Goldman CEO warns remote work is aberration, not new normal | Hacker News Reader

Goldman CEO warns remote work is aberration, not new normal

bloomberg.com

34 pointsOJFord33 comments

You see this attitude in some senior (who are also, maybe relevantly or not, older) folks in the large company I work for.

When asked questions about how to capture the positives and lessons of the pandemic/lockdown for our working practises, they consistently resort to “we’re a people company” and “can’t wait to have meetings face to face again”. It’s like they lack the mental flexibility to see how well remote working works for many people most of the time, or that they have a deeper reason they’re not sharing for wanting everyone back on site.

Thankfully, I think the cat is far too far out of the bag now, to ever be fully put back inside. We were already losing out on promising hires due to old-fashioned remote working policies; and I suspect that the majority of people will want to retain at least a reasonable degree of location flexibility even if/when Covid is only a memory.

I work for a FAANG and none of my colleagues have relocated. It doesn't seem like anyone is moving far enough that management would seem unreasonable to ask them to come in on a daily basis.

Let's spell out the deeper reason: These people rely on personal interactions, charisma and the illusion of work afforded by on-site presence.

It's much easier to identify the real workers in a remote setting.

You can also see it in open source projects like Python, where always the same people go to sponsored core developer summits where nothing is achieved apart from showing presence, being in the in-group and gaining power.

I was more guessing that these people have a bunch of money tied up in commercial real estate and they want people out and about again.

Free-form collaboration has been a lot harder at my startup in a remote setting. The remote arrangement may benefit productivity when people are mostly working in silos, just crunching out code, but if you need to brainstorm or whiteboard something it's a genuine downgrade.

Lots of companies will be switching to a part-time-remote model, which makes the most sense to me

This reminds me of a supplier that was notorious in the security industry for stacking the sales dept with very friendly but otherwise unqualified "closers". I can't imagine that sales strategy is working so well right now.

I wonder how much time this CEO spends in the office themself vs working remotely from various locations like business trips, hotels, planes, second homes, yachts, beaches, etc.

Anyways, the pandemic was the aberration. It brought about the new normal and many things, including increased remote work, will never be the same again.

And for me remote work significantly improved my quality of life to a point that I'd consider leaving the company if it doesn't remain an option afterwards.

> improved my quality of life

Well, not having to work as much while being paid the same does that to you. No argument here.

However, from a management point of view: nobody (and I mean nobody) can multi-task "work" tasks and "life" tasks at the same time. Inevitably "life" wins out, and of course productivity suffers.

The only solution is preemptive multitasking instead of cooperative; forcing people to attend office space is just the gentlest form of preemption.

Remote-only is possible, of course, but expect very ugly forms of preemption to take place: screen spying software, time tracking to the second, 24/7 on call duty, etc.

Honestly, you'll prefer office work instead. Trust me.

That's very antagonistic? Statistics show otherwise. WOH employees spend more time on task and produce more. Throwing around speculation and bias is unproductive. Just more FUD.

> Statistics show otherwise. WOH employees spend more time on task and produce more.

Obviously not, or we'd be all be forced to work from home if it really saved businesses money.

No, obviously because of pre-conceived notions based on FUD, like my comments are responding to.

I know you don't like your manager, but trust me: it's not true that 100% of managers on this planet are idiots running on preconceived notions and FUD.

If work from home was profitable than some company out there would have made bank already.

Work from home doesn't work because humans can't context-switch too well.

Again, that argument is more FUD. It's predicated on 'if people were rational'. Consider this: I've written three comments trying to rebut an argument based on nothing but FUD. If people were rational, there would be references to studies or statistics to rebut, but no I have only tired lazy arguments to try and refute.

To address that latest FUD, working from an office is worse in the interruption aspect. At home I can make draconian rules about when I'm interrupted. Not so in an office.

WOF doesn't always work, but it can work and very effectively. Way more often than folks are willing to try it.

And consider: this argument is from somebody who has worked from home for most of their career. How often have you tried it?

> It's predicated on 'if people were rational'.

No, it's predicated on "at least one person is rational".

It's never really been put to the test, though. Most companies have been working in offices because they've always been working in offices. Prior to fast internet availability there was no other choice. It's a deep rooted part of culture and it usually takes a much longer time for these things to change even though it might make sense. In Australia they celebrate Christmas in Summer. That makes no sense, but it's not going to change any time soon. The pandemic has accelerated this change that probably wouldn't have happened for decades otherwise.

> "Statistics show otherwise."

Which statistics? At least for my employer, it was reported that productivity dropped across the board and I certainly feel that's true for me personally.

Projecting a bit here?

I’ve been remote for a couple of years and my productivity is at least 2x what it was in an office. Said office was fairly quiet, plus I take care of a child during the day at home, and I am still more effective than before.

Not having to commute, and a boss that trust me and cares that I deliver my projects and tasks on time helps.

I achieve the same amount of work, and can spend more time with my kids since I'm already at home when I'm done.

I'd take remote-work any day.

HN title should be: Remote working professional gives Goldman CEO as an example of out-of-touch boss.

Welp, can't micromanage people working from home...

You sure can do; plan many screen sharing, with camera-on zoom calls during the workday (even just adhoc as a surprise!), log keystrokes/random screenshots, check visited domains and get 'performance' analytics from git commits. There are all kinds of ways to make people unproductive, but have management feel like they did everything in their power to make sure everyone was working every paid second of the day.

BISM: Butt-In-Seat-Mentality

I'm not against meeting clients face-to-face now and then, but working on-prem continuously was and is an unnecessary inconvenience.

Overall, I think most companies will stick to full and partial WfH indefinitely because they can reduce office space costs. Effectively, turning office workers into semi-gig office workers by utilizing their space rather than the company's space. Still, companies will need to up their home-office stipends if they expect people to work completely at home.

I think industry definitely matters here. Software companies and other companies building a product I would think would be more flexible with remote work than wall street. I work for a trading firm, and for me it was really interesting to see the entire industry go from "we can't have traders trading from home under any circumstances" to "traders are trading from home now" practically overnight last march.

What we’re seeing is worst-case work-from-home performance, with no planning and disrupted childcare. I don’t think this has been enough to sway management who were reluctant to support WFH before.

I’m torn on this. I think WFH makes more sense for a lot of roles, but it’s sure to be the end of the Bay Area FAANG gravy train because it alleviates the local shortage.

Pre-pandemic financial skyscrapers were full of people doing not much at all day in day out. Thousands of people would transport their bodies to these skyscrapers every day and proceed to do nothing useful. Seeing this first hand really changed my perception of the finance industry. There is a value in simply having people on the payroll and coming into the building every single day. It's their insurance policy. Banks have to be too big to fail and that means they have to be employing people.

But now all these people are just doing nothing from home and that's not good enough. They need to be doing nothing at work. The illusion that they are doing something useful is essential. It's the Emperor's New Clothes. The financial industry is nothing without trust. Nothing at all.

Cant have all our scheming on the video record.

I worked pretty much exclusively from home for like 7 years before this, and even I miss the office now. Some will make a more permanent change, many won't. I'd probably go in a couple of days a week at this point.

Working from home creates a new friction to collaboration that didn't exist previously. It is however a trade-off with employee well-being and recognising that people have lives and responsibilities outside of work.

The problem with GS announcements like these is that you never know whether it's an actual insight or they're pushing a narrative or just advertising

> urged them to use private-sector support to speed up the process.

If only big banker fucker CEO compensation was an aberration, not a new normal...

Well not all organisations can be effective.

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