The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices
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I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered.
I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet.
Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about "special performance measuring procedures" and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come.
We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can't approve our WFH requests since they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course in the last three years. They don't know when the course will be offered again. I've been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle.
I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...
so you also have time to go hunt for another job before quitting at least, if that's where you want to go.
Ween yourself off the "yeah, no" pattern.
After a few more minutes and another set of whines, the guy asks the barman “so why doesn’t he move?” And the barman says “it probably doesn’t hurt enough for him to get up.”
"Love it, change it or leave it. No amount of complaining will ever do anything else than paint you as a naysayer."
Was a hard pill to swallow, but my own experience proved me again and again he was spot on.
My current lesson is - most things that look like an easy win would have been claimed a long time ago if not for some unholy hidden mess. If I'm to vote for "change", I should be prepared to deal with the unholy mess. It doesn't matter that I don't see it, it's out there somewhere.
Since I rarely want to take on an unholy mess, and I'm not good at the kind of doublethink that would allow me to love a thing I'm not inclined to love, usually that just leaves one option.
To vanquish these, in the name of The Right Way, one ultimately must engage them in social combat, whether by proxy or directly. And they're better at it than you are. Nerds may be clever, and they may actually be right, but the other players are usually more convincing. And I don't mean merely argumentatively.
The "Schmoozer" class is full of this type of crap. I'm convinced that outside of a few unicorn companies, meritocracy is an illusion.
One of the things I've learned is that authority is a real thing. If you don't have the authority to change something, don't try. You will fail, and it will do nothing but cost you. I've jousted with this many times, and it was a failure every time. (More technical type stuff, but the same holds for this sort of thing too.)
Authority doesn't have to be given from on high; there is also some distributed authority that arises from the unofficial de facto org chart that every organization has. I've managed to push some things through with that (and relevant amounts of consensus) when I was more careful to ensure I had the authority.
But if you don't have at least some authority, you will fail.
This comment is is, not ought. You are welcome to feel about it however you like. But when it comes time to determine your own actions, you should work in the space of is and not ought.
That doesn't mean the only option is to give up. One may attempt to acquire the authority. This can either be by direct appeal, or in some cases, through the long-term acquisition of authority called "respect". One may attempt to convince an existing authority to help with whatever your issue is. Though in this specific case if the problem is specifically fighting existing authority that may not help. There are other options.
But it is a total wishful thinking myth that if you're just smart enough and good enough and just take charge, by golly, you can get anything done! In fact, after a while, when you see someone and on day 3 you see them charging around just trying to change things, you start to see someone who isn't going to be there long.
(Now, I actually like fresh perspectives on my team and don't squash people if they have new ideas, but at the same time, I ask them to take a couple of weeks and be sure they fully understand the changes they are proposing before we consider their suggestions. The end result is better suggestions, and we have taken many of them. This is why I'm specific about it being "day 3"; on day 3, you may know enough to have identified a problem, but you don't know the solution yet.)
But if you can't acquire some authority somehow, your options are reduced to deal with it or leave it. There is no "just bull through and change things anyhow". The entire political structure built into our very genes will not permit it. You're fighting not just your current organization but millions of years of evolution. You will not win.
I guess this is what it looks like when a nerd learns how to do politics.
My theory has been that you look for things people already want to do but can't, and try to enable them with the resources at hand. You can change things that you don't have formal authority for (possibly not for the better) by simply removing roadblocks.
Yes. This is the old point about the Serenity 'prayer': grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Or, as soldiers say more succinctly, "Pick your battles".
I've slowly internalised this over the years. It also applies on a micro-level: when reviewing someone else's work, if something that isn't critical actually gets the job done, just go with it, unless there is an actual problem with an obvious solution that you can suggest. Don't complain just because something is done differently to how you would do it.
The point about Unknown Unknowns is also totally relevant. And cans-of-worms. You really must be very confident you are right before opening them.
Actually that's often the best choice, you need to pick your battles.
The cliché is true during the hottest hours, but it fails to admit that it is simply because most activity moves to the twilight hours when the heat subsides.
When I left, I thought it was so stupid to build these big offices near the desert and to pack them full of people working 9 to 5 with massive amounts of aircon, effectively imposing on them the Northern European way of life - folks have been inhabiting those areas for millennia, they know how to properly deal with the environment they live in, let them work at night instead and save all that energy.
A job change can also mean - inheriting someone else's problematic code base, new office politics and colleagues who may not get along with you. Hardly 0-5% of pay rise really does not justify all this. All in all, one cannot switch jobs easily when the options and benefits of switching are not so good.
This. Everything you said is true about most of Europe, and even more so outside of major tech hubs.
Companies call the shots and employees have to follow if they want to stay employed, because there are no good alternatives to go to, when all companies just act the same and pay the same. And most companies here don't give a damn about what their employees actually want and presume they can bait you with a +10% salary increase but exact same inflexibility, toxic environment and management practices. Good luck with that.
Plus, interviewing and changing jobs in the tech world is a monumental effort, taking both time and a mental toll after several rounds of interviews with several companies, on top of your regular job, time that could have went into hobbies, dating, socializing, travelling, cooking, etc., so there's a lost opportunities cost associated with the job hunt.
I've been interviewing around for about 4 months so far, to hopefully change to a better , less stressful tech job, and I'm already completely exhausted from all the "complete our 20-questions, 6 page HR online form about yourself, before you can submit your application, because our time is more valuable than yours", "solve this week long take home test, and when you're done, we'll let you know that unfortunately this position has already been filled", "there will be several rounds of interviews after wich we'll just ghost you, because f*ck you", "you didn't sound passionate enough about our company's products in your cover letter", etc. And, apparently there's a labor shortage. Yeah ... right.
God, I'm so exhausted from all this, some days I just can't get out of bed anymore and sit there wishing I get hit by lightning, or die in my sleep and end my misery.
If I had two offers, and one was 20% less compensation plus WFH and the other +20% but working from office ONCE a day, I'd go for the WFH one.
Of course everybody's factors are different.
I'm glad you acknowledge it; with rising cost of living, housing prices, and (in my case) medical expenses (the part not covered by insurance, like physical therapy; we're still trying to get a diagnosis so it will be covered), I can't afford a 20% pay cut.
Even pre-pandemic, I rejected an offer from a company literally across the street from where I live, because their offer was >30% lower than what I was earning at the time. I just flat out told them I wouldn't be able to afford to live there - and I live in some of the cheapest houses in this area.
There are switching costs which mean the employee often takes a hit on attempting to move. It's like buying a car, car doesn't work as advertised so someone says, "well stop whining and sell it, you're in market." Like yes, but also nope.
