Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Things seem to be hardest for younger single employees who don’t always have great work from home environments and are also sometimes lonely. Also, some of my coworkers with kids are having a hard time being productive with pressures from kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries. Then there are people who can’t manage the work life balance and relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over.
Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver. I’ve seen this so many times after an org change, architectural change or anything that will give someone an excuse for failing to preform. These people may or may not like their new freedom but they do like their paycheck and will use any excuse for their poor performance.
Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. I personally love working remote and would never go back to mandatory days in the office if I didn’t have to. I think the trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once. It is so much easier to just say “make things go back to where they were” so their jobs can be less complicated. People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work. In a public company it is one more unknown to juggle when they have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits.
So let’s start proposing solutions and promoting them. How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal?
That’s how we make this work for everyone.
Adding new people requires removing other people or reducing my productivity to make more time available.
Also, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem socializing if you’re going around humblebragging about how you’ve optimized your work and personal time for peak employee performance.
I am not humblebragging about optimization. I have 24 hours in a day. They are generally all spoken for, meaning that for something to go in, something else must go out.
Being productive is as much a waste of my time as interacting with coworkers.
I basically have every day mostly free because I'm just productive Enough and work remote. I am leaving an insane amount of (for-employer) productivity on the table and instead giving myself that productivity.
Don't you, like, have to work during those hours regardless of your environment? Even working for the government, they kind of expect that.
That said, I have worked for many different companies, and rarely felt like working relationships were ‘foisted’ upon me.
I generally enjoyed interacting with colleagues because we were working towards a common goal - i.e. we had something meaningful which we cared about in common.
The one company where this wasn’t true had a cultural separation between product and infrastructure engineering, with a lack of mutual respect that flowed from the top of the organization.
My point is that if people don’t feel common purpose with their coworker that enables them to find satisfaction in their working relationships, that points to a company culture problem.
However it is definitely not a solution to an actual culture problem. Ideally, working from home should be a choice because it suits the individual’s needs, not a way to separate from dysfunction.
I think culture problems are quite common. Plenty of people report them, on the other hand I haven’t run into them all that often, and there are many people here who report reasonable cultures.
I'd like to see them argue "I don't want to come to the office because I don't like to be surrounded by people like you" as well. Is that a common argument?
I think people who are unhappy with their working conditions should just look for another job. It's fine to try to convince bosses that changes would be beneficial, but I don't have much sympathy for all the whining.
I kind of concur with the original comment too. Single guys in their 20s might want to go back to socialize, perhaps driven by this idea of socializing at work. Guys in their 30s, low on kool-aid reserves, no kids but maybe partner, might prefer to stay at home. Once the kids show up, now you have an external force that might push you back into the office. Guy in his 50s with grown-up kids? He's having a hell of a blast retiring in a remote cabin while cashing in on the big bucks. Unless he is a VP or a micro-manager; then he might be miserable for his inability to crush people's lives remotely.
Like if you give the example of young people and old people - fair enough, then maybe young people are better of looking for jobs where they work together with other young people, and people in their 50ies are better off in jobs with other old people.
Ultimately companies are not created for the benefit of employees, but to create stuff. They try to be good to employees to be able to attract and keep talented staff.
What do you mean? Did they tell you about guy with questionable hygiene and that other guy with chronic allergy that makes him cough all day long during your interview?
I just don't get the sense of entitlement many people seem to have.
Agreed. Most of the issues that you highlighted that cause employees to prefer being in-office (loneliness, children and other distractions at home, work/life balance) are not attributable to being remote per se. Exacerbated by it, sure. But we should probably be addressing those problems head-on in a more intentional way.
For instance, I've seen a lot of younger devs opining about wanting to go back to the office to reinvigorate their sense of social participation. But I'm not sure that's something we should be encouraging. (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned.) Compared to cultivating friendships outside of the office, socializing at work is empty calories.
I’m not an old fart but I’m on my way. I find is brilliant to talk about house repairs and kids and vacation tips with my colleagues. It really brings some chill to an otherwise chaotic day in an absolutely volatile industry.
I meet with my team once a day for 15-20 mins, and once a week for a full hour. I meet with each of the team leads once a week for a half hour. I meet with my boss once a week for an hour.
This is important for a few reasons:
1. Keeping coordinated with work. We get that out of the way first.
2. Replacing the work-type water cooler conversation. There’s a lot of problems, random thoughts and questions, etc that may never rise to the level of scheduling an actual meeting but are valuable to resolve. The meeting is already there and the time is already spent, so the barrier and cost to bringing these up are nil. This has led to a lot of improvements and moving things forward in a way they wouldn’t have been otherwise.
3. Personal connection. Once we’ve got the work sorted out, just hang out and chat for a few minutes about all the things you’ve mentioned.
I spend like 5-6 hours a week on meetings like this, just beginning/end of day so it’s not a interruption to anyone and everyone I’ve asked finds these meetings valuable.
