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Comment by ThaDood | Hacker News Reader

I guess it depends on the industry and if you/the industry you work in has been effected by COVID.

Working as a bartender or cook at a restaurant? Doubt we will see a mass resignation. Unless people decide they are tired of shit treatment.

Working in IT or some similar position at a modern company? I bet we would see a larger number of people quitting. Why go back into the office? Why commute? Why do anything like that when COVID has shown that remote work is a viable option. Any company that cannot accept the new fact that workers want to be able to work remotely is going to struggle to find talent.

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> that workers want to be able to work remotely is going to struggle to find talent.

I suspect that there will be a large split here. My company reopened offices for any volunteers who were interested.

You couldn’t have meetings in person. You couldn’t have lunch with people. But plenty of people still went in anyway.

There are many lonely people who have nothing but work as their lives. No friends, little family, no hobbies or interests to keep them busy. The workplace is their life.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who have hectic home lives (young kids, etc), and are much more productive being able to get out of the house and into the office.

There are also people who actually enjoy face-to-face interactions with coworkers/clients and working together in the same physical space. Even with friends and hobbies, for many careers, WFH still means spending most of your day in relative isolation.

That's great for some people, but looking at everyone else, I'd imagine there's a split between people who _only_ have meaningful social interactions at work and people who just happen to _enjoy_ it.

I’m sure there are many many more reasons for enjoying a return to the office.

This has always struck me as both something strongly encouraged by management (“we’re like family here!”) and extremely dangerous. Anyone living this way is risking having their life ripped away from them the moment their labor is no longer convenient for their employer.

Best to leave work as purely economic, and satisfy as many emotional requirements as is feasible in other places.

Yes, this will probably play out in a number of different ways. You'll have people who don't want to be forced back into an office at least part-time at one group of companies. And you'll have other people who don't want to go back to a company that basically doesn't have much of an office culture any longer and necessitates most meetings still happening over video.

I think companies will need to decide and split. Hybrid is going to be hard on those who really like that in person interaction.

Although I'd point out that many companies were pretty hybrid before this between people traveling, people in different offices, and, yes, people remote. Even if I went into our local office pre-pandemic, only a few people I work with are there and I don't actually even know most people in the office. I don't disagree though. This was sort of my point. People who don't want remote or hybrid will have to seek out companies with stronger butt-in-seats cultures.

It's also hard for people who don't need an office or in-person interaction with coworkers. It should be opt-in rather than hybrid; socialites can hang out with each other, so there's no need to force everyone else to go through commuting, dressing up, and sitting in an office around people all day.

Fair point. I did not intend to be as blanketing as I was. I assume there are a number of people who would not mind going back into the office. I think my point still stands, as long as employees do not have an option, some will leave.

Oh certainly. I can see a lot of companies basically splitting in half on what their engineering teams want.

Introverts vs extroverts

Except we are seeing a mass movement in food service today of workers closing up shops for better pay. We're seeing businesses say there's a "labor shortage" (there isn't, they are just unwilling to pay a wage labor wants to work for.)

Something is stewing out there, and I expect to see some road bumps when covid is over.

> We're seeing businesses say there's a "labor shortage" (there isn't, they are just unwilling to pay a wage labor wants to work for.)

And that may well change rapidly as both the active job search condition for unemployment returns and the temporary federal boost is withdrawn by states or expires.

Sure, there may be a cluster of elite workers taking a pause resulting in some short-term disruption, but most will probably return to work in fairly short order, some after trying entrepreneurial endeavours or other alternatives to traditional work.

For one thing, a lot depends on what office life in cities looks like. If there are X% fewer office workers on a given day, that's going to put a lot of places out of business that depend on the lunchtime trade.

> Working in IT or some similar position at a modern company? I bet we would see a larger number of people quitting.

This is purely anecdotal, but I changed jobs last year from one tech company to another, and in general on the teams I worked with both at the old and new companies it felt like there was if anything a slightly larger number of people changing jobs vs a normal year. From my social networks I can also recall seeing quite a few friends and tech folks I follow get new jobs.

In other words I really don't see any impending event here. There has been no reason for the past year that someone who wanted to change jobs wouldn't have already done so. I did a full interview process and joined a new company without ever leaving my house or meeting anybody in person, so the pandemic certainly didn't limit job changes in tech in the same way it limited travel and events.

I changed jobs as well, but I have noticed pretty high turnover in my personal web of contacts.

However (again, anecdotal) I think people are fairly uneasy about having to hit the job market right now. At least where I live, there's a feeling of worry about the housing market specifically, and many people I've talked to want to sit pat and see.

I don't think this is directly related to covid, but a powerful knock-on effect. The IT market in many centers outside of the typically high-demand areas is absolutely booming right now. I'm not convinced covid taught us anything definitive about remote work, but the involuntary loss of central control at many companies showed that satellite or hub organizations will be very doable, and sometimes come with huge cost savings. I know of several Seattle companies setting up entire dev teams (30+) in Canadian cities where they are paying 30-45% premiums and still recognizing similar cost savings. Amazon et al have done this at scale for a while (Seattle -> Vancouver) but it's now viewed as viable for those 300+ person companies that are growing fast, and it's meant demand for tech workers is as hot as the housing markets.

Same here. I jumped -- new gig starts in 2 weeks -- and I know literally all of my coworkers are actively looking.

At least one has an offer (not sure if it's been taken), and another sounds like she's going to have an offer soon.

IT workers who live in regions where there are many work opportunities — or in regions where remote talent from that region is considered suitable for hiring — will have this option.

IT workers who live in regions where they couldn’t have worked remote previous to COVID simply because no IT company would hire someone remote from $country to do this sort of work, and who had to instead settle for local, low-paying jobs, will be back to being stuck in the same rut as soon as their local employer stops offering remote.

I had to work 100% remote for a few months last year, and after that we went back to the office part time. I have to say that I could not have handled working from home any longer than I did. Getting back to the office doesn't just let me concentrate more, but being able to interact with my colleagues is really useful.

I'm sure there are people who like working from home, but I think that that number may be smaller than you think.

Why go back to office? Why commute?

To be outside again. To breathe outside again. To be among human beings again. Sit next to them. Talk to them in person. To not have to look at Zoom windows everyday again.

To have an extremely clear “arrived at work, left work” boundaries again. Not just from employer’s side, but from my side as well.

To have a place called home again, that’s not my office as well.

But hey that’s just me.

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