It still means that I need to live near the office. Instead of a cheaper, quieter place far away from cities.
Besides making middle-management happy, I'm not sure what is the benefit of having one required day per week at the office.
This resulted in things where they suddenly found out that they need to pay taxes in four states (and Canada - unless they get that employee to leave within 3 weeks... and firing them is an option).
The three day hybrid may also be something to discourage one employee trying to hold down two remote jobs (on Reddit, this is a not uncommon question and sometimes a really suspicious coworker who suddenly can't VPN or connect to slack for a day or two each week).
The hybrid model keeps a number of problems that the company would otherwise have to think about and enforce non-issues.
I've side-stepped this issue by being self-employed.
Then it becomes as simple as - you keep paying me and I keep working.
(to counter companies pushing their workers to be self employed, to avoid taxes, healthcare costs, etc. But I am not convinced if the result is beneficial to the workers)
Though my clients in another country, I don't want to push it, they don't want to push it - so I don't care. Eventually I will jack up my rates and they will either sign me again or I'll find somewhere else.
If you pay yourself 100% of the extra revenue (aside from expenses), then there's no avoidance of a lower corporate tax, thus no issue.
But there are tons of jobs that require trust and collaboration. For those workers, in-person relationship building is a fundamental part of the job.
We need to be clearer in our job titles and descriptions about that, so that there is less conflict in expectations of remote work.
I have worked with people whom only have friends, and social time, through an office setting. I've worked with people who can't wait to get away from their family by going to work. My dad couldn't wait until monday.
I was that guy that socialized, and made friends through work. I'm still that guy kinda? The hour grooming, and the two hour commute is making me think I should reach out to people whom I come in contact locally.
That said, some people don't need the social experience going to an office provides.
They have full lives, and don't need to show up to the charade. If they are good employees, why force them back?
Smart employers will let them work from home.
I mean, if I asked OP if they had a nice weekend, what would happen? Would I be ignored? Just a grunt in reply? Or a “fine” and that’s it?
Or even monthly have maybe a 2-3 day mini-retreat work a day or two on-site and do some after-work bonding for those who are staying in hotels, etc... I mean if it's just about bonding. I had pretty good bonding with an agency I worked with and we'd do once a year retreats and it was really nice to hang out with the team, then go back home and hang out in slack.
Every single day, lots of things have to go right: dropping off has to be at a defined time (whether school or daycare, most activities have a predetermined start time unless the kid is very young, which mine isn't any more), then I have to get to work from the daycare, then I have to hope that nothing blows up during the day requiring me to stay longer, then I have to hope nothing blows up on the trip to daycare, and so on. I'm very fortunate that daycare is on a transit path for me because my family doesn't drive and transit around here is usually more reliable than driving.
Working from home for the last 15 months has been a godsend. I don't have to deal with any of those oddities. My spouse and I have traded off who takes a few days off every few weeks or so to be "on vacation" with the kid, or we sync up and take days off together to just veg at home as a family.
If you tell me I can skip the bullshit commute and only have to plan child care around a retreat that is booked a month, or even a couple of weeks!, in advance, I will gladly take that trade. Even if it's a "bring your spouse" kind of thing, I can get a set of grandparents to train or fly in for that time (or even go to them).
The key is to recognize that the in-person contact is part of the mix to enhance empathy/connectedness and for those few situations where a multi-way high-bandwidth conversation is necessary. Planning sessions are an example IMO. Understanding how people really feel about priorities etc. is important, but often involves interpreting facial expressions and body language that aren't captured (or conveyed well) on video. Making it a part of your every day team work environment puts you into an entirely different and no longer remote-friendly milieu.
I predict that in all the full time WFH companies, some small group will start having in person meets once every X. Or some other startup will innovate past an incumbent by having a hybrid model.
Then hybrid will be the next “new” thing.
I don't even think we have a point to make, it's just like a thing we say... like oh god another power point meeting, oh god another zoom call.
I think the real thing is "oh god another thing I have to do I don't want to" - but we're afraid to say it.
You can also quickly switch to screen sharing some chart and discuss it. Or you can look at a backlog, or some bit of code, or a mockup.
I've been remote for 12 years, in my experience video calls are strictly better than audio only, but of course it's fine if someone can't join with video.
It's not video that makes meetings bad, it's people.
And I assure you I wasn’t imagining the average of 3-4 hours of online meetings every single day that was compressed to 1-2 days every 2 weeks once we started meeting in the office again.
I think once a week in-person meetings and rest of week heads down WFH would be a great idea. Or we can do everything in async communication like emails.
And no, not Slack. It is even more distracting and should ideally be used only during scheduled meeting in place of Zoom or for emergency situations.
Internet quality and speed is a function of a few things, including where people live. I wouldn't want to extrapolate but I've not been finding connectivity to be an issue for internal meetings. Yes, occasionally there are hardware issues (e.g. I had a flaky WiFi chip in my laptop). These may be unfortunate for a particular meeting but tend to get fixed and so "can you hear me?" is definitely not a recurring pattern in my experience.
Sometimes people choose to join video calls from their phone while, for example, walking their dog (a completely acceptable thing culturally). In those instances video and audio quality can be variable; it's up to the individuals to make sensible choices around which meetings are suitable for this sort of thing.
