[HN Gopher] Google says it won't follow Amazon's lead with a ret...
___________________________________________________________________
Google says it won't follow Amazon's lead with a return-to-office
mandate
Author : christhecaribou
Score : 183 points
Date : 2024-10-03 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.entrepreneur.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.entrepreneur.com)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Hybrid is RTO. If I can't live where I want to live and work from
| anywhere, it's a non starter for me.
|
| In my little neck of the woods - cloud consulting/professional
| services - Google is worse than Amazon where I just left last
| year.
|
| AWS ProServe never had a RTO mandate and from former coworkers
| I've talked to, still doesn't.
|
| Google's Cloud Consulting division does force a hybrid office
| schedule which is really dumb considering the work is both
| customer facing and requires a lot of travel
| sitkack wrote:
| Well. Being tied to any one cloud is not a great position to be
| in. Not patronizing.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You're always locked in to your infrastructure. The entire
| idea of "cloud agnosticism" is BS.
|
| I've seen companies take over a year and thousands of man
| hours to move from VMs on premise to a cloud platform.
|
| Cloud agnosticism is hardly ever a business differentiator
| glzone1 wrote:
| It's also not an advantage, I've seen endless complexity in
| abstractions on abstraction, fragility and giving up really
| nice cloud features for this.
|
| It'd take years to migrate STILL even with all that effort.
| And they can't ship features they are so busy worrying
| about AWS going away.
| woooooo wrote:
| Exception, companies like datadog where they're actually
| operating in several clouds for good business reasons
| (it's where their customers are).
| abadpoli wrote:
| > AWS ProServe never had a RTO mandate
|
| Before Covid, no team had an RTO mandate, so ProServe wasn't
| really special here. In ProServe you were still expected to be
| in _an_ office regularly, but it was just understood that you
| wouldn't be in an Amazon office all the time because you're
| likely at a client's office instead.
|
| Post-covid, it's mostly the same, although now even many
| clients aren't requiring consultants to come in. But when they
| do, you're expected to be there.
| vb-8448 wrote:
| for the moment.
|
| my guess is that in the next 12/18 month all of major tech & big
| corps will follow the amazon's way.
| christhecaribou wrote:
| These folks literally just saw what Amazon did and did the
| opposite.
| behringer wrote:
| They just want Amazon talent. Then they'll turn up the heat.
| Hamuko wrote:
| You mean the ones that don't want to go to the office?
| What's the point of taking in talent, getting them up to
| speed at Google and then having them leave after 12-18
| months?
| whatsdoom wrote:
| You're not going to get a VP job talking like that.
| sottol wrote:
| The general opinion here on HN seems to be that the most
| talented that can easily land a new job are the first to
| leave - might be a good time to skim the cream of the
| crop, even if for 12-18 months. Who knows, many might
| even stay when every other major company moves to RTO.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm not sure it's right to say they _did_ anything here. All
| the article reports is that an unspecified Google VP made an
| offhand remark that no changes are expected to their 3-2
| hybrid schedule - which used to be Amazon 's schedule until
| Andy Jassy made an unexpected change.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Maybe but I think this sort of exposed weak leadership at the
| top of Amazon (Andy Jassy) and/or their hidden goals of a
| silent layoff or protecting value of their real estates (at
| everyone else's cost).
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I applaud Microsoft and Google for not going with a full RTO. But
| hybrid work still requires you to live near an office. True
| remote work enables an economy that is spread out, resilient, and
| lets people live the way they want. We have this capability so
| why not do it?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Because they don't simply want you to perform tasks. They want
| to assimilate your mind and make it fully committed to a
| corporate cult. They can best accomplish this by having you
| spending most of your wake time in their corp kingdom.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Having been there: it's not that. It's that, unfortunately,
| they have enough hard numbers to know _most_ people do their
| best work with a boss physically breathing down their neck.
|
| I knew some folks at Google who worked 100% remote and only
| came into the office for critical meetings about once a
| month. They had proven they could operate that way with a
| more-or-less stellar track record.
| azangru wrote:
| > It's that, unfortunately, they have enough hard numbers
| to know most people do their best work with a boss
| physically breathing down their neck.
|
| While the conclusion -- that most people do their best work
| when in the office -- may be correct, why do you think that
| the cause of that is the boss breathing down people's necks
| rather than, say, more efficient collaboration among team
| members?
|
| My personal observations of my team over the past couple of
| years are that people are much more engaged, issues get
| resolved much quicker, and information radiates much better
| when team members are co-located. This is something that
| many were in agreement on before covid.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It may be more efficient collaboration among team
| members. The end-result is the same: more output for the
| same cost if people are congregating.
|
| > This is something that many were in agreement on before
| covid
|
| This is an excellent observation worth highlighting:
| Google's belief stems not just from pre-COVID / post-
| COVID observation but from the relative output of teams
| that were same-office colocated vs. inter-office located,
| necessitating videoconferencing, chat, and email to get
| work done. Now that you highlight that, I think my
| reasoning is in error and it's probably more about
| collaboration being easier in-person. But inconveniently
| for those who don't want to work in person, the end-
| result is the same.
| makestuff wrote:
| IMO the downside of being that spread out is the
| infrastructure. Cities subsidize the suburban infrastructure
| because of the population density benefits. If everyone spreads
| out then infrastructure will suffer.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Do cities actually subsidize suburban infrastructure? I am
| skeptical but I don't know all of the details on how people
| come to that conclusion. What happens if the economy is more
| spread out? Also a lot of the people that own and run
| companies that give a city its tax base live in the suburban
| areas. It might even be reasonable to say that they are the
| ones subsidizing the city and not the other way. How do you
| think about these angles?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| It is simple enough to break it down by area. If a city has
| N people per city block, but a suburb has 1/N people per
| city block you lose out on all economies of scale. Each
| individual dwelling requires water, electrical, gas, roads,
| etc. More efficient to amortize that across more people per
| unit of infrastructure. A road is always going up cost
| $/foot. Best if that road is being used by 100k people per
| day instead of 10.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Yes but that's a cost of infrastructure angle, not an
| argument for who is subsidizing whom. I'm saying the fact
| that the economy is unnecessarily focused into cities
| makes suburbs look worse in tax revenue but it doesn't
| have to be that way.
