Hacker News Reader

Comment by zw123456 | Hacker News Reader

I have a theory about this, I already know some people hate it, and others totally agree. Basically it is that executives, management types, people who worked their whole career to get ahead and get that corner office, they really like walking around an office, it is like their fiefdom. It's not just the meetings or whatever, it is being a big shot and having people see them that way. It is a big part of what they worked for. This is a generalization, of course, not all executives and managers are completely that way, but, I think all have, if they are completely honest, will admit, they kind of like being the big man on campus and miss that a little bit. I am not casting shade here, it would be human nature, of course, you worked hard to be head of things, you want to walk around and enjoy that, it is completely understandable.

Those of us who do not care about that sort of thing and are happy writing code, developing circuits or network designs and etc. We are completely fine working from home. In fact, not having the distractions of an office is actually really nice.

But if part of your fulfilment is being "the big boss" or whatever, it's just not as satisfying sitting in your basement on Zoom with the rest of us.

Just my little theory.

View on HN

[Disclaimer: I'm a manager.]

Your theory seems to rely on a rather uncharitable set of assumptions.

I wonder if an alternate explanation could be that the manager job role tends to involve a lot of talking to other people, and that there's something advantageous, or at least more fun, about doing that in person?

Or perhaps the type of people that become managers tend to lean more toward extroversion, and thus on average managers enjoy in-person social interaction more?

I often meet and talk with people for 6 hours in a day. Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc. It kind of sucks, like, a lot. Especially for people, like myself, who ended up managing because they simply enjoy being around other people. It's just not that fun to talk to a plastic rectangle all day.

Now, I do still sneak in some IC work from time to time, and it's obviously great to do that remotely. And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

But if you surveyed me, asking whether I'd like to return to the office? Fuck yeah, I'd like to. But my motivation has nothing to do with your ungracious views on managers needing to feel like bigshots. I'm sorry that you've evidently worked with poor management to the extent that this is your worldview.

Yea I agree with this. Ever looked at an executive calendar? All day meetings. That’s almost all they do. Relationships are critical, so of course they’d prefer in person.

The problem is imposing that view on everyone, forgetting their individual contributor roots

C'mon, if you enjoyed social interaction so much, you'd be a salesperson; not a manager talking to the same people all the time. Nope, you like being in charge and 'directing' people.

In 13 years of software development, I've never had a productive meeting where a manager was present. Only when engineers get together to argue and hammer out details is it productive. If a manager is present, he/she makes the decision or just agrees with the lead engineer and no further discussion takes place.

So, my view is that managers are useless and a net drain on the company wallet. Walking around, making decisions you're not qualified to make, approving time off, talking to people for 6 hours, time tracking, pushing employees to work more is the most useless role ever created.

My favorite development job is one that had no manager. The lead communicated with the director, who reported to the CEO. It was great because the lead was an engineer that coded with the rest of us. No meetings or other useless activities. When the company was purchased, the software architect was made the new manager as part of the new structuring. Immediately, he instituted metrics and developer rules. Within a year most engineers had left. Thank you management...

At my last job, we 3 engineers were doing fine without a manager, once again the lead took care of things and reported to the director. But the director's best friend needed a job and became our new manager. And here we go again... Within a year and a half I'm the only engineer left on the team and I end up quiting 3 months after shouldering the load and working 7 days a week.

I don't trust any manager and I go out of my way to avoid them even as far as refusing promotions to avoid more interaction with one.

I'm a manager and I talk people using teleconferencing apps 6+ hours a day. I like it better than doing it at the office, where I comically have to use the same technology to talk to people in other offices.

I'd rather stay 6+ hours in meetings in more comfortable clothes (loose shorts) and sitting in a more comfortable chair - not to mention the lack of people wanting me to leave the meeting room because of THEIR meeting.

Yes, communication suffers to a certain extent, but occasional visits to the office eliminates the problems with 1:1s you mention. And at least in my experience, this small degradation of in-person communication isn't such a big deal.

