[HN Gopher] JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-O...
___________________________________________________________________
JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate
Author : yesthis
Score : 136 points
Date : 2025-01-13 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.barrons.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.barrons.com)
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I genuinely wish them luck and I hope it works.
| SSJPython wrote:
| On the one hand, capitalists and business owners want people to
| have more children in order to keep the economy functioning. On
| the other hand, they want to make work as inconvenient as
| possible and want work to encompass the life of the employee.
|
| It's becoming increasingly clear that there is a trade-off and an
| inverse relationship between career growth and family formation.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I think RTO mandates will be the straw that broke the camel's
| back, for a lot of Americans. Workers in sectors that previously
| wouldn't even think about unionizing, are now having serious
| discussions.
|
| Going back to commutes, wasting time, for no obvious reason -
| yeah, that did wake up people.
|
| EDIT: I'm talking about rigid 5 days a week RTO policy. As other
| have pointed out, having a flexible WFH policy is often "good
| enough" for most people. Not all want 100% WFH, but taking away
| the flexibility of WFH a couple of days a week, if you want,
| feels like a shitty deal.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| American society doesn't want to accept that a lot of our
| problems happen because the parents aren't home. Michael Moore
| had an interesting scene in Bowling for Columbine where he
| showed a 6 year old shooter's mother had to work hours away
| daily and wasn't home. Mine and most of my friends parents
| always had to be outside of the house during our formative
| years. We had very robust economy in the 90s/2000s that pretty
| much sacrificed family time to get it done.
|
| This is truly a past way of being. A real past, we cannot go
| back.
|
| We have a way of solving this for many workers and any company
| not in tune with this beautiful thing is unacceptable to my
| heart (and hopefully many others).
| rpcope1 wrote:
| I agree but would take it further: a very aggressive income
| tax on any non-primary earner in a household that has a total
| income above 2 or 3 times the median wage. I know there's a
| lot of "line must go up" types that salivate at the idea of
| maximizing worker participation rate and GDP, but I think
| life is probably better when the thumb is put on the scale
| such that only one breadwinner is encouraged (no matter their
| gender).
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| If you think that wouldn't be the man you've got a rude
| awakening headed your way. Thanks for setting back women &
| equality 50+ years...
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| Wait - how can you say remote is comparable with in-office,
| then tell me a work from home mother is going to look after
| her 6-yr-old while doing her job and not split her attention
| & efforts?
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Being near the child is important. Our economy was so
| insane that a new mother/father was not be able to spend
| the first few years with that child even though we had
| every means of allowing them to do so (for many workers,
| not all).
|
| Being there to pickup the kid from school is important.
|
| Getting lunch with your SO is important.
|
| Being in your neighborhood is important.
|
| Those two hours of sleep is important.
|
| What nonsense perks can a company can offer me compared to
| things like that. I don't even know if you can pay me
| enough to go without that (If I have the means to get that,
| that's what I'll do).
| tombert wrote:
| Even if she put in the exact same effort for the company,
| if she worked from home she might not have a multi-hour
| commute every day, which could still translate to more
| attention being paid to the six-year-old.
| riskable wrote:
| Oh give it up. Very few jobs require 100% attention. At my
| job I'm on the phone at least _half_ of every day and on
| 70% of those calls I only need at most 10% of my attention.
|
| The rest of the time I'm going through emails, filling out
| endless bureaucratic forms/documents, doing mandatory
| training, and every now and again I get to actually _write
| some code_ (more likely: reviewing PRs), LOL! My
| performance reviews are always spectacular and I 'm the
| only one in our (much) larger team that's actually 100% in
| compliance/up-to-date with everything and completing all my
| work on time.
|
| The one thing all those tasks have in common? They can wait
| five minutes while I take care of something and if I'm on
| the phone I can do something else entirely while I'm
| listening. Just the other day I did--the horror!--laundry
| while I was on a call discussing how we should move forward
| to solve a problem. And I was the one speaking most of the
| time while I folded my laundry and put it away!
|
| I could _easily_ watch a 6yo and do my job at the same
| time. Based on how much real "work" comes out of your
| average corporate office employee I'm certain they could do
| the same.
|
| Employers should give zero fucks about what their employees
| are doing while they're at work as long as they get all
| their work done on time and don't cause the company any
| problems (and no conflicts of interest). We hire people to
| get things done not to dress a certain way or keep a chair
| warm in a very specific place all day!
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Hah, just yesterday I had a conversation where an
| individual told me that I have no pride in my work if I
| don't devote 100% attention to it and I guess today's
| generation has no shame. I politely pointed out that I
| work based on results requested. If someone wants
| different results, they should adjust accordingly.
|
| But no.. you want 110% and everyone looking busy,
| because.. manamagement does not know how to manage..
|
| No offense, but to me it shows severe lack of skill in
| management class.
| intended wrote:
| Remote jobs are essentially saving people about 1 hour of
| travel time, per day.
|
| Assuming a 5 day week, and an 8 hour day, thats a 10%
| salary bump. In practice it's much more, since thats time
| you get back to spend on a variety of things, that just
| getting more money wont provide. Being at home, means
| breaks or down time help you get stuff done, and save even
| more time.
|
| WFH allows for many virtuous cycles to be set up, IT moves
| wealth away from down town areas, and into lower cost of
| living regions, letting people save more money, and
| invigorating local commerce.
|
| MY guess is that WFH is what society needs as a whole,
| wherever it can get it. Cities and municipalities should
| plan and compete to get the largest number of people
| working from home within their boundaries. Get reliable and
| safe mass transit up and running, and you can even cut down
| on short hop fuel consumption.
|
| Money concentration is great when it helps generate more
| wealth for humanity at large. If it's only going to a small
| group, then distributing it amongst the broader populace
| will (should) drive up demand, resulting in more economic
| activity, and therefore a stronger economy.
|
| Heck, extend that logic to a global scale, and you've
| basically created a reflection of outsourcing. Do WFH
| instead.
| soco wrote:
| Another data point: behind the iron curtain quite often both
| parents were working. Yet the situation got very different
| form the States, so I'm not sure that's the big cause of
| shit.
| bko wrote:
| So why do companies insist?
|
| If it has no meaningful impact on productivity, and workers
| don't like it (including a lot of managers), why push it?
|
| That's why I believe that companies have some evidence (or
| belief) that work from home employees are not as productive,
| enough so to wage this political battle and pay loads in office
| expenses.
| teddyh wrote:
| It is extremely generous of you to assume that those who push
| for RTO have the company's interest in mind.
| bko wrote:
| Okay, so what's the point? Just to piss of employees and
| waste money on real-estate and snacks?