We’ve had to onboard a lot of people since we went remote and I’ve developed good working and personal relationships with many of them. And I still get the chance to ramble about home repairs and kids.
I have seen this multiple times already - overtime and long hours that are largely composed of socialization in disguise or very ineffective work. Mostly serving as a way to fill in void or have someone to talk to.
Workers who want to work remote can find employers who are ok with remote work. It isn't like there is a shortage of companies that allow remote work.
There are not that many exploitable smart people left, even internationally. In my applied research niche they already hired internationally and the ability was rare, being high functioning autistic was basically a prerequisite. Supply dried up because these people have better options now; start ups, finance, crypto, independent scientists, more promising companies in their home countries.
It’s much easier for me to change companies than for companies to change. I’ve been remote for 7 years and will retire long before going back to an office.
Simple DDG search [1] says that somewhere around 45-80% of companies are pro-remote. Which definitely puts the number of such companies into TENS of millions.
[1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=percentage+of+companies+allowing+r...
How do we make execs more comfortable? Simple, we make it so they have no choice to be uncomfortable with. Allow full remote or lose a significant portion of your workforce in the middle of a hiring crunch with already existing insane hiring demand. This may not play at Apple, for example, but it’s what I’ve already seen play out at my company (including for me specifically) and I see no reason it wouldn’t work at any non-FANG. It’s not a bluff or bluster, I’d leave if my company doubled down on forcing people back on a hybrid schedule and truthfully I may leave anyway over frustration with their initial attempts to do so despite exempting me and others.
My team and office is in a very precarious position with two of our best engineers having left over the initial attempts to force hybrid. I truly think if it was forced again my the fallout may be fatal for my team.
Why do you assume that this won't result in you being replaced?
Sure, employers are paying a premium for remote work for the moment. That's a great demand right now and you absolutely should take advantage of that. Supply will adjust to compensate--developers willing to take less are flocking into the system. Companies are adjusting to be able to deal with workers not in their local jurisdictions.
Once that shakes out (and it will happen quicker than you think)--why shouldn't I lay off your expensive salary? If you can be completely remote, what value do you bring over someone else completely remote who is a bit cheaper? This is the classic race to the bottom problem.
Apparently programmers learned nothing from outsourcing. Management doesn't really care about how good you are. Most programmers aren't geniuses working on world shattering problems. They're doing the same thing that a thousand other programmers have done before.
The only people likely to survive this well are, in fact, the people who have a genuine need to be in the office.
1) Starting remote seems tougher than going remote. It’s a bit rough on families but maybe an extended in person onboarding trip is a good compromise.
2) Face to face connections have to be renewed every once in a while. Co-location trips are going to become a cost of being remote, I think.
3) Some people come across badly over video. Not sure if there’s some kind a training and/or technological answer but it’s a problem and if it can’t be solved those people are not going to thrive remote even if everything else lines up.
4) All other things being equal the relationship is always going to be more transactional for remote workers. It’s just human nature to feel closer to people you regularly bump into and eat meals with.
That’s not necessarily a horrible thing in an industry that blurs the line between work and life, but it does mean you need to be on the top of your game in terms of being productive and making sure people know it.
For example, when I was setting up my local environment I needed a token. What token? Not specified. So I had to ask someone else and wait for a reply. It turns out I could have gotten the token myself.
In a prior job, I needed at least 10 instructions from senior developers on setting up my local environment as the readme was very out of date. It caused a lot of problems for the next guy coming on board.
The thing I find more problematic with remote onboarding followed by remote work is that there’s no relationship building. There needs to be some play in the joints for a team to work. Getting to know teammates as real people, and not just an image on a screen and some IM messages, makes it more likely you will give them the benefit of the doubt.
You’re right that it won’t be the same. We’re past the point where everyone being in the office was the unquestioned norm because we never really tried mass remote work on a large scale. But we have now, and it worked just fine.
Companies and employees need to figure out solutions that don’t involve forcing people to do something they don’t like just to “get back to where we were”.
Mature in-office companies - generally larger companies with established business models and median employee tenures of 5+ years - have it the most difficult. Some may have rapidly adjusted during the pandemic. But other in-office companies will not adapt so quickly - people were hired into a certain culture, got used to it, build core processes, systems, workstyles etc. Even if in-office wasn't ideal for them, and it wouldn't have been for all of them, it is ingrained. For those companies, if they choose to go hybrid or remote now because they feel it makes more sense long term, they still may have a multi-year adjustment, and that may include losing some people and gaining others. So, if you are one of those companies, this may represent a massive refactoring type decision and the complex systems between people and processes can be difficult to refactor.
Would love to hear from folks at these types of companies (we have always been remote-first so can't really put ourselves in their shoes) who are successfully pulling off that refactoring.