So if you surveyed me, I'd say "Please let me stay home!". Also, if IC work is "great to do remotely", I'd rather see my team at peak productivity remotely than indulging any possible desire I could have to talk to them in person. As a manager, I exist to unblock and help my team, so what's best for the team is best for me.

I have been the CEO of a successful company for 5+ years and a senior director/manager in others. I very rarely had meetings. If you pick the right people for the job, and make sure they know what the goals/deadline is, then the best thing you can do is to not bother them with meetings. Find ways to measure progress without interrupting the team flow. Make it clear that you expect the team to solve problems themselves without constantly asking for permission etc. It isn’t rocket science. I spent about an hour a day working when managing. The rest was me doing my hardest to not slow down the team that was doing the actual work. It worked really really well.

> where I comically have to use the same technology to talk to people in other offices.

For my current company, I have no team members in my local office. So for the short period where I was going into the office, I never had an in person meeting.

Ahhh, sorry if it came off that way. Honestly, I have good friends that are managers. And I think I work for good managers. I just think it is probably not as satisfying being a manger or executive if you don't have people around you to manage. If everyone is doing their work just fine without all that close supervision, it probably feels like you are not as appreciated. But I was not trying to be uncharitable.

I am sure you are a very good manger.

> I just think it is probably not as satisfying being a manger or executive if you don't have people around you to manage

I still get to manage my reports remotely. :P

Now, I like to view myself as helping them succeed, rather than browbeating them into submission to enact my will. But even if I was this caricature of a manager that you posit, why would it be better for me in person?

If anything, my "big shot" factor is higher remotely than it is in person. Physically, I'm just a normal person, made of meat and vulnerable like anyone else. If I am speaking to a large audience, they can actually participate. An audience member might throw out a little joke here and there, a bit of heckling, etc. I can't stop it! (Not that I'd want to, personally.)

But over video? Well, first, I can make it a live stream. Boom, I am in power, no heckling possible. But even if it's technically a two-way call, once you have a few dozen people, there's no audience banter. I control the conversation, completely. Heck, I'm the only one with my camera on. I'm the center of attention. I have the power to mute people. I'm a God!

> If everyone is doing their work just fine without all that close supervision

That's a pretty good description of my team. And you're right: like anyone else, I enjoy feeling appreciated. But bossing people around in person is not a way to obtain appreciation! Providing useful feedback, helping people ensure they're are working on meaningful projects, helping resolve weird interpersonal situations -- in other words, being a good manager -- is what results in real appreciation.

And all that stuff can be done remotely. But again, it sure is less fun, at least for me. Having a difficult performance conversation with someone over video sucks, for the same reason that it sucks to break up with someone via text message.

Don't you think it's a lot more plausible that extroversion correlates with becoming a manager in the same way that it correlates with wanting to see people in the office? Or that it's simply easier to do the manager job in person than over the internet?

I manage a linux team so this battle was lost for me long ago, but having managed a site-oriented team before, it was a lot easier to build relationships for me and the team members.

I definitely think there is certain personality traits that lend to the "traditional" manger role in an office.

What I think could be interesting over time, if this "new normal" let's call it, of working from home, persists, could that lead to a different set of personality traits being attracted to or being better suited to this new work situation?

I don't know, but it seems like the nature of work is changing rapidly right now and, that could perhaps, lead to a rapid change in the nature of a good manger or perhaps leadership changes because of it in ways ?

I guess we shall see.

> Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc.

Have you ever tried meeting in person for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a different quality of voice so some people sound muffled and I can't "turn the volume up" to understand them. Screen sharing at a desk is awkward and involves huddling close to look at a screen, god forbid I forgot my glasses. Eye contact is annoying because some people like to stare deeeeeeep into my eyes when I'm talking about stuff and I find it distracting. Whiteboards are nice, but I can kinda do the same thing with draw.io or visio on a screen while chatting. And we haven't even begun to talk about people who don't shower enough or like eating stinky food.

lol, see? I can make in-person meetings sound terrible, too!

