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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

One possible reason for wanting GS employees back in-person: it's much easier to avoid putting things in writing when you can just walk down the hall. There's probably a lot of stuff they don't want on email/Slack/etc.

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I’m surprised this is the first time I read this argument. It seems so much more obvious than the typical “what would middle management do if nobody comes back?”.

As a rule, toxic management avoids leaving paper trails. I had a boss who was so predictable about this, any one on one call with him would inevitably default to threats and harassment.

Perhaps because it's complete speculation with no evidence backing it.

Perhaps, but it is plausible.

Of course, there are always toxic managers dumb enough to leave a clear and permanent paper trail.

A lack of evidence doesn't indicate anything.

Witness SAC getting shut down. Or the Libor scandal. And many other scandals involving the financial sector.

Now, does GS specifically engage in such practices? Maybe, maybe not. But it's more than plausible.

Sorry, S.A.C. Capital Advisors didn't shutdown. Rather, it repaid outside investors, and then was reborn with insider-only money as Point72 Asset Management. (Yes, I know that a few employees of SAC were found guilty of financial crimes.)

They were shut down as part of the plea deal with the government (in which they plead guilty I might add). Not accepting outside money is a de-facto end to the business.

A family office isn't the same thing...

Kind of the point isn't it? The existence of people preferring in-person communication because it absolves them of a paper trail is necessarily something that can only be established anecdotally.

For other companies, maybe. Knowing GS…Probably not!

> with no evidence backing it.

Nobody that is asked to do illegal (or grey area) things or that gets threatened in person will yield to your demand for "evidence". To ask for it in this context is not very humane of you, it's not hard to imagine why it isn't there.

That doesn't match my experience. At an investment bank, or hedge fund, you don't usually go to interrupt someone. You "ping" them on chat, set up a videoconference, or something else. You meet people at the floor kitchen, the cafeteria, or meeting rooms. In NYC floors they don't even say good morning to the person next to them. Even if on the same team and both going together for drinks at the end of the day. It was shocking how isolated workers are. This was years before the pandemic. And I'm not just talking about trading floors.

"We're RTO because we need to foster the office culture!"

_Office culture is a cubicle and 12 hour workdays_

Maybe its time for a new generation of workers to meet people outside the office instead of making their life revolve entirely around work.

Isn’t that what video calls are for? Whenever I want to talk to someone and not leave a paper trail I get on a call.

Can you be certain those calls aren’t being saved, whether by a party on the call or the underlying service in use?

In many places, including where I live, its illegal to record calls without the consent of all parties on the call. If they are being illegally saved (certainly possible), nothing in them would be admissible in court.

There is whole range of conversations that would never end up in court but if they are recorded can bring a lot of trouble.

Where I live, you only need consent of one person (ie: ypu self).

But then it changes when you are using company tools. Teams can be configured to automatically record all conversations. The consent is baked into your employment agreement.

those calls are easily recorded on the server, your speech transcribed with reasonable accuracy and searchable. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer the live transcribe.

Whatever it is, it isn't for 'off the books' conversations.

Legit why some co-workers and I have signal. Be like- hey can you hit me up on s? (For non work related conversation, or taking about our Plex/emby/jellyfin/home lab meta conversationa)

Or by the other person. There's a new hire on my team who records all his video chats with what I think is a program meant for streaming games, and Meet/Zoom/etc don't recognize it and so can't notify the other person (he mentioned it once and that he uses it instead of taking notes (the only reason I know he does this), and I was just like ???). It's kinda unnerving.

You might give them a friendly hint that this might be a criminal offense, depending on the state they or the state their conversation partner is in. In California for example, this can be charged either as a misdemeanor or a felony, both with hefty fines and up to multi-year prison sentences.

Video calls aren't the same as spontaneous in-person communication. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to have a 2 minute "face-to-face" conversation (via video), only to receive a reply by chat: "Sure, try me tomorrow morning." I think: "Oh nevermind. I'll find someone else." Six months later, I have almost no communication with the people who regularly tell me the same.

The issue is though that those 2 minute conversations are actually distractions for the people you talk to and in an office setting they don't have the option to avoid them.

Or they are 2-minute conversations in the hallways between meetings or spontaneously over lunch. Those two categories are even more important and even more precluded by remote work.

Talking of personal experience after a year remote due to covid I went back to office for a single day and I had members of product management team coming to me every 15 mins with questions. I realized they were doing this pre covid and also during remote but the difference in the latter case was that they were using chat and that meant I could prioritise and reply to them asynchronously. Never went back to office after that day. A

If it’s not worth it to someone to articulate their thoughts/questions in writing, that is a huge red flag that said person will probably waste much more than a few minutes of my time if I don’t reset their expectations.

This is a skill everyone should be doing. Require everything in writing. I started doing this in office because everyone has amnesia and I was tired of people lying or changing their mind. If you want something done, then go through the channels and in writing.

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