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Comment by johannes1813 | Hacker News Reader

I've been back in my company's office in person (medium-sized tech company) for the last week with a small subset of employees before we all go back, and I've become pretty convinced that these hybrid models will not go well. Even while wearing masks and social distancing, I feel far more connected to the others that work in the office, and whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in collaborating effectively and deciding who gets what work, who gets promoted, etc. If everyone can choose whatever combination of remote and in-person they want, it seems impossible to me that there won't be extremely strong in-group/out-group effects that will cause big organizational problems for companies. But I'm saying this as a young person excited to work in person, so maybe others (parents, those with long commutes) feel it's still worth it.

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TBH your personal experience has no bearing on mine. I can't help but feel like people with _opinions_ like yours are going to ruin it for the rest of us who are orders of magnitude more productive at home. "But I can't socialize"... I don't care. I would rather not work in tech anymore than return to an office full time.

I also think my point was about companies/organizations as a whole rather than individuals. Remote might be optimal for lots of individuals, maybe even the majority, but my guess is that the conditions it creates will cause an organizational problem. I don't think incentives between employees and companies are necessarily aligned here.

You can work in an office and be good at communicating by writing docs.

> _opinions_ like yours are going to ruin it for the rest of us

I guess we will find out in the next couple years who just has a terrible _opinion_ and who is 'the rest of us.' You may not like how that turns out.

Or that managers find out that extroverts create distraction and ruin productivity thus the numbers and their bonuses...

> But I'm saying this as a young person excited to work in person, so maybe others (parents, those with long commutes) feel it's still worth it.

Parent of three, going on four. Get me out of here!

Totally reasonable and I'm glad for parents that there will be options now

That sounds like a problem with the pandemic, not a problem with remote work.

Similar situation. My solution was to rent a tiny office in my town. It’s awesome! Three minute commute.

How much does it run you?

Why don’t you wework?

Is this substantially different than having a manager in a different office?

I'm in SF, but my manager has been in NY for the last 3 years. Being managed from a different office seems to be common in large companies.

Where I last worked it was common to have your manager be in another country, sometimes with a pretty difficult time zone difference.

I was remote but many offices had a butts-in-seats policy because of unapologetically old-school top management. Fortunately there were quite a few middle managers who were able to creatively route around this inefficiency.

I’m fine with the in-group/out-group stuff.

Just let there be a relatively permanent core and the rest of us can just shop on the open market for advancement.

I don't know how long your commute is but I shudder at the notion of wasting my time physically travelling every day. Fortunately I am fully remote for at least the near future and I wouldn't mind travelling out every quarter for a week or something or some sort of periodic in-person work period. But sitting in traffic every day of your work week is no way to spend your life. Even taking mass transit means less flexibility in your day if it's not the automobile commute.

> whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in collaborating effectively and deciding who gets what work, who gets promoted, etc.

You're assuming a bunch of stuff here. There's something to be said for:

1. Having known people pre-covid, and so having a predefined "connection" with them. 2. The kinds of work that would or would not be more susceptible to personal bias. Web development, for example, is more impervious than people-management.

Ultimately what you're talking about is bias, and bias is shit and should be minimised. Remote working shouldn't be compromised as a result of people not being able to be impartial in their work.

Humans are not machines. There will always be some kind of bias.

Meanwhile I used to go into the office 3 days a week. That gave me enough face to face personal connection, while giving me two days without a commute to have a life, and get my head down and churn things out.

I am still remote but I think you are spot on.

I hate the office but I will be back in as many days as possible as soon as possible. I am not going to be part of an out-group to an in-group that contains the people who decide promotions.

I have no doubt the people who come back to the office the quickest and the most often will get better raises over the next few years on average vs THOSE remote people.

The dynamics here are pretty much face up.

I don't know the term for this, but in-person contact is important for metagroups/in-groups at work. People who are coworkers, but also friends as well, to an extent. People that you trust more than others not part of the group, and who you might even become friends with outside of work. I've found developing relationships like this impossible while fully remote.

I personally felt more connected and more aware of what everyone was doing when we switched to remote because people had to overcommunicate and write docs instead of having private conversations I wasn’t invited to.

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