This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now.
> it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch
If you work in IT (generous, but it is HN...), this should be your experience unless you switch more than once every two years. Then everyone will mistrust you, but you can still do it as a contractor.
> On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K.
Making around or above 100K in the EU is indeed very unusual. Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
Tough but fair.
Your statement definitely does not apply where I currently live (Austria). No tech company I've interviewed here is 100% remote as of now. They always expect more or less around 30-50% in office presence for new hires. They almost always have some staff at near 100% remote but those are usually tenured employees that management does not want to lose, so they get extra privileges as a bonus.
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape.
That's also not true. American tech workers don't have higher salaries because they get less social safety, but they have higher salaries because a lot more investment money, by orders of magnitude, gets poured into their tech sector compared to Europe where most goes into real estate instead, while the US also has a smaller supply of devs due to their expensive higher education and tougher immigration laws than Europe, meaning that the high demand of devs in the US can't be met by their low supply of workers, so their salaries naturally rise accordingly. It's that simple, basic supply and demand, nothing to do with the presence or lack of social safety from the government, as US taxes aren't that much lower than in Europe.
US taxes being similar to Europe (which in my experience is true) certainly does not equate to an equivalent safety net.
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
Can you elaborate?
I assume the canonical source for information about the US is American TV, but I really can't imagine what you watch that makes you think there is no safety net, even for people making $100K.
So there is obviously no bottom-most robust safety net, as plainly evidenced by the homeless situation. But there are a bunch of safety nets that do sustain millions of people. Welfare, subsidized housing, social security (retirement, and disability), medicare, Medicaid, to name the big ones.
>So there is obviously no bottom-most robust safety net, as plainly evidenced by the homeless situation
What is your perspective on schizophrenia?
Every single US citizen I've ever spoken to has made this clear (sometimes only after a while) without fail.
Apart from anything mentioned in this thread.
In (most) European states it's just not a concern that anyone ever has - if you are getting treatment under national health service then it has nothing to do with your employment status and any treatment would just continue. If you need time off due to ilness it has to be paid for as well(employer only pays for a while, then the state takes over).
“It’s not about the nail.” https://youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
It's a business not a skate park, tell your CEO that you appreciate the positive feedback but that if he really means what he is saying: he should put his money where his mouth is and give you a sizable raise or a considerable bonus.
We compromised, my contract says I work from home and they pay me for my time and travel if I go somewhere, and they can afford me.
Can they justify paying you an extra $50k a year (or $10k, or $100k) just to have you in an office?
>I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving.
>But the thing is that the pay is good
How is it not easier to fire those individuals? And not now, when you can just bring them to the office and have them be productive from day one (unlike new hires who would replace them), but one year ago.
Anyway, the rules and processes exists. Essentially PIP someone, explain and document expectations, and follow up. And you know what, most of the time, people can improve.
I suppose it depends on the government, but my experience is that it’s extremely difficult to fire people. I spoke with HR at a US federal organization that said their termination rate is .1% of employees and half of those are during the 1-year probation period.
That’s extremely low and I think an indicator of how hard it is to fire people in government.
I do have people say funny things like “It’s easy to fire people, you just fill out this paperwork and spend 20% of your time tracking a performance plan for two years.” Even though theyve never successfully fired anyone. While pointing to their group’s lack of firing as an example of their great management.
I think this is an example where theoretically it is possible, but practically it is very difficult. As evidenced by very few being fired.
One big confound to remember is that it’s generally hard to get US government jobs because a lot of work has been outsourced to contractors, so the federal workforce trends older and more experienced. That pool of people is less likely to be fired for cause in general.
When thinking about why you believe more people should be fired, consider the politics — both the general managerial class tendency to shift accountability to workers and the specific culture war points favored by people who oppose government regulation – and ask whether what you’re basing that on is fully in the worker’s responsibility. I’ve seen plenty of .gov inefficiency but an awful lot of that has been required by policy (not just agency, often by Congress) and underfunding. The latter often isn’t just a simple number being too low but also things like having money budgeted to contract out work but not to hire people to adequately supervise them. Very, very few situations have been as simple as “Fred chose not to do his job” without significant other factors contributing to the problem.
I’d also note that while I have seen a couple of cases like that, that’s less than I saw in .com or .edu and for exactly the same reason: they were high enough up the org chart and a buddy even higher up sheltered them. HR could have fired them if they weren’t being told not to.
But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up. It’s like saying “Batting .500 is easy” when their own at bat it .200 or not even measured.
What was the relative breakdown of their workforce by seniority? What did that look like on the .gov side if you include the contractors who've been the majority of the workforce growth since the 90s? I've seen a lot more churn in the latter and suspect that if you combined the two that gap would close considerably.
> But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up.
On the subject of data, you have one anonymous anecdote of unknown size or completeness.
I wish I had better. But I have tons of anecdotes of people claiming firing is easy without any direct experience or data. So there’s that too.
Contractors are completely different as they aren’t fired at all and are easy to get rid of, sort of. But comparing contractors and employees in federal government is comparing apples and oranges.
But I stand by that it is very difficult to fire government employees.
Have you used these to go to your CEO directly re your WFH request? It's where I'd start.
The situation in my company is simple to manage - we hire good people who are very capable and then trust them to get on and do the job. That works with the sort of people we hire and the sort of work we ask them to do. If they're at home we'll generally work just the same, because we're pretty well motivated.
Not all companies are like that though. My partner worked for a charity where maybe 2/3 of people worked exactly the same during the pandemic, but a good chunk (mostly of the lower level admin staff) didn't. Some of them were very unsubtle - they'd never answer Teams calls, and would return them half an hour later and never produced any output anyway. Some were more subtle like the colleague who'd log into Teams first thing and then go back to the Playstation for a few hours of the morning before actually starting work. Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done.
What we need is for these employers to be focusing on output rather than hours in the office. They are stuck in a mindset and approach that barely worked in the past where if you had someone in an office for 8 hours a day you'd probably get something out of them. If they focused a little more on what they were getting (and I don't just mean some basic metrics with no human insight) then we wouldn't need bums on seats and the people not doing anything at home would be pretty obvious.
It's a pretty kafkian environment, but it's sort of a golden cage too: Pay is good, benefits great, stability rock solid. I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay.
I think you're underselling the rest of the world a bit. Many if not most companies aren't great, but there are a good chunk that do empower their employees to do their job properly and that's how you get the most job satisfaction. Of course, this is without knowing your sector and role - it does vary.
