but
| if they are this draconian in one area, would it not be safe to
| assume it would span other areas as well?
|
| Even if I was looking for a new job where the WFH issue didn't
| exist, I'd personally still be hesitant about working at a
| place managed by people doubling down like that
| vntx wrote:
| It would to me. Any employer who wouldn't negotiate on
| something like this for a job that does not require being in-
| office is potentially toxic.
|
| Commuting can be expensive and even potentially dangerous.
| Car, insurance, gas, dangerous traffic, time wasted driving
| at least 2x a day.
|
| There's also the potentially unproductive office
| environments: loud, annoying co-workers, constant
| interruptions, etc.
|
| RTO has costs, WFH has benefits and employers who don't
| recognize that should be shunned. If the reason they require
| you to come back is because they wisely rented office space
| and didn't even consult the employees on whether the workers
| would return, that should tell you how much you can trust
| management and how much they value you as an employee.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The safety issues are what kills me. In a large enough
| office you will regularly have employees getting maimed and
| killed on their commutes. This is literally justified on
| the grounds of employee productivity as if employers just
| get to wash their hands of any culpability for safety so
| long as their employees die on their way to or from work
| instead of at work.
|
| Employers literally demand blood sacrifice from their
| employees and wonder why their employees are either leaving
| or becoming non-complaint when they do this without
| accordingly raising wages.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You're not wrong, but it's not that obvious to people. Most
| people look at this from a perspective of "ohh I'm okay with
| RTO so I don't care" or "ohh I like RTO and people should
| stop complaining and being so entitled". What they fail to
| realize is that soon it will be your paid parental leave cut
| down to two weeks or medical plans moved to cheaper options
| with less coverage, what are you going to do then?
| [deleted]
| sharts wrote:
| Not only that but those that stay are the "yes" men/women who
| are either bootlickers or accept that they aren't valued much
| and thus will put in minimal genuine effort and just comply
| with stupid directives to the letter.
|
| In the end you just don't get that diversity of thought through
| disagreement/evolution/personal ownership that you otherwise
| get when people feel comfortable enough to genuinely show up
| and be mission-driven.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| I would bet lots of those who stay are the visa slaves who
| aren't as comfortable with the threat of unemployment as
| domestic workers would be.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| At Twitter, all the visa folks left, only domestic workers
| stuck around. I know it's a common argument, but
| unfortunately not as true.
| caliwagon wrote:
| That is interesting, do you have more info on this, or is
| it anecdotal?
| jasfi wrote:
| I think that hybrid is the answer. You get the benefits of both
| working in the office and WFH in a balanced way.
|
| The only thing that doesn't work with hybrid is that with WFH you
| can live anywhere in an acceptable region (e.g. a country).
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Shocking how the CEO of Evoy could come up with that result. (and
| then getting to present it on global tv)
|
| I believe the company is trying to help companies shrink their
| physical offices. I am not 100% sure since the website for Envoy
| seems like satire.
|
| ""Envoy Workplace is the only fully integrated workplace solution
| for all your workplace needs. Join thousands of companies that
| rely on Envoy to efficiently manage hybrid workplaces, so
| everyone inside can connect, collaborate, and thrive. In today's
| world, it's almost impossible to optimize space without smart
| space technology. Reducing your office footprint cuts costs.
| Smart space solutions help you understand how your space is being
| used, so you can decide if and where you can cut. """
|
| I am pretty sure if tomorrow they have on a CEO of company making
| their living off of renting out as much office space as possible
| he will have a survery with a different result.
| [deleted]
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I think Work From Home vs Return To Workplace is now a pendulum.
| I wonder if it will swing back and forth, spurred on by radicals
| in both sides, until it goes out of control, or if it will come
| to rest at a central location?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| They regret boiling the frog too fast
| mydriasis wrote:
| > The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in
| companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher.
|
| > In New York City, office space costs, on average, about $16,000
| a year per employee, the New York Times reports.
|
| Oof.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| And yet, believe it or not, they still want to beat the RTO
| drum.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I knew from the start that this was a major reason so many
| companies want RTO, no executive wants to look like a fool in
| front of their board for wasting millions or more on office
| space. Even more so when you have bigger companies that have
| billions invested in real estate across major cities
| WWLink wrote:
| That's an unfortunate thing with how businesses operate. They
| shouldn't have to look like a fool in front of their board.
| Executives are not psychics. I get that their job is to
| foresee things like that, but sometimes you just.. can't.
|
| Having everyone work in the office all the time was an
| accepted norm that everyone was ok with. Nobody (really) saw
| this coming and if they did, everyone would've thought they
| were nuts. If the CEO decided "hey let's try WFH!" they
| probably would've been removed by the board. So it's pretty
| unfair for the board to be like "this guy's an idiot for not
| trying WFH in the past!"