| shaftway wrote:
| Strong Towns does a lot of discussion in this area. But
| here's a video that breaks it down well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
| KittenInABox wrote:
| It's not like cities give their money to every suburban
| mom. It's like this:
|
| Suburbs cannot function without freeways, but the presence
| of freeways harm the property values of city neighborhoods
| not suburban ones.
|
| SFH simply produces less tax revenue than an entire
| apartment building by land, so any statewide social
| services (education, freeway maintenance...) is paid
| proportionately more by cities than by SFH.
|
| There are reports[0] of cities reporting that their SFH
| actually loses them money due to the fact they simply don't
| pay their fair share of taxes vs all the infrastructure
| they use.
|
| It's not like the government is going "oh boy, SFH mom,
| here's 500$ plucked straight from some inner city mom's
| payroll taxes". But in the broader system of supporting
| many people's living styles through greater societal
| infrastructure, less-dense housing like suburbs do not put
| out as much as they take.
|
| [0]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfb
| c26e... [Town of Nolensville, TN]
| electronbeam wrote:
| The should raise the taxes to account for land size to
| make it fair
| kbolino wrote:
| This feels more like a planning/governance problem than
| an innate property.
|
| I've lived in SFH on the edge of a major city and on the
| edge of farmland and there's a wide gulf in the level of
| infrastructure that they had access to, and also a
| significant difference in the amount of tax that was
| owed. It's hard for me to believe that those two very
| different scenarios are functionally equivalent.
|
| Moreover, vast swathes of the city I used to live next
| to, despite having significantly higher tax rates, were
| ultimately paying a lot less in tax due to severely
| depressed income levels and property values. There
| _might_ have been a higher mean revenue per acre in the
| city as a whole, but there also was a much higher
| variance.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Suburbs in general are losers from a government operations
| perspective.
|
| They work because they are mostly newish. Core functions
| like keeping roads functional rely on state and federal
| aid.
|
| Many older suburbs are more in decline now. Especially in
| 2nd/3rd tier metro areas. It's just less obvious than the
| inner city or rural areas. They need growth to thrive. Once
| they fill out, population ages out, schools decline, and a
| vicious cycle starts.
|
| Money policy has kept that going by organizing the economy
| around real estate. I don't think it's sustainable to
| continually recapitalize single family homes.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Suburban infrastructure is usually much more sparse, of
| lower quality and a lot of it is shifted to the local
| business/homeowner.
|
| As an example - city water vs Water wells & Septic
| tank/fields. Gravel roads without sidewalks, etc.
|
| So it's not 100% evident that cities subsidize rural
| counties. Cities do provide the larger tax base for
| states, which probably subsidize more rural counties
| through incentives tied to certain rural activities, but
| making a blanket statement is probably not accurate.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| [delayed]
| mushufasa wrote:
| > We have this capability so why not do it?
|
| sortof yes, sortof no.
|
| Aside from all the conversation about work culture, state taxes
| are a big barrier to fully remote work. States hate losing tax
| revenue. Notoriously, it is easier to register to do business
| in a state than to unregister. This is even harder
| internationally.
|
| For large organizations, remote can be the difference between
| one state's paperwork + regs + taxation, and every state and
| country under the sun's paperwork + regs + taxation. That is a
| real burden. Not just the paperwork + administrative overhead,
| but being subject to differing employment + everything else
| laws from *everywhere* will really muck up ability to run a
| consistent business.
|
| While fully remote startups can now access services to help
| with this, like PEO providers like Justworks/Deel, the reality
| is that most of the world is not setup to accept this at scale.
| I run a fully remote startup and still run into issues with
| vendor diligence departments and accounts etc. expecting us to
| have a physical office, and being totally bewildered when we
| don't. The people involved now understand remote work, but the
| systems --forms, insurances, tax nexus decisions, etc -- still
| very much aren't setup to handle it.
|
| Notably: if you are a bigger company, you can't put the
| toothpaste back in the tube with all these local governments,
| and you bet that every locality will be trying to extract tax
| dollars from the big firms with deeper pockets.
| whatshisface wrote:
| "Anywhere in California" would also solve the LA density
| problem.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| We see this all the time working at the intersection of the
| insurance / fintech space. I've had several big, legacy
| vendors make requests for multiple physical signatures on a
| piece of paper (printed and mailed or faxed, can't just
| annotate a PDF) from people who haven't even met eachother in
| person let alone ever worked at the same address.
|
| The kicker? These papers are access authorization forms to
| APIs.
|
| Your average tech company is probably reasonably well
| prepared to go truly distributed, but I bet many of their
| vendors aren't. Whole workflows in certain industries don't
| even conceptualize companies with employees distributed
| across offices, let alone companies with no office at all.
|
| (I've fought similar battles over not being able to provide a
| direct phone extension because I don't have a phone on my
| office desk and even if I did I'm not at the office anything
| close to full time, and I don't provide my personal cell
| phone number to vendors... but thats a whole different topic.
| Employees exist without phone numbers! Entire offices exist
| without phones!)
| mushufasa wrote:
| is this your startup? I'd love to chat about what you've
| found work. we're in the intersection of fintech / wealth
| (which overlaps with insurance).
|
| I've gotten by just fine for the past few years but we are
| starting to see more questions about this that require us
| to change our legal address away from a residence. I think
| we got away without much trouble solely because of the
| pandemic, and now it's over we're going to see a lot more
| questions about this.
|
| It's not worth the future of the whole business to fight
| big vendors/customers over addresses.
| mushufasa wrote:
| Basically, for those who aren't living this, the physical
| address is mostly a liability thing. Insurance expect to
| be able to (imagine worst case scenario) walk into an
| office and blame / seize assets / arrest people if things
| go south. Sometimes you can just provide a residential
| address of a founder / board member, but all the
| diligence forms etc expect a physical office building
| where you can find all the employees 5 days a week if you
| just walk in.
| papercrane wrote:
| > I've fought similar battles over not being able to
| provide a direct phone extension because I don't have a
| phone on my office desk
|
| I'd probably just setup a cheap DID number with someone
| like VOIP.ms and have it go straight to voicemail.
|
| I agree though, it's not a fight you should have fight.
| Office phones are going the way of the fax machine.