You're in a great position that you're in a job you're largely happy with. You should use that as allowing you to carefully choose your next role, rather than as an excuse not to. It's also great in salary negotiations - you can pick a large number because in the worst case you go back to your perfectly reasonable job!
I disagree as I think those people did no work while in the office and kept doing no work outside the office.
I worked in a building where one person had a personal laptop open, daytrading all day. Instead of working. Of course they should have worked, but they didn’t.
People will shirk work in the office and outside.
I think it’s silly to assume someone who would log into Teams and then play PlayStation wouldn’t just close their office door and play games on their iPad for hours.
None of those points prevent you from looking to see what other jobs are available and applying for any that look interesting. Who knows, you might find something that is better on all counts. Worst case scenario you don't find anything better, which will mean you're no worse off than you are already, you learned a few things in the interview processes, and maybe the knowledge that your current role is better than various alternatives you looked at makes things seem a bit more tolerable where you are now?
Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job.
We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone in senior management asking me, 'how will we know people are working at home?' My response was 'how do we know they are working in the office?' If people aren't getting any work done it doesn't matter where they are. Management just feels better about seeing them in the office.
I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being done satisfactorily and someone is just jealous or on a power trip.
A Company is not a charity, people are not kept on payroll just because
Now that the economy is "back on track", we need them to be working - like they did before the pandemic, not like they did during the pandemic - so the work organisation gets back to a pre-pandemic state.
This idea that people were slacking off during COVID is a myth.
basically not only people took a 2 years paid vacation, they also could not be fired which incentivized the more parasitic workers to work even less
I know personally of a mailwoman working in Northern Italy for Italian Postal service (a public service) that went back to her home in Sicily and never showed up at work for 9 months because she could not be laid off.
So my mother in law who's also almost blind didn't get her mail for many weeks.
Nothing we could do about it. There were no consequences whatsoever.
It’s easy for people to game the system and turn around and claim that it’s a discriminatory practice. It’s also easy for management to cut off an employee in bad faith to drum up a case for termination.
The easiest way to weed out the assholes is to change the rules for everyone, and purge those who are insubordinate. You’ll lose a few producers, but not as many as HN would leave you to believe.
Sounds nice until it's your bonus tied to revenues or people start nominating your mini-empire to shrink headcount.
I'm glad they did...I got a substantial severance package, "retiree" benefits, and a much better fully remote WFH gig that pays better.
I would have stayed at the first place if it was possible to do so, but I'm much happier since they forced my hand. I'm certain I won't have to go back to an office before I retire.
If your company won't play ball, it's time to find another field to play in.
I've looked at some recently and tons of jobs require office presence. Finding something outside of US is near impossible.
You could see that the past year and a half in restaurants that are willing to close down entirely (often with a sign saying they're short staffed) for days, weeks, or permanently, rather than raise their wages enough to hire and keep the employees they need to function.
[1]: "Newly published research from the Pew Research Center that surveyed roughly 10,000 Americans from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30 found that nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 6 in 10 U.S. workers who say their jobs can be done from home, at 59 percent, are doing so from home all or most of the time. Now, more workers say they are working from home out of choice than necessity.
Among those who have a workplace outside of their home, 61 percent said they are choosing not to go in, while 38 percent said they’re working from home specifically because their workplace is closed or unavailable to them.
Interestingly, Pew Research noted just the opposite was true earlier in the pandemic, with 64 percent of people indicating they were working from home because their office was closed while 36 percent said they were choosing to work from home."
https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities...
Most companies are in this situation.
My wife, who spent much of her career in corporate HR, would often note: "People who want to work, will work wherever you put them. People who don't want to work will find a way not to work wherever you put them."
The people who used WFH as a "2 year vacation" are the same people who will wander the office engaging in random conversations and scrolling Facebook the remainder of the day.
I always wondered why we presume traffic and cubicles are a cure for the lack of motivation.
You probably lock the front door of your house. The reality is, it’s not a meaningful thing in most cases, as a moderately in shape middle aged man, I could likely kick or pry it in in seconds.
We do it because it keeps honest people out and increases the friction for the bad guys - kicking the door down in itself becomes a felony. (Burglary)
Likewise, people are on a bell curve of sorts with respect to motivation. The people on the bottom are a waste of oxygen and require explicit directions for every task, and the other extreme are self-motivated and will create novel tasks to complete without any direction.
Some people need the office to function appropriately on that curve. I have one guy on my team who came to work physically every day during the full lockdowns in NYC because for him, the context shift of being in the office was important. He is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, but he can’t work at home. Another colleague is living on an island somewhere.
The rest of us are in the middle. Combine that with other business requirements, and you have to make a decision that’s best for the business.
1: they have the effect of warning you of unauthorized access: you can maybe break a door/window in a matter of minutes but you wont catch me napping nor you will be able to make it look like nobody broke in.
2: they keep unmotivated attackers out and can move the attacks off to you and on less protected properties.
Locking your door looks more like an historical artifact from the time the police wasn't ready available for policing the neighborhood of normal people.
Look at what happened to COBOL people. Eventually, the bean counters figure it out, and “work from home” becomes, “work from the Philippines” at 1/5 the cost.
WFH is not outsourcing. And outsourcing is not offshoring. Folks mix up things all the time because they don’t know.
This is exasperating: it’s basically saying managers aren’t doing their jobs and you should pay the consequences. If someone really did goof off that much, their supervisor should be looking for a new job too.
What I suspect is that nobody did this and what you’re really hearing is that senior management are distrustful and don’t believe people are working if they don’t see them. Everywhere I’ve heard that, it’s been pure projection.
Either way, I’d reconsider leaving. You have a stable situation so you can look for a place you really like without time pressure but the respect gradient probably won’t improve unless you have C-level turnover.
We start back at the office next week and this sums up exactly why I have no interest in going back full time.
Your decision to not even try will cost you more jobs than ageism
All your reasons is why I have never had any interest in working in an office, ever. Now that my current company has been remote since the start of the pandemic and I've gotten an exception to be permanently remote, I will never step foot in an office again if there's anything I can do about it. I couldn't care less about supposed career growth impacts, free snacks or food, collaboration, all the other propaganda they put out. You are right to be insulted by not having an option to work remotely and you should just start looking for better jobs
I've found that once you start having thoughts like this, you've left already, if only in spirit, and you remain physically only as a form of self-delusion or rationalization of fear. You can find good pay and slack elsewhere. Your current employer sounds like a nightmare.
This approach worked well for me, but maybe I was just lucky.
This. WFH fights this more than anything. When interviews were happening online, i had deliberately set lighting to be low so that my wrinkles are not clear.