|
| They could play it off as "wow turns out we were wrong about
| WFH, this is going to be great in the long term! Right now
| here's how we might use that extra space" - they could detail
| things like improving retention by bringing back private
| offices for people who want to work in the office, subletting
| the space, and other things.
| paulmd wrote:
| > they could detail things like improving retention by ...
| subletting the space
|
| nope, that's actually _the root of the problem_ , nobody
| else wants to be in the office either so the commercial
| real-estate market is in slow-motion meltdown for the last
| 3 years. even if you fervently believe that WFH is the
| better path, you simply cannot exit your commercial real-
| estate investments right now without locking in big losses.
|
| at the landlord level the game is to simply let the office
| space go vacant rather than write down the notional value
| of the property (which is going to be based on X years of
| rents, and if you lock in a lower rent value you just
| dropped the value of your investment). But at the tenant
| level if you want out, it's not like you can just find
| someone else to sublet your space either, because the
| building is full of unoccupied offices already. Nobody
| wants to sign a deal that realizes the losses that exist on
| paper.
|
| So instead the move is to force everyone back to the office
| so it looks like there's value being generated from the
| property, as opposed to a white elephant standing empty,
| which is effectively what it is. And yeah, middle managers
| and CEOs have every incentive to push for people back in
| the office from their own ends too... the feeling of
| power/control and the facilitation of their own
| communication-focused work as opposed to the output-
| oriented work of the actual ICs.
|
| --
|
| Anecdotally, my current employer has had some weird
| communication mis-steps where my manager clumsily relayed
| some "we really want everyone to be at the all-hands this
| month, in-person if you can!" and it came off as more of a
| "more layoffs incoming" tone when actually the problem was
| more that this was boardroom politics around being seen to
| be using the expensive building we just bought a couple
| months before the pandemic started. And this is a company
| that is all-in on remote work already, we have people
| everywhere (I and another coworker are at least 4 hours
| from the closest satellite office) and we're nearshoring
| some junior roles etc. We will never get everyone into an
| office because that's not the strategy, but even we are not
| immune to the "we bought the building and can't exit"
| politics.
|
| Last employer, same thing, but they _are_ going all-in on
| forcing everyone back to office... despite having hired a
| bunch of people remote during covid for a project. Since
| the project crashed I guess they dropped all the
| contractors and are hiring from a bodyshop, and I guess
| maybe they 're doing local hiring for that. But between IC
| turnover due to the project being a shitshow, and heads
| rolling in the team leads due to the project failure, and
| dropping all the people they hired on remote since COVID...
| I think they basically turned over the entire team that
| existed pre-covid minus like three people. So they are
| starting from (almost) scratch anyway.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It was not a norm, until ubiquitous high speed networking
| and computing there was no choice but to be in the same
| place to work together.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| The smarter ones would find some way to reduce their cost on
| office spaces.
| jurassic wrote:
| I like that for the present moment there are a diversity of
| approaches and people can somewhat self-select into a work
| culture that fits their preferences and needs. If you make abrupt
| changes I don't like, rest assured I will be using my new time
| commuting on the train to prospect new job opportunities. But
| good for those who want and prefer an in-office culture.
| Voluntary association is a wonderful thing.
|
| I mainly reserve scorn for companies issuing abrupt ultimatums to
| employees they hired remotely that they must relocate long
| distances or be fired. Nobody established in an area with a
| partner that also works, potentially has family nearby or kids in
| school is going to accept that. That move signals a toxic brew of
| tyranny and cowardice from execs who don't want to take
| responsibility for doing a real layoff. Grindr, looking at you
| this week.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| If everyone is WFH why is the freeway bumper to bumper.
|
| This all reads as privilige to me.
| Ms-J wrote:
| I've noticed that CEO's who forced people back to the office
| really regretted it after the senior engineer's and related all
| quit. They offered to make it remote again but by that time all
| of their talent left so at least two companies I know of.
|
| There is no amount of money that would get the best and most
| talented to go work in an office. Productivity suffers immensely
| in an office as opposed to working from home.
| footy wrote:
| This happened at my old job. I left because of RTO (after
| trying to come to a reasonable agreement with my manager).
| Between the day I put in my two weeks' notice and my actual
| last day, there were at least seven farewell emails from other
| devs. The company was about 500 people, so that's >1% attrition
| in two weeks.
|
| The CEO spoke to me for the first time ever trying to get me to
| stay, offered me a gigantic raise, etc. Leaving was the best
| thing I've done for my career.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Return to office is a massive sink cost fallacy and effort for
| executives to save face after strangling their companies
| profitability by signing long unnecessary leases. Rather than
| shrugging at what COVID wrought and going "meh, act of god, this
| unused office space is a write-off" fart huffing executives want
| to bend reality to their will by declaring work from home a huge
| problem and return to office the only way to save their
| companies.