This is an incredibly difficult thing for management to implement and write policy for. Now, if you look at my previous posts, I'm known to have made fun of a bloated middle management structure cough once or twice, but in this very specific case, it might actually be able to be used to the benefit of the employees. Using that middle management to reach out, communicate and facilitate the needs and wants while the infrastructure is in place can make a truly hybrid structure work for everyone and review based on work performed, not time in office (like it should be, anyway - though generally is).
Another path is to simply hold leaders accountable for output rather than working style. After all, is it acceptable for a team to under-deliver if they worked hard & worked in the office? Usually not. Working in the office is not sufficient to produce the right output.
If you hold leaders accountable for output, you can then let them decide how their team will work. It's way easier to solve this problem in a discussion among 5 team members than in a written policy for 500 or 5000.
One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder. When everyone is remote all communication must be available remotely (and typically written). When everyone is in the office, it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat. But impromptu chats leave out the people who aren't there - that's why half local and half remote is harder.
> One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder.
While this maybe true for best outcomes. IMO even flexible work policy is better for people like me who are stuck in hellish commutes 5 days a week. 2-3 days in office is similar outcome and avoiding 3 hr /day commute times for couple of days a week.
> it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat.
This used to be true for me also 5-7 years back. However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects" and what's left is sufficient for a webex call.
Also in my case team is distributed and of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers to have face to face collaboration. But nonetheless commute is mandatory. So the rule seems collaborate with remote co-workers but only from office.
> However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects"
Honestly that sounds terrible.
> of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers...
Maybe look around for better company to work for. There are great teams out there.
I haven't had an "office" to go to work in since 2000. I've shared spaces with anywhere from three to all of my co-workers. "Recent research shows that such offices result in 73 per cent less face-to-face interaction, and a 67 per cent increase in email interaction" https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-...
An opposing perspective: note that the cost for private offices is very high vs. cubes. Assuming Class A space in a premium location is around $85/sq.ft. per month [1]:
6' x 6' cube: 36 sq.ft. * $85 = $3,060/mo
8' x 10' office: 80 sq.ft. * $85 = $6,800/mo
10' x 12' office: 120 sq.ft. * $85 = $10,200/mo
What would most people choose: upgrade from cube to desk, or add $3,500/mo to their paycheck?
[1]: rental rate chart at https://www.squarefoot.com/office-space/ca/san-francisco
A company basically pays you for your cost of living. That's why pay is high in the Bay Area or NY, and why you take a massive pay cut when you move out. If you choose to work remotely or sign up for shitty work conditions, they are not going to reimburse any of the costs you just saved them.
I think the added cost may be worth it, but I'd be surprised to find majority agreement.
> A company basically pays you for your cost of living
I'd argue that companies generally pay market rates for employees, which in a well-functioning market will be well above the cost of living.
And agree on the last statement, I had over-simplified that, though I did add the word "basically".
That's the essence of another issue companies are forcing with remote work. It puts the lie to any claim that compensation is based on business value. Do I not provide the same value to the business if I live in Omaha, Nebraska rather than San Jose, California?
But, the company has offices in Menlo Park, you're more valuable because you're closer to them, you say? But the company also has offices in Omaha, and a dozens other places around the world.
This isn't theoretical: companies have already said that pay scales for remote work will be tied to location, regardless of the contribution a person makes to the company.
Employers are going to have to reckon with the fact that if I can chose to live more comfortably, I can also choose to expect to compensated for my contributions rather than my postal code. Am I worth a six-figure salary or not?
it simply is bonkers they've tried to pull that line out.
Companies are terrified that employees will flex some of these desires and flexibilities as not benefits, but open to as many jobs as possible. It removes their ability to keep employees focused on groveling in appreciation to be allowed to be in their presence.
If they let this go, employees may begin looking around and realizing why are the top 1% being paid ridiculous salaries with millions of shares given annually while whinning to unions, employees and anyone who can hear they have to continually cut benefits, pensions (what are those?) to barely keep profitable. (Question how can foreign companies continue to pay good benefits, have employee long term retention, etc. and not have it cause such damage to company profits?)
Employees have been trained and brainwashed for so long that only a scant few find the behvior described above as bonkers. Rather most have grown numb and believe it is normal for companies to tell them they deserve only what the company decides to toss their way.
It is bonkers they are pulling that line out, unfortunately it works very time.
Note, I am from Ukraine, and I am speaking from personal experience moving to the USA. My American friends eat out all the time, buy very expensive home appliances, and tip extremely generously.
I live a frugal life since this is the standard of living I am accustomed to from my homeland. I was also willing to accept the lowest salary legally possible just to get into the country, which is already a huge upgrade to my income.
I also can't then change jobs easily, since the visa is tied to my employer.
If Tech workers want to maintain this state of demand, they should really oppose immigration from poor countries, such as requiring that the H1B visa has a maximum cap of 10% from any one country, which will have the effect of limiting the number of Indians who enter. Setting an additional maximum cap of 49% males from any one country would also be good to encourage gender diversity, instead of flooding in male migrants and then forcing companies to do it.