I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc).
When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. When managers say collaboration is better when everyone is in the office, they don't mean those "water cooler moments" we apparently have. They mean those times they can talk to you as they stand by your desk so you can't ignore them.
Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?
This means it is less "work" for them to speak and listen than it is to type and read.
Written communication often takes orders of magnitude more effort, since it lacks the immediate feedback loop.
In the case of my job, they could have maybe 20? for the price they're paying now.
But I wouldn't go anyway. Maybe once a month or every six weeks or so. Just because there will be people who prefers an office and to keep up with their faces, but I have no business there.
If my job was WFH (its not and can't be), I would still probably be doing the same stupid entry level shit with mediocre raises. Thanks to impromptu/casual conversation though, I got pulled out from under my manager and moved to a much higher position in another department (this was over a year or so, not just a one off conversation)
I could interact with higherups without being viewed as "going over my bosses head", and to me that's insanely valuable.
This should tell you exactly why they are asking you back and it's not "collaborating". That's an excuse. It's because they don't trust you and think you're goofing off at home.
The other day my manager said that he misses coming to the office because back then if he wanted something he could just come over and ask.
Meanwhile I've specifically chosen to work remotely so as to not be bothered by anyone when I need to focus.
That was about as low on the morale barometer I have ever been, and I hope I never have to anywhere near an environment like that again.
Junior engineers need mentoring, need to talk to other people to understand what's asked of them.
Mid-level engineers/ICs need to talk to other people to understand the architecture design, collaborate with other mid-level engineers, and push back or report back issues that arise during the work.
Seniors and up need it for design reviews and achieving consensus.
Critically, to advance in your career, you need to start participating in conversations with the next stages. All of this is easier face to face.
Yet somehow the world of open source keeps putting out high quality software with teams distributed across the planet in different time zones with different native tongues.
I've found these technical discussions, pair-programming, mentoring, architectural consensus building, are all much easier to do "remotely" than typical management-style discussions. Our project's technical team size fits into the "two pizza" rule, although just barely probably, so it's not like we're super tiny.
Pair-programming is great online. Better than in-person in my experience. Simply share your screen, and I can put it up on my second monitor. We've successfully mentored numerous junior-ish devs during COVID, with heavy use of remote pair-programming.
Architecture type discussions main drawback is missing a whiteboard, but there are a plethora of online tools of varying quality. In practice we often use draw.io and show a bit more finished copies than pure whiteboarding, but we've used other more simpler solutions for whiteboarding here too.
Design discussions/architectural consensus take place fine online, we just haven't had any issues. Just like pair-programming or architecture, we might screenshare but mostly we talk. And we find we don't lose anything from this. Sure, you don't get body-language, but that isn't needed for discussing bearer tokens.
In summary, while I agree that technical discussion is necessary at all stages, I believe that technical discussions is far less negatively impacted by remote when compared to non-technical discussions (i.e. managerial).
For me, my boss has told us he wants 2 people on site every day per week, doesn’t care who. In the event a new server or other hardware is shipped to the building he wants a safe two-man lift to be possible. I think it’s fair, and he doesn’t care who goes in, so it ends up being the people that like being in the office the most that show up.
> I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face.
That's also undermined by other decisions, like offshoring and distributed teams.
> The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc).
That's not true. Maybe only "higher up management roles" are exclusively like that, but there are plenty of other roles that include a significant amount of that, or a significant amount that occurs at irregular/unplanned intervals.
Also remote work is a lot more socially isolating, and I feel it makes work relationships a lot more one-dimensional an tenuous. That might be fine if you're a loner, but that's certainly not true of everyone.
Im in my mid 30s, and most of employees are +45 in my job. They really want to come back, and there are already a few in there, but whats the point?
I guess they feel lonely, bosses too, but my life is so much better with WFH.
Now Im just used to go places with my laptop, my phone as hotspot, and do work somewhere nice and quiet.
I can even travel on workdays. This very week Im heading to Madrid to visit a friend. I don't need to take time off as I'll be capable of working there.
It's usually just around my province, but knowing I can do this if I want is very liberating.
Im not a SWE, I'm aiming to be one, as I currently work for an ISP and get low pay. Getting even a junior job in SW will likely give me a jump in income. I wonder if I will be able to continue with this lifestyle, because I'll probably need more concentration, not sure yet.
Of course the fact that I can do this makes my otherwise boring and alienating job, with low pay, much more attractive. I didn't leave because I was afraid when the pandemic, now I just take it easy while I i study to change career.
Of course I have no kids, no wife, no responsibilities. If I don't do this now...
Meetings are about twice a year, and they appear in my teams calendar so I can plan ahead.
When I feel we need a serious discussion I write a long ass text, and people usually follows without needing a call. It's like forums, so that's something I'm used to.
But again, my job is very jump in, jump out. I don't really need too much focus, it's pretty much helpdesk with some admin, so I can get distracted without problem, and I don't really need to keep any code model in my head.
My only worry if I find a job in SW will be that, the need to keep my mind focused, not being able to be pretty much anywhere. I hope the pay offsets this fact.
Wrt the SW job, it might be more difficult in the beginning as it takes some focus to understand the system and how your work fits into the bigger whole. After a time it becomes easier to understand and to jump in, jump out.
Of course this completely depends on the company and job type. My job is very non-demanding and I can easily coast by on just 3-4 hours of work a day. Other people are in a different situation.
I hope jumping into software makes this better and can finally be financially confy.
Just record a loop of yourself and use OBS as a virtual camera.
Some employees even have premiums for putting their hand in your pocket. So yea, it may be more expensive but the peace of mind that gives you for offloading all of that to someone else is priceless.
I go out during lunchtime during the week (or message on Teams that I will be out for a little while), but usually that is for appointments or errands - on my last visit to my hometown I visited my accountant to do my taxes.
Un Madrid I guess I'll visit my friend, some museums and stuff and go eat and drink out with people.
You don't even have to become a freelancer. Remote.com and similar companies can set you up as a portuguese employee.
I'm saying Portugal and not Spain bc I think it's better for foreigners right now. And Portugal is amazing.
I don't want to criticize too much, because I work for an otherwise great employer, but this decision just has me shaking my head.
It did not created some kind of real split (yet), but the potential is super clear and it is pretty much guaranteed to happen.
Honestly, given the choice an all face to face meeting is the best. However, with any kind of cross location collaboration this quickly becomes impossible (even before WFH). An all online (ideally in their own workspace) meeting is far better than any other mixed mode alternative.
Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
>Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
I didn't argue against remote, simply that having an online meeting which includes people near you doesn't have to be problematic sound-wise.
There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. It's better reserved to either deliberate asynchronous communication, or very short, often purely factual, conversations.
I think it can come close, provided everyone involved are experienced, fast typists, but it’s definitely a different dynamic if someone is slower. I’ve had incredibly fast chats in typing that were close to real time, face to face discussions. And when you reach a certain speed, the illusion of actual speech and listening is created, which is a fascinating phenomenon in and of itself. There’s a certain level where you reach peak verbal acuity and everything you type transcends the medium itself. At that point, you can seemingly intuit little tics, idiosyncrasies, sarcasm, humor, emotion—almost everything you get in a real time, face to face meeting.
No company can expect having an hybrid system work without a little bit of investment and some decent guidelines. With so many space gained in the offices there is a lot of space to liberate to build more small conference rooms and some storage area for those who don't have a fixed desk but may wish to keep things on site.
The one thing I think they did right is keep the surface high enough it's hard to type on. Now people can't camp them all day.
It was horrible and demoralizing. I got to a point where I basically didn't show up to the office at all except for the occasional scheduled meetings, which were about once a month at most. I got three hours of my time back every day and actually increased my productivity, because I was able to stay home and deal with some health issues that I had at the time.
That said, lots of people at that company sporadically worked from home, and even in the offices with my colleagues, there were days where as much as 1/3 of the team wasn't present.
There seems to be a kind of critical mass number of working in the office: below that amount, and the office starts to feel like a ghost town, and it's benefits shrink past the point of being worth the commute.
So I think companies are wrong to force people to come in every day every week, but it's clear that the benefits of working in an office on the manifest when there are enough people in the office.
I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that working in person is better for productivity. But what it does do is make 50% of the people feel happier - the people who want to escape their home-family to be with their work-family. In this sense I totally understand why management is forcing people to come into the office: it's because management just likes in-person, and they don't want to learn how to work hybrid or remote-first if they keep the office.
I think there continues to be a competitive advantage for remote-first companies. They can be more productive, have a global pool of talent to choose from, and potentially lower overhead. I think we're going to see incumbents remain in-person while disruptive companies will be increasingly remote-first.
The company ignored it all and said "back in the office".
I suspect that it was because of the CEO who was saying throughout the pandemic that he wasn't a fan of remote work. That's how the decision was made, based on one old guys feelings.
They don't care about you as an employee, remember that.
Isn't this how all decisions get made on a company?
Its an "old guy" thats either appointed by stakeholders or personally heavily invested in the success of the company.
Like it or not his "feelings" are formed from decades of experience in making a business profitable.
I understand its not every case but lets not be overly-dismissive of his opinions, especially on HN where we are so concerned with ageism.
Their feelings are formed by cronyism, nepotism and ignorance. When it comes to embracing change, they're fine when it something motivated by these three factors, but when it means a perceived loss of control, or a loss of prestige, then they resist.
This is hardly surprising. At the last few offices I worked in during the Before Times, everyone in the open office crammed a few feet apart was typing away and focused on their monitors, wearing headphones that said "don't interrupt me!" And watching Slack.
You can just see the visuals in their minds. Stock images of their lowly, loyal drones clad in business casual, smiling, scurrying about with manila folders in hand, shaking hands. Not a single human being that they actually know or have observed in the workplace.
These people wouldn't be caught dead near a humble IC, and yet they have the gall to tell us how best to get our work done.
Granted, I live a 20 min walk away. The walk in is through a beautiful county park, surrounded by nature.
Most of my colleagues who live further away have stopped coming in. Understandable, I wouldn't want to get in a car to get here, traffic in the UK is horrible.
It's all about personal circumstances, really. Living close to my workplace, having access to a nice office that is (now) mostly quiet, I quiet enjoy the new work culture :).
This is likely the reason you love coming into the office. The fresh air, greenery in the park, and the walk that gets your blood flowing ... emotionally you _should_ be in a better place. Compare this with someone who commutes 30 minutes in traffic, and they will arrive at the office in a worse emotional state.
It took me a long time to realize that in addition to the team culture, my happiness/satisfaction at work depends a lot on my commute and the ambiance at the office (quiet and comfortable is good; noisy and cramped are bad).
Of course I'm a hypocrite for not exactly doing this myself... instead I take a short drive to pick up coffee in the morning. There's no traffic (esp at 5am) and it's quite a beautiful location. It at least helps define somewhat of a boundary between work and home life for me.
I’ve commuted by foot through a park, great but when it’s -20c not so great.
I’ve commuted by bike, a 60 km round trip through a big city, and loved it… the exercise, being outside and the time alone to think. 3-4 hours of riding was the best part of the day.
Until winter came and I had to make the trip on a train and I got sick and hated the noise and people.
It’s also good for family flexibility where I can take 10 minutes to drop off a forgotten lunch and that would be a 90 minute drive.
Correction: "[my] office is not as bad [for me] as [other] people make [their offices] out to be [for them]"
Every office I've worked in has been horrible to work in. I hate being around other people, the random distractions of office noises/smells/etc, and I hate not having control over my environment so that I can be comfortable. For people like me who specifically want to not see other humans unless they're family or friends, it really is that bad.
Thank you! I'm going to use this.
Other than my family and friends, the humans I regularly deal with are somewhere between terrible and mediocre. If they weren't, they'd be my friends.
My company is allowing permanent work from home, however, we are keeping our office, as not everyone has a great home office set up.
However, my company actually expanded during the pandemic, and we don't actually have enough desks for all the employees. Instead of increasing our office space, my company decided to move to an open seating. This makes sense, as people are just now coming and going on their own hours.
I suppose this is fine for some people, but it really isn't ideal for developers.
I have _my_ keyboard and _my_ mouse that I want. I'm not lugging this into the office anytime I come in. I really prefer working on my snappy workstation, with my standing desktop and perching chair.
I don't drink coffee, so the office coffee machine isn't useful to me, but I do like to have cups of my preferred yan cha (loose leaf tea), which means I need a kettle and tea pot (Making tea is part of my ritual that lets me take an important mindfulness break).
I was previously able to mostly accommodate myself, since I had my own permanent desk and storage space. But now that I don't, I rarely come in, and it is usually just for a meeting, lunch, or to have some facetime with colleagues.
I don't see myself wanting to do serious work from the office, as the space is no longer designed for that.
However when the sun is shining I'll take a 20 minute walk a few times a day through the country, or I'll take an 40 minute long walk to a nice cafe for lunch.
If it's pissing it down then I won't.