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| Organizations consist of many individuals with different
| motivations, so it's hard to ascribe a single reason to
| an individual or group.
|
| Here are some of the real and assumed reasons that
| companies are pushing for this:
|
| - They have accepted tax breaks or other financial
| benefits from cities tied to specific headcounts or jobs
| created
|
| - They are locked into longer term leases or own the
| building outright and want to make use of their sunk
| costs
|
| - They found that (on average?) remote employees are less
| productive
|
| - They want to encourage employees to find another
| employer
|
| - It's a control/showing-off thing
|
| There seems to be a financial motivation behind this and
| apparently employee happiness/productivity doesn't appear
| to be part of it. I [anecdata warning] don't see
| employers mentioning any sort of commute benefit/subsidy
| for returning to the office nor do I see 'remote
| employment' touted as a benefit so these decisions are
| being made without any consideration for employees.
|
| I guess pick from one of the above and figure out which
| way a company stands to benefit - there's your answer.
| verteu wrote:
| I've found that RTO is mainly useful for new employees. They
| have lots of novice questions, false assumptions, and sub-
| optimal workflows that are most easily corrected in person
| (where the barrier to talking or noticing issues is lower).
|
| For ICs with good experience/independence, I haven't noticed
| any benefit.
| gretch wrote:
| One aspect I rarely see discussed on these messages boards,
| but one of critical importance, is the role that in-office
| has on developing new employees over time.
|
| Imagine you are a new grad who just got hired but all the
| senior employees all work remote. How do you learn the trade?
| It's much harder to become established.
|
| However senior employees who were established already pre
| covid don't experience this problem.
|
| If you are the leader of the company, you realize that one
| day all of these senior ppl will retire one day and the
| people who are juniors today will be the main work force.
| Will they be just as good in this remote-first environment?
|
| Maybe yes, maybe no, either way it's a huge unknown and that
| means big risk.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| My last company was fully remote and went through an
| expansion of hiring a lot of jrs and co-ops. They had a
| pretty well developed onboarding & mentoring process but it
| was still very hard. In the end I saw the same people be
| successful in a remote-first environment as I suspect would
| have been successful in-office. I believe it was harder on
| the seniors and other mentors though.
| convolvatron wrote:
| personally I've come to believe that's not about the real
| estate investments. maybe some. nor just a generic assumption
| that people working at home are slacking off, maybe some. and
| not about the desire to express domination in person, maybe
| some.
|
| I think that WFH substantially shifts the power balance to
| the worker. if I don't have to worry about my commute, or
| which city or country I'm actually working in, then the
| barriers to me changing employer start to really drop to
| zero. so if I feel bad enough about the situation, I can just
| spin up a new job without changing .. anything.
|
| I understand if everyone else is WFH and I'm only hiring in
| office, that puts me at a disadvantage. I'm still willing to
| consider this thesis.
| intended wrote:
| Soft layoffs.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| I've heard "The Great Resignation" only 2 years ago about quiet
| quitters and people who would switch employers in a heartbeat
| when made to RTO.
|
| The opposite has happened. Workers are craving jobs harder than
| since the financial crisis.
| intended wrote:
| Causation and correlation.
|
| The job market is different. Workers will take what they can,
| till they land a remote role. Remote jobs are in high demand.
| Finnucane wrote:
| "We're spending a bucket of money on a new office tower, and
| you're damn well going to it."
| exabrial wrote:
| I generally like working in the office. I get more completed, I
| enjoy my coworkers, communication is easier, and I'm visible to
| management.
|
| If it came down to RTO, or a 4 day work week, It would be an
| unbelievably simple choice: 4 day week.
| greenchair wrote:
| when people say 4 day week, do they mean 4 10 hour days or work
| 32 hours a week?
| stinkbutt wrote:
| extroverts are not going to win this war
| nielsbot wrote:
| Can you explain this? I don't understand the point you're
| making.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| I have an extroverted colleague and they really like to chat
| and make events and go for walks and ....
|
| These people probably are miserable in a remote only setting.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| https://archive.ph/PI7vb
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| thank you. Also, were you aware that 0xcafef00d is not included
| in the wikipedia article on hexspeak? is 0xCAFEFOOD used as a
| magic number in any systems?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak
| nine_zeros wrote:
| My unioned wife lives a life I can only dream of. The respect,
| the dignity of her job makes me feel like I made the wrong choice
| by getting into tech.
|
| Unionization is the answer. For a long time, tech workers were
| gaslighted into thinking that unions will not let them get paid
| high salaries.
|
| Guess what, without unions, tech workers don't even have job
| stability. Forget high salaries.
|
| Vote for unions.
| nielsbot wrote:
| To see pro-union comments like this on Hacker News gives me
| hope.
| svillar wrote:
| Same boat as you and agree 100%.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Tech workers may not have job stability (but compare to say,
| farm workers), but it's a pretty tough argument to say that
| they don't have high salaries. Even for the highly educated
| like civil engineers and librarians, tech workers out earn most
| of them.
|
| Unionizing tech workers may or may not be a good idea, but
| finances would be comparatively down the list.
| EncomLab wrote:
| The key to me is the flexibility - I have the option of WFH 2
| days per week, but most weeks I'm in the office 5 days (sometimes
| a half day on Saturday) because I am fortunate to have a "real
| office" with a door, a nice view, a stocked break area - and no
| home distractions. If I was still in a cube farm with a barely
| stocked vending machine (where I spent the vast majority of my
| career) I'd be using every WFH moment I could get.
|
| The key discussion should not be WFH vs. RTO - it should be why
| do people hate the office they are expected to return to?
| zeusk wrote:
| I'm betting for a large part of the WFH crowd - commute and
| home prices (near the offices) are the biggest sticking points.
| smcleod wrote:
| Commute, noise, lighting, desk setup, open plan offices, hot
| dealing and generally having to sit in some corporate office
| rather than my own home. I'm an adult - I'll work where I want
| and that will never been an office ever again.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It isn't just the commute. Life is greatly simplified and
| improved when you can run the dishwasher or throw a load of
| laundry in during the day. God forbid you want to, you know,
| visit a business during business hours as well.
|
| Of course management doesn't like to hear this. They'd rather
| you stare at a wall when there is nothing in front of you I
| guess.
| switch007 wrote:
| > why do people hate the office they are expected to return to?
|
| They hate it because it's designed to be hated. The discomfort
| is the point. You're meant to know your place and be reminded
| of it everyday.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I'd argue that's a side effect, not an intent... but you
| never know.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| the intent of creating an office environment that is
| pleasant to work in is rarely something that employees
| provide enough input into. I would argue that the side
| effect of making an office that disrespects some employees
| perferences is more than a "blind spot", it's a "I don't
| give a damn"
|
| Examples: - talkative/noisy areas - lighting level -
| speakerphones/headphones/cellphone conversations -
| kitchen/ping pong/foosball noises - privacy/divider
| existence/divider height - personalization -
| lighting/glare/sunlight/color reproduction -
| start/stop/break schedule - "cool" versus "comfortable",
| "public" vs "private" - "corner office" versus "bull pen"
|
| In my new office, I was given the choice to rank my
| preference from nine desks in a small area (group/team
| cluster, because "synergy"). I didn't even bother asking if
| I could sit closer to people I like or identify with (the
| parents of children at home subgroup).
| galleywest200 wrote:
| I am not paid for the two hours of sitting in traffic (one hour
| to work, one hour back). The company does not reimburse for
| gas, car insurance, vehicle wear and tear, etc. Take the bus?
| Not sure they pay for bus fare either.
|
| Those are two hours every single week-day that I could use to
| either do more work for the company or, more realistically, do
| self-improvement tasks or hobbies.
| estebank wrote:
| > Not sure they pay for bus fare either.
|
| A lot of companies have commuter benefits that cover bus fare
| at a minimum. Sometimes it is "free" money, sometimes it is
| "pay for your bus pass with pre-tax money".