- Visa workers paid less for a job with a higher rate of lay is illegal. The paperwork and justification to offer jobs to visa workers clearly makes the company liable for Fraud, Illegal Hiring, etc, etc. problem is to stop it things just happen:
- they must be turned in
- the US Govt must stop turning a blind eye
- companies at fault and convicted must face real consequences (fining a company $5 to $10M for this when savings over multiple positions over time has saved them 10x, 100x or more than the fine is useless
- CEO, CFO, etc jailed no less than 10 years per instance (10 year min time served)
- company fined out of business on 2nd or 3rd instance
- Americans can leave on lower lifestyle cost but refuse (tech high pay jobs, obviously not everyone) - Americans need to be educated in jobs as well. Many times positions go infilled as no available US worker or the $150k per year doesn’t allow to live and eat in places like the Bay Area and Americans while forced to share housing here couldn’t imagine to share a room with 4 or 5 or 6 others.
Yes visa worker process needs to be massively reworked and politicians need to stop screwing Americans for lobbyists pouring money, etc at them to bend to the business needs. But a lot is also caused by Americans keeping up appearances and government allowing the cost of housing and living to be so out of control.
Source in case you don’t believe me: https://www.squarefoot.com/leasopedia/dollars-cents-much-cos...
And - personally - I might even take the $10k/yr pre-tax deduction for a nice private office. Certainly much cheaper than trying to do it at my own place.
Wait, you get cubes? That would be an upgrade compared to the open offices I am talking about. I mean open-plan offices, where each worker gets a flat surface, a rolling filing cabinet, and a power outlet.
I'd almost go back to one job where I had a cube, because the cubes there were maybe 8' (2-1/2m) square, high-walled, enough desk space to spread out, and even a personal coat closet/locker with a door. Make it another foot or two high, put on a cover and a door that closes and I wouldn't care that it was made out of cheap fiberboard covered in ugly carpet.
Knowledge is power. Research has certainly been turned to socially questionable ends. See, for example, the iffy research churned out by the tobacco companies to counter the overwhelming evidence that smoking causes cancer, heart disease, and a host of other issues.
I also think you hit the nail on the head in explaining the incentives and default behavior we’ve seen from executives. Before the pandemic, I heard the same explanation for open office plans, despite intense dislike from many: “well, around 50% don’t like this, but we can’t please everyone.”
The only solution I can think of is not mandating a single solution. Allowing individuals/teams to choose what works best for them is more complicated and risky, but also offers the greatest potential. I’m not sure there’s a way to make execs feel more comfortable with this approach though. It is risky, and it requires a lot of trust.
I’m hopeful as more companies take the leap to flexible remote policies, the results will speak for themselves. If the fears among the more conservative/risk-averse execs aren’t realized, opinions may soften. At the same time, I’m expecting there will be enough anecdotes to serve as “evidence” for any staunchly-held perspective.
The two wfh days become almost half days due to banked up hours while in the office.
Do you mean the majority? Because that is not true. The percentage of employees that want to go back and that doesn't want to go back are both significant and comparable. The question, as you say, is how to make everyone happy, but the meta-question is, does everyone really need to be happy?
A hybrid solution makes the "officer"s partially happy but non-"officer"s completely unhappy. A flexible solution makes officers happy and at advantage, but non-officers at a career disadvantage for being deprived of, among other good things, also all the schmoozing, self-marketing etc that takes place.
Also the breakdown of the "employees" is important. Not just execs but also mid-managers seem to be particularly unhappy with current setup because having the self-organizing IC to IC interactions reduced, managers' organization and coordination skills have been put under serious test. I am not saying only bad managers want RTO, but their shortcomings do get foregrounded more.
> Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver.
I think this is another problem of the managers' performance. Now it is up to their capabilities to steer up or weed out those chronic scape-goaters.
Also I think it is very important to operationalize the term "under-performer". There is a reason for having performance tiers and their proportionate rewards; anyone who is not operating at full-performance can be considered an under-performer, but that is OK and the employee's choice unless they are in the lowest tier.
That's what most ICs have been wising up to; it is easier to not cave into the peer pressure of an office environment to feel you always have to perform at top. You can totally pick a tier and have a proportionate work performance in comparison to your life performance, i.e. your other life goals. For the first time in a while a great majority of employees got a feel of what is to be not living for work.
I mean, this is not even just tech, eg. restaurant workers have been quitting disproportionately, due to many things, but also for realizing they just don't need to put up with the unnecessary pressure and rude clients.
> The trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once... People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work... How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so?
That is literally their job to handle and steer the ship under ambiguous conditions.
I absolutely don't think it is anyone's but their burden to find a working solution. If they find it too stressful, they can quit, or take comfort in their exec salaries.