And then there's the larger in-person meetings in the conference room. I don't get my giant screen, keyboard, and mouse. Nah I gotta have my clumsy laptop, it runs hotter in my lap, the keyboard isn't as nice, and then they probably dimmed the lights a tiny bit because the projector is on. ZZZzzzzzZZZZzZzZZZZzzZZZZZzzzzZ

Okay now I'm just being totally unfair lol.

In person meetings can be nice, but I can totally live without them.

Edit: But I don't totally disagree. There's always gotta be that ONE PERSON who has their microphone like 500 times louder than the other people. And then somebody who has their microphone super quiet. So I either can't hear the quiet person, or get my ears blown out by Loud Howard. And the worst part is hardly anyone knows how to adjust their mic (or my favorite - some idiot in IT forbid adjusting the mic via group policy. WTF?!)

> Now, I do still sneak in some IC work from time to time, and it's obviously great to do that remotely. And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

It is unfortunate that only one group can get what it wants. The people like yourself that enjoy working from the office do so because of the in-person interactions. If the people that want to work from home do so, then those in person interactions are possible.

I'm a big fan of "1-2 days in the office, the rest of the time at home" in order to get _some_ of that in-person interaction. Unfortunately, they requires a VERY specific set of circumstances; specifically, people willing to live close enough to the office to come in (though not necessarily as close as if they had to come in every day).

> I often meet and talk with people for 6 hours in a day. Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc. It kind of sucks, like, a lot.

I actually haven't had o be 5 hours of Zoom and could see that could get old quick. An interesting thought since its the managers inclination for in person meetings - if one could actually organize the 1-1s to be a walking session. But instead of having both the manager and the report driving into the office to walk around the office - perhaps the manager could drive to the report's neighborhood for a 1-1 walking meeting.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Maybe the report can come in 1x per week. Not fully remote but a lot more flexibility than full on office.

Lore tells us managers can't enter your home uninvited. Very clever to have the meeting nearby instead!

I have never in 25+ years of professional development had a productive meeting with a manager. However I have had plenty of productive meetings with engineers. My impression is that most managers mistakenly think they are productive and bringing value when they interrupt the people who are doing the real work. I have been the CEO of a company for 5+ years and in director/management roles for other companies. My teams were way more productive than the competition (according to our customers) and I almost never had meetings. The only rare exception was when a engineer was stuck or spinning his/her wheels. I would then get a few highly respected engineers together and let them help the engineer getting it resolved. All I did was to facilitate the meeting and keep my mouth shut after explaining the problem we needed to get solved. That’s all I needed to do. I probably spent about 1 hour a day on actual work. Mostly fending off bad ideas from other managers, defending the team from clueless managers who wanted to get involved, and making sure our customers stayed informed and happy.

Thanks, I think that's a fair assessment

But now think for a bit: are video meetings the only way you can talk to your colleagues?

Here are other ways you could talk or at least do some of the updating work: chat, email, shared doc, quick audio catch-ups (Slack amongst others). Not just to send what can only be sent by those, but why not explore different ways of doing this? Managers seem allergic to trying anything besides "doing a quick call"

Why don't you put a headset and try walking around and having a walking meeting?

"People have different quality headsets" Ok how much is one of those? I guess it fits the budget. Can't do much about the connection, sure, but maybe the company can think of supporting the employees?

Do all meeting need to be 1h long? I call BS on that one. If the meeting is done it's done, but some people feel like dragging it over.

Linux development has been, for the good part of 20 yrs, done without zoom, phone calls, 1:1 meetings. Mostly through chat (irc, not slack) and email. It's doable

If only people could be ok with the middle ground of spending some "meeting days" in the office and "individual contributor days" from home.