|
| In doing so, they replace an understandable situation in which
| the were blindsided by an extremely low probability act of god,
| with an intentional hoisting upon their own petards. It's
| incredible to me how many people have OPENLY cited how much
| they're paying for office space as a reason for their return to
| office policies.
|
| The US government accountability office framed unused office
| space as an environmental and financial problem. Not the office
| space itself but the fact it was unused is clearly the problem.
| So of course the solution is to have your workers burn a whack of
| oil during an oil shortage, burning through their own money, to
| "save" the environment and government finances by making them
| commute to these offices so they can't be say converted to
| residential housing or something useful. The true costs of such
| idiocy are hidden by shoving a large portion of the costs onto
| the workforce who are expected to ask for no additional
| compensation for the extra unpaid work and uncompensated expenses
| they're taking on.
|
| This doesn't actually work because workers actually vote with
| their feet. Or they simply don't comply with policy knowing that
| nobody is either paying attention or has the guts/inclination to
| actually fire them. How much do you really expect people to do
| this performative labour for executives that COSTS them money
| when non-compliance or finding a different job can make such a
| difference in their financial well being and quality of life?
| jonjon16 wrote:
| I think I'm in the majority when I say that I prefer WFH but
| honestly, working ONLY from home is not something I like. I can
| work for a week or two in remote but then gotta spend a day or
| two in office. Naturally, it depends on a number of variables,
| like personal character and the relationship with the other
| employees but in general I think most people fall in my category.
| Having the option for both is the best possible solution.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Maybe. For me personally, I'm glad I had the experience of what
| it was like to work in the office for two weeks when I was in
| between projects recently, because it helped reconfirm that
| yeah, I hate going to the office.
|
| It was good to see people in person, but everything else was a
| pain in the ass, and the office is such a sterile and boring
| place (pretending it's not, with an arcade machine,
| shuffleboard, a small stack of board games, and a ping pong
| table -- none of which anyone ever uses), with lighting that
| seemed to suck the energy out of me.
|
| I'm going to the quarterly party in two weeks (for the first
| time since I started working a couple of years ago), but I feel
| like I'm really forcing myself. It's just so inconvenient to
| head downtown from the far suburbs.
| zamalek wrote:
| > In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022 to reimburse
| up to $800 per year for commuting, pet care and dependent care
| costs
|
| I can understand dependant care being considered an "employee
| problem" in the strictest causal sense, so it's amazing that this
| is considered. That being said, childcare can cost up to $3000/mo
| - so $800/yr is woefully inadequate.
|
| Commute costs are another story entirely. If I were to entertain
| RTO (which I wouldn't), my commute time would be paid time. If
| being in the office is considered a job function, then _by
| definition_ I should be paid while performing that function. Me
| doing that for free effectively cuts my salary by 20% (for a
| 2hour commute on top of 8hours). Furthermore, $800 is a drop in
| the bucket compared to the cost of fuel and maintenance - another
| free benefit that employers enjoy.
|
| $800/yr doesn't cut it, not even close - especially if the
| employee is using that benefit for all the purposes listed.
| ngetchell wrote:
| I don't see why my employer needs to cover 100% of my expenses
| for the benefit to be useful. They are paying me extra money to
| try to convince me to come into the office. Especially when
| they can just change their policy to force me to come in
| without the added benefit.
|
| Tuition reimbursement doesn't cover the total cost of college
| classes but I'm still glad they provide it!
| iteria wrote:
| It's even cover a month of daycare and it pays out over a
| year, so it's beyond useless. This would cover 3 months of
| aftercare for me, which I'd only need to have because I was
| going into the office. Why would I opt into that extra
| expense, especially when it's significant.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > and say they would have approached their plans differently if
| they had a better understanding of what their employees wanted
|
| The poor employers. If only there was some way they could have
| gained that understanding. Without actually listening to
| employees and taking them seriously, of course. Don't let's be
| silly now.
| archsurface wrote:
| Not only is the company I work at not returning, it's getting rid
| of the office entirely.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of
| in-office policies, while others said it's been hard to make
| long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees
| might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from
| now.
|
| In other words, the two most obvious objections to RTO turned out
| to be correct. That is, that when the leadership says that being
| in the office is more productive, they are speaking from desire
| rather than evidence, and that the sunk cost of a commercial
| lease had more weight in the decision than the employees'
| opinions did. Two things they could have avoided with one minute
| of reflection.