| ygjb wrote:
| > For large organizations, remote can be the difference
| between one state's paperwork + regs + taxation, and every
| state and country under the sun's paperwork + regs +
| taxation. That is a real burden. Not just the paperwork +
| administrative overhead, but being subject to differing
| employment + everything else laws from _everywhere_ will
| really muck up ability to run a consistent business.
|
| This is a real burden for small businesses. The nature of
| Amazon's business as an online retailer with a massive
| distribution network means that for any significant market
| they do business in, they will have employees. Practically
| speaking, this is a solved problem for any state in which
| Amazon has a warehouse (which I think is probably all of them
| for the US?).
| ryandrake wrote:
| All major payroll companies and employment law firms have
| long since figured out paperwork, taxes, and labor
| regulations in all 50 states. Unless you're so small that
| you don't even have an external payroll provider or legal
| counsel, "differences between States" shouldn't be a valid
| excuse.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > state taxes are a big barrier to fully remote work
|
| What percentage of remote-workers are in a different tax-
| jurisdiction? Especially post-COVID I expected that the
| majority of remote-work involved people already in the same
| US state, merely with a nontrivial commute.
| geodel wrote:
| From Google's perspective a lot of outsourced work is remote
| work. As its done away from Google offices. And they are
| doubling down on that.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > But hybrid work still requires you to live near an office
|
| Not as close as a daily commute, though.
|
| I live 60 miles from my office. It's just not practical to go
| in every day, so I go in once a week. I can also go in as
| needed, such as if there's a special guest, event, ect.
|
| I wish I could go in every day, but where I live is a
| compromise with my wife, and we have kids.
|
| If I were to go in everyday, I'd need to be much, much closer
| to the office. It wouldn't work for my family: Single incomes
| don't work very well near my office.
| layer8 wrote:
| I would hate to live in a world where I don't regularly meet
| with coworkers face-to-face. Remote communication just isn't
| the same, you lose a lot of signal and are more
| compartmentalized from each other. I'm saying that as an
| introvert.
|
| But I also have a short commute and a nice office.
| ghaff wrote:
| At my last company I was officially in-office but I basically
| never went in because essentially everyone I worked with was
| in a different office or even a different country.
| xyst wrote:
| They say this now. But in 12 months (or the next layoff period),
| they will move from hybrid to full RTO.
|
| Still a shitty move to mandate RTO. Most people (IT folks) have
| spoke with do this routine:
|
| 0) daily routine to prepare for day 1) 1 hr commute to shitty
| office 2) login to computer, do calls with cross regional (and
| international) teams over Zoom/Teams/Webex or whatever
| conferencing system 3) teleconferencing with boss or manager 4)
| teleconferencing with company stakeholders 5) work on features
| and push code to remote systems (VCS, CI/CD...) 6) eat shitty
| food at nearby places, or use the low quality vending machines or
| cafeteria 7) logoff 8) 1 hr commute back home
|
| There are _some_ roles which may require in-person. But those
| were mostly sales folks. Some IT folks that deal with physical
| assets did require RTO (ie, data center / network engineers).
| sbrother wrote:
| I think the worst part is 9) at night, do more work that
| requires focus time while no one is bothering you, since
| expectations got calibrated to when everyone had a private
| office and more control over their own time.
| macintux wrote:
| Yep. Many of my days are 4-6 hours of meetings in the
| morning, 2 more hours of paperwork/email/coordination
| activities, go get dinner, then work another 2-3 hours.
|
| Thank goodness I can work from home. I know in some ways that
| makes my flexibility more damaging to my work/life balance,
| but the tradeoff is worth it to me.
| ein0p wrote:
| That's how it was for me circa 2004-2005. The only way I
| could get anything real work done was from home, after hours.
| During the day all we did was sit in meetings and report
| status to each other and to the higher ups. Worse, then the
| higher ups decided that we don't need a sustained engineering
| team for the past two releases (boxed software) and the team
| would context switch between building new stuff and patching
| what's already out there, 2 releases back. I said fuck it and
| left.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| In the Bay Area, 1-hour commutes are generally for older and
| apartment people. Younger family people are in the 2+ range.
| ryandrake wrote:
| When I lived in the Bay Area, my commute was ~2.5 hours each
| way. I would have killed for a 1 hour commute.
| barsonme wrote:
| That's insane. 13 hours of work + commute. After 7 hours of
| sleep you only have 4 hours left in your day for literally
| everything else.
| commandar wrote:
| The push for the 8 hour work day over a century ago was
| often accompanied with slogans to the effect of "8 hours
| work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours for what we will."
|
| 5 hours round trip commuting a day is giving up over half
| of your prerogative time to simply shuffling from one
| place to another.
|
| The Bay Area is lucrative monetarily and all, but there's
| just no world where that's worth it for me.
| jjulius wrote:
| >13 hours of work...
|
| ... what?
| shrikant wrote:
| 13 hours of (work + commute) -- that's 5 hours of commute
| + 8 hours of work.
| Sirizarry wrote:
| The parentheses help a lot. I also thought the original
| commenter was implying 13 hours of work + the 5 hour
| commute and couldn't figure out where they got the 13
| from haha
| FPSDavid wrote:
| That is a ... choice.
| epolanski wrote:
| I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their
| suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend
| so much time in their cars.
| hiatus wrote:
| What steps do you suggest an average person take?
| worstspotgain wrote:
| People would go for condos if there were cheap large ones
| nearby. Alas, the supply restrictionists blocked all
| vertical development decades ago in order to inflate
| prices 10x and capture tech wages. That left SFHs and
| townhomes in far away places.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| +1 for family sized (3 bedroom condos) if they existed
| close to work we could have families and jobs - imagine!
| tesch1 wrote:
| Because door-to-door transport is faster than public
| transportation. Average American commute time is 26
| minutes, what is it where you live?
|
| https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-
| trans....
| 10xalphadev wrote:
| I live within an European city - not downtown, but
| relatively close. My commute by car over ~10km is 18-20
| mins, same distance by public transport takes 40-50 mins,
| depending on train reliability and workers not striking.
|
| So change my mind?
| longnt80 wrote:
| I don't intent to change your mind because it's often
| that people are stuck to their opinions.
|
| Just want to say that sitting in public transports I can
| do other things such as doing some work or reading a
| book. While sitting in a car feels terrible to me. 30
| minutes of driving a car is a lot worse than sitting in
| public transport. Also, if I have to commute by
| walk/bike, I also feel much better.
| RobRivera wrote:
| Yes, we Americans love our cars, oil, wars, wwf, and
| guns.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| Well at least we still donate to preserve endangered
| species. 1 out of 5 ain't bad!