Probably would make the ICs more happy as well since now you know you can focus as opposed to getting nudged randomly.

Even with WFH meeting once or twice a month for a meeting works great. Lunch hour and afternoon traffic isn't as bad as rush hour.

I'd say the vast majority of meetings I'm in we are looking at code or documentation anyway so video calls work the best anyway. But I look forward to when using something like VRChat is a viable option as well.

So a manager prioritizing personal minor convenience (single individual) over productivity and comfort of the reports would be considered a charitable interpretation in MBA land? edit: removed "You" as the author is not part of the group that supports the behavior mentioned

I guess you didn't read my whole comment. I'll quote the part that you didn't read:

> So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

By the way, I definitely don't have an MBA. I've written around a million lines of C++ over my career. So I understand what it's like to work as an IC. Have you managed?

I retract the "you" from the above statement the rest of it still stands. I have managed people and had run my own company but will not extrapolate my experience more generally as I am pretty introverted by nature which is not very representative.

If your comment is just saying "managers who do things to their own benefit, to the expense of their reports, are bad," then we're in agreement.

> And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.

noted: edited the comment to reflect

I think it has more to do with the nature of the job. Management is mostly communication and collaborative planning. This type of work benefits from having people together in one place to a much greater degree than most IC work.

totally, i'd go occam's razor on this one.

I bet it almost entirely comes down to offices. People who have an office don't mind, or are happy to, go back to an office. People who have to work in the open plan would rather work at home.

Right? You don't have to bring ego into it, of course the guy with the only closed office in the open space doesn't mind going back!

At least in SV startup land the executives are on the same floor as the ICs.

They tend to camp in conference rooms more or less permanently, though.

I believe that the explanation is simply because an executive job is more about managing relationships with clients, partners, stakeholder, suppliers and the first line of management rather than building something or executing some specific task. Or in other words: it's politics. And this "relationship job" is definitely better done in person rather than remotely. Actually I am surprised that the percentage is not higher. The disconnect between the executives and employees is first of all in the kind of job that one is expected to do vs the other. P.S: I am just a mundane employee.

> Actually I am surprised that the percentage is not higher.

I feel like a good amount of executives will end up putting the needs of their own workers above their ego/this desire to play office politics, and the scentiment for keeping remote work will influence how much they'll be for it. After all, management just manages, and the negotiating power of these skilled workers is very high; not offering remote work, while competitors do, means bleeding talent.

Some of us entered management explicitly because they had such a good manager themselves, who truly enabled them, that they want to provide that to others. And are constantly tempted to go back being a developer because of the pain of dealing with the organization. And some of us are enthused about remote, and have spent the pandemic finding new ways of working.

Agreed that we're rare and vastly outnumbered by people with bad motivations though.

Slavoj Zizek has a great bit about how much of the power of bosses stems not just from being able to order you about, but to force you to be their friend also, as he explains in this interview:

https://youtu.be/XS_Lzo4S8lA?t=5m20s

Much of this social dimension of power is lost without a physical presence in an office, and I think a lot of managers and bosses fear this.

Yes, agree, people who seek to be in charge value the feeling of power. That feeling is diminished without physical proximity. That is actually better expressing what I was trying to get at.

> force you to be their friend also

Imagine going for a lunch with a group of coworkers, and then your boss joins you... because he is one of you, right?

Nope. Lunch is a precious opportunity to complain about the work (including your boss) with people who understand what you are talking about. Now the workers are losing even this trivial right.

Part of it I’m sure is: the kind of people who become executives tend to be the kind that like work. Nothing wrong with that, there’s a lot to enjoy in “being productive”, accomplishing tasks, feeling like you’re making an impact, optimizing things, or competing in a new market with novel technology and strategies. The kind of people who make it to the top love it in one way or another, or in multiple ways.

Originally I was really looking to find holes in what you said but I do think it's basically the same result but from a different path.

