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Comment by philote | Hacker News Reader

Before the pandemic FANGs seemed to want everyone in the office as much as possible. That's why they have their own cafeterias/restaurants, daycare, workout rooms, etc. They wanted employees in the office, working a minimum of 40 hours a week. I'm guessing even though remote work is going fine for now, they're concerned they're not going to be able to keep getting over 40 hours of week out of employees. (This is conjecture on my part, I have no idea how many hours FANG employees tend to work).

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Sure it's N=1, but I worked more than 40 hours every single week when I was at a FANG. I used to laugh at all the perks because who actually had the time to use most of them other than interns.

Times I used a climbing wall or nap pod: 0

In the end even the free lunch was annoying. (Yes I am going to complain about "free" food.) It just lead to short lunches where people go back to their desk as soon as they could.

I love the social aspect of lunch and it's the highlight of my day to eat with friends. When you are trapped on campus that rarely happens. I was immediately happier when I left and got the social aspect of the middle of my day back. Went from taking like 20-30 minute lunches to like 70. Leaving the office and eating lunch with good friends a few times a week is a huge moral boost over waiting in some silly named tech cafeteria.

Don't get me wrong pre-FANG I dreamed of how nice it would be to eat at on campus free cafes. Later on I realized it was mostly there to keep you from taking a long lunch stuck in traffic.

See I was the opposite. I had no time as an intern but have plenty of time as a full timer.

It seems like it's almost completely self-inflicted if someone doesn't have time as a full timer (at the 2 Big-N tech companies I've been at). I didn't have time as an intern because I wasn't confident and felt I needed to prove something. Now, many years into it, I know I can work my 40 hour weeks, enjoy the perks for what they are, and relax most of the time.

I've never understood why people consider perks like food as traps to keep you on campus. Nothing stops you from leaving campus for lunch, as long as there's not some meeting you scheduled. Nothing stops you from working 40 hours a week, unless you choose to work more to get ahead faster.

I agree with you there about some interns being very busy. I do remember interns that had a lot of self imposed pressure to perform. If they even had say a minor issue with their work issued laptop they would be in a panic because of the time lost.

Also totally agree with you not having to work so many hours, but this is exactly why they love the college grad pipeline. So many fresh workers with something to prove.

The problem with nothing stopping you from leaving campus for lunch is that it's hard to convince your work-buddies to join you. Free is very compelling to some. And all your co-workers plan their meetings around this truncated lunch break.

At my FAANG they did studies and on average people are working MORE hours each day since the switch to WFH. If they were concerned about maximizing hours then they'd leave it as in. I suspect there are other concerns.

I have to wonder whether they're available for more hours or actually putting in more work. Home distractions tend to extend the work day for people who have pride in their craft.

At least for me, the hours I used to spend driving my car are now spent doing actual work, because that’s what I’d rather be doing anyway. The only reason I don’t work more hours as it is is that I have other obligations. Just seems like a total waste of resources along multiple dimensions to have me driving around my brain.

There could definitely be other concerns too. Such as security. It'd be much easier for someone to copy a code base, or get evidence of wrongdoing by your employer, or whatever, when at home rather than in an office. It's also harder to secure all your employees' home networks than one office network. But I wonder how many people who work at offices still bring their laptops home to use.

This had been my experience too. I don't think I had been more productive - many times I've just stayed late poking at the problem I'd normally leave for the next day when working in the office. Most of these times I still solved it the next day with the new ideas after a night's sleep. Not to mention I've got many ideas from random discussions with colleagues, which ceased with the WFH. So return to the office is a win-win for me and my employer: I work less and I am more productive.

> (This is conjecture on my part, I have no idea how many hours FANG employees tend to work).

Then don't conjecture. Speculation doesn't add to the conversation. In the absence of evidence, it just spreads a misinformation virus.

Without due speculation we could only talk about fully established facts. That would make a very infertile conversation.

Also you should have more trust for your fellows in dialogue here, that they do have some immune function against misinformation viruses.

My experience in the software industry is that engineers are just as susceptible to misinformation as everyone else. It is the exact same process which reinforces beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic, homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such nonsense.

A number of folks are asking the question, "why does the HN consensus appear to be so far away from my experience?" I think the answer is really that noise is being amplified and echoed above the signal.

If you know you're just guessing based on what "seems reasonable" and "matches what other people are saying" you need to stop and re-evaluate the validity of your beliefs. That's an important part of critical thinking which is sorely lacking in this forum right now.

I hope you see the irony in this. Many of your comments, including this one I'm replying to, have "I think ..." which is really just speculation.

I mean, you say "It is the exact same process which reinforces beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic, homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such nonsense.". But is that true? How do you know? Do you have all the facts? I'm sure it seems reasonable and matches what others think...

Thanks for your input regarding critical thinking skills. Below are my suggestions for you, inspired from CBT skills. Normally it is a faux pas to point out cognitive distortions in other people's thinking, but looks like you're up for a direct conversation so I'll reciprocate;

- don't read minds; dialectic can only happen if we allow the flow of conversation back and forth. Cutting that flow prematurely happens for example when we assert that we know what the other person is thinking.

- don't use should statements; don't enter the scene with imperatives and normativities. At best it is insulting to fellow adults you're talking to, at worst it again kills the dialectic. Conversation requires trust in the other person being able to unpack and reality test what is being said. It requires an assumption of good enough character. Talking down to people is a self fulfilling prophecy; when you show you have very little expectation in having a good faith conversation you have already created it.

- let go of black and white thinking; simple categories are useful but have serious precision errors. I invite you to consider "truth", "knowledge", "validity" as shades of gray instead of discrete categories while talking to people, because it allows parties of a dialogue to puzzle together the subsets of truths they have.

- don't overgeneralize; don't take a comment and overgeneralize that to a person's essence e.g "they are a person who always does this". Don't take a few comments and overgeneralize that to the entire forum. Don't use labels.

- don't discount the positives and filter in only the negatives; instead of focusing where people might have missed your expectations in critical thinking, see if you're downplaying or outright ignoring when they are in fact demonstrating it.

Hope it helps.

Many comments in this thread are speculation/conjecture, I was honest enough to label mine as such. We're not running studies or experiments here, this is a place to converse. My comment allows others to provide additional evidence for or against my theory.

> . Speculation doesn't add to the conversation. In the absence of evidence

This is an interesting claim. Do you have evidence for it?

I listened to a Cartalk or maybe This American Life segment many years ago that asked the question “Are two people talking about something they do not know anything about better or worse off after talking about it?”

The consensus was that the downside risk is the two people coming to various conclusions even though they knew nothing about it simply due to our cognitive biases and how we interact with each other. Therefore, two people talking about something they do not know anything about might very well be worse off than had they not talked about it at all.

I hate every time this mandate is slinged around as if this is the only way humans can operate intelligently.

Humans are deductive creatures and we're not terrible at constructing and testing hypotheses. A lot of value can be derived from discussing inconclusive topics, and an understanding of new subject matter can be established for those unfamiliar. It's a valuable exercise to walk through supporting facts.

I wish we didn't cry every time we conjecture.

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