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I find it absurd how Americans can 't give up on their
| suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then
| spend so much time in their cars_
|
| I agree that kind of commute is insane, but maybe we
| don't all want to raise our families in shoe boxes (often
| surrounded by filth and crime) in the city centre (as if
| everyone in France lives in downtown Paris).
|
| You may find that thrilling, but I don't. None of it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| There is zero relation between filth and crime, and
| living in the city centre. At least inherently. There may
| be a correlation where you live.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Everyone I know with a long commute can afford a shorter
| commute, they just trade the commute for a larger single-
| family dwelling.
| jrks11o wrote:
| yeah, "can afford" doesn't mean I should, props to them
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a ton of fraud in this space. You need at least hybrid
| to keep that at bay.
|
| At a previous place, we chose hybrid RTO over intrusive
| surveillance. My opinion shifted from being a full remote
| advocate after I caught a half dozen folks with various schemes
| and scams.
|
| The straw that broke the camels back was a guy who lied about
| where he was living. He was going through a divorce and the ex-
| wife ratted him out to the state tax authority to get the
| reward. The company was fined by both states. The ex made like
| $50k.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| Define "fraud"? If you get your work done in two hours and
| can't progress until a teammate does their end, is it better
| or worse if you are scrolling HN in an office or at home?
|
| I run my own company, I do not give a single fuck how, where,
| or when people get their job done. I only care they deliver.
|
| Likewise, people who need to be watched over are not the
| employees I _want_ in the first place. I'm not running a
| daycare for children. Adults can make their own decisions, if
| you need me over your shoulder to deliver you aren't useful
| to me to start with.
| grayfaced wrote:
| And if you find out that your developers were actually in
| North Korea and you've violated sanctions, would you care
| then?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
| disrupts-n...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They're literally doing the work. They're not accused of
| placing backdoors, they're not accused of anything aside
| from the US government running an antiquated sanctions
| regime, and just doing the work. The US government isnt
| charging companies with OFAC violations, so there is no
| reason to care. North Koreans learned how to be a fake
| Staff Software Engineer and do non-fake things for real
| RSUs.
|
| Companies shouldnt burden the rest of their employees for
| social verification, for something that isnt a problem
| for the company.
| grayfaced wrote:
| That sounds akin to saying a security breach doesn't
| matter until there are consequences. Not many companies
| would be comfortable being in the position that they have
| not verified the identities of employees who have access
| to payment processing data.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They did verify the identity to the standard required.
| The employee lied.
|
| Although analogies compare dissimilar things with a
| common attribute, your analogy relies on saying all
| employees are security breaches. These are employees
| competent to work in medium sized all the way to big tech
| companies as software engineers.
| grayfaced wrote:
| Every company with sensitive data need to consider
| insider threat risk. Many compliance standards require
| background checks specifically because employees can lie.
| My point is simple, it's not as simple as "employee
| complete tasks? Y/N" but that every employee is a
| potential liability that businesses need to do risk
| management according to their role. Remote work makes
| that more complicated, and requires different controls.
| chgs wrote:
| You could have them turn up to an office for a few days
| when they start work if you wanted
| uludag wrote:
| So the logic is that even though they may get their
| required work done, the risk that they may one day flee
| to North Korea and cause you to violate sanctions
| requires that you have to constantly bring in all of your
| employees to a central location and soft surveil them to
| mitigate this?
|
| Why not just require a single background check or
| interview them on-site?
| grayfaced wrote:
| I was responding to someone that says they only care that
| they deliver. And that was the statement I took issue
| with, there are numerous factors that employer should
| care about beyond performance. As another example, the
| liability raised from creating a toxic workplace. I said
| nothing about bringing people in. You raise two things
| that would be good controls for identity fraud.
| appendix-rock wrote:
| Don't worry. Most people here that "run their own
| business" are in VC-funded startup la la land anyway. It
| says very very very little about knowing how to actually
| productively steer a group of people.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| Why do we do this all the time? Somebody makes a slightly
| hyperbolic statement, and everybody replies to them with
| the most outlandish and extreme examples of things that
| would be problems if they literally meant the exact thing
| they said.
|
| "People can wear anything they want out in public, I
| don't care"
|
| "Yeah, well if they wore a suit made of plutonium, or one
| covered with guns that fired randomly in every direction,
| I bet you'd care then".
|
| I'm going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and
| assume that he probably does the due diligence to verify
| that his employees are legally able to work wherever the
| company is, and aren't using company resources to launch
| cyberattacks on the NSA, aren't international terrorists
| trying to destroy the moon, etc, etc.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Surely nobody is referring to scrolling HN during work
| hours as "fraud"
| ferbivore wrote:
| No, I think the current buzzword for that is "time
| theft".
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Define "fraud"?
|
| He lived in another state but paid taxes where he supposed
| to be living. The company was held liable.
|
| > I run my own company
|
| Then you should understand what for you can be held liable
| and what your responsibilities are. It may be very
| expensive not to know. In extreme cases you may be held
| criminally liable.
|
| > I do not give a single fuck
|
| It's just a recommendation: I'd suggest you do because your
| tax authorities certainly do.
| glzone1 wrote:
| A lot of business don't want to bother performance managing
| that closely. Plenty just worked off of trust.
|
| * You hire someone, and then figure out someone else is
| doing the work (usually because they are making stupid
| mistakes, and the person you hired can't be that dumb)
|
| * Your staff work odd hours that make coordinating hard
| (side gigs / hussle's etc).
|
| * I think the rumored record of multiple full time jobs
| someone was working was 5+.
|
| * We interviewed someone who was upfront they would be
| working for us while working for her full time day job
| remotely.
|
| We deal with sensitive information. Having data go overseas
| etc is a no go for our business at least.
|
| Note: If you have to deal with government agencies that
| have gone remote you KNOW that the throughput is sometimes
| < 50% what it was before. You can almost immediately tell
| as someone dealing with them. No one answers their phones,
| all voicemail, all super long delays (week+).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > * I think the rumored record of multiple full time jobs
| someone was working was 5+.