Meritocracy is never totally there, but it is more practiced in the engineering roles.

For management, it's who you know. And who you have beers with at the end of the day.

In a large e-commerce company at which I once worked I was both a manager and an IC. My family grew from 1 kid to 3 during my three plus years there. So I never could stay late to have those beers with the other managers. My career there suffered (in addition to all the other awful stuff).

When you looked around, teams were almost always composed of people that looked the same way. That company was 60% East Asian heritage, either India or largely Chinese immigrants. The teams were often grouped along ethnic lines. It makes sense, if English isn't your first language, you would prefer to work with people who spoke your first language.

But, that's the point. We hire people that look like us. And management isn't a meritocracy, so you want to be in the office to make sure people see your face and get to know you. They will more likely listen to you, consider your opinions, etc. if you are meeting face to face. It is vital for managers to keep their jobs.

The exciting thing is perhaps this will be a Renaissance for a better form of manager. But, of course, the Renaissance also had Machiavelli, and there will be lots of people who will successfully subvert this new reality.

Senior Managers at my work - one of Australia's largest companies - have actually said this. At an all staff meeting one of the exec's near the top, who is - though this will be received sceptically - a genuinely empathetic, good person said: "I miss walking around and seeing my team working, I can't wait to get back in the office"

We are a 100% remote company, have been forever. We have been going through some growth and one of the executives we added recently put a slide deck together where he basically said everything you just wrote - (and kinda saying everyone will be coming to an office even though we all work out of about 6 different states).

He was fired like 2 weeks later.

Who do you work for and how do I get a job there?

I like getting raises by stroking their egos and it’s hard to do remotely. I want to go back to the office too.

Whether I take you seriously or I take you jokingly, it's funny either way

The purpose of management is to keep all the stuff employees do actually be useful to the company.

Executives are there to ensure that happens, and having employees onsite makes it easier.

As far as I can tell, Bezos would sack every manager at Amazon if he could, and have every employee work from home, if that was best for Amazon's bottom line. I bet he'd love to save on salaries and office space. Yes, I hear a few Amazon employees are quitting, but it's not because he's just too nice to his employees. As far as I can tell, his entire philosophy in business is to make everyone a replaceable cog, and replaceable cogs don't really need managers or desks (especially if he could make everyone work from home, in some kind of mechanical turk type system). But he hasn't made it work.

Maybe I'm wrong about Bezos, or he's wrong about how to make profits (and just happened to luck out getting rich). But surely someone else would just say "get everyone to code at home and don't have managers" and they'd destroy the competition with lower overheads and greater productivity, but there's not many of examples at scale.

Here's how this debate will go:

"Managers are needed to keep employees on task, so it needs to be onsite".

"Wait, can't we just have performance reviews?"

"So why not just have freelancers for everything?"

It's basically a rehash of the theory of the firm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Employers don't know who is doing the best work. Sometimes it's virtually impossible to judge. But they can know that employees sit in a cube for the right amount of hours, and are apparently trying to get work done.

It might annoy brilliant people (and people who think they're brilliant) that they can't just be judged on the quality of their work, but in reality the company is paying for time, not results, as they really can't just the quality of results all that easily.

Yes, they can have 360 performance reviews, or negotiate everything as some kind of contract, or count lines of code or some kind of function points. There's plenty of problems with all of these, and it also means more work and probably a lot of ugly office politics. But unless it's something where results are easily judged then really just forcing people to be at their desks looking busy is going to be one of the best ways of ensuring that on average they get results.

> The purpose of management is to keep all the stuff employees do actually be useful to the company.

Yes, but I think that's too broad a statement. The purpose of managers is to coordinate work between employees, and ensure employees are working on the company's priorities.

It's telling that smaller companies tend not to have many (or even any) managers. Employees can do a perfectly fine job of coordinating and figuring out the right priorities on their own, up to a point. I'm not sure if this point is hit because after a certain size, coordination would take up all the employees' time (to the point where they wouldn't get any useful work done), or because people start getting political and selfish and can't agree what they should be working on.