|
| On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that 80% of
| executives were willing to admit they could have done a better
| job. I'd expect most of them to say it went flawlessly, in a
| voice which echoed off the cubicle walls of a nearly empty
| office.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > the sunk cost of a commercial lease had more weight in the
| decision than the employees' opinions did
|
| That's not what they're saying. They're saying they don't know
| how to plan their commercial real estate footprint when they
| don't know if and when people will be in the office.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Which could easily be solved by doing what the company I work
| for did, just don't renew the office lease and go 100% remote
| ilc wrote:
| What they say in an anon survey, and what they say to their
| employees may be very different things.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| if people quit you have the evidence
| judge2020 wrote:
| Most employers instituting hybrid or RTO will have a way to
| apply for an exception, which is just a filter to keep high
| value employees (by approving their fully remote requests)
| while cutting employees without needing to write severance
| checks - a "soft layoff" if you will.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You are assuming the employees will just accept their
| exceptional situation instead of using it to gain some time
| and jumping ship. You are also assuming the managers know
| beforehand who are high-value employees.
|
| I doubt either of those are true.
| ilc wrote:
| You are assuming managers want to keep high performing
| employees.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, I am. To be fair, I inherited that assumption from
| the GP.
|
| Anyway, you are right, mature business that have no
| further space to grow may not want to keep them at all.
| Even when they aren't a differential, they are still
| worth more than they cost on maintenance, but there are
| plenty of companies that just skip maintenance and it's
| not obvious at all if they are any worse for it.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| Or the employer interprets higher than average turnover on
| other things, like greedy, disgruntled workers leaving for
| better pay, or some other completely unrelated thing to RTO
| policy changes.
| pg_1234 wrote:
| basically because they picked a fight and lost
|
| no actual remorse
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > basically because they picked a fight and lost
|
| Did they lose?
|
| Pretty sure the prevailing sentiment among the C-level has
| effectively become "Get back to your cube and shut up because
| we said so, or little Timmy won't be getting his braces." here
| in the US.
| rabuse wrote:
| In the long term, they will lose out. It's like Tinder vs
| your local dating pool. Why limit your options to a very
| small subset of people, when better options are just a tap
| away (ssh tunnel away)?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Why limit your options to a very small subset of people,
| when better options are just a tap away (ssh tunnel away)?
|
| Employers like control. Relationships (your example) are
| pretty similar actually.
|
| Why would someone settle for a partner below their
| standards? Simple, they enjoy having control in the
| relationship. Why would an employer settle for a sub-
| optimal employee? Dependability and reliance.
| notatoad wrote:
| i don't think this is anything other than the intended outcome.
|
| C-Suites knew attrition would be high, and regardless of what
| the managers who had to implement the policy might have thought
| companies knew that return to office was just layoffs in
| disguise.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| RTO is fun when I'm the only one working in my section. I get a
| quiet and large workspace, good coffee, free lunch and some
| snacks.
|
| But it's going to be bad if everyone starts coming back and I
| have to get in a long line to grab lunch...
| rjsw wrote:
| I have new neighbours, I wish they would RTO, hearing the noise
| of someone else's Zoom calls all day is really distracting.
|
| When I did work in an office it was a 15 minute commute,
| against the flow of traffic.
| asielen wrote:
| Same, I've been going into my office a couple times a week and
| usually I am one of a couple dozen people there in an office
| that fits hundreds. I love it.
|
| However last week there was a company event and the office was
| full all week. It was terrible, couldn't get anything done.
| closeparen wrote:
| I have a new conspiracy theory on RTO in Big Tech. Much has been
| said about commercial real estate. But I think getting highly
| capable people to work hard for you is a difficult problem &
| something tech executives put a lot of thought into. If you don't
| pay people enough, someone else will. But if you pay them too
| much, they'll become financially independent.
|
| Mid six figures is an objectively life-changing amount of money
| that an engineer would be insane to walk away from & that few
| companies can match. But because it's contingent on living in
| places where the "working rich" are on the lower half of the
| housing market totem pole, housing will always place significant
| pressure even on an obscene income, and your home will never be
| quite satisfactory. It keeps you on the treadmill working harder
| and longer, worrying about the stock price, chasing the next
| promotion or refresher so that you can afford a little more
| light, a little more space, a little less commute time. And
| that's right where they want you. Location independence means
| people could actually get their fill of "TC" which would make it
| difficult to keep them sweating over such uninspiring projects.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yes, I think you've really got it there. The federal government
| is absolutely trying to orchestrate this situation for the
| benefit of companies. They try to keep unemployment at a sweet
| spot number where not too many people are living on the street,
| but companies have a pliable and plentiful labor pool. It's
| achieved through a careful balance of monetary policy, taxes,
| immigration, education, and laws limiting reproductive choice.
| The CEO of every Fortune 500 is working towards the same in
| their own realms, such as all the lobbying that tech companies
| do on H1-b visas.