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I'm paying _my own commute_ into the office. I take on the risk
| of auto travel at the busiest time of the day. I can't get far
| enough on my lunch to truly take a break and I can still get
| fired for actions taken during lunch which makes it more of an
| unpaid hour. I'm forced to live somewhere the company wants me
| to live which may be overpriced, crime-ridden, and have
| terrible schooling.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| 3 in, 2 out here but I'm in the office for four days just
| because I work better in the office.
|
| My one bedroom apartment is my home. Not an office to work in.
|
| Maybe if I had a spare room, but I like the feeling of leaving
| work at work and coming home not to know I need to work here
| tomorrow.
| jmspring wrote:
| RTO is more than "why do they hate the office they are expected
| to return to".
|
| I've not had to do this. I've been fully remote for over a
| decade.
|
| If I am hired as remote and then the company changes its policy
| later requiring me to go in, that is a change of the employment
| contract. AWS was particularly insidious as people are required
| to go to the office where the work/team they are part of are
| assigned to.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| Labor unions seem like the wrong model for organizing "knowledge
| workers." A professional association like the American Medical
| Association might be a better way to structure things.
|
| One difference is how they gain leverage. Labor unions seem to
| rely on the fact that they are the ones _right there_ who can
| work in a factory, clean a facility, etc. But capital sort of did
| an end run around some of that by literally packing factories up
| and shipping them overseas. That seems pretty easy to do to
| knowledge workers as well. At least to some degree and at some
| level.
|
| This is far outside anything I've read extensively about, and
| it'd be interesting to read more.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Labor unions seem like the wrong model for organizing people
| in a lot of "knowledge workers." A professional association
| like the American Medical Association might be a better way to
| structure things.
|
| Please explain--knowledge workers are still workers and the
| same benefits that labor unions provide to other workers apply
| just as much here.
|
| Secondly, why would I ever care about a professional
| organization if I can't use it to collectively bargain? It
| doesn't seem to work this way for doctors; why would it work
| this way for us?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Knowledge workers do not need to be there in the office like
| the labor unions. This can be used both ways. The WFH crowd
| uses it say they can work from home. The GP is suggesting
| companies thinking that if we don't need in-office workers,
| why not just offshore it altogether?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > why not just offshore it altogether?
|
| Policy equivalent to tariffs to make it unfavorable to
| offshore vs hiring onshore talent. I.R.C. SS174 implements
| this concept with an amortization delta between US and non-
| US based development and R&D cost accounting, for example.
|
| "We can make you come into the office because we say so or
| we'll just offshore." might be challenging in the current
| zeitgeist.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| How does 174 work with a outside contractor company?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Knowledge workers do not need to be there in the office
| like the labor unions.
|
| Nothing about a labor union implies this, either, just that
| labor is necessary to produce revenue. This is still true
| for service-based companies, even if it takes longer for
| underinvesting in labor to hurt.
|
| > The GP is suggesting companies thinking that if we don't
| need in-office workers, why not just offshore it
| altogether?
|
| This is true regardless of if you're in a union or not. I'm
| not going just to toss the baby out with the bathwater.
| There isn't a situation where I _don 't_ want a union
| outside of maybe self-employment.
| grapesodaaaaa wrote:
| I would do either in a heartbeat to maintain my remote status.
| bickfordb wrote:
| FWIW medical workers often belong to unions
| silverquiet wrote:
| > capital sort of did an end run around some of that by
| literally packing factories up and shipping them overseas.
|
| Knowledge workers did this to themselves by moving everything
| to the cloud and remote work. My boss was literally told by one
| of our private equity overlords that if a job can be done from
| home, then it can be done from India. They proved good on their
| word by doing it to my job within two years. And that was
| before the current era of mass layoffs. I was here warning
| people to this effect and making myself rather unpopular back
| during the boom times.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I'd like to see a stop to abusive practices like unpaid
| overtime, but I doubt that any form of organization is going to
| end RTO.
| Aunche wrote:
| Medical workers are shielded from outsourcing because the vast
| majority of people who need medical care aren't going to travel
| overseas to get it.
|
| The threat of jobs being exported just means that members of
| the union or association have to embrace innovation like unions
| do in Germany rather than focus on job retention.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Oh fuck yes, let it happen. The entire finance industry will take
| note if it were to pass.
|
| Naturally, this means that JPM will take extraordinary efforts (
| OWS level ) to ensure it does not come to pass.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _JPMorgan reportedly ending remote work for more than 300k
| employees_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42669143
|
| _JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-
| Office Backlash_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677491
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I dislike RTO for one simple reason .
|
| I'm not at work to make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat.
| I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last football
| game .
|
| I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to
| acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these
| holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no
| that's not what I'm here for .
|
| Most of the time coming to the office actually adds a bunch of
| unnecessary crap that is completely unneeded. If you can't get
| your job done remotely, what's the stop you from also slacking
| off in the office. I have to go back to the office for a while
| last year times were hard and I didn't have another option .
|
| We're just talking to each other, shooting the s**, and it was
| cool to meet some Junior Devs who were just starting their
| career. But none of that made me a more productive worker.
|
| If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates is
| to keep cities sustainable.
|
| If every single office job went remote, what's the point of a
| city like New York. Who's going to willingly pay $6,000 for an
| apartment, ride the trains for over an hour a day, if you can
| just sit at home in a much cheaper city .
|
| However, to quote a famous philosopher, it's a big club and you
| ain't in it. The powers that be one as many people in office
| chairs as possible, so they're real estate holdings appreciate in
| value.
|
| Billy Bob's bagels also benefits from this, although I'd imagine
| he's not able to have the same amount of pool as the real estate
| titans
| nickff wrote:
| Maybe JPMorgan doesn't want employees like you; maybe they want
| employees who chit-chat, and become attached to their company,
| for various (non-kLoC) reasons. Not every workplace is for
| everyone.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Hell yeah, we can be a family up until the moment their
| automated performance tracking software flags me and I get
| let go!
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| Have you noticed that those who come out hardest against RTO
| - or any change/revision that doesn't fit their desires - use
| the same, unbending absolute arguments they claim to be
| fighting? Like anyone who (gasp!) might want to work in the
| office is a slacker, there to shoot the shit and at the whim
| of useless managers and executives who just count asses in
| seats?
| tombert wrote:
| I don't think that's what they're saying, they're saying
| that they don't want to be forced to come back to the
| office because they don't like it because some percentage
| of the people there are there just to shoot the shit. That
| doesn't imply that everyone who comes to the office is
| there to slack off.
| intended wrote:
| If you select the people who come out hardest against RTO,
| as opposed to the median, or mean, then ... you would
| expect this behavior, no?
|
| You sure you picked the right example category to service
| your point?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the same, unbending absolute arguments they claim to be
| fighting_
|
| Both sides are absolutely doing this. It's like the concept
| of multiple equilibria has temporarily left the zeitgeist.
| reidbk wrote:
| Totally true. A company and its leadership are free to set
| the rules and expectations. It's their company, not yours.