I think the comment is asking the HN community for potential suggestions/solutions that allow for the remote-loving crowd and the office-loving crowd to coexist (presumably in a single company), since their needs are a little at odds with one another.
1. No hard rules on when to be in the office, simply that you must be close enough to make it into the office when you need to.
2. All meetings are remote first unless everyone is in the office (protects disadvantaging people who don't choose to come in)
3. A slack channel for people to coordinate when they will be in the office. This is big as it means that people can group together when they want to socialize easily, so it's 20 people in on one day vs 4 diff people in a day in a week. I've seen team coordinate this as well, often with social activities after.
4. Cross-team social events that encourage people to go into the office without having any professional consequences when you don't come in. In person hackathons, a many game long Catan tournament, etc.
I think there's much more to sort out, but generally this seems to have few complaints. Everyone gives up a little here, but it is very flexible. Some examples:
- The people who want to be in for social reasons can be
- Those who work better in an office / separation from home can come in whenever they want
- Have a new hire? Everyone can try to come in for the first week to help onboard and get to know people, then go back to mainly remote.
- The people who want full remote get most of what they want and don't get professionally disadvantaged by not being in the literal room. The only downside is having to be near an office, but they can easily do a few weeks working from completely remote location X still.
I think many full remote people who want to get out of major cities will have qualms with the last one, but I think those people are looking for fully remote companies without any hybrid model. I'm all for that existing and becoming more popular, but I think we have to realize that the hybrid model simply can't fully accommodate these people, and the answer is to split our models. One open question then is can you split that model at a team/org level, or does it have to be at the company level?
- Things that happen outside of meetings, which are what the remote-video rule is for, not everything categorically. e.g. debugging together when in, white-boarding, the quick desk visit, etc. As I said, teams can (and do) coordinate to come in on the same day
- Socially, the return being happier workers, better teamwork to fall back on when you're remote, etc.
- The people who do not have a good home office setup for many various reasons that affect both young and old.
There are countless benefits, there's no magical "this is the reason to be in the office" that you can reduce to. The "video conferencing by default" rule is the tradeoff for not disadvantaging people who want to retain their less frequent office time schedule of the pandemic.
Looks like you work for a relatively good company. Others have, for example, threatened with dropping health insurance unless the workers come back -- yes, in the middle of a pandemic. I am not sure those execs care about how you make them feel. Therefore, my answer to your question, is to organize and fight back. It's a class struggle, not a happy conversation.
How do we make our execs feel more comfortable ...
How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry ...
Some of the corporations I've worked, the execs seemed to absolutely revel in their ability to make their employees uncomfortable and worried. I give not one whit to their comfort and worries so long as they act like sociopaths or worse. This class of people hasn't had to worry in a generation. Hasn't been uncomfortable in decades.
So the pandemic reveals the charade, and we're just supposed to all agree that is isn't a charade and go back to acting like good human resources? We have been so overworked, for so long, that we get a long moment to rest -- the pandemic -- and realize the culture, the society, its just awful. What have these stewards of the economy given us, and guided us toward? Empty lives, endless work, a seemingly dying ecosystem, endless consumption, pointless entertainment.
This isn't class struggle, its class war. A war the lower class is clearly already losing.
I think the post makes the mistake of assuming that we are one equal footing with corporate execs and that this is, somehow, a conversation. But let's just give them room to expand on their thoughts.
I agree this is a reality and has to be considered.
But we need to acknowledge that this is people's personal problems coming into the workplace. If there is going to be a compromise, at some point I'm going to at least want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason I can no longer interact with my new born baby a few time throughout the day, and will thus spend significantly less time with them during this brief phase of their life. I also want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason my risk of early death in a car accident are greatly increased. Otherwise, I'm going to feel that any "compromise" is forced.
It's a hard problem.
If you don't get paid family leave for several months in that situation, that's not your co-worker's fault. That's how it's supposed to work.
I've been fully remote since 2010, and I would be completely frustrated if I was told "You need to sit at the office now, because John is feeling different in half-empty office"
I don’t think it’s necessary to be physically present to build software, but if you do go remote, go all the way. Trying to build a sense of camaraderie over Zoom is a tragic farce.
Our experience is that a team that works together to solve problems builds camaraderie. The tools and tech are all there and very easy and affordable.
A few weeks ago we met up for lunch after being away from each other for over a year. Nothing about our meeting gave us the impression that we'd grown apart from working remotely.
Of course, the size of your investment and your returns may vary.
Everyone likes to talk about supporting efforts for climate change until they are presented with an actionable choice that negatively affects their personal habits.
e.g. no meetings in dusty conference rooms that could be done remote, instead, actual interactive events that are occasional but useful for relationship building and collaboration.
The future of going in 5 days a week is gone, the pandemic and the internet killed that. When you do get the team to go in, make it worth it.
Oh, I see. And I want to be surrounded by family and friends. Coworkers are....well, coworkers.
