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Comment by acwan93 | Hacker News Reader

I'll give you an anecdote for my company (we're a software firm with developers, support staff, and sales reps):

We offered hybrid and remote options to all of our employees once lockdowns ended. All of them (except for one) wanted to come back full-time, with some notable exceptions for hybrid. Some employees have kids so they went hybrid, but once schools reopened they all went back full-time in the office. The lone person was extremely freaked out about COVID and still wants to do full-remote, and he's now working hybrid where when he's in the office he's in an isolated room away from us.

All of them disliked the lack of communication while remote. We implemented Teams, had our daily/weekly standups over video chat, and talked a lot using remote tools. But that significantly slowed things down and it was hard to figure out what people were doing.

Remote does have a place, but I think hybrid is the way to go.

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> All of them (except for one) wanted to come back full-time, with some notable exceptions for hybrid. Some employees have kids so they went hybrid, but once schools reopened they all went back full-time in the office.

We had the same opportunity to choose at my workplace (130+ employees) and ALL BUT ONE of the tech-team chose hybrid. Most of us are effectively working full-time remotely still, but have the option to meet at the office when we want (this is currently discouraged until we see how omicron pans out).

The sales and management teams were more in favor of working at the office, but even there many chose hybrid. Amazing that two companies can have such a totally different outcome - although I must say the company I work for is an exemplary example of a diverse workplace, with a great mixture of young and old, parents, and singles of all genders and from a variety of cultures and backgrounds.

Is it the lack of communication or the lack of spontaneous socializing with coworkers? Dont get me wrong, I think the latter is probably underrated, but I dont know if thats what you are missing?

I think there’s also another aspect that gets missed; the lack of being around other humans, which is subtly different to socialising.

Pre-covid, most people were around multiple other people for most of their waking life. I don’t think it’s at all surprising that a mode of working where you spend every working day without seeing another human is causing some people difficulty.

Thats a good point! It is difficult to explain what is missing when the less social half of the office is missing, especially as it seems like even the absence of people you dont speak to, is felt.

It is hardly fair to expect people, especially who dont want it themselves people or aren't even friends with to not work from home for such reasons. Though it may well be that many introverts need on this more than extroverts, despite often wanting remote. My point is that leadership is primarily ensuring a social environment where people work well, and the ones who figure this out will benefit greatly.

I think it's a mix of language and company structure. We are a bilingual company where people speak a mix of Mandarin and English, and sometimes it's just too much of a pain to communicate to someone in English in text when you've been primarily speaking to them in Mandarin. That and a lot of technical terms are in English, so that also adds a layer of complexity in remote work when trying to mix English and Chinese.

Our company also is on the older side (in longevity), even though we're a small business the company has a lot of systems in place that's not equipped for remote work. I'm really trying to change this since I firmly believe hybrid seems to be the way to go moving forward.

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