| You (we) might not fit in a new iteration of "their" company
| Also, in exchange for the strong compensation and benefits
| that I believe lots of us in finance, tech, etc enjoy - we
| might have to give acquiesce back on some things.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to
| acquire goods and services
|
| Social currency is also a thing, which is much more difficult
| to gain in a remote setting - if not impossible. I don't go to
| work to socialize either, but I'm not naive enough to think
| that without an extremely established career and reputation at
| an org that I'll be promoted or employed strictly on merit.
| there is always some degree of social-ness involved in those
| kinds of decisions. I'm not saying that's how things _should_
| be, it 's just how they are.
| benreesman wrote:
| There will always be some social-ness, but let's be real that
| it's out of fucking control right now. I've been doing this
| professionally for more than 20 years and "who you know not
| what you know" hasn't run this badly amok in that entire
| time.
|
| The industry is very unsettled right now: credible (or at
| least loud) opinions on AI range from "fancy autocomplete
| nothingburger" to "programmers are obsolete starting now",
| RTO is in some weird ass place where it's really unclear the
| merits or lack thereof, consolidation of half the S&P into ~7
| companies and the whole startup pipeline running through guys
| who fit in a banquet room is uh, not highly not a working
| free market.
|
| This is how you get a chorus of "talent shortage" on one side
| and a chorus of "CS is cooked fam" on the other: software
| engineering jobs are experiencing a market failure, price
| discovery isn't happening, and shit is going to be weird
| until the market starts working again.
| CptFribble wrote:
| Megacorps being naturally risk-averse, and the lion's share
| of the rest of the capital being held by that banquet room,
| it's going to take one or a few scrappy startups hitting it
| big while also committing to WFH/etc to get the banquet to
| loosen the purse strings a bit and kick off a new wave of
| investment a la Web 2.0 post-dotcom-crash (which was
| coincidentally also post-oh-noes-outsourcing-1.0)
|
| That plus a few years of new successes _might_ get the
| megacorps to start hiring en masse and possibly see the
| value in WFH again, but it 'll take a lot of these stars
| aligning to produce several new unicorns that can eat a few
| lunches to get there, which will probably take the rest of
| the 2020s and possibly part of the 2030s (based on the last
| time this happened, going from 1999 crash to the 2010/2011
| renaissance)
|
| If I was a betting man, I'd guess the first wave of new
| startups will be unifying a huge dataset of local info with
| AI into like the AirBNB-of-local-whatever personal
| concierge sort of thing, like OpenTable on steroids. but
| I'm frequently wrong, so -\\_(tsu)_/-
| intended wrote:
| RTO is studied and found to be equal to, or less efficient
| and profitable than, hybrid.
|
| My guess is that RTO mandates act as a lay off.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates
| is to keep cities sustainable.
|
| The entire point is to get you to quit because firing people is
| hard, and they don't care if their best talent leaves.
| awkward wrote:
| Development work at all of these major financial companies is
| likely distributed across three continents and 6 time zones,
| nevermind the network of offices in multiple major cities. Even
| "Hub" models likely have cleave points like design in NY,
| frontend development in LA, testing in Mumbai.
|
| The end effect is employees schlepping to the office to sit
| down and hop on a zoom call.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > If you can't get your job done remotely, what's the stop you
| from also slacking off in the office.
|
| I find slacking off in the office so much easier than slacking
| off at home, mainly because people (like CEOs of companies with
| RTO mandates) automatically assume people in the office ==
| people being productive. You could leave your seat and go to a
| meeting room, and people won't know if you are having a genuine
| meeting or if you are just talking to yourself. Or you could
| bring your laptop to a meeting room and people won't know if
| you focusing or if you are slacking off. You could even stay in
| your seat, and people won't easily notice that the GitHub page
| you have open on your monitor is actually for your side
| project. You could open a long and useless company email on
| your monitor and daydream for a few minutes. In contrast, when
| people know you are at home, they default to thinking you are
| slacking off. You need to actively work to prove you are
| working.
|
| > If every single office job went remote, what's the point of a
| city like New York.
|
| The point is to enjoy the city (whether museums or bars) after
| work hours.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates
| is to keep cities sustainable.
|
| In a few cases (certainly not all), it's to keep the c-suite's
| reputation sustainable.
|
| If you're a CEO that signed a lease or construction contract on
| any piece of property since, idk, 2015, you have, in some way,
| burned a _lot_ of money on a piece of ground that could have,
| in many cases, been replaced with a far cheaper internet
| connection and suite of remote work applications.
|
| You have two options at this point:
|
| 1) explain this bonfire of cash to the board and possibly to
| shareholders, which is a pretty good way to see yourself shown
| the door
|
| or
|
| 2) justify your expense by telling the rank-and-file to get
| back in the office and make use of the capital you are now
| locked into having.
| hn72774 wrote:
| I'd love to see data on RTO mandates vs real estate lease/own
| status.
|
| For companies that own, Low occupancy = asset write downs =
| higher cost of capital.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Control for overhiring during the pandemic. Almost every
| RTO whiplash I've seen is a shadow restructuring.
| gruez wrote:
| >If you're a CEO that signed a lease or construction contract
| on any piece of property since, idk, 2015, you have, in some
| way, burned a lot of money on a piece of ground that could
| have, in many cases, been replaced with a far cheaper
| internet connection and suite of remote work applications.
|
| >1) explain this bonfire of cash to the board and possibly to
| shareholders, which is a pretty good way to see yourself
| shown the door"
|
| I don't get it? Is this supposed to be bad look for the CEO
| because he wasn't prescient enough to predict the covid
| pandemic and the wfh revolution 5 years before it happened?
| Given how frequent next quarters' forecasts get revised, I
| don't think the board expects CEOs to be that prescient.
| brookst wrote:
| Especially since board members are typically execs at other
| companies. Anyone remotely competent knows that the macro
| changes leading to remote work surprised everyone. I just
| don't find it credible that RTO is about CEO's wanting to
| keep office leases looking like smart decisions.
|
| If anything, it's exactly the opposite. If remote work is
| genuinely good for the company, a good CEO will acknowledge
| that and work to minimize downside from unnecessary leases.
|
| IMO execs are often _wrong_ about RTO, but for simple cause
| /effect reasons, not elaborate conspiracies to
| retroactively justify office leases.
| phil21 wrote:
| > I just don't find it credible that RTO is about CEO's
| wanting to keep office leases looking like smart
| decisions.
|
| It's not credible. It's stuff folks make up from a myopic
| view of the situation. I have had more than a few
| intimate very open conversations with executives on the
| topic and not a single one has stated this as a reason.
| In fact, many are happy to be able to cancel expensive
| office leases when able.
|
| The executives may be wrong, but as a group they
| certainly understand sunk cost theory. Most of them are
| even smart enough to not to fall for the fallacy by the
| time they reach that point in their careers. Of course
| lots of self-serving myopic behavior in that group as
| well.
|
| It's difficult for some to empathize that there is
| genuine disagreement on what makes for a more productive
| workforce. That an individual's performance is irrelevant
| - group and team performance is the metric that actually
| matters. One does not necessarily correlate with the
| other.
|
| It's very interesting to me that folks can hold the
| opinion remote learning is far deficient to on-campus
| classrooms, but simultaneously state that WFH is good for
| everyone. I think it's far more nuanced - and certain
| types of personalities and life stages will do better in
| one or the other.
