Workplaces are in denial over how much Americans have changed | Hacker News Reader

Workplaces are in denial over how much Americans have changed

theguardian.com

74 points0xa229 comments

Yup I look back at the insanity of driving two hours a day to sit in a stupid office that’s downtown for random reasons apart from “I’m required to”

I hated it before the pandemic. But now I never ever want to go back to it.

It is amazing to see my kids and family for longer.

It isn’t perfect. The weaker boundaries can take their toll. But overall I can’t imagine what circumstance would make me want to commute ever again.

And I’m the CEO so I can’t imagine any client demanding such. And I will never demand it of my employees.

Used to be I'd leave home at 815 to get to work at 9, and leave work at 5 to get home at 6

Last September I decided to start going into the office one day a week again. Except my new schedule was go upstairs at 9 and go downstairs at 5, so I left at 9 to get to work at 945 and left work at 4 to get home at 5

I immediately went back to full time WFH. If I commute it's gonna cut into my 8 hours, not into my personal time. That's the new reality, and it's not worth it to the company to cut 25% of my time so they can have me in the office

Just this last week, I had three meetings with a state entity that had us be there. 2.5 hours there, 4 hour (mostly useless) meeting, 2.5 hours back.

That was 9 hours of my life, not including the lack of will to do anything after that, for something that could have been summarized in probably two average Medium articles.

Madness.

(Ironically the meetings were regarding Digitalization and Green Energy)

All your reasons for liking WFH have to do with you and your personal time. Less time spent driving, more time with friends and family, etc. I like those things too. But I have a feeling most companies will try to optimize for what’s best for the company. If it’s possible to hire talent that can come into the office, then they will in the long term.

But there's no scenario in which on location information work benefits companies. Paying premium real estate for a location, equipment, office perks like snacks, then that guy willing to come in is going to charge a premium exceeding his rate for the commute and expenses because he doesn't want to but he's willing to for more money, so they've got to balance what's good for the company... slashing of large, tangible overhead vs some studies show that people are more productive when they've got a water cooler to fuck around at. What it really comes down to is middle management types who liked the level of control they had pushing for it and city governments pressuring companies to prevent a collapse of city economies.

Some companies might try to fight it but they will fail. For information workers like programmers, data entry, accountants and call center reps, work from home is the new normal and that's just how it is now. If you've got to go somewhere for work, it's because you have to be there to do something, like dig a home or cook a steak or mop a floor. The question "why do I need to be there" is now a normal question to ask when considering a job, and a real answer better exist. And if it does, you'd better pay me for my commute.

Many companies have actually experienced more optimal business in WFH during the pandemic. And many metro areas less pollution, lighter traffic, etc. The fact is most work is done hybrid anyway in companies with large geographic footprints and outsourcing. Of course different business models and sizes may still benefit from 100% in office so not a onesize model.

I agree with you but many cities can't see it that way.

There's an infrastructure of service businesses (restaurants, tailors, hair cutters) and retailers who depend on the foot traffic of office workers. They are suffering too. There's a critical density of foot traffic that makes a city survive. I feel intuitively that that density is lower than one might expect, but the data may not bear that out.

Last week my GF went into the office for the first time (she switched employers in the autumn of 2020) for the new "three days office two days WFH" schedule. That was on Monday, the program's first day. She spent the time on Teams calls same as when she was at home. She hasn't been in since and nobody has said anything.

I thought it would be fun to to drive up with her for some moral support. I found out I could get a wework in the building next to her for $29. Turns out for $29 what was actually on offer was an entire floor. It wasn't only me -- people came to service the kitchen during the day.

Dynamics change, just because we used to do something is not a reason to keep doing it forever

That's simply how life works, its dynamic and constantly changing

New businesses and business models will evolve and change as they always have

I've decided that I am willing to go into the office, but the price of that labor is higher than the price of my WFH labor.

I also think I am more productive at home, and am upfront about that.

I think the labor market will have a higher rate for in person SWE work compared to the WFH market.

Granted we are a small company (13 people) but I actually see happy (and as a result, invested) employees as a productivity gain, especially with information work. In fact, I've had the opposite issue where I have to remind people to make sure they take lunch breaks, etc.

We are already discussing things like having sprint kickoffs as picnics, meeting at coffee shops, etc. So we do have those face-to-face interactions where it counts, but they can also be in an environment that is unconventional. Let's see how it turns out. It may be a pain, who knows? The point is that I have an opportunity to build the ideal company I'd like to work for, so I'm trying that.

But again, I understand this might be a smaller company thing (where people in smaller companies tend to be more invested than ones in larger companies regardless). In a larger company that might not be as easily done.

Companies that are more WFH flexible will be more competitive in the job market. It’s that simple.

After 2 years my company, a recent acquisition of a "large bank", has begun the RTO transition.

The CEO of our parent has been leading the charge to "get back in the office, where face to face gatherings foster great ideas, spread our great culture, train our young associates!" etc.

Looking around today in the office, still largely empty, I know the truth is: very little is done 100% onsite in the same building. Hell, we've been working with mixed teams comprised of offshore and nearshore members, and departments in other offices for years prior to the pandemic, and, of course, for the last 2 years under the pandemic in a 100% WFH regime, and have in this distributed team model actually grown assets under management by over 100%. Business has been good if not outstanding.

So it rings very hollow to hear all this cheerleading about how good we had it. How, all of a sudden after, finally, some respite from pandemic numbers, our senior company leaders are "excited" to dive back into long commutes and rub elbows with their employees around the water cooler - not that a lot of elbow rubbing ever really occured.

I swear an HR manager said in an all hands Zoom call, "The one thing I miss most was that Ferry commute!