I really wish we could find a way to build successful companies without all the layers of management. While they do help with coordination, they also end up abstracting and watering down the company's mission and priorities to the point where the employees end up being so much less efficient than if they had greater control over their destiny. I view the need for management as a symptom of our failure to build better business processes, not as an obvious necessity. Of course, management's paycheck depends on them maintaining the status quo, and they call the shots, so I doubt this will change.

> I really wish we could find a way to build successful companies without all the layers of management.

We do know how to do that, keep them small. You don’t need much management in a fifty person company.

The real trick would be to find a way to get the same economies of scale with a smaller company that let large companies out-compete smaller companies in spite of their drastically larger management overhead.

There's probably a biological basis for these traits. Having a place to go daily and be seen in a positive light, even if achieving near nothing, by a bunch of people is a strong human desire. Then you add the hierarchical superiority as a bonus..

I think that could be.

This is completely anecdotal but I there is a friend of mine, he and I have worked together for probably 20 years on and off in various companies and so forth. He moved up the ranks and became a VP for a big company, same one as me now. I never wanted that, I don't like having a lot of responsibility, I like being innovative, developing things but I just don't want the responsibility of having people report to me or anything like that, I am just not comfortable with it, tried it, did not enjoy it. He on the other hand, loves it, he devours it. He is a good guy, we are friends, but just different.

Recently he decided to retire, I joked with him that it was probably not as much fun being a VP now that he can't go into the office and have all the attention. He laughed and said ya, it's just not as much fun anymore, and we are not even allowed now to ask people to turn on their cameras (long story for another thread).

He was joking a bit of course, but you know, sometimes when we joke, there is an element of truth in there. I think that was the case here. He is just one guy but, I am guessing there is a personality trait at work here.

If there is a biological basis for this, why wouldn’t it be randomly distributed among ICs too?

Why do you think it isn't? There are definitely developers that can't stand working from home all the time.

Because the ICs who have this trait will work to get themselves promoted into management as soon as they can.

sorry IC means integrated circuit to me, what is it in workplace terminology ?

I think it means Individual Contributor. But I agree, Integrated Circuits are more interesting :)

Individual Contributor, that is, someone who doesn't manage others.

I think the core of this is safety and a selfishness requirement deep in each every one's brain.

Most want to feel they have their spot, that they matter, that they're relevant and that you can't put them out of the net.

The fiefdom-bigshot manager is just one dude who compensate that fear by over-leveraging the natural order in a group of people, most people won't seek that much dominance, but inside of them they have the same need. Things just balance out and most assholes will have their place at the top, the weaker or less favored will be below (all it takes is a diploma).

After a few months at public offices I've seen the social tissue at play. Most people don't do much, they come in their official spot, do the minimum to get by without causing hiccups to others. And they very often talk about how others are, and how they're perceived. As long as the metaphorical food comes regularly people will stay on this pattern.

I also have a theory about this. If you're commuting to the "office" every day it's easier to cheat on your spouse.

The "big office" is not just a status symbol. It is also practical. It is essentially an extra room, free from the usual distractions you may have at home, and where you can do almost whatever you want with as long as it is work-related. Lower ranking employees are more likely to have a better setup at home, especially if they work on an open floor plan.

Bosses are also advantaged when it comes to commutes. They may have designated parking space closer to their office, maybe even a car with a driver.

Having more money also open other options, like hiring people to do housework when you are not at home or living in a location closer to your workplace.

Reminds me of this one guy in the analytics office on the floor of my office building who was somehow cordoned off from the other parts of the same business. This guy dressed like total "mover and shaker" dudebro: always business casual with the top 2 buttons undone, sunglasses hanging from his shirt at all times, Michael P. Keaton hairstyle, and a blazer, and ALWAYS wandering around in circles while gesticulating and talking to SOMEBODY via earbud microphones in his office.