Working from home doesn't stop me from choosing to go for a walk, or run, or bike ride, or horse ride, before starting work.
That said, me wanting this separation is probably not stronger than a bad commute. It is currently a 15min stroll. Before that, it was an 45min train ride, but in Switzerland where trains are quite comfortable and I could use the time to work, do some admin, listening to podcasts, read a book or chat with friends.
Definitely not in favor to require people back to the office and thus force them living nearby. I like for people to have options.
Now it turned out that during my last visit my boss had already been infected with covid. So not only me, but my wife and my two kids will need to stay home, isolate and take days off to look after the kids. WTF is the point of this? I am losing valuable vacation days, my boss also loses an employee for days (and my wife's boss ditto) and the kids will go bat-shit crazy because they will not be allowed to go outside.
Yay. How much fun the office it is.
And this was just one example of how idiotic and unproductive this whole on-site in-person office work arrangement is.
But keeping your kids indoors is not considerate towards anyone. It is simply abusive to your kids.
Let them out in the garden/park/street to play.
My cynical view is that some older executives are, indeed, not as effective in remote companies and younger ones, because they have no practice running remote companies and haven't adapted. Additionally, many senior and middle managers never figured out how to assess and reward actual productivity on their teams, so relied on their ability to schmooze to create a veneer of contributing, and schmoozing is easier to do in person. Finally, managing facilities is a big job, especially at bigger companies, and few executives are going to point out that their main job functions are now outdated and the company should de-invest. Imagine being an executive who is overseeing the capital costs of real estate development for a very large tech campus as an extreme example.
However, it is also my view that remote work-forces are inherently more efficient in multiple ways for many industries. I have been working from home and managing remote teams since 2008. Every time I go to an office I am absolutely shocked by how much time is wasted in an office. Time that could be spent exercising, doing laundry, gardening, so many things that are beneficial to someone's health and work productivity. I believe that market forces will solve these problems of ineffective execs and managers. I could imagine some specific companies making a co-located office their competitive advantage by appealing to the minority of knowledge workers who prefer working that way, though.
The punchline is that we had offices both in California and Mexico... and I was specially hired to open and maintain the office in Mexico.
I flew several times a year to Cali (thankful) but I just couldn't make him see that covid or no covid we would have to make remote work , because I was working remotely for him.
I ended up leaving for a 2x salary position and fully remote job.
And yeah i would say your take is pretty cynical and pretty ageist -> diminutive to someone for their ability to contribute is reduced greatly by using their age as a proxy.
Having a hallway conversation with one person where you pass on critical business information isn't really schmoozing, but it is harmful to the overall organization.
At the beginning of the pandemic, all our "boomer" leadership couldn't even properly share their screen on zoom. We then switched to Teams, and they couldn't figure that out either.
I actually in a one on one suggested all of senior leadership should take a class on remote work, and Teams, because 90% of the friction was actually self created.
HR loved the idea, but guess what? They never took it.
Meanwhile, software engineers are expected to learn 5 new things every month. It really has created a riff where pretty much everyone in engineering has no respect for our senior leadership. This further undermines the return to the office because its clear as day: Remote work doesn't work for THEM, but it does for the rest of the organization.
I do agree that this will all die out due to market forces, younger companies are going to force the hands of incumbents and slower moving organizations.
People think they'll get better at remote working by a) being bad at it, b) putting no effort into getting better at it and c) doing it a lot.
...and in some ways it makes sense. Surely, if you do something for long enough, you'll get better at it right?
The reality is, though, I guess, that in most domains, if you don't make an effort to get better, then the ceiling for the skill level you can acquire by just repeating the same mistakes over and over is pretty low.
It's like having a soccer match every day and never putting any practice in between.
You get a lot of experience playing, and you'll get better, a bit, slowly... but at the end of the day, two years later you're still basically rubbish at it and a let down to your team.
That's the problem I see: People not actually believing that they have to put effort in to get better at working remotely...but, I don't think it's fair to say they can't be bothered.
A lot of people are trying really hard to Make Things Work... they're just doing it wrong, because they don't think that they need to actually learn new skills.
That's different to being lazy.
Perhaps its particularly pronounced in people who aren't accustomed to taking feedback; but it happens in all kinds of teams at all kinds of levels.
Work in a hybrid team where you have to meet up physically to do 'difficult' meetings where more than 3 people have to talk? Have a team that doesn't really talk to each other outside of standup? Got an agile coach who can't share their screen? Have big online meetings where no one turns on their cameras and only one or two people actually speak?
Yeah. I mean, I've had all those things on and off in the last two years. It's a bit of a joke really.
It's not just execs who struggle with remote working. They're just easy targets, because they're especially bad at it.
I also find it hilarious when fellow IT associates demonstrate the same level of incompetence in Teams/Webex. Leaving mics live, taking their cellphones into the restroom. It really shows how the intelligence of any org is a Bell curve.
Obviously COVID changed all that and exposed the opposition to remote work as just obstructionist. Our company was 100% remote for over two years, and both sales and profits have never been higher. Yet some of management really just can't deal with it now. Ironically, the IT mgmt is the one most opposed to remote work and barely signed off on a hybrid model.
I'm in the same age cohort as most of our executives, and though your comment may seem ageist, I think it's spot on. These VPs and managers love to schmooze, have $$ lunches, golf with vendors etc. Their entire work life is designed around schmoozing and building their little networks with vendors so they have a safe landing spot if things go bad in their careers.
You might say this is the same as ICs who build networks, but I don't get paid to network. I don't recommend technologies based on who I golf with.
Mgmt needs to realize they can't unring this bell, and will continue to lose effective performers who (especially in IT) have more options since COVID.
Many businesses -- despite whatever their mission statement may be -- are not-so-thinly veiled real estate vehicles. Even businesses with a healthy income from whatever good or service they provide will often have another 25%+ in income from real estate gains. McDonald's is probably a good example of this.
I learned this pitching a business plan where an executive thought the "occupant mission" was compelling, but that we needed more expertise on the types of properties we could add value to.
For example, a lot of studios in hollywood in recent years have sold their back lots, and are now just leasing them back from some holding company. I'm sure this arrangement made a lot of money for some people, but I imagine in a few decades this will hurt the studios when these land owners start negotiating the next round of leases and realize they have literally all the leverage.
I live in a small town, on the main residential street in the old neighborhood. I have a family ( wife and two kids ) and we love our neighbors.
Before Covid, the commute was awful. The area where the office was located was insular. I watched my security cameras to keep up with my garden and family and feel connected to the world that mattered to me.