Yeah. The one parked for hours in a car line, both ways, then getting on a boat trip, if you were lucky a breakdown hadn't occured. All this 3 hours a day on top of at least an 8 hour work day. This claim sounded so forced and desperate it was completely, obviously, an attempt to shill the whole idea.

Can't fathom why we'd continue to cling to this false notion that everything has to happen 9-5 and in one office. It hasn't been like that for a very long time.

> I swear an HR manager said in an all hands Zoom call, "The one thing I miss most was that Ferry commute!

Since nobody is going into the office, that HR manager is welcome to take a trip or two on that ferry whenever the mood strikes! It won't be crowded so they can just make a round trip and then head home to get some work done.

I agree that face to face interactions can be great. However they don’t need to happen in an office.

I have expressed to my team that, in the spirit of doing things however we want to, our sprint kickoff can be a picnic or could be done at a park (or some different place every couple sprints)

You should state this to your leadership. It may ring hollow, you might have to do it in a way that some thin-skinned leader doesn't see it as criticism but they need that feedback. I'm facing this at my company.

I'll never forget the freedom I had as an 18 year old fresh out of high school who got a job remotely building web apps for the university. That type of autonomy can never be replaced with any office perk ever. Multiple startups and big tech companies later, I'm still not bothered by those perks and live my very happy life with this freedom.

My employer is in denial about why people don't want to come back to the office. They are convinced that the only reason anyone wants to work from home is that they are afraid of getting sick.

This describes my employers too. I work with people in 3-4 different offices on a daily basis. My boss is in another state. Yet the engineering leadership is pushing us to come back to the office. I don't want to waste time and money driving downtown every day. They set a goal of everyone working most days a week in the office in about 6 months.

So that's 6 months to find a better job. The latest silly things is they moved from an office with free parking into one that costs around $20 a day, and it's no longer free. Most of us will have to drive or double our commute times. This seems fairly ham handed to me.

The whole COVID rollercoaster has made me appreciate the fact that I work for a labor union much more than I did before.

For the equity minded in here, think of this perk: work that requires you to be on location now comes at a premium. This means that retail workers and other blue collar workers can demand better pay. Why work for 9 bucks an hour flipping burgers when you can do the same remote as a call center rep? I know most people I've talked to would rather take a pay cut than return to the office. We have lived a world where the commute for information workers can be replaced with a VPN for about a decade now, and the inertia preventing that was absolutely destroyed. Any company taking a bet that they can browbeat employees back to commuting is going to lose.

Deurbanization will accelerate. There's just no value proposition in cities for white collar workers anymore, and therefore service jobs that cater to them and blue collar work catering to a city directly. They're ruins already and don't know it yet.

Nothing more "rewarding" than returning to the office only to sit on Zoom all day. There are days when I have back to back meetings and I have tried, practically begged, to be allowed to work from home on these days to no avail. "We may miss out on valuable spontaneous ideas!" I have yet to see these face-to-face moments lead to anything actually productive.

But look at my sprint numbers during work from home? Through the roof. I was to the point that I was begging for more tickets because I was chewing through the normal workload. Upper management doesn't care. They want a butt in the seat. Rumor is that their bonuses are tied to RTO numbers.

Zoom has become the new "Death by Power Point". At least at home, when Zoom Fatigue sets in, I can take my normal lunch and have a quick nap.

“ We may miss out on valuable spontaneous ideas!"

Translation: all your thoughts are belong to us.

we all knew things were bad, but feeling the contrast and suddenly living a freer life was absolutely enchanting, even in the face of uncertainty and death.

all of my friends said to each other, over and over, we will never go back to the way we lived before. i'm sure millions of Americans had the same experience.

I feel like this is the correct response. I've seen so many people claiming that "office efficiency" is the most important thing, but the happiness of humans working remotely is such a massive gain. It creates a tradeoff where you're explicitly making employees much more miserable for mild gains in money for employers.

I feel like there’s a happy medium where you have a quarterly session where you meet with coworkers in person to get face time but work remotely the rest of the time. That’s been great for my team, at least.

What pandemic?

The whole situation is the most crazy shit I ever experienced in my 45 years on the planet. Non of it adds up. We have a dangerous but not very contagious initial 'flu' outbreak. Drug companies heavily tied into governments proceed to profit massively. The ordinary citizen pays in many different ways, reduction in freedom and civil liberties mainly.

We now really have a pandemic (of a much reduced nature) which is effectively by comparison ignored. Nearly all my friends and acquaintances have had the omicron variant (relatively mild flu). Omicron is fairly contagious. I got it from a friend and gave it to a friend. Nearly nothing in the media now when the situation is actually much worse.

With regards to the actual 'meat' of the article Americans have not changed, good times make soft people. There are many soft people out there now. Maybe that is what will really change now..

Sorry, I don't agree with the notion that the pandemic was somehow about 'freedom reductions' or control. The us has had many pandemics like all other countries where millions of people have died. During previous ones in the US, we did have new health regulations that were enforced. Examples were the 1918 flu pandemic in the US, and multiple times we've had required vaccinations for public health reasons such as around polio. So only a million people died, that is a million families with someone missing at the table, thousands of kids where both parents died.

The pandemic plans were about trying to avoid huge numbers of people dying unnecessarily, and all the grief that was caused by it to their loved ones. The US did a particularly bad job, considering that we are an advanced society with lots of money spent on health care.

Some people didn't get a bad reaction or die if they got it. Plenty of people did. I think something that kills a million people, overwhelms hospitals for years at a time, drives people out of the medical profession, that is more than the false narrative that it's just like the flu.

I will never return to an office full-time again. I've decided that I will always work from home. The quality of life increase is just too great to forfeit.

I'm actively looking for a job for precisely this reason.

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