Finally, there's a phone backup, where you can dial into a meeting (audio only) over a phone line. Some people use this if they need to take a meeting from somewhere with particularly bad connectivity. I personally have not needed to use it once in the 15+ months of WFH but I've seen others use it.
People unintentionally speaking over each other was definitely a thing in the beginning, especially in larger meetings. I've been founding it happen less and less over time, as people learned when to pause and we developed better ways to moderate large online meetings. Video makes this much easier compared to audio-only.
Overall, I think I've come to prefer video calls to in-person meetings, at least when _everyone_ joins over video. It'll be interesting to see how well the original, hybrid model (some participants joining in person and some over video) will work.
Since we're doing SCRUM, their spacing is also the same: sprint review, retrospective, splaning, refinement, ideation, etc..
I work from home, and my team is distributed, so we work fine online, but there are a few times when we say 'we'll have that conversation over a beer when we meet in person'.
There is no such cultural determinism. Many countries won't stop having children as their economy grows, in fact the opposite is happening in many places around the world.
So it's not that birth rates decline "as their economy grows" - the birth rates go up during the growth phase - it's what comes after in an established prosperous society: fertility rates decrease.
It's consistent enough to predict with some certainty. As prosperity has grown worldwide, so global TFR has dropped. This happens one by one with the individual countries following a predictable pattern.
China does have regulatory limits that keep their TFR lower than it otherwise would be, they are still in their (modern) growth cycle. Absent that regulation, with the economic boom they've been seeing in last twenty years you'd expect to see the fertility rate boom accordingly, and while it appears to be growing despite the regulatory constraints, it's still below replacement value. This slow growth in the face of structural prosperity changes is the impact of regulation, not organic. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/fertility-ra...
there are direct factors that explain away TFR drops that are not "prosperity" - in fact prosperity alone has historically increased TFR pretty much every time
drastic drops in fertility rates in Europe and North America respond to very specific cultural phenomena that are unlikely to happen in a similar fashion in Africa or the Middle East, more likely to happen in South America and parts of East Asia to some extent, but certainly not across the board
social pseudoscientists can spend as long as they wish looking at past charts, they still won't see causality and there is no better example than fertility predictions to showcase The Poverty of Historicism
Look at any given developed society today (characterized by long-term peaceful stability and general prosperity, development of professional classes, liberalization of gender roles, shifts away from field work) and you'll see TFR falling below replacement levels. This isn't a "western" phenom, you can see it in Korea and Japan as well, for example.
It's simply practical economic decisions by individuals - kids cost a crap ton of attention and money, and when the risks of them dying have decreased (lower mortality due to medical care, less war/violence) and the obligation to reproduce is lowered (changing gender roles, birth control availability, women having options for professional careers), and kids are less useful as labor units, you get fewer of them. Predictably. Across hemispheres.
I suspect your examples are all "developing" countries, not "developed" but you've thus far only referred to nebulous regions and continents. Interested in a specific example of a developed country that has not exhibited this pattern.
I saw someone say that a lot of what makes WFH successful currently are the bonds that we had built while working together... and that as time goes on, those bonds will loosen as new people come in that don't have those experiences and those hallway talk.
I think I agree with that... but it remains to be seen how things will work going forward. I see most companies going to a hybrid model. I see a large number of turnover at places that don't offer hybrid.
My current place of employement seems to be winding up towards hybrid and I have a long commute (had before covid). I'd be unhappy with 5 days meat in seat. I'll be very happy if I only have to be there 2 days a week. Still happy with only 3. Sad with 4. I'd probably hunt for a new job with 5. Maybe 4.
For instance it’s a big difference if you can send and take your kids from school yourself 5 days a week or if for one or two days you need to find someone to contract just for that.
Same for having one or two cars, needing a laptop or not, etc. There are a lot of big and small effects on having to commute one/two days or 0.
I think, personally, most will want hybrid - to get the best of both worlds - and it's simply a matter of finding the right personal and corporate balance (if possible).
We'll see how long term the effects of COVID are. We might see WFH become mainstream... we might see a massive pushback to go back to the Old Normal. I think successful companies will find the middle to keep their talent.
Socializing, as other people pointed out, is also much easier in person.
If you need hourly contact with your co-workers I hope it's more about doing the job then socializing. If it is about doing the job and your job is software development then are alternatives to endless meetings.
Similarly, just because you do work with some people, does not make them your team.
Now maybe programming can be organized in a way that doesn’t really require a team. People can get projects done by interacting in a more transactional, contractor/gig-worker way. But that is a very different experience from being part of a team.
On web forums like HN people post regardless of who might be reading. That's an important difference.
Almost always I can avoid the full meeting with the understanding that they can call me in if they need my expertise. When that happens it's typically just a couple of questions and I can go back.
Sure some weeks can get a bit busy with meetings if we have a lot of projects going on, but I'm almost never in a meeting where I feel I'm wasting time.
If it's "3 days every week at the office", then you need to live close by.
If it's "two days every month", you can just stay at a hotel for that time with the money you saved from commuting - maybe even bring the whole family =)
I'd be ok with up to a max of one day a week in the office.
That doesn't restrict location too much. Only one day a week, I'm willing to put up with a multi-hour commute. Anything more than one day, I don't think so.