|
| But at the same time, we also have a brutally efficient
| marketing and advertising discipline that taps into our
| emotional biology and keeps people wanting more and always
| looking over their shoulder at what everyone else has.
|
| I've thought before that by default, most people will be pushed
| to work ceaselessly, barely affording everything they think
| they should have and saving nearly nothing. It takes a choice
| to and self denial to step off that treadmill and start
| building the wealth that can set and individual free from
| living off their labor.
|
| Remote work is a huge threat because of geo-arbitrage. Clever
| employees can quickly get ahead of then saving curve and throw
| off the reigns. Hungry employees are the easiest to manage. Fat
| employees have the power to say no.
| catmanjan wrote:
| Is it really possible for an individual to "build wealth"
| without exploiting the working class
| dougmwne wrote:
| For some definitions of wealth, sure. I think the minimum
| definition is that you are freed from at least some need to
| labor. Clearly there's a wealth point at which you need to
| capture excess value from the labor of others.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Exploited? Working for a living is called being an adult.
| The inverse of which is sticking your hand out and
| demanding that everyone carry you through adult life.
| People who agree to work for someone else are, in no way,
| being exploited. You have a choice to be a bum, as much as
| you have a choice where to work. And your options are
| greater when you're not a bum and have marketable skills
| that employers are willing pay for. Furthermore, if you're
| not a bum and you acquire skills, you can start your own
| business and do extremely well for yourself, and support
| dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of families if your
| business requires employees. I'm interested in discovering
| where you learned that successful business owners are
| "exploiting" people who willingly work for them.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm not a fan of the overly broad definition of
| exploitation meaning "anyone who has a job." Clearly
| voluntarily selling your labour for money isn't
| exploitation. Save your money and live off the interest.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Save 50% of your gross salary, invest in index funds, and
| be patient. You can speed up the process via geo-arbitrage,
| climbing the career ladder without lifestyle creep, working
| at a FAANG, being more frugal, or side hustles. Search for
| FIRE for more details.
|
| It's not easy by any stretch.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Let's be honest, it's only possible for people with rare
| skills and/or prestigious credentials (which are largely
| a function of your parents social class).
|
| Earning median wage most of that goes towards rent.
| There's nothing left to save. Move further away and you
| lose big on earnings.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| ordinary behavior is unlikely to bring extraordinary
| results
| mfDjB wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I always found it odd that the
| transition from labour to capital seemed to be so hard, even
| with mid-figure 6 income TC's it always seemed like you can't
| quite escape the rat race, you can definitely live more
| comfortably, or maybe as comfortably as you can as one of the
| rats in the race but never escape. Of course with very
| disciplined saving and LCOL arbitrage you stand a chance,
| however it seems like these methods are being purged with COL
| adjustments, inflation purging cash savings, markets tanking
| 401k's. Just when you think you are out they pull you back in.
| I often wondered whether this was by design, because it seems a
| bit too convenient for labour pools, or whether its a feature
| of the economic system we operate in.
| hagbarth wrote:
| Seems to me that it's central to the economic system we live
| in. If advancing from labour class to capital class was not
| very very hard, there would be far fewer workers, which is
| untenable in our society.
| closeparen wrote:
| Labor demand was sluggish for a decade after 2008, it's
| only now that the economy wants a lot of workers.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yep. Hence the economic alarms about salaries being "too high":
| remote work enables geo-arbitrage, which removes a significant
| portion of employer leverage.
|
| If employees could buy their way out of the system, then, by
| definition, capital is leaving power and money on the table.
| And it absolutely loathes that.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| They get what they pay for. Companies that offer remote jobs
| will be able to pick from and retain a wider gamut of talent.
| I suspect a lot of this RTO is related to the tech market
| just generally being down. Once things heat back up,
| recruiters will be knocking down doors to get people to
| interview for remote gigs just like before. It may take some
| time to get to that point though, because there are a number
| of factors at play currently that could prolong the
| depression in tech.
| closeparen wrote:
| My contention is they won't be able to sustain it, because
| either the wages will be uncompetitive or remote workers
| will pay off their houses and no longer need to work (as
| much).
| [deleted]
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Wages aren't even close to being high enough that
| companies won't able to afford workers. Developers in the
| standard ranges don't even need to consider what a
| company can afford when doing salary negotiations. With
| the exception of small businesses, it's about what they
| are _willing_ to pay, not what they are able to.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The last 40 years of economic policy has been about
| aggressively loosening restrictions on capital movement, while
| keeping in place or strengthening restrictions on the movement
| of labour.
|
| The WFO wave was an disruption in that cycle. But only for the
| professional class. It won't last, at least not for the lower
| end of the market.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| I don't think it's really a conspiracy theory, this a
| fundamental aspect of American capitalism.