|
| > * We interviewed someone who was upfront they would be
| working for us while working for her full time day job
| remotely.
|
| I'm not sure how this is justified as a problem.
|
| CEO of multiple companies: A-OK
|
| SVP serving on multiple companies' boards of directors:
| A-OK
|
| Salaried office worker working for multiple companies
| remotely: Fraud
|
| Hourly worker working three jobs to make ends meet: A-OK
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Capital patches out any attempt of non-capital to exit
| the system quickly.
| donkers wrote:
| I wouldn't call it fraud, but it is probably violating
| the terms of the employment contract. I know it is for my
| company (I bet people still do it anyway)
| hiatus wrote:
| What's the recourse for violating your employment
| contract beyond termination? Ineligibility for
| unemployment because you were fired "for cause"? Seems
| like it's worth the risk since you can be fired for no
| reason at all.
| appendix-rock wrote:
| That's just, like, your opinion, mahn. I don't recall
| anyone else saying that those things were OK, or that
| they were comparable, which they aren't? Your MO seems to
| be to just make your comment so high-effort to reply to
| that nobody will bother.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| CEOs and SVPs have contracts that deal with these issues.
| Salaried workers commit to full time hour commitment.
|
| My employer allows outside employment for some roles if
| appropriate. It requires disclosure and may not be
| possible depending on what you do. Double dipping is not
| acceptable.
|
| I'm a VP level person who serves on a couple of boards
| and help with a family business. It's all disclosed and
| approved with mutually agreeable boundaries.
|
| Another example is an attorney - it's ok for some private
| practice, but not ok if that practice will reasonably
| involve an entity that the company is likely to interact
| with.
| zblevins wrote:
| Hiring?
| thousand_nights wrote:
| > Define "fraud"?
|
| the BigCorp owns your life, the rights to tell you where to
| be 75% of your waking hours and what to do.
|
| get the eight hour job done in two hours and slack off for
| the rest? that's theft and fraud. get it done in two hours
| and admit to it? that's more work for you for the same pay,
| to fill the rest of your time.
|
| then you go online and some overly enthusiastic yc
| sponsored clown will dunk on you for not giving your life
| away to a corporation
| fallingknife wrote:
| And it should be that way. The responsibility for tax
| cheats should rest entirely on the person not paying. But
| that's not how it works. Our government has passed
| authoritarian laws that put the responsibility on the
| employer too even if they have no knowledge of the crime.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you want to work like a hourly contractor, be one. Work
| your hours.
|
| If you want to be a $250k engineer and fuck around on
| Netflix waiting for something for 75% of the workday,
| you're demonstrating a lack of maturity and
| professionalism. Or you work for a really dysfunctional
| place.
|
| If you're running your own shop, you're empowered to run it
| to your needs. That's awesome. Mine are different.
| bityard wrote:
| "Work in the office" or "remote surveillance" are not the
| only two possible options here.
|
| I work (remotely) for a company that treats their employees
| like adults. I have a work-provided laptop, but it doesn't
| contain any surveillance-ware and my boss doesn't care where
| I am or what I'm doing as long as I'm getting my stuff done
| and showing up for zoom meetings. When they hired me, they
| ran a background check to ensure that I was who I said I was,
| among other due diligence.
|
| There are more companies like this. They may not be in the
| majority, but they exist.
| deagle50 wrote:
| who are these people who barely do any work from home? My
| office is an amusement park with free food and amazing views
| and yet I still work from home to minimize distractions and
| wasted time. My output is measurably higher when I work from
| home.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I mean, my experience says you're right, but the red hot labor
| summer combined with Dell and Amazon _and_ Apple workers
| vocally opposing such mandates and leaving outright give me
| hope that maybe, _maybe_ leadership will accept this is a
| losing battle and embrace the new norms.
|
| Barring that, the younger working demographics have made it
| abundantly clear there's a zero tolerance for the traditional
| corporate bullshit. When mandates first came down, they
| responded with "coffee badging" and the like; I don't doubt
| there will be another adaptation, like arriving late and
| leaving early, baking the commute time silently into the work
| day.
|
| The writing is on the wall, and the modern worker knows how
| badly they're being screwed over. I'd argue it's a wiser
| decision to let the workers do their jobs from wherever,
| consolidate offices into continental HQs, and decentralize the
| workforce to disincentivize collective action. Workers get the
| flexibility they need to survive in the current cost of
| living/housing crisis, and companies don't risk bleeding talent
| or earning the wrath of a Union election.
|
| Everybody wins except commercial landlords, but they're not
| exactly the good guys here anyway.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Tech organizations are all overstaffed from the pandemic.
| Engineering is usually boom/bust. Likely outcome is recession
| and purge. The plucky gen alphas will be in the cube farm to
| pay they rent.
| stego-tech wrote:
| It depends on your perspective and context. I refuse to
| subscribe to the defeatist attitudes of "this is how it has
| been and therefore always shall be" that's in your post,
| because otherwise what's the point of participating at all
| if change is impossible?
|
| The engineering boom-bust cycle is a recent phenomenon
| (past fifty years) relatively speaking, and it doesn't mean
| it's a permanent fixture of civilization unless we choose
| to accept it as such. I reject permanence and advocate
| change, and so should you.
|
| Besides, "Gen Alpha" won't be in cube farms even with a
| RTO, because Glorious Leaders (TM) in tech threw out
| cubicles, personal identity, and privacy in favor of hotel
| seating and clean desk policies. A return to cubicles would
| be a marked improvement over the present status quo, if we
| could just figure out the right marketing buzzwords to
| trick the C-Suite into believing it's the Next Big Thing
| (TM).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'm not defeatist. We're at a high where massively
| capitalized companies have been in a hiring binge for
| skilled technical employees for a long time. It's been
| good to me - my family is more prosperous by any measure
| than my parents are grandparents, who were arguably
| smarter and bolder people.
|
| All of these companies have been incredibly successful...
