Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

We developed a policy that Mondays are required, Wednesday are encouraged, rest is work from home.

I find this sort of policy fascinating. You say people are required to be on site every Monday, but what would happen if they said no? Would you fire them and go through the pain and expense of replacing them? Or is it "required" in the "we'll say it in the hope no one actually questions it" sense?

View on HN

Some people are fully remote and only meet with a team once in a while and that's ok. You can say "I will WFH on Monday, because I am waiting for sofa delivery". It is not a big company and we don't have anything formalized. We have about 80-90% people in the office on Mondays, 50-70% on Wednesdays, 20-40% on other days and it works out OK.

I think what they were really asking was whether you're ok with an employee moving 200 miles away then rarely returning to the office in person.

That'd be interesting, but there's an obvious answer of "Of course not, no one should have to travel that far!" It's much more interesting to consider a case of someone who lives 2 minutes away from the office and just doesn't want to come in. Would they be reprimanded for refusing to comply with the 'requirement' to come in?

If they wouldn't then it's not a requirement.

If they would then I suspect many people at that company are job hunting right now.

That's not really answering the question.

Curious why this is downvoted, it seems like a valid question here of how to handle a situation that may arise. I like a lot of these rules but could see myself hitting these. What if I "can't make" 25% of Mondays. What about half? What's the general force behind the policy? That's a big part of the design here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com