Now I'm able to walk in my garden and pull weeds between tickets/meetings instead of taking a lap around an exurban campus. I talk to my neighbors when they are out doing the same, or at the end of our days ( tag-team visiting Taco Tuesday gathering last night after the kids went to bed... )
Everyone is in different seasons, ( heck I might be looking for an office in a few years depending on the kiddos schedules, ) but community is the make-or-break factor.
Flipside, if you dont go back to the office. What are going doing holding so much $ and costs for nothing? Everyone who realizes this also cant rush out to sell. There's already loads of empty buildings and who is buying? Nobody, you'll get wrecked.
Then add on top, even if you decide to force everyone back into the office and accept the losses. How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home??
Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.
Down on my imaginary future ranch, I have a 10kw solar array charging my cybertruck and it drives me to the concerts, friends/family, and all that for free.
Children playing at the park? Is that even a thing anymore? Xbox/PS# seems to be replacing that entirely. We could discuss if this is a good thing or not but that same cybertruck can self-drive the kids to wherever they are meeting up.
>Another big problem is rural broadband. I know the countryside is nice, I may well retire there, but it's not where I am now and it's only a very small number of people who like the isolation.
That's what just broke. Why suddenly this became a thing. Starlink or 5g with long range 5ghz wireless backhaul. Rural suddenly has good relatively reliable fast internet access.
Have you been to a park in a child-raising area lately? They are absolutely packed all the time with kids. Sure, you don't see them downtown, but you head out to the suburbs and you absolutely do.
Oh for sure. If the kid is not quite old enough for the xbox/ps# age. They are totally out at the park. You never see kids out above whatever that age is.
I did see some older kids out tobaganning this winter. maybe in the age 8 range, which is unusually old compared to the playground soccer field age kids.
My comment stands for sure.
This is actually a super interesting subject I haven't considered. What is the tenability of cities without fossil fuels? I think we do know, it's really the cities that collapse.
Farmers might emit lots of CO2 and carbon taxes directly attack them, but ultimately they cant go anywhere. The cities need to eat. So those carbon taxes don't harm them at all.
How does public transit work? Generally speaking they are all diesel. Do we have a plan to spend a trillion $ converting this all to electric?
What's even the point of giant office buildings anymore? Downtown cores are dying if not dead as it is. When people stay home, the sharwarma spot downtown wont be able to afford to stay.
It's obvious what will eventually happen. These office buildings convert to high density residential. However, what happens after that?
If I am 100% remote, why even be in the expensive high tax city? I could go buy 10 acres and pay $100/year in nonsense taxes. Do my own utilities. never again worry about nuclear war because nobody will be nuking rural areas.
I really dont think we have quite thought out the consequences of our actions.
I walk everywhere. It's suburbs that collapse without fossil fuels.
> How does public transit work? Generally speaking they are all diesel. Do we have a plan to spend a trillion $ converting this all to electric?
Our subways have always been electric. Our street cars are electric, and have been for a century, before that they were horse driven. All new buses are electric.
> What's even the point of giant office buildings anymore? Downtown cores are dying if not dead as it is.
This is probably true.
> I really dont think we have quite thought out the consequences of our actions.
The consequences of NOT following these actions will horrific.
I think shooting from the hip the suburbs hurt without fossil fuels for a short time. However, who are the people buying teslas it's rich folks in the suburbs. Who in 10 years will be driving the gasoline toyota econobox. It's the poor in the cities.
>Our subways have always been electric.
That doesnt cover everything. Not all cities have a subway. Not all subways are electric, the danger of frying people made a number of subways diesel. My understanding is that much of NYC subway is still diesel for various reasons.
> Our street cars are electric, and have been for a century, before that they were horse driven. All new buses are electric.
I'm not sure I follow. This is certainly not true in the general sense. Perhaps true where you are? Where are you?
>The consequences of NOT following these actions will horrific.
That's the big debate there. Climate change isn't even important to the discussion.
If we fast forward ~75 years. We know without question that we are going to run out of fossil fuels. If we do nothing to switch now, it's a certain collapse of society.
Clearly we must do something. The sooner we begin, the less painful it is in the long run.
However, we cannot ignore the consequences. We must address these issues.
NYC subway still uses cloth bathed in oil to insulate some electrical circuits.
I'm disputing YOUR generalization, that [all] cities are doomed, not creating a new generalization that they are all fine.
True but cities required domestication of the horse. There were literally horse shit all over the roads and the occasional dead horse that was abandoned.
The answer isn't subways or monorails neither.
The answer may be robotaxis. I am very optimistic that this could solve a large degree of the issues.
Cars are very useful to go wherever you want, but are literally the worst for volume.
Similarly to how trucks are necessary to move stuff around but they cannot replace train freight/air planes/container ships.
dont take me as attacking nyc and/or their subway. I'm certain at some grand time in the future all cities have a subway with rapid transport.
> The answer may be robotaxis. I am very optimistic that this could solve a large degree of the issues.
What I was trying to say is that cars (autonomous or not) are to mass transportation what copper wire is to the internet: better to keep the bulk of it out of it.
Also car infrastructure is extremely expensive, both in and of itself and as a collateral, parking lot requirements have a huge maintenance and spatial cost.
I also wouldn’t say cities are particularly less capable of electrification than anywhere else. Bus systems can be electric. Subway systems are already electric. There are some diesel train systems that would be expensive to electrify (eg Boston regional commuter rail), but even this isn’t impossible (frankly it should have been done years ago, and a study in the 2010s had recommended it because it gives other benefits like improving reliability and reducing maintenance)
As you’ve noted, there’s a big question mark on how cities will adapt central business districts around a non-office world. It’s also worth noting cities have handled such a transition before: during the industrial revolution, cities were full of factories, and over time these shuttered and were replaced or turned into housing.
Not everyone wants 10 acres or cares about the threat of nuclear war. Cities will be for those people.
Alternate POV: this could save cities as we know them. All top American cities have been struggling for about 20 years now to handle urban growth, as cost of living goes through the roof and small businesses disappear when their renewed lease comes at twice the rent. As always, the survivors are those who can afford the change: homeowners and the wealthy on the residential side (keep in mind cities like Boston are majority renter), and large corporate renters on the business side (think Starbucks instead of Local Coffee Co)
Pre-war growth patterns (ie, densification and transit) have been generally outlawed, and big companies seem to have endless pockets to raise salaries to attract more highly paid workers to compete on rent; so there’s been no counterbalance on this trend. Until remote work.