|
| I've worked remote most of my career since the late 90's
| - I have hired dozens if not hundreds of remote employees
| over this time. There is absolutely a group of workers
| who do quite well under such conditions, and some who do
| horribly. And it doesn't mean the latter can't be
| productive anywhere - or that these groups are static
| over an individual's entire career. This was not a
| controversial opinion prior to the pandemic.
|
| You can go further into company/team structure and
| communication methods as well. Some have the culture to
| do remote well, some do not.
|
| In the end I'm confident the market will figure out the
| right mix. Companies will be punished for making the
| wrong choices for themselves here.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > I have had more than a few intimate very open
| conversations with executives on the topic and not a
| single one has stated this as a reason. In fact, many are
| happy to be able to cancel expensive office leases when
| able.
|
| And that's just it: a lot of them aren't able.
|
| Especially if they own the facility.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They're not expected to have predicted the next pandemic;
| rather, they're expected to come up with novel ideas of how
| to do business. That's the point, or, rather, the
| justification for why just one year of one job can have
| them set for life. You get paid an insane amount of money -
| many multiples of the median lifetime income of Americans -
| because you make the right bets that either save the
| company massive sums of money, create new revenue streams,
| or both.
|
| We were having "disaster recovery" days at my old employer
| in 2015. You found a place outside the office to attempt to
| do your work from, and made adjustments to make your
| various pieces of technology work. It worked, and the
| implications of it working should have been obvious to our
| betters.
| gruez wrote:
| >They're not expected to have predicted the next
| pandemic; rather, they're expected to come up with novel
| ideas of how to do business. That's the point, or,
| rather, the justification for why just one year of one
| job can have them set for life. You get paid an insane
| amount of money - many multiples of the median lifetime
| income of Americans - because you make the right bets
| that either save the company massive sums of money,
| create new revenue streams, or both.
|
| Taking this at face value, what does that have to do with
| getting an office in 2015? It seems like the same
| "hindsight is 20/20" problem as before. Maybe the CEO was
| busy transforming the company to use blockchain or
| something. You can't expect a CEO to nail every bet.
| Microstrategy is (was?) doing great because of their
| bitcoin treasury strategy, but I doubt many boards are
| getting upset that their CEOs didn't buy bitcoin, even
| though that would arguably be a better return than not
| leasing an office.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Taking this at face value, what does that have to do
| with getting an office in 2015? It seems like the same
| "hindsight is 20/20" problem as before. Maybe the CEO was
| busy transforming the company to use blockchain or
| something. You can't expect a CEO to nail every bet.
|
| Odds are, if they were "busy transforming the company to
| use blockchain" they blew absolutely massive amounts of
| money.
| nielsbot wrote:
| It pains me to say this, but I find in-person discussions more
| productive than online ones. It's not just shooting the shit--
| for me, spontaneous social chats often lead to work-related
| brainstorming. Being in the office next to co-workers leads to
| more spontaneous discussions.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Yep. Also in person mentoring and spontaneous collaboration.
|
| In person and remote both have advantages and will work
| better or worse for different people, organizations, or
| situations.
| com2kid wrote:
| The number of times, early in my career, I had senior
| engineers come and hold impromptu learning sessions is one
| of the reasons why I'm such a good engineer today.
|
| Being able to have robust discussions about software
| engineering, best practices and design patterns and all
| that good stuff and have other engineers hear that
| discussions happening and stop by to give their input is
| incredibly valuable to both personal growth and oftentimes
| the success of a product.
| jppope wrote:
| I find the opposite. People frequently show up to meetings in
| person unprepared. They are also way less likely to document
| the discussion - which can now be done with AI transcribing
| the discussion... which is even more productive. There is way
| more shooting the shit in person.
| badgersnake wrote:
| I'm not sure about AI transcribing the discussion, is a
| great idea generally, as I'm not sure I want all the
| company secrets sent off to some random AI startup, but I
| also don't see what precludes you from using it to
| transcribe an in person meeting.
| intended wrote:
| Have you ever thought of why? Just 'magic', is an open
| doorway for bias and unreliable memory to enter and influence
| the conversation.
|
| Is it perhaps that there are specific people, who are doing
| the ideation, or are particularly good at helping you think?
| Or is it anyone and everyone? If it's anyone, then is it a
| social / biological quirk? Is it something else?
|
| For everyone reading, this is worth reflecting upon, if only
| to move our regular WFH / RTO discussions on HN forward.
| com2kid wrote:
| Don't overcomplicate things. Whiteboards are way better
| than even the best of online tools and drawing with a
| mouse.
|
| For that matter, post-it notes on a wall are better than
| JIRA.
|
| At one workplace everyone had glass table so they could
| draw on with markers. People could literally come up to
| your desk and you could work through problems together on
| one end of the table.
|
| The best online tools are garbage compared to physicality.
| intended wrote:
| These are your > spontaneous social chats often lead to
| work-related brainstorming. Being in the office next to
| co-workers leads to more spontaneous discussions.
|
| I submit that this isn't my reality.I never spontaneously
| break out a whiteboard., the same way I dont
| spontaneously break out into a dance routine.
|
| I do hope I'm in the majority, otherwise I'm really
| unsure of what to make of all the work places I've been
| at.
| com2kid wrote:
| > I submit that this isn't my reality.I never
| spontaneously break out a whiteboard., the same way I
| dont spontaneously break out into a dance routine.
|
| Countless times I've walked up to someone and asked "hey
| can I work through this problem on a whiteboard with
| you."
|
| And while I haven't done so myself, I have had coworkers
| spontaneously break into dance routines before. (Ok that
| has only happened once...)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Don't overcomplicate things. Whiteboards are way better
| than even the best of online tools and drawing with a
| mouse.
|
| I'll never understand this. All my whiteboard diagrams
| look like shit. My drawing skills suck, my writing is
| nearly illegible.
|
| Most online tools have excellent diagram shapes, nice and
| customizable arrows, good templates, etc.
|
| I can make nice diagrams much faster on any of those than
| in a real whiteboard. A lot less messy as well.
|
| I also worked in a place where we could draw on desks. I
| fucking hated it, it was the worst possible place to
| brainstorm anything, and made the place very noisy
| because people were invited to have those discussions on
| desks, and it was an open office plan where others were
| trying to work.
|
| It is small wonder that I became extremely more
| productive at home. I don't need to wear headphones all
| day long, meetings tend to be more focused (since people
| don't like sitting on online meetings as long), online
| tooling for communication ia top notch these days.
|
| I can't think of a single upside of being in the office.
| com2kid wrote:
| My whiteboard diagrams are also ugly, but I can draw ugly
| diagrams on a real whiteboard without cognitive overhead.
| Meanwhile diagraming tools have friction that a pen
| doesn't.
|
| Also I've been to plenty of meetings where engineers
| split off into multiple sub groups and diagramed
| different ideas on parts of the board and then everyone
| joined back up to discuss. Can zoom technically do that?
| Sure but it sucks.
| nunez wrote:
| It's much more difficult to save and revisit state with
| whiteboards and post-its, but when an entire team is
| colo'ed and able to work together on something, I agree;
| nothing comes close.
| nunez wrote:
| I'm a sales engineer. Given that a big chunk of our job is
| face-to-face, I can answer this.