|
| Health insurance is a perfect example of a carrot that
| companies want to maintain control over in order to maintain a
| dedicated workforce. By keeping "affordable" (eye roll) access
| to healthcare tied to a full time job, they keep butts in
| seats. This isn't new or isolated to tech companies. It's
| always been about maintaining control from the top.
| usaar333 wrote:
| Healthcare is just another cost in your life and you should
| view the benefit as part of your TC. It's only slightly
| distorted here in that companies can use pretax money but it
| isn't like it's a small expense to companies either.
|
| I've personally never used Cobra, because it is in fact
| cheaper to buy individual plans.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Ironically making it pretax harms employees long term by
| making them more dependent on the employer for healthcare
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I've always thought this. Having healthcare primarily
| accessible through your job must be a strangely subservient
| place to be. You could literally die if you lose or leave
| your job!
|
| Im not one for conspiracy theories, but that's a great
| position for governments and big business to find themselves
| in!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Health insurance equivalent to what an employer subsidizes
| is pretty accessible without the employer at
| healthcare.gov, but the tax deductibility is not if you are
| working for an employer too small or cheap to offer or, or
| not employed at all.
|
| The premiums just happen to be very expensive (even for the
| employers' subsidy portion) to the tune of $10k/$30k+ per
| individual/family.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| This is too "brilliant villain". Too many chain links of logic
| to actually implement and make work.
|
| I suspect it's the far more evil banality of "we paid for this
| office space and it's pretty awkward to explain to the board
| why we have this red line item for a '10 year lease - office
| space' and nobody is in there, so let's just force 100s of
| people to come back in against all common sense and metrics
| that show this is a bad idea."
| [deleted]
| closeparen wrote:
| That's surely a factor for remote work in particular, but we
| must also ask why engineering orgs that embrace globally
| distributed sites & happily span SF, SEA, and NYC allow for
| so few seats in places like Chicago, the Triangle, or the Sun
| Belt. It's cheaper & the collaboration setup is no different!
| base698 wrote:
| I assume everyone had roughly the same thought around 2012. Mid
| sized city jobs paying 100k+ and you could still find homes
| with half an acre for $300k. As salaries got inflated due to
| FAANG and startup competition it really seemed like an easy out
| was just keep a lower cost place or rent. The dream of WFH was
| find a HCOL job and buy LCOL place and a helicopter or maybe
| just save for retirement at 45.
|
| Now given the cost of living increases, the $300k places push
| $900k in midsized cities. The HCOL areas have gone up in value
| and the mortgage due to interest is almost twice as high over
| 2019. Assuming a $15-$20k net take home the housing will be
| half of it. Grocery bills seem about twice as high. Even with
| much higher salaries it seems like everything has been squeezed
| back to the 2012 math. Not everyone ended up riding the salary
| train and it's even harder form them. And that's assuming you
| get to keep your job in the shuffle back to the office/layoffs.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/titles/barbara-ehrenreich/...
|
| _Fear of Falling_ by Barbara Ehrenreich.
| csomar wrote:
| It's not a conspiracy theory, it's how the system works. You
| are taxed on pretty much all of your income either from the
| state, the landlord, the credit card company or the lifestyle
| obligations that stems from the area you are living in.
|
| > And that's right where they want you.
|
| This is the part where we diverge, and I think where people
| confuse emerging phenomena for conspiracy.
|
| There is no one orchestrating this.
| xwdv wrote:
| > There is no one orchestrating this.
|
| There wasn't before.
|
| There is now.
|
| Lobbyists are pushing for it. Big investment firms like
| Vanguard and Blackrock that have a lot to lose if the
| commercial real estate market collapses are pushing companies
| to mandate RTO policies if they want to keep getting
| investments. Makes sense.
| myroon5 wrote:
| source?
| linza wrote:
| > There is no one orchestrating this.
|
| Very true, and the reason why it's important to spell this
| out explicitly is because any solution that hinges on
| identifying and blaming a single or few orchestrators is dead
| on arrival.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > There is no one orchestrating this.
|
| I think there are thousands of people orchestrating this,
| independently.
| csomar wrote:
| That's kinda what an emerging phenomena is.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| My point is that it's still the result of human action,
| it's purposeful and intentional.
|
| It's just not conspiracy.
|
| It's not emergent out of nowhere. It's emergent out of
| shitty people being in positions of power and influence.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >it's still the result of human action, it's purposeful
| and intentional.
|
| Orcheastras imply a conductor, a central figure with the
| score to direct their symphony to play.
|
| 1000 conductors means there is no conductor. Each one may
| have a purpose and intention, but a conspiracy implies...
| well, conspiring. That isn't a conspiracy, it's a mob.
| Even if somehow the symphony manages to make a melody out
| of the madness, it's not a result of a conspiracy because
| it never happened.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| You are doing incredible mental contortions to avoid
| acknowledging the concept of a cartel.