| but can they sustain their historically unprecedented
| growth? Maybe. But when that train slows down, Intel is
| the example of what happens.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Oh goodness, if we're talking about sustainable growth
| then boy do I have some hockeystick charts to reject
| _that_ notion. For decades, growth has largely been an
| illusion created through clever accounting and inflation
| metrics - it's why the industry keeps desperately trying
| to jump on "brand new" stuff like crypto, blockchain, and
| generative models: a new industry means actual growth as
| opposed to illusory growth, which would create a new
| wealth class above and beyond any of the existing
| billionaires of today. For all of Sam Altman's own
| blowharding, he's not wrong that whatever the next brand-
| new revolutionary industry turns out to be - AI, space
| mining, molecular fabrication, whatever - will require
| literal trillions of dollars to explode into a 100x ROI.
|
| That said, if we abandon this idea of "infinite growth
| forever" and accept that market saturation and
| incremental improvements provide opportunities to
| rebalance structures and remediate institutional flaws,
| then there's a lot more hope to be had. You can't build
| new things forever, and eventually need to take time to
| pay off outstanding debts, improve existing systems,
| modernize legacy infrastructure, and basically make
| everything simpler and sustainable for whatever the Next
| Big Thing turns out to be.
|
| ...unfortunately for me, making that pitch to leadership
| usually just gets me laughed out of the room because
| maintenance and efficiency isn't "sexy", nor does it
| boost their share valuations. Ah well, won't stop me from
| trying.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| >The plucky gen alphas will be in the cube farm to pay they
| rent.
|
| Gen alpha? You're talking about a generation that the
| oldest cohort is ~10-11 years of age.
|
| Will there even be enough of them given their potential
| parents can't afford a house? Will they go into tech after
| seeing this "learn to code" cohort getting screwed in the
| marketplace?
| whstl wrote:
| > There are _some_ roles which may require in-person
|
| IME when working in a Product role, it worked better from the
| office. Doesn't have to be every day, but being able to talk
| directly to people is much better than having to schedule
| meetings.
|
| Tech positions don't even need daily video calls IMO. My team
| experimented with a few days of written status updates and it
| was fine. But they chose to have a 10-mins stand-up mainly for
| socialization.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > being able to talk directly to people is much better than
| having to schedule meetings
|
| i do not understand what people are talking about when they
| say things like this personA: hey @personB
| you got 20 mins to talk about XYZ? personB: yeah
| gimme 10 mins personA: k, i'll grab a coffee
| personA: /zoom start
|
| that's ^ not scheduling a meeting. that's having the same
| direct conversation but with like one extra step (joining
| zoom).
|
| the rest of what your comment says is fair enough. i just see
| this mentioned a lot in anti-WFH leaning comments. often
| about how hard it is to mentor a junior.
|
| (i can't remember the exact slack command but you hopefully
| get the idea).
| skybrian wrote:
| Google had flex time for all the time I worked there, for a
| dozen years, well before the pandemic. I don't see any
| particular reason it wouldn't work for them now?
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Google has always had the flexible working _hours_ and didn
| 't mind the occasional "plumber coming today" day, but before
| COVID it was very allergic to permanent WFH arrangements.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| RTO for sales folks doesn't make sense to me either. Typically
| you want your sales folks on the road not in your office. I
| think sales is a good candidate for fully remote.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| You 100% want your sales folks at customers not in your
| office.
|
| Most roles can be hybrid/remote. Regardless of Tech, Finance,
| Marketing, whatever, if the job involves sitting in front of
| a computer or being on the phone all day it's a good
| candidate. If you were doing the job remotely from March 2020
| through the end of 2021 and being effective, it's a good
| candidate.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| Sales also has long established and standard ways to
| measure performance
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Amazon is not mandating RTO for sales folks.
| deagle50 wrote:
| Good, they didn't when I was in sales at AWS (well before
| Covid).
| ghaff wrote:
| Inside sales maybe. But sales reps who physically meet with
| customers spend very little time in company offices in general.
| bethling wrote:
| I don't know if that will happen. A lot of the cloud heavy
| offices moved to shared desks for engineers, so there's only a
| desk for 2 days/week, so they don't have enough space available
| for everyone to return full time.
|
| It's still possible, but I don't think would be as easy as an
| annoucement.
| yegle wrote:
| At least Google's offices have nice perks: free gym, healthy
| and nutritious meals, healthy and tasty snacks. Personally
| those perks are enough to negate the terrible commute.
|
| I was told Amazon's offices has none of these.
| nostromo wrote:
| You're forgetting that a lot of people still have to WFH, they
| just do it now before or after going to the office - so it's
| even worse than you're stating.
|
| I know some folks that work from the west coast with customers
| on the east coast, and they regularly are taking meetings at
| 6am from home, then commuting in, and getting home late.
|
| If we return to the office, we should not also be expected to
| work long hours when we're at home. It's the worst of both
| words.
| technick wrote:
| I was told at a previous job I couldn't work from home but
| they expected me to take my laptop home with me just in case
| something happened. My response was I couldn't work from home
| and just left my laptop at work.
| deciplex wrote:
| >It's the worst of both words.
|
| And it's quickly becoming the status quo.
|
| They really don't ever let a disaster go to waste, do they?
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think if you're required to RTO, you should insist on not
| having Zoom/Teams/Webex on while in the office.
|
| "Come to my cube if you need me".
|
| Way before the pandemic, I almost never had those tools running
| on my work laptop - unless it was for a (rare at the time)
| cross-geo meeting. A coworker once sent me a screenshot of how
| I appeared in the IM tool - _Last seen 120 days ago_.
|
| Sadly, that went away once we hired our first remote person.
| deciplex wrote:
| If you're required to RTO and doing it you probably aren't in
| a position to "insist" on jack shit.
| hintymad wrote:
| > shitty office
|
| I'm not sure this applies to Google. Their offices and food are
| pretty nice. And their gyms are top-notch. If you stick with
| the salad bar, I'd venture to guess the freshness and nutrition
| variety will be better than most IT guys can get at home.
|
| Of course, this does not mean RTO won't suck.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Google has been shedding office space in the bay. They probably
| don't currently have enough desks, and they don't feel like
| spending on the office space.
|
| They've also been aggressively moving teams overseas. My guess is
| they won't RTO, or at least not until their headcount matches
| desk count in core regions.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| If they do RTO I wouldn't expect them to announce it during the
| busy Q4 holiday shopping season, that's an inopportune time for
| people to leave the company.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Didn't they just build a couple massive new buildings in MTV?
