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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

Alternative title: "76% of people large portion of whose jobs is to represent the company as cool, trendy, and modern say they will do a trendy thing."

There will certainly be some change after the pandemic ends, but it is extremely difficult to estimate how much.

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Managers taking steps to prevent their employees from contracting a disease that will prevent them from working for weeks or months is 'trendy?'

A workplace that's shut down for weeks because of a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is a workplace that's not making any money. Taking all reasonable steps to minimize employee exposure to infectious diseases just makes good business sense.

Good points! In this case, it has nothing to do with cool and/or trendy, but what is sensible in the circumstances. Still, there might be some companies who pick a certain route just to keep up with Joneses.

Well done, you destroyed that strawman. I totally agree with working from home to minimize employee exposure to infection diseases. Not for profit, but because not getting a potentially debilitating disease at work is a reasonable expectation.

Trendy thing that I referenced was everyone declaring that working form home in new norm and offices are a thing of the past.

There are so many COVID-19 denalists/disinformation sources on HN that it wouldn't have hurt to be clearer about your intentions so you weren't mistaken for one of them.

Any cool, trendy and modern thing tend to stay if it can save some money for a company. Good example is open office. I haven't heard companies pointing to studies that shows a nice cubicle with walls is better for employee's mental health than open office. On the other hand they keep telling how open office promotes open collaboration etc because it saves them money.

People keep saying that productivity will go down will all remote arrangements. But so far assumptions have that company has to worry about it. However I feel once employee/team/projects been identified for low productivity it's them that have to worry. The reason is simple, barring few top percent of employees most do not have any negotiating power on whether to work from home or from office or few days from office to preserve their office seat etc.

So to think that low productivity will bring every one to office seems unlikely.

Love it. Nice succinct dismissal!

I'm honestly asking because I can't tell, but is that sarcasm?

It is hard to tell. But I actually liked your dismissal. So concise.

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