Hacker News Reader

Comment by oakfr | Hacker News Reader

Companies think that remote work works but they fail to realize that most of what happened over the past few months was based on prior momentum built inside the office they are carelessly ditching.

View on HN

The team I work in has done more in a month while wfh than we have ever achieved before. I guess we will be able to prove this for sure soon since it doesn't look like things are changing this year.

also most people on your team has met in person, so there's that momentum too. It's a complete different vibe when teleconferencing with people you've met several times than with those you have not.

And I don't think a quarterly on-site is enough.

I think tech workers that believe that remote is more productive really fail to grasp the enormous company incentive to have all workers remote if it were so, as it would be cheaper tax-wise, operational wise, legal wise, etc.

If it were that good, software engineering in the US would suffer the same fate as manufacturing: it would disappear to cheaper foreign workers and only specialties would survive.

> I think tech workers that believe that remote is more productive really fail to grasp the enormous company incentive to have all workers remote if it were so, as it would be cheaper tax-wise, operational wise, legal wise, etc.

Would it be? Seems like, at a minimum, various employer liabilities that exist when an employee is working independently of whether or not it is at the employer’s location become less controlled in remote work, which potentially works strongly against that.

Also, the argument you make, even in the best case, fails to grasp the difference between “is” and “has always been” and the magnitude of impact of cultural inertia in favor of what has worked well in the past.

I like this point, we've had a lot of success going remote but also haven't been through multiple rounds of planning out the next quarters yet, everything was in place.

My company has been fully remote for like 6 years. It seems to be working pretty well.

I'd say that totally depends on the area you're working in. If IT is at the core of your business, you'd probably be fine working from home. For companies in manufacturing/retail/etc. where the IT is not the core, I doubt permanent work from home would be equally good. Looking at my company, the IT departments seem to be doing just fine. However, basically all people I know from engineering and other departments are really looking forward to come back to the office. Having everybody onsite is just so much easier if you have that many dependencies with other departments.

Also, I think the size of the company plays an important role as well. We're about 2000 employees in the IT departments alone, I somehow cannot imagine all of those people permanently working from home while also being able to properly cooperate with the other 100k employees.

Much of this momentum was negative though, meetings and rituals were built around everyone being in the office and being face to face. Remote work relies on much more async text based communication and many companies are still building momentum to work well remotely.

Couldn't you bring people together once a quarter or bi-yearly? Book a nice villa someplace exotic for a couple of weeks, get all the planning and coordination out of the way, give everyone the last few days off with families invited.

Would that really be any cheaper for the business than just renting an office?? Flying people to nice destinations and putting them in expensive hotels along with their families is $$$.

Almost certainly. Toptal used to do it. I'm not sure if they still do.

How would this work when both parents work different jobs and children in school?

Same way they take vacations. The parent working remote has more flexibility to take on childcare responsibilities the rest of the year, so they can probably work something out together.

Going "someplace exotic" may be great for some people, but if you have responsibilities such as being the caregiver for an aging parent, being forced to be away from home for a couple of days or weeks can be a big problem.

True. OTOH, and not to invalidate anyone's experiences, but people shouldering such responsibilities typically have help already (either paid or other family). Otherwise they couldn't do their current job. They also, presumably, have plans/protocols for when they need to take a vacation or break. Unless they were otherwise spending all their free time on caregiving, which isn't sustainable or healthy. They could potentially use those same measures when it's offsite time and even be given some makeup time off later.

They could also get an exception and attend the working sessions remotely. But there's a chance that could lead to fewer opportunities for advancement for them, because they weren't there. Which sucks. It's not an ideal situation.

BTW, lots of enterprise sales companies already do annual "sales kickoff" events where they fly all their salespeople globally to a single place. It's not unprecedented.

> Unless they were otherwise spending all their free time on caregiving

You're not far off the description of parents of young and early school-age children. Kids are in school/daycare for part of the day, then at home, needing dinner, care, etc.

That's different from caring for elderly family members. Parents with young families (maybe not those with newborns) can and do take vacations and travel. They also often have paid help even in their non-work hours e.g. babysitters or nannies.

This is resolved by going somewhere within an hour of the office location. It’s a good idea, but not everyone wants to be forced into traveling for work.

If everyone's 100% remote, there's no "office location". The best compromise is to find a location that minimizes travel for everyone. That might mean the city nearest the centroid.

> lots of enterprise sales companies already do annual "sales kickoff" events

Salespeople know, when they take their job, that they'll be expected to travel for work. Developers may not expect that to be a requirement of their job.

I worked at a company that did this: big in person retreats, once or twice a quarter. I've now been working remotely due to covid about as long as I worked at that company before I was laid off. I still feel much closer and more in sync with my current coworkers than I did to my coworkers at the remote company.

I feel like everyone in my remote company is a total stranger and it's the strangest feeling waking up every day and working with total strangers. Feels like every project I have to prove myself and it's been making my impostor syndrome pretty acute. Cultures a big, big thing there..

Not true in my case, I joined a company during corona and started out remotely. I've been working there for 2 months and had the opportunity to go to the office for the last 2 weeks. What I've noticed between the first 6 weeks and the last 2 weeks is that there wasn't a difference in productivity.

There was a difference in amount of time wasted though. Going to the office is in my case much more wasteful, mostly due to travel time (90 minutes per day).

Could prior momentum have been built remotely? Just because it exists doesn't mean it was caused by office?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com