Meanwhile, the company president was a friend of a friend, worth 8 figures, and just a normal dude.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to do that as long as this person is providing value. People have their own tastes, some people don’t care much about appearances while others do. In fact it would be a pretty boring office if everyone had the same tastes.

You are absolutely correct. I have recently been in workplaces where, almost without exception, managers (mostly non-tech) at or above a certain level deliberately held loud phone conversations, or 1-on-1 conversations, while slowly walking laps around the roughly O-shaped open office layouts. They know it pisses people off. It is, almost literally, a pissing contest.

I may be partially true, but I think there's a more charitable way to explain it. Managers work with people. For a coder, talking to a manager is a distraction. For a manager, talking to a coder is literally most of what they do. So obviously a manager wants to create the optimal conditions for this - surely you can talk on video, but talking in person is better. Surely, you can manage 20 people by videochats, but getting them in the same room is better. Different work means different preferences, means different approaches.

I think it has more to do with the fact that most management has very little "deliverables" for work and most of their work has to do with meeting people and understanding how people feel about things. It's easier to do that type of work face to face as it's extenuating to manage through email and zoom. ICs tend to have more heads down work so going to the office is a net negative for most of them, as there's more interruptions and the commute to account for.

I don’t know about not having deliverables. Aren’t the deliverables of their subordinates their deliverables as well? i.e. If things don’t go well the guy in charge eats the blame as it’s his/her job to make sure it does.

OC compares "executives" and "knowledge workers", does not define "manager".

Spitballing: Director and above are executives, managers remain knowledge workers.

My observation is that executives at any given publicly traded company are functionally insane. Whatever executive daily activities involve, it's disconnected from real work and real world.

They generally have nicer clothes and hygiene. So it's not all bad.

The transmutation from Manager to Director is kind of fun to watch. The Body Snatchers meets Battle Royale.

[disclaimer: manager] To echo Humbledrone's note:

> If anything, my "big shot" factor is higher remotely than it is in person. Physically, I'm just a normal person, made of meat and vulnerable like anyone else.

This truth has been caricatured in many movies and TV shows, where the boss speaks from some large screen on the wall. Or think of Star Wars, when the bad guy is talking to the Dark Lord, who shows up as this massive 3-d projects.

I don’t understand how this dynamic works any less on Slack, when you are arguably more visible, provided you type something once and a while.

I could see this being part of it. Managing people surely has a bit of performance to it, and the physical office is a stage.

Similarly, I quite like working from home and walking around the house (getting drinks/snacks/etc) looking at the garden. That's all something I've worked for - things I planted or bought or paid off - and it's comforting to see it.

This seems plausible to me in theory, but wouldn't that be limited to the head office? If they're happy to outsource things to a different continent, then employees in satelitte offices working from home seems a smaller thing.

yes ... being a boss is for most bosses about being and feeling important. and you can only feel that in personal contact. also employees are less impressed by higher ups when they can hide behind a screen.

Why even propose a theory that makes unfair generalizations? I suppose I don't see how to start a conversation around it when you admit to the flaw in your reasoning.

A theory with generalization can still have value. In this case, I think those who seek to be in charge do so because they value or appreciate having a certain amount of power. The lack of physical proximity diminishes that feeling. It's a theory based on a generalization, I bother to propose it because it is an interesting discussion.

Maybe its too abstract for me. I'll leave it to others who can understand the value. Many thanks for explaining!

Trust me, there are shitty managers that are just fine with Slack and text.

Personally, I am more on the introverted side but I would still like to return to office at least some of the time. It is far easier to zone out at the office. At the house, the 4-year old can be hard to tune out. Right now, a couple of friends of my wife are around and they are talking loudly and I can't tune it out and it would be rude to ask them to tone it down. It is far easier to be rude to co-workers than to your family.

+100

Reply on news.ycombinator.com