|
| We are a social species. Body language, eye contact and
| facial expressions are more important than the spoken word
| during a conversation. They're also extremely subtle. You
| don't think about someone leaning in or mimicking your
| position (that's a thing!) when you're saying something
| interesting, but we instinctively pick up on these cues and
| use them to steer conversations (or, in this case, know to
| double-down on whatever we're talking about).
|
| None of these transmit well over VC.
|
| Consider eye contact, for example. Maintaining eye contact
| with someone means that you're staring almost directly at
| your webcam's lens, which is at best unideal (if you're use
| to being on camera) and, at worst, impossible (since
| you're, naturally, staring at the facsimile of a person in
| the box on the lower-left-hand corner of your Zoom window).
| Webcams are AWKWARD.
|
| Furthermore, a Zoom meeting has to compete with the
| billions of other things that you're doing on your
| computer. A face-to-face meeting competes with your
| calendar and your inner thoughts. This matters a lot for
| key conversations.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Virtual video sound is rarely full duplex meaning the first
| person to speak blocks others and you have these really
| awkward pauses and latency that interrupt natural
| communication. Then, add in the lack of body language cues
| that are difficult to see over video and the pace of
| communication becomes slower. Ideas don't easily bounce
| around a team because the technology creates a one-person-at-
| a-time framework.
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| > I'm not at work to make friends,
|
| Most of my great friends I met at work
| redserk wrote:
| And my friends are from a sports group that meets up every
| Sunday, who aren't any bit related to work.
|
| Some people prefer meeting others outside of work and there's
| nothing wrong with it. My coworkers are wonderful folks but,
| frankly, won't become beer-buddies.
| craftkiller wrote:
| > what's the point of a city like New York
|
| Pizza and Bagels. If the rest of the country got their shit
| together and figured out how to make acceptable pizza and
| bagels then I could leave this city.
| neilv wrote:
| Cambridge, MA, has Bagelsaurus, but unfortunately almost as
| expensive cost of living.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xup2Lcd4Ers&t=1m40s
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| > I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last
| football game
|
| You average Joe/manager in the office judges you based on this.
|
| ( I too don't like it)
| devmunchies wrote:
| > I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates is to keep cities
| sustainable.
|
| The main important factor IMO is mentorship of junior talent.
| (I'm speaking for technical orgs)
|
| Viewing the organization as a living organism where an employee
| is a "cell", then there are material benefits in the "cellular
| replication" of talent and rejuvenation of the next generation.
|
| It can definitely be true that RTO is worse for an individual
| engineer but better for the health of the organization long-
| term. Both can be true.
|
| In my experience, remote only companies tend to prefer a higher
| ratio of senior employees for this reason. It's plug-an-play.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Completely, agree. I think am lot of senior engineers work
| well independently and feel more productive at home. They
| miss that this isn't always the case for more junior ones.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I think we're all getting the reasons for RTO wrong. It's not
| just executives liking a certain work environment or a way to
| hold employees accountable. It's a core part of their business.
| If real estate in overpriced cities is worth a lot less, JPMC's
| own property, its assets, and so on are all worth less. What
| happens to JPMC if people with loans decide to stop making
| payments and just default because their property is worth a lot
| less than the loan? To prevent this, they're trying to
| strengthen the RTO trend.
| parineum wrote:
| > We're just talking to each other, shooting the s*, and it was
| cool to meet some Junior Devs who were just starting their
| career. But none of that made me a more productive worker.
|
| You're not the only employee of the company. They aren't trying
| to maximize _your_ output, they're trying to maximize the
| company's output. You being present for a junior dev to ask
| quick questions to (the type that don't get asked if they have
| to message you) will increase their productivity much more than
| your productivity loss. It isn't all about you.
|
| > If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates
| is to keep cities sustainable.
|
| This is, essentially, a conspiracy theory. RTO is happening
| because management thinks it will increase productivity. Right
| or wrong, it's crazy to assume the are all working together to
| keep cities alive.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There is no universal answer to RTO vs WFH.
|
| What _is_ abhorrent is employers changing these terms as if
| they 're trivial. We probably need legal protections treating
| swapping workplace requirements as requiring someone to
| relocate or accept lower pay.
|
| > _If every single office job went remote, what 's the point of
| a city like New York_
|
| You really don't see the value of New York beyond its office
| buildings?
|
| > _it 's a big club and you ain't in it. The powers that be one
| as many people in office chairs as possible, so they're real
| estate holdings appreciate in value_
|
| This is a Bay Area conspiracy theory that doesn't make a lot of
| sense, particularly when the cost and need for layoffs explains
| the effect more parsimoniously.
| jltsiren wrote:
| > If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates
| is to keep cities sustainable.
|
| More like to keep cities unsustainable. If a few major real
| estate companies went bankrupt, forcing the rest to lower the
| rents, a lot of wealth would be destroyed. At the same time,
| cities like New York would become even more desirable due to
| being more affordable.
|
| NYC is still the #1 city in the world. There are plenty of
| things you can't find anywhere else. Cities like that - cities
| that offer something unique - would benefit from being more
| affordable. Mid-tier cities that exist primarily for economic
| reasons would probably suffer from a real estate crash.
| linotype wrote:
| > If every single office job went remote, what's the point of a
| city like New York
|
| Yikes, if the only reason you're in NYC is a job and you don't
| go out I highly recommend you find a new job/city.
| com2kid wrote:
| > We're just talking to each other, shooting the s*, and it was
| cool to meet some Junior Devs who were just starting their
| career. But none of that made me a more productive worker.
|
| I solved an incredibly difficult technical problem while
| grabbing lunch during PAX with fellow co-workers.
|
| Spending time face-to-face with team members as a lead help me
| keep track of who needed some extra time off, who was at risk
| of burn out, and who was being harassed out of band by PMs.
|
| One of the most powerful things my team did was have cookies
| out in front of her desks everyday. Other devs would stop by
| the chit chat and it let us keep a pulse on how the entire war
| was doing. My team was able to get a lot more done and hope
| everyone succeed because we had not just technical connections
| but personal connections throughout the building.
|
| Those personal connections also let me transfer top performers
| onto my team, people who would otherwise have left the org due
| to dissatisfaction with their current team.
|
| Knowing individual developers one-on-one also helps me know
| what problems they're going to have with their code and blind
| spots in their technical knowledge.
|
| Finally, there's a fact that trust is earned through time spent
| together. As a junior member of a team, I was able to propose
| some radical alternative solutions to problems because of how
| much time I'd spent talking to the tech leads above me.
|
| That said, the working conditions in most offices are so bad, I
| see what people want to stay home myself included.
|
| Even Microsoft, who years ago commissioned studies showing the
| massive productivity gains from individual offices, has gone
| against their own best practices and resorted to loud open
| office nightmare environments.
|
| I think part of this is because corporations no longer expect
| individual engineers to come up with radical solutions to hard
| problems and are okay with mediocre solutions to everyday
| problems instead.
|
| In my opinion, this results in massive numbers of employees
| being hired to create complex solutions. When one quarter of
| the employees could have got the job done if they were treated
| well.
|
| Another aspect of everything going wrong is that American
| cities are so poorly designed with constrained housing that
| commute times have gotten way out of hand. Even in the early to
| mid 2000s when I started my career it was possible for people
| to live 15 minutes from work or buy a house 20 minutes away. I
| used to have a round-trip commute time of under 10 minutes so
| of course I didn't mind coming into the office.