| skzv wrote:
| I go to the office almost everyday by choice. Free food, snacks,
| and coffee, gym, and medical clinics on campus. And it's just
| nice to get dressed and leave the house.
|
| But it's really nice to have the flexibility to WFH when I need
| to, especially just mornings to skip traffic.
| ENGNR wrote:
| Same! Tech job, my co-founder and I are only a 5 minute drive
| or bike ride from the office. It's nice to get dressed and have
| that separation from home.
|
| I feel like the commute is what people are actually feeling the
| worst, because it's unpaid time that they just straight up
| lose. Being close to the office resolves it for us.
| time0ut wrote:
| I don't have the discipline to stop working when I work from
| home. Being able to go into the office every day is a nice
| perk for me to help structure my day. If it was a longer
| drive, I'd probably feel differently.
| ultimafan wrote:
| I feel the exact opposite- I didn't have the discipline to
| keep working when I work from home- my productivity
| plummeted during COVID and skyrocketed when RTO was
| mandated again. At home I'm too easily distracted by
| errands, hobby projects in the garage, picking up a book to
| read "just a chapter" on a coffee break and realizing 2-3
| hours have passed, and the like. In office I feel obligated
| to actually be productive from the combined shame of being
| seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof
| off.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In office I feel obligated to actually be productive
| from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and
| less physical opportunities to goof off.
|
| If anything, an office makes for more unproductivity than
| working remotely. No random people showing up at your
| desk with "can you help out real quick (LOL) here and
| there", no "hey we gotta wait for colleague XYZ before we
| head for lunch break", no coffee room talk...
| ultimafan wrote:
| That's true. I suppose if you are a person who has an
| iron will and good discipline the potential for
| productivity is much higher at home where you can lock in
| and just grind for a few hours with no interruptions. I
| am not that person and suspect many others aren't either,
| so there's that conflict between potential and real world
| outcomes where some people are just more productive in
| office even with all the distractions you mentioned than
| in an environment where you can actually focus in a flow
| state but have no surrounding social pressure to do so. I
| suspect management figures the same which is probably
| part of why RTO is being pushed so hard.
| generic92034 wrote:
| In my eyes the individual differences here could mean
| that it would be better to leave the decisions about WFH
| or office work to the teams. The team manager should know
| who can perform well from where and they can react if an
| arrangement does not work out as expected.
| epolanski wrote:
| No no and no.
|
| Stop thinking all people are the same.
|
| Some people are just unproductive at home, some are more.
| That's life.
|
| I know plenty of people that are absolutely unproductive
| at home, they just get distracted easily as the previous
| user.
|
| And there's many people that just can't work without
| carrot and stick provided by people/bosses around them
| judging their daily routine.
|
| Seriously stop thinking that every person works as you.
|
| We are all different and reality is that WFH is tough for
| many people from many points of view, it's not for
| everyone.
| phito wrote:
| Wait you need discipline to... stop working?!
| epolanski wrote:
| I can relate.
|
| I work (or at least spend the time at the PC even if I
| don't) around two hours more per day from home, while the
| office made me quit much sooner.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| Separate your work location from the house life. Best thing
| i did was putting a desk in the guestroom and turn it into
| a home office. If im there im working, if im in any other
| part of the house im not
| redserk wrote:
| Unfortunately a new job, even 5-8 miles away, may turn a
| then-5 minute commute into a 45m-1hr commute in many
| metropolitan areas.
|
| I think more management needs to realize that forcing in-
| person isn't inherently beneficial. There can be value in
| meeting up if it's appropriately planned, though.
|
| My current management has been very accommodating with
| remote/hybrid. If there's a meeting where face-time is
| beneficial, people voluntarily come in -- but there's no
| pressure to do so. Generally, we find it easier to pop into
| the office for a day every few months to whiteboard things
| instead of dealing with Miro/Zoom. We have a mix of remote
| folks who live next to the office, some folks within a couple
| hour drive, and some who need to fly in.
|
| A former job of mine used to fly people to the same location
| 4x a year for a week to hash out a quarterly plan and grab
| drinks. The whole agenda was laid out and not a minute felt
| wasted. While not everyone went 4x a year, everyone was given
| the opportunity to do so, and this helped alleviate friction.
|
| Another job of mine had remote folks fly in every 3-4 months
| for a couple of days at a time. Some teams did it more
| frequently (1x/mo for a couple days) when critical projects
| were in the pipeline, but they'd return to normal afterwards.
| epolanski wrote:
| With good public transport and metros such low distanced
| would never take that long.
|
| But Americans just can't give up the freedom of being
| stressed in their cars.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I feel like the commute is what people are actually feeling
| the worst, because it's unpaid time that they just straight
| up lose.
|
| There's also the associated side costs: getting ready to
| leave work (more for women, many feel socially obliged to put
| on makeup), extra clothes washing (personally, I don't like
| to wear clothes I had to travel in public transport with),
| having to schedule around errands like tradespeople coming in
| for repairs or picking up parcels from the post office, and
| for those with children all the shit associated with _that_ ,
| like picking up said children from daycare (whose opening
| times often conflict with expected work availability) or
| transporting them to school and after-school stuff like
| sports training... and finally, even though people like to
| deny even the most obvious (like in Munich, the current
| explosion of covid in wastewater tracking), there is still a
| pandemic raging on _plus_ all the other "regular" bugs like
| influenza, RSV, measles and whatever else shit children catch
| at school, distribute to their parents, who then distribute
| it around work.
|
| Had society actually learned _anything_ from the two years of
| Covid dominance, in-presence work would be the exception not
| the norm, and people who have to perform in-presence work be
| compensated for their commute.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| On-site childcare would guarantee I go into the office.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Used to feel the same way, but that was when I always used to
| always choose apartments near my office. Now that I don't want
| to live near my office, I prefer to work from home.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Not to mention coming to Google office has many perks, Amazon
| office is much much more barebones.
| alex_lav wrote:
| _yet_
| worstspotgain wrote:
| Google proving that they remain a less Xitty company than Amazon.
| Yes, the bar is low, and yes, we'll see if it lasts.
| sitkack wrote:
| No they have to alternate with the RTO policies, if they did
| this at the same time, it would trigger a recession.