> going back while the majority of the team is remote is not the same
Going back while I don't want to go back is not only not the same, it is __completely different__
> kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries
Now, this is the problem of the worker. Just because person X can't reason with their family shouldn't mean that __I__ have to go into an office.
> relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over
This makes absolutely no sense. If they want a commute they can go to a coworking space. Commute itself is the reason why I __will never__ go to an office again. I'm not gonna waste a minute on something I'm not getting paid for.
> How do we make our execs feel more comfortable
Why would I want that? There are many more employees than execs. Why wouldn't we want to focus on making the employees comfortable so that they can perform well?
> no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal
What does this even mean?
However - how many people have moved away from a commutable distance during the 1 year WFH period?
Ironically I had this battle with Google pre-COVID back in 2019. I was worn down by my commute and itching for a change of environment, but I liked my team and my project. I figured I’d push for full remote since the sell seemed obvious: either I stop working for you and you get zero value from me, or you let me work remotely and you continue to get value from me (more value, I argued). I put forth a list of concessions to address their concerns (I’ll commit to stable online hours, I’ll create a virtual desk in the form of an always-on voice or video call, I’ll forfeit remote if my performance rating is anything below “exceeds expectations”). After weeks of back and forth meetings, the final response was: we can’t give you full remote because then everyone will want it. How about 3 days in 2 days out?
I left a month later, did some traveling, then started working as a remote freelancer. Despite no free food, no benefits, no in-office massages, I have zero regrets. It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my overall well-being. And most recently I took a full-time position at a fully remote company (as in no offices at all) with better comp and benefits than what I had at Google.
The more we actually leave to pursue remote, the more these opportunities will arise.
Really? What company pays more than Google and is full remote like that? I’m not saying that they don’t exist but the $400k bar is hard for most remote companies to swallow.
This seems naive, disingenuous, or just lazy reporting. In my experience, neither "management" nor "workers" are monolithic blocks. Some are in favor of more WFH, some not.
Most people I work with want to return to the office or are indifferent. Reasons cited include, too many distractions at home (kids/family), work/life structure (more below), team social interaction, improved face to face collaboration & mentoring (new hires), office perks, and so on.
Not everyone has the discipline, independence, and communication skills necessary to be successful at WFH. In my experience, WFH is especially challenging for many early career individuals.
We should be realistic about human nature and organizational dynamics. There are significant down sides to teams if some people are in person and some are remote. The remote people will inevitably miss out on many in person / adhoc conversations. Having less information than peers can hurt job performance. This leads to people feeling like second class employees in the long run. We saw the same thing with remote employees pre COVID.
I say all this as someone who is generally in favor of WFH.
Remote teams need to work & communicate differently from in person teams to be successful. For example, we spend a lot more time on written communication (docs, emails, chat, etc) compared to in-person adhoc desk/whiteboard conversations.
I think the more reasonable organizational approach is to have fully remote teams and fully in person teams. This enables everyone to get roughly what they want/need. Team processes and expectations can be tailored to the team's situation.
The big question then becomes, how do companies refactor large orgs into remote and in person teams? My guess is that it's going to involve a lot of team changes and disruption to the org. This is likely why sr. managers are trying to make the transition in a slow, controlled way.
Really? As in you and someone else are each assigned a meeting with each other on Zoom (or whatever) at a given time? Would your co-workers not socialize, otherwise? It sounds like it was a positive experience for you, which is great.
Yes, I did enjoy this a lot. Off topic, but when I retired (again) after this gig, I re-started offering my free mentoring service (1 hour talk on the phone or Zoom, some people just want to exchange emails) again, and have enjoyed helping people.
I realize that this is an anecdote, but as a young(ish) single person, this doesn't match up with my experience at all. Half our team is out of state, and I've never heard anybody express a desire to come in state to work at the office.
That probably makes those spaces harder to sell/rent. It's unlikely they'll find a single large buyer with the same needs. They'd probably have redesign the campuses a bit to better support multiple tenants.
I’m pro-remote work, but if all of tech does it, that seriously dents tech-style real estate.
So I don’t think this has to do with executives protecting home values. It might be about the business protecting the value of office buildings, though - if they own them, and don’t rent, anyway.
However, making decisions based on this is a pretty classic sunk-cost fallacy. The cost of continuing to use the campus won't be any higher because it's half-empty.
There are millions of small variations in this "war", to the point that it is not even a war, but markets being creative in their own way.
There are the startups in high paying areas that hire remotes for a fraction of the salary they'd have to pay locally.
There are the people with skills extremely rare that can demand remote only.
There are the contract workers or consultants in one area of expertise.
If, from the start you say no to FAANG and Microsoft you'll find lower salaries but a lot more in interesting opportunities.
I work remote for a startup in Europe. The salary is not Berlin/Zurich/Paris high but allows me to live like a king in the Canadian Prairies. Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement. And also I can truly make a difference in the company. Couldn't be happier.