| hammock wrote:
| _> I dislike RTO for one simple reason . I'm not at work to
| make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat. I'm not at work so
| we can talk about who won the last football game . I go to work
| in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods
| and services. All this other crap, all these holiday parties,
| all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no that's not what
| I'm here for ._
|
| Oldhead here. This was a common thought pattern before
| lockdowns, but only among the ~5% of people who personally
| negotiated for a work-from-home/telecommuting arrangement. And
| it was not normal. It was vaguely looked down upon by
| superiors, unless you had been with the company for a long time
| and had proven your value. And among peers it was a little
| "weird."
|
| "Return to office" post-lockdown is not the same thing as "Work
| from home" pre-lockdown. The RTO thought pattern is similar,
| but the social feeling around it has flipped - is normal and
| not weird. (Yet still vaguely looked down on by some
| management)
| SirMaster wrote:
| Then maybe you aren't a culture fit for that employer / office?
|
| My experience is just so different. I love the vibe and the
| camaraderie of my office. It makes it fun to work there.
|
| Just sitting at home working, never interacting with people in
| person sounds really dull and boring and cold to me. I had to
| do that in 2020 and I hated it.
|
| Productivity is nice, but IMO it's not all about productivity.
| As a worker I value my enjoyment of the job, and just being a
| robotic super productive worker is not as enjoyable as actually
| feeling like you are part of a team or community and having fun
| with your fellow coworkers.
|
| We spend so much of our lives on the clock, I would hate to
| have it all just be serious productive work 100% of the time.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| > My experience is just so different. I love the vibe and the
| camaraderie of my office. It makes it fun to work there.
|
| Me too! If we had free teleporters I'd probably go into the
| office for at least half my work day, just about every day,
| voluntarily.
|
| ... I don't like it enough to pay about 15 days per year,
| every year (5 hours commuting per week, times 50 weeks,
| divided by 16 waking hours per day[1]), hundreds of dollars a
| month commuting (gas, plus insurance and depreciation on a
| car), and make every single thing that happens at home and
| requires my attention less convenient and more disruptive in
| ways that probably also amount to at least several hundred
| dollars per year, one way or another, and quite a few extra
| micromorts/micro-chances-of-crippling-injury per year (risk
| of that ~250 hours of extra driving). Plus increased
| restrictions on where you can live, which can come with
| significant (tens of thousands per year) costs in many ways,
| including in raw dollar terms.
|
| It's nice, but the cost is _really_ high. I 'd also probably
| really have fun with a supercar, but I'd rather not buy one
| just the same. Far too pricey for the benefit, to me.
|
| [1] Perhaps more to the point, that means over six _entire
| work-weeks_ of extra work time per year, uncompensated, just
| to get to and from work. A month and a half of extra work
| every year. And that 's with an hour a day spent, lots of
| people have more than 30 minutes lost per day (nb you'd need
| to include extra gassing-up stops, and extra car maintenance
| visits, divided by commute days per year, to properly account
| for this--so your commute time would need to average somewhat
| under 30 minutes each way to hit only an hour lost each day,
| probably closer to 25 minutes than 30).
| 999900000999 wrote:
| My points exactly.
|
| For example, if you want a good amount of space in NYC
| you're in Brooklyn or Queens.
|
| Your spending 45 minutes to an hour each way just getting
| to your Manhattan office.
|
| Or you live in Manhattan and spend 6k a month.
|
| Just from a raw math perspective, assuming I make 100$ an
| hour in NYC, and my Brooklyn apartment is 3k.
|
| That's 1000$ a week for the 2 hour commute if I value my
| time and apply the same rate.
|
| Let's just say a Manhattan apartment is 6k, but it's right
| across the street from the office.
|
| To make the math easy, let's estimate your BK to Manhattan
| commute time to be worth 3k a month.
|
| Vs 2K for an apartment in Philly or Chicago with a remote
| job.
|
| 4k extra a month to work in Manhattan, meaning 48k per
| year. Once you factor in taxes, you have to make about 70k
| more to make the in person NYC make sense.
|
| If the option is 150k remote or 200k in NYC you *lose*
| money going to NYC. Plus, you don't need to live in a city
| at all .
|
| If I want to I can move out to some small town in Ohio and
| buy myself a ranch. As long as I have stable internet I'm
| fine .
|
| Of course this is a moot point if RTO becomes industry
| standard which it quickly is. With my luck the options are
| probably going to be have no job or go to New York or San
| Francisco and make 170 meaning I get the worst of both
| worlds.
| nunez wrote:
| I'm with you. WFH is insanely isolating, and interacting via
| Slack/Zoom doesn't cut it for me.
|
| I hate that it's either full RTO or full WFH at so many
| places.
| dygd wrote:
| For those who don't know the famous philosopher - it's George
| Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
| freejazz wrote:
| You really misunderstand _why_ the jobs are in NYC, if you
| think that people only come to NYC for the jobs.
|
| On the same point, gosh you sound like a fun person! I know,
| I'm sure it's not part of your job to be personable. Though, I
| do wonder how an approach like that will work for most people.
| screye wrote:
| I dislike RTO because none of that happens anymore. The
| economic landscape is too paranoid (despite positive macro
| indicators) for employees to enjoy work.
|
| People don't want to chit chat, just clock in clock out.
| Layoffs threat is ever present. Remote & odd-time zone meetings
| are still here. Can't turn off my computer after 5pm. In office
| benefits are limited. Mentoring, learning-seminars and after-
| work activities are soft discouraged.
|
| Why even come in ? _____________
|
| > what's the point of a city like New York
|
| I agree that RTO mandates have to do with keeping downtown
| office space prices high. But, if you could work from anywhere,
| why wouldn't you want to be in the coolest city in the world?
| You don't need to be in Manhattan. But you can get some pretty
| great apartments while still being a 30 minutes subway ride
| from downtown.
|
| I visited NYC regularly through Covid, and it seemed quite
| lively.
|
| Remember, us programmers are a famously introverted & indoor
| bunch. Most people want to be in places with rich social lives
| apart from their smaller intimate communities.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| A lot of people actually despise living in major cities. I
| was born in one, a huge metropolis, and lived in it for the
| most of my life. For a long time I was forced to live there,
| because the jobs were there too.
|
| In may ways, the pandemic was a blessing for me. Remote work
| allowed me to move to a small city, closer to a rural area.
| If depends solely on my desire, I will never again live in a
| major city.
| nunez wrote:
| Fun fact: We have a place called Billy Bob's Bagels in Houston,
| and it's actually fantastic!
| nunez wrote:
| > If every single office job went remote, what's the point of a
| city like New York. Who's going to willingly pay $6,000 for an
| apartment, ride the trains for over an hour a day, if you can
| just sit at home in a much cheaper city .
|
| Yeah, but that's the heart of the problem here. The suburbs
| that many flocked to when WFH became acceptable are largely
| subsidized by city income. Cities are largely funded by
| employers paying hefty taxes to operate within them. Non-
| negligible portions of municipal budgets are also funded by
| small businesses that cannot exist without people working
| centrally somewhere.