| mrangle wrote:
| There's going to be a significant exodus of Amazon employees once
| the mandate kicks in fully. A percentage aren't able to come into
| the office every day, due to unrealistic commute logistics.
| Google making this headline sets them up to catch a lot of talent
| at once, to the point that I suspect this may be part of the
| policy's intent.
| baq wrote:
| it remains to be seen if it will be a net positive for amazon,
| but people quitting is expected and the primary reason they
| implemented RTO. it's right there in the public announcement.
| epolanski wrote:
| We snatched a great talent from Amazon.
|
| And we didn't even need to throw crazy money, just full remote
| and 16 weeks of vacations per year.
|
| It's amazing what amazing talent you can get paying with time
| rather than money they don't need.
| janalsncm wrote:
| RTO is effectively a cut to your hourly wage since you need to
| commute. I think people would be less sore about it if Amazon and
| others extended an olive branch of "commute time pay" or
| something.
|
| (And no, free food and snacks don't count. Amazon doesn't have
| that anyways.)
| cush wrote:
| I know multiple people who worked at Amazon (I say worked because
| they've recently quit) who would log two of their three weekly
| badges by going in the office at 11:59pm, and again at 12:01 am.
| Their team, managers, and collaborators never actually expected
| them at their desks. It was all to appease this mandate.
|
| It's not surprising that Amazon has moved to 5 days a week
| despite so many people gaming the system and not actually caring
| about being in person. There's likely some algorithm driving this
| entire movement that doesn't take into account any of the real
| nuance that team dynamics requires, let alone taking into account
| that there are tangible benefits to remote work.
| qqtt wrote:
| I honestly don't think there is any algorithm. For all the
| bluster and commitment to being "data driven", none of the
| companies I've seen mandate RTO have provided any sort of data-
| driven reason why it needs to happen. Amazon's policy might as
| well be "Jassy feels it in his gut that RTO is better for the
| company so we are doing it".
|
| All the communication of RTO invokes the most fanciful and
| vague references to "magical hallway conversations" and
| "increased collaboration" without a single data point to back
| up any of the claims.
|
| It is been almost humorous to watch such stalwarts of "data
| driven decision making" turn up a giant goose egg with respect
| to actual evidence on such a huge, impactul, and far reaching
| decision.
| spydum wrote:
| Only champion data driven decisions when they confirm your
| desired outcome. Nothing new under the sun.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| Amazons RTO is a hidden layoff round. They are overstaffed
| because they hired like crazy during the pandemic, now they
| need to slimmdown and will simply wait for people to quit
| because of the RTO and fire those that dont comply. And they
| dont have to pay anything because those that leave do so out
| of free will, and the fired people were simply breaking their
| contract
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Open office plans have data that shows it costs less than
| individual offices but it is sold as "fostering
| communication" and "team culture." The cost per office is
| easier to count than the lost productivity of a distracted
| programmer.
|
| RTO has similar data. If we require a highly distributed
| workforce to be in a specific physical location x amount of
| time, y percentage will resign and we don't have to pay
| severance or announce layoffs. That's easy to calculate vs.
| the lost productivity of individuals or the impact of losing
| top performers and lowering the bar.
| bitwize wrote:
| Data-driven management is primarily to find goldbrickers and
| troublemakers through statistical mumbo-jumbo performed over
| shoddy proxy metrics. It's not supposed to promote or
| encourage sensible decisions.
| righthand wrote:
| I'm pretty sure my friend has been required to return to office
| for 3 days a week since after the pandemic.
| wepple wrote:
| That's hybrid, not full RTO
| josephcsible wrote:
| I wish this commitment had some kind of actual teeth, maybe
| something like adding "if we ever require RTO for you to keep
| your job, and you don't want to, we'll give you 2 years'
| severance with full benefits" to every remote employee's
| employment contract.
| mugivarra69 wrote:
| they are watching and will make the switch if it pays off for
| amazon. dont trust any of the big corps.
| StarterPro wrote:
| RTO Mandates are just attempted power moves by greedy CEOs.
|
| We have people living on space stations and promising nuclear
| fusion, but we still have to be in the office to be productive?
| Gimmie a break.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Google will most certainly wind down office time on short-term
| leased offices or those expiring soon. There are likely many
| around the country/world they have. These could also be smaller
| offices or areas where they think they could possibly take a wash
| with a sublease in the current commercial real-estate
| environment.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Of course it won't. It doesn't have enough desks to allow
| everyone to be present simultaneously.
| honkycat wrote:
| RTO is going to be brutal for us in 3rd tier cities like PDX
|
| The tech scene here SUCKS, but I much prefer the lifestyle to a
| large city ( plus, I can buy a house here. )
|
| Not sure what will happen if the days of remote work ends. How
| will I get a gig?
|
| There was a time in the mid 2010s were they were obsessed with
| "servant leaders" and "leading from the front"... those days are
| long-fucking-gone. Guarantee the executive class will not be
| forced into office.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Guarantee the executive class will not be forced into office.
|
| Absolutely, they will find some kind of excuse to justify their
| jet-setting around and spending time in their various homes
| across the world, while insisting that the worker bees cannot
| possibly do _their_ work outside of an office.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Plenty of places are still hiring remote. Do not lose hope
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I would be fine in going to the office if they could make it so
| that I don't get sick. I got sick all the time even before COVID.
| technick wrote:
| Companies should be forced to pay some sort of commute tax every
| time they force someone to come into an office. Driving an hour
| to the office and back home, in your car has an impact on
| everyone and everything around them, it's time they pay up.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| At least in the Bay Area, the commute _is the tax_ that follows
| a severe lack of housing supply, which cities fight tooth and
| nail against, while encouraging more office space. Low density
| and driver-centric planning also makes public transport less
| feasible.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I'm the MD of a small company. My attitude towards WFH prior and
| post pandemic could not be more stark. I am probably a bit more
| chilled out in general but that is another matter.
|
| MSP is a reasonable description of my firm. We have a helpdesk
| etc and provided calls/jobs/projects are fixed/process within
| SLAs etc then all is fine. I am now a lot more chilled about
| where people work from. In return, I know I get a lot back.
|
| However, collaboration in person is useful and no amount of email
| or webrtc is going to replace that. We loosely require two days
| per week in the office.
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