This makes it sound like these 3 are somewhat equivalent in terms of compensation in terms of salary, but to be clear, they're really not, as a quick look at levels.fyi indicates.
> Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement.
I've been reading a bit about personal finances lately, and I realized that being able to save x% only tells you part of the story. More precisely, the comparison between two places in terms of saving rates are only relevant if the only two scenarios are to remain in one place or the other indefinitely. Let's say you want to retire in Berlin eventually, you might be better off saving 10% working in SV than saving 40% working in Paris. If you're flexible about where you'll retire, you should maximize the nominal amount you're saving.
Since they already had that in place the pandemic didn't really hit them from an organisational point of view.
The reason I was so interested in the job (other than the fact the work is interesting) was because they where remote-only before pandemic - so there was no risk of "right, it's over, everyone back in the building".
I'm not sure what someone would have to offer me at this point to get me back in an office tbh.
Working how you want, with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer.
Of course there are challenges to working remotely but on balance they are no worse (or somewhat better) than working on site.
I had an earlier comment on how those against WFH might change their mind if they had a good chair. It might work in reverse too.
The office might be far less annoying to people if they had a budget for equipment or at least got high quality equipment.
Also, I have a porch ten steps from my desk.
I’ve been working with a company that have done studies on remote work, at the beginning 4% of employees wanted to work from the office 100% of the time. 6 months later it was 2%."
Source: @dade_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992011
The problem is they built campuses and feel stupid about devaluing them. Combine that with a backwards mindset and, for most companies, the situation becomes clear.
It’s really that simple.
That's their choice, but they can never again complain about a shortage of talent. Which should affect their ability to participate in work visa programs, for example.
Seems like the solution may just be a great realignment of employees. Companies can pick a side and people can move accordingly.
This industry doesn't care about tenure or retaining codebase experience anyway.
Before the pandemic, companies had employed remote workers and paid them based on business value, but now they want to pay us based on the location we live.
They are creating a narrative that they pay us based on the cost of living, but it's just an excuse to reduce our salary.
They are forcing us to go back to offices because corporate executives are elitists control freaks that think remote work is a privilege workers should not have.
They are putting pressure on this question because they know the majority of developers would prefer to stay remote and they will put pressure on us until we accept the wage reduction.
But I tell you we should not accept this. The media always says there is a shortage of qualified workers in the tech industry so we, as employees in the tech industry, are qualified workers and since there is a shortage of us, we have the power to impose our conditions.
I want remote work with full salary and I think you too.
What do corporations fear? Unions.
They fear unions so badly that they are willing to pay lots of money to union bursting firms.
So I say you we should unionize, we should combine our power to fight this devilish attempt to reduce our salaries.
Why should employees pay for saving money for the company?
My company is also experimenting with a 36 hour work week based on the Icelandic Study. As per the study, in order to maintain productivity, organizations need to clean up their processes. Specifically targeted meetings, more documentation and less interruptions. I am sure my coworkers will also be more productive just to keep the shorter work week - I know I will.
8 hours in an office != productivity. Quiet time and the ability to do deep work = productivity. I wish more managers and execs understood this.
For my own productivity, the company that I am looking at for inspiration is Hashicorp. https://works.hashicorp.com/ looks to be one of the best documents on how to do remote work. If anything, it is all well thought out.
I'm actually wondering if there is a way to rent a sealed medium size office space (think something around 10-15 m2) with high-speed internet, table, chair and a refrigrator with a moderate fee. I absolutely hate open spaces. For God's sake if it's open why not I go to a Starbuck? It's just a few bucks a day!
For some, you have to work at a specific location. This is what it is.
If work from home works, you have an opportunity to hire some great people that less flexible employers are going to shed. You also can start reducing the costs - offices are very expensive compared to a reasonable work from home allowance.
If it's not working, then it's time to go back to the office and hope you can out compete your competitors. Your competition will be hiring away anyone not happy with the office environment, who wants to move or hates their commute. Your competitors will have lower costs because as they eliminate a huge chunk of office costs, you'll be making rent and utility payments. This is a Pareto level advantage.
Leaving up giving a yes/no on what WFH will look like contingent based on how the pandemic unfolds
The problem? People (myself included) have mentioned we're walking if office work becomes required
Why? We were already doing WFH before the pandemic; this isn't a chance to renegotiate that
But it would have to be an actual office. Like with a door. And room for a photo of my wife or two. Maybe a silly LED project.
If my choice is having to be somewhere at a certain time with absolutely no privacy, sometimes not even the ability to set stuff up and leave it, or WFH, it's WFH every time.
Maybe now that those of us that don't want to be in an office at all will be at home, those of that want to go in can take over the empty space and get actual personal space again instead of cafeteria tables with a row of monitors on them....