|
| When OPEC raises global oil prices, that's the result of
| a collective, negotiated action, and a conspiracy.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > 1000 conductors means there is no conductor.
|
| 1000 conductors means that there is 1000 conductors and
| 1000 orchestras.
|
| They've all done their research, and they've all
| independently decided to have their orchestras play
| mostly the same songs as all the other orchestras.
|
| They've arrived at this decision by copying what the most
| successful orchestras are doing, reading in orchestra
| magazines about best practice for orchestras, going to
| orchestra conferences, talking to other conductors over
| expensive meals and games of golf, etc
|
| I agree it's not a conspiracy. There's no big room where
| all the conductors get together and all agree which songs
| to play.
|
| But it's not accidental either. Each conductor is seeking
| the best song list, and by using the resources available
| to them they are all coming to similar conclusions.
|
| I think I've tortured this metaphor enough.
|
| I just do not want the human element to be abstracted
| from the equation here. Yes, I agree there's no
| conspiracy. Ultimately this crap is "emergent" from the
| systems in place. Those systems were built by humans, and
| then the "emergent" behavior is just humans concluding
| "based on this system in place this is the best set of
| actions I can take". Those humans then are successful so
| other humans try to copy them.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| There is a word for it, stigmergy. It is just conspiracy
| minus the direct communication. A network where nodes
| each behave according to their observations rather than
| communicating. Termites don't conspire either.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Not if it's being orchestrated on lines of class And
| wealth
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is absolutely being orchestrated, right out in the open.
| OP's entire post is fundamentally about the balance of power
| between labor and capital. The Fed's stated goal is to cool
| the labor market so that wage growth will calm down. In other
| words, the Fed thinks labor is too strong, calls too many of
| the shots in negotiations and so wants employees to be more
| desperate so that their employers will have the upper hand.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Note that this also aligns with incentives of the largest
| voting bloc, retirees and near retirees.
| closeparen wrote:
| Obviously capital would prefer to pay lower wages, all else
| being equal, and in this case the Fed backs them up on that
| to prevent a wage-price spiral. What's less obvious is how
| to keep even very-highly-paid employees from deciding
| they've made enough and checking out.
| bagacrap wrote:
| It seems that everything is a tax to you. What would you like
| to spend your money on besides lifestyle?
| hudon wrote:
| they're not saying lifestyle expenses are a tax in
| themselves, but rather the inflation on the lifestyle
| expense is a tax (ie. "cost of living"), as well as the
| need for certain expenses to begin with (eg. the need for a
| nanny because both parents need to work long hours bc of
| high COL and commute times)
| [deleted]
| nektro wrote:
| lol go figure
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| I decided I will never again work in an office, for the rest of
| my life. It's a lifestyle choice. I refuse to put up with the
| B.S. anymore. I'm lucky that I've had a long career and my skills
| are very much in demand, so I will always be able to find a
| remote job somewhere.
|
| People doing jobs with more qualified candidates in the pool will
| probably have a harder time, and that sucks. For them, I hope
| they can band together as a union and force companies to hire
| them remote. There is no excuse anymore about it not working,
| because the whole planet did it through a friggin' pandemic, and
| work actually improved. We just have to stick to our guns,
| because the suits will continue to try to ruin our lives as long
| as it benefits them.
| [deleted]
| gumballindie wrote:
| > and work actually improved
|
| Not just work but also profits (except of course where profits
| depend on people's physical custom, such as restaurants, but
| that is no longer an issue). So basically a lot of these
| digital product and service companies are shooting themselves
| in the foot. Also not commuting meant fewer expenses meaning
| more disposable income. Essentially a free economic boost.
| floucky wrote:
| Don't you think full remote is kind of selfish? I mean, I also
| love it, but what about new hires and junior? How are they
| going to learn and improve if each time they have a question,
| they need to post it on slack and just wait...
| o1y32 wrote:
| Did it occur to you that there are people who were hired
| during the pandemic, who had full virtual onboarding
| experience? How did they survive?
|
| Actually I myself joined my current company after March 2020.
| I can't imagine a 5-day, in-person experience would be any
| more effective or productive. If anything, I was able to
| completely pay no attention the mandatory training of
| "corporate value" nonsense -- it felt great to be "in" the
| meeting but spend the time doing actual development or doing
| some household chores.
| floucky wrote:
| I joined a new company in September, and most of my
| colleagues were fully remote. I have enough experience and
| was able to handle myself, but when I imagine this
| situation in my first year, I'm sure it would have been
| much harder.
| [deleted]
| Gareth321 wrote:
| It's different, and harder in some ways, but easier in
| others. I just think we need to get better at accepting
| the new paradigm which is clearly better for many people,
| instead of lamenting what we might have lost. Onwards and
| upwards!