|
| Until municipal governments figure out a different operating
| model, I don't think any major city can survive big companies
| pulling out en masse unless your desired end state looks like
| Detroit circa 2000.
|
| > I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to
| acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these
| holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos,
| no that's not what I'm here for .
|
| What of the people whose jobs aren't WFH compatible? "They get
| what they get?"
| HamsterDan wrote:
| Workers need to tread carefully here. If you there's no need to
| be in the office, what's to stop corporate from replacing you
| with an Indian that costs 1/3rd as much?
|
| Push back too hard on RTO and you may not have a job at all in
| five years.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Shrug. In our latest meeting our leaders had no problems hiring
| 'outside hires' for random unexpected project resulting from
| them trying to stiff US vendor ( don't get me started on how
| that makes sense ). Adding those contractors with the amount of
| time spent in meetings, we likely have already spent more than
| the money that would be paid to the vendor, but I digress.
|
| Anyway, I am mentioning it, because the usual issues with
| quality of work that had to be QC'ed immediately came up. To be
| honest, there is nothing stopping corporate, but none of the
| jobs most of us do are so easily done that it can be just put
| in a simple step by step process ( and even then its hardly a
| way to guarantee accuracy ). I guess what I am really saying
| is: if they could, they would have already.
|
| But they can't, because you get what you pay for.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Ah, the I'll replace you with an Indian routine that's been
| going on for over 25 years years of my career.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The only new thing there is they'll threaten replace you with
| AI
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Or Indian IIT grads with AI tools. For tis the sport to
| watch the engineers hoist by their collective petards.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| To be honest, I almost welcome major collapse resulting
| from AI intern imploding major US corporation with one
| bad code submission auto-approved by a contractor.
| TheGlav wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| Quality of work, communication challenges in time zones,
| language barriers, and setting a company culture are huge
| barriers to entry for workers remote from India.
|
| Minimum required wages of at least the prevailing wage and
| limited access for W2's are major ones for bringing them here.
| Even doubling the W2's wouldn't cover replacing all jobs.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| They would have done this already if they could. Timezones
| matter much more
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > what's to stop corporate from replacing you with an Indian
| that costs 1/3rd as much?
|
| I like to think the quality of my work and ability to be more
| than just a coder (setting priorities, goals, innovating on the
| product, etc) prevents that.
|
| Ultimately most tech jobs are replaceable but that's not a good
| enough reason not to. Especially since there's already pressure
| making this happen. I recently watched a previous employer
| offshore most of the dev work and it seems to be going ok to
| bad for them.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Management will replace you with a cheaper worker whenever
| possible, foreign or otherwise.
|
| Only way to ensure worker rights (and a greater share of your
| company's profits) is to fight for them and that's where unions
| come in.
| svillar wrote:
| This is a common argument that we hear time and again.
|
| My take is that this assumes the job - any job - that can be
| done remotely, can also be done by just anyone, and that there
| is someone in India or elsewhere with the same or higher level
| of critical thinking and IQ and who is willing to do it for a
| lot less pay.
|
| But maybe none of this matters. Maybe the company is OK with a
| below average warm body in a 3rd world country that can do a
| version of the job for 1/3 of the pay.
| ewhanley wrote:
| This always comes up in RTO discussions. Why haven't they
| already done it - why go through the pain of forcing an RTO
| when they can cut costs by 2/3?
| paxys wrote:
| What stopped them from doing exactly this 20 years ago? Turns
| out the differentiating factor isn't salary but talent. They
| pay you $$$$ because they can't find equivalent talent in
| India. And the talent that does exist in India isn't going to
| work for peanuts.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| You are woefully ignorant here. There are lots of cultural
| challenges (ex: IME young Indians jump jobs even more
| frequently than young Americans), the time zone coordination,
| corporate organization, matching client time zone & culture,
| etc. Talent is not an issue.
|
| Even blind statistics are not in your favor.
| ggm wrote:
| Yet both of you align to the same answer: replacing us
| employees with Indian remote workers is less likely for a
| number of reasons.
|
| But that said, you're also both ignoring relocation of the
| enterprise as a whole: employ Indians in India.
| mgh95 wrote:
| I don't think you realize LATAM such as Brazil and CR is
| becoming the go-to destination for outsourcing, not India.
| IME, it's _much_ more stable in SA than India.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| The talent abroad is also moving here for higher quality of
| life.
| Devasta wrote:
| There is absolutely no anti-offshoring properties conferred to
| your job by having a shitty office cube.
|
| These companies already offshore every change they can get, you
| aren't going to preserve your job by going in each day and
| staring at your boss with giant sad eyes like Puss in Boots.
| hibikir wrote:
| I already have teammates in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. Every
| day I chat with people in the London office.
|
| If I was at an office, I'd be spending hours on zoom anyway.
| greenchair wrote:
| nope. you are comparing apples and oranges and everyone knows
| it.
| currymj wrote:
| I generally think for many jobs, in-person is actually better.
|
| SWE in a place with good process, remote is probably fine.
| Generally similar for jobs with clear deliverables on that kind
| of time scale. if it's more research oriented, there is a huge
| benefit to being in-person in front of a whiteboard. For a job
| with shifting requirements day to day (like some legal or banking
| work), it is easier to coordinate everyone in the same office.
|
| unclear if this overcomes cost to employees of the commute,
| housing, etc., but the value is there.
|
| however there is also "worst of all possible worlds" RTO, where
| you have to commute to the office because the office is the place
| you are required to sit for your 4+ hours of Zoom calls per day
| with other colleagues in other offices. I expect a lot of
| companies are going to do this, which is totally stupid.
| jcims wrote:
| One note to consider here is that JPMC has, over the past 4-5
| years, invested over a billion dollars in renovating and
| rebuilding several major offices (270 Park and Polaris being
| major efforts).
|
| It's not entirely unlikely this is related to that as well.
| whatever1 wrote:
| RTO is a cheap way for the companies to filter out the rebels
| that they hired during Covid.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wish these places would consider remote offices in places with
| lower cost of living. Or in suburbs outside of major cities.
|
| THe worst part is the commute. Just such a waste of human life.
| srvo wrote:
| Honestly, the fact that J.P. Morgan employees are even pondering
| this credibly enough for it to get picked up by Barron's is a
| watershed moment for the labor rights movement in the U.S.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| good, my company will keep remote work and easily scoop up good
| people because we're not ones to make excuses about 'better
| office collaboration' or whatever the current joke is to help the
| real estate out
| robotnikman wrote:
| I feel like Work from Home would be a great solution to the
| housing crisis, as it would allow people to easily live in
| affordable areas. A tax break or something for businesses which
| implement WfH would be a good starting point for this.
| kkfx wrote:
| That's the good answer
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/starling-ba...
|
| AND not alone, it's time to prepare a mass resign for all
| companies pushing RTO stating clear that they are against human
| evolution, so harmful for humanity AND their heads must resign to
| end the strike.
| blased wrote:
| I worked at JPM, practically the entire US office was Indians. It
| was a mess.
|
| It's the largest bank in the world, "too big to fail" and
| apparently "too big to employ the people who are on the hook for
| their bailout".
| from-nibly wrote:
| This likely won't work. They are probably using this as a way to
| thin the herd anyway.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-13 23:03 UTC)