Apple Park $5 billion[0]
Google over $7 billion nationwide ($1 billion in Mountain View alone)[1][2]
Facebook $300 million on MPK 21, a billion on real estate in general.[3]
And these are just some of the marquee players. If workers don’t return to the office, these executives just wasted $13 billion collectively. Well, we can’t have that! Force the plebes back into their boxes.
we’re living Cook’s, Pichai’s and Zuck’s a sunk cost fallacy.
[0] https://manofmany.com/living/architecture/inside-apples-insa...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/google-spends-1-billion-on-p...
[2] https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/18/google-launches-bill...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/facebook-new-campus-has-redw...
In addition to remote work, some here have commented about private offices vs cubicles or open desks without even cubicle walls. Obviously, it is much cheaper to give someone a desk in an open space, with zero extra costs. The cost savings then can to to giving the CEO an ultra expensive office. I've read some can get up over a million dollars, with gold faucets in their private bathrooms, rare Italian marble credenza tops and all furniture made of rare mahogany wood, and the like. For example, a Pininfarina Aresline Xten office chair costs $1,500,000. John Thain, Merrill Lynch’s CEO, spent approximately $1.22 million to upgrade his office. Goldman Sachs' retiring Lloyd Blankfein spent top dollar to build its soon-to-be retiring chief executive a new office as he transitions to an advisor for the firm - exact numbers are not known but it is over $500,000. Many other peoples' offices had to be moved for the ex-CEO, in order for Blankenfein to get a coveted view of the Hudson River.
This is essentially the same exact reason why CEOs want people to work in the offices. For both, it is personal vanity.
When the CEO brings people into the office - personal friends, family, clients - the CEO wants to show off how great he is. Vanity. "Look at me, look at how important I am with my own expensive office that costs $528,000."
In the same way, the only reason the CEO wants people at the offices is for his vanity. It is more impressive for the CEO to bring his friends to an office where there are thousands of workers, all reporting to the great big important man. Oh, he is so important. How impressive is the CEO if there's only a barebone skeleton crew of 8 people?
Peoples' vanity is limitless, and they will literally tank a company rather than give up on their vanity. People think that CEOs are attached to the bottom line, to maximize shareholder value, but they are not. It's all tied to their vanity.
No, this is not the case for all CEOs, of course, but probably is for a good 84.827% of them, as shown by France Is Bacon polling company.
To that end, as a side project I was hacking on https://wlblist.com/surveys/aa74ed35-d51e-4d23-991d-6049e0ba... earlier this year (think the awesomeness of Levels.fyi but for non-compensation data). Never got much traction, but I still believe that collectively, we can influence the future of work if we collaborate in some form to freely and anonymously share information about the degrees of workplace flexibility that each employer offers.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Raderwer...
Translated: "All the gearworks grind to a halt if your powerful arm commands it so".
In 2021.
With 1.5°C expected increase of global temperature by 2030.
I think when people start going back we will quickly see that most aspects of the office are actually worse.
I am a hard worker but I am also social and with just a few people back I end up wasting at least 1 hour talking about non-work related things. This isn't even an open floor plan.
If you are going back to an open floor plan, forget about it. Things will be so obviously less productive.
I am enjoying going into the office but I also know this time is limited. At some point in the future going into the office is going to be a perk with remote standard. Bet your ass on that.
You don't even have to bring in the cost savings but the cost savings will be the knockout punch.
Any in office work should be 100% optional and up to the employee.
You can be well compensated and still demand a seat at the corporate table as a stakeholder in a business.
Haven't heard this sentiment much. So I'm curious what's problematic about such vaccine mandates?
To me it's a slippery slope to allow corporations to mandate what happens to our own body.
It’s literally no different from not wanting to employ people that don’t have a driver’s license, or some credential, or are convicted of crimes.
Come on. If vaccines are ao offensive, why do you want to work for someone that only wants people that are vaccinated around them? Take some responsibility for your life choices instead crying, “Woe is me!” No one owes you a job, nor do you owe any employer your labor. Walk if you don’t like it.
Finally, if you think employers and body modification is some recent bridge too far, perhaps you should google tattoos, hair styles, facial hair, and piercings in the workplace.
I don't take offense with the vaccine, it has helped to turn things around, it's the mandate that i have a problem with.
And again, tattoos, hair style and so on are things that you freely choose to do, they are not mandated and thus are not the same thing.
You are always free to start your own company and endanger other people’s health there.
At this point you’re basically complaining that it sucks to be unpopular. Well, that’s a personal problem. Stop trying to say that people are being forced to do anything. They’re not. They just aren’t free of of the consequences of their (in)actions.
You’re not allowed to enroll in a public school or the military without specific panel of vaccines. Again, you’re always welcome to not join the military or to enroll in a private school that doesn’t require vaccines or even homeschool. Whining that that private schools are too expensive, or homeschool is too much of a time sink, isn’t the responsibility of anyone except the person that decided to opt out of the system. Take the responsibility. Antivax folks don’t have a right to endanger others.