| rco8786 wrote:
| I see this argument all the time, but I've onboarded like a
| dozen new hires and juniors since going fully remote in 2020.
| It's fine. The tools and processes are different, but
| fundamentally it's still just about communicating and working
| together. You genuinely do not have to be in the same
| physical room to do that.
|
| That said, the problem I _do_ see is that the folks hired
| into a fully remote environment have a significantly lower
| "attachment" to the company. Working together in an office
| fosters a sense of belonging to the group (over time) in a
| way that remote work cannot. This is the thing that isn't
| getting attention, IMO - but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe
| we were all overly attached to our jobs anyway :)
| floucky wrote:
| Well, these people were lucky to have you. Unfortunately,
| many people just want to not be disturbed, and it's much
| easier to ignore someone through Slack than in person.
| dxdm wrote:
| That's a question of culture and organization. Onboarding
| a new hire is a job, and someone has to do it. Same for
| mentoring juniors. If you're relying on in-office for
| that, because the newbie needs to tap physical shoulders
| to get attention, then I'd argue the setup is not good to
| begin with.
|
| I've spent years now in a fully remote team, and we had
| no problem getting people integrated and productive, and
| bonding everyone into a real team. Likewise, I was the
| newbie in in-office teams before and have felt like an
| outsider who needs to beg for help for months.
|
| In my experience, remote or not is not the deciding
| factor for onboarding and team building.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| the_gipsy wrote:
| What's the big deal?
| notnmeyer wrote:
| fully remote requires rethinking collaboration and working
| together to some extent.
|
| if slack is the only way remote companies communicate,
| they're doing it wrong imo.
| awestroke wrote:
| Mentoring, pair programming, calls, code review, etc
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Slack is no different than the desk if you're using it like
| that.
|
| You can hop as easily to huddle as you'd do an interruption.
| Of course, a junior interrupting ALL the time in real life
| would be a terrible thing so you definitely need to strike a
| balance.
|
| But I see most arguments for office is better from people who
| just don't know how to communicate effectively through tools
| and potentially are bad at cross location team collab, which
| happens all the time in big companies.
| landswipe wrote:
| I'd argue remote is way better, if you share screens over
| google meet or similar it is far far better than physically
| sitting around a single workstation. Also, by default it
| encourages respect of people's time rather than tapping
| people on a shoulder or an interrupting them (don't get me
| started on open plan offices).
| paradox460 wrote:
| Vscode live share beats the snot out of traditional pair
| programming. I can view where my colleagues are on the
| side while looking up something else, and vice versa. If
| a colleague is writing a function or something and needs
| to know how some system works, I can go and look it up
| while they're working, and not break their flow.
| Traditional pair programming, with a single terminal,
| makes this impossible
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Nobody has the right to interrupt you while you are doing
| your job, to ask you any question they feel like, at any
| time. They can talk to you when you have office hours, they
| can schedule a meeting to talk to you, they can post it on
| slack, or they can interrupt you for critical concerns.
|
| The lack of structured times to communicate and collaborate
| is a big reason working from an office is counter-productive.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| > I'm lucky that I've had a long career and my skills are very
| much in demand, so I will always be able to find a remote job
| somewhere.
|
| Yep, this is exactly who WFH benefits, and nobody else.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Uh? WFH benefits a whole lot of people:
|
| - The people who need to stay home to take care of their
| children and family members.
|
| - The companies who can't find [good] enough local talent, or
| can't afford them.
|
| - The people who can't find jobs locally and cannot move, due
| to financial, familial, environmental, or other reasons.
|
| - People with diverse needs who require a flexible schedule
| and safe space.
|
| - People who live in dangerous places where commuting could
| put them at increased risk. (see: can't move because of X)
| (also: commuting is actively dangerous to your health;
| constant sitting, danger of traffic collisions, being robbed
| at bus stops, etc)
|
| - Anyone who wants to live in a cheaper, less dangerous city,
| or doesn't want to commute a long time.
|
| WFH can benefit _everyone_ , but they have to learn how to
| work a completely different way, and most people are lazy as
| hell so they don't.
| throwaway949124 wrote:
| I made a similar decision. I decided I will never ever work in
| an open-plan office ever again. However, I guess I would be ok
| with working in an office, if an employer offered offices with
| 4 walls, a door and a window with some natural light.
| [deleted]
| pharmakom wrote:
| How does it benefit the suits? what you just described is lower
| cost and higher productivity under WFH
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Having butts at desks allows them to do things like
| manipulate people to stay at work longer (Google perks),
| monitor them closer, discriminate, and justify lavish office
| expenses that they want for image rather than productivity.
| They literally don't know how to manage work or workers so
| they just stick people in the same place because they only
| know how to use their eyeballs and ears.
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