Right now cities are still expensive, but the next few years as we transition out of the pandemic will determine whether remote work is here to stay; if so, you will likely see another suburban migration of ‘former reluctant office workers’ (we already had one wave at the start of the pandemic), and city real estate might finally cool off for the first time in decades
Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
Essentially urban sprawl/suburbia/single family homes cost more for the city (road upkeep, water/gas pipes, etc.) than what they contribute in taxes, so many cities are in a positive feedback loop of building more houses to get quick money to do maintenance on the previous rounds of growth.
Same with highway/Interstate maintenance. Raise the Federal gas tax (which hasn't tracked inflation for ages).
But modern cities have had two phases: first industrial growth, and more recently white collar/information worker city cores. Industry will still exist, but has already moved further out from city centers and cores. Currently, the life blood of large cities is closely tied up with the mega corps having their ego towers there and thus attracting innumerable highly paid workers which then spend their money in those city cores. With that going away and/or substantially changing, cities will change drastically too.
Chicago does this well. From my front door I have the follow options:
* The El (train, local stops)
* Metra (train, commuter that gets out to the burbs)
* Bus
* Taxi
* Divvy (e-bike rentals)
* Personal bike
* Walking
As a resident, is the danger true?
Chicago is no different than any other large city in that being aware of your surroundings and not doing dumb things is expected.
One of the reasons I never consider living in the midwest again (Toledo) is because my bike was stolen so many times as a kid. Crime doesn't make for nice living.
wouldn't that be the opposite? Where I live right now, the nearest grocery store is in the next town over and there is zero public infrastructure to get there. There is no uber or taxi or bus. You just don't live here without a car, period.
1) how many companies actually own their buildings? i think generally it’s only the already successful companies which own instead of lease — i.e. the ones who can recover from such a hit.
2) IF the office had negative utility, then the company is harming themselves by using it. whether they’re willing to sell it or not, that fact remains.
You're looking at it wrong. Plenty of jobs simply can't be done remotely. If it gets to the point that people can't afford to move around much, they'll either permanently move closer to their workplace or find a job closer to their home.
Also, arguably the current discussion around WFH to me is evidence that even most office jobs can't be performed remotely (productively). Even if one person can WFH by themselves, they still need to interact with coworkers who may not be able to do it.
This data is now in. It's roughly 2/3s of jobs cant be done remotely.
> If it gets to the point that people can't afford to move around much, they'll either permanently move closer to their workplace or find a job closer to their home.
That transition happened during the financial crisis in 2009.
>Also, arguably the current discussion around WFH to me is evidence that even most office jobs can't be performed remotely (productively). Even if one person can WFH by themselves, they still need to interact with coworkers who may not be able to do it.
That's a debate I'm sure many management are about to have and flipside going to make lots of recruiters pretty busy.
Frankly for me it's 1 thing that really puts me off going back to the office. When I need to hit the shitter. I walk 2 seconds from my office to my toilet. I have nice soft toilet paper.
At work, I have to go through like 2 security zones and then hope that nobody is using the stalls already. If they are, and that's common. I have to walk to the other side of the building and then hope those shitters arent in use.
Then there's a good chance the one that's empty is going to be atrocious. Then I have to wipe with 1 ply sandpaper. It's just better to be at home.
I think he's wrong though. Most office jobs should be capable of being remote, unless the mgmt is unwilling to make changes to the modern world.
I don't think it's as simple as "management doesn't want WFH because of a temper tantrum".
It's about control for most mgmt.
In my case, my employer isn't forcing anyone to come back to the office, but there's definitely an unspoken understanding that 'collaboration' and 'team feeling' will improve if we're at the office more often.
But when I go to the office it perfectly reflects the experiences described in the article: I'm almost always the only person from my team in the office at the time, or otherwise the only other team-member has their work to do, and I have mine, so we sit next to each other on the considerably less comfortable office chairs than I have at home, and work 'side-by-side' with our headphones on, and pretty much don't speak to each other any more than we usually do in Meet or on Slack.
I tend to use the days for wondering around and chatting randomly with other people at the office: hang with the Sales people, mosey past the Support team, spend half an hour in the office kitchen.
I guess this is ok if the idea is to be a more socially cohesive group, but it's disastrous for my productivity, and I always have to work twice as hard for the following days at home - even though it takes a while to regain my focus afterwards, so the rest of the week is often a little bit disrupted by the wasted day at the office.
I don't want to only work at home for the rest of my life though - but it feels like we haven't worked-out what the new situation should be just yet. And in the meantime, managers are just thinking in outdated terms of getting everything back to 'normal'.
Why? If socializing in the office is part of your job now (explicitly or implicitly), you're working your hours either way. If that leaves you with too little time to get things done, address it with your manager.
While there definitely are exceptions, addressing something like this with an average manager is useless to contra-productive.
My perfect commute would probably be a 10 minute bicycle ride, or maybe a short train ride.
I really felt it when we started working from home during corona and I was sitting on the couch just eating chips and ice cream.
But in the beginning it was bad.
Bike maintenance is really low, btw. I might bring it by the bike shop once a year, pay 100 euros and be done with it.
Even in a densely populated area such as Manhattan, getting from midtown to lower manhattan (which is quite close btw) is 20 minutes either biking or taking the subway.
Meanwhile, with working from home, I've been simulating a commute. I walk for 5-30 mins maybe with a mug of coffee, or go biking in the morning, then come back and start working. It helps give some separation between home and work. Then I do the same thing at the end of the day to close it out and help clear the head.
Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both being heated/cooled for 24 hours. The employee wastes 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Similarly the employer wastes time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms in building B, etc.,etc., in addition to paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself.
The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful. Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.
Let's face it, it's dumb.
To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org.
Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the office could ever achieve a 10% increase in output.
For your situation I would imagine in a hypothetical example where your team composition stays steady for a long period of time you'd find that you required onsite less often. And in that case I'd advocate that defaulting back to remote is a good thing.
I don't see anything in the OP's comment that referred to any assumptions about peoples' preferences: they were addressing the practical wastefulness and harm to the world's environment from the office-working conventions we've 'conformed to' in the past.
You may prefer to commute to work, and sit in an office instead of somewhere else (doesn't necessarily need to be a home), but that doesn't affect the inherent environmental wastefulness of all this 'busy' activity.
Think about a Manhattan with 40% more housing, what would that do to affordability?
[0] https://www.osc.state.ny.us/files/reports/osdc/pdf/report-11...
True, of course. But geographically distributing the need for space reduces the very concentration of demand in the office park areas.
The larger home (with an office) may be entirely unaffordable in the city center where HQ was, but with remote you can move elsewhere where it can be cheaper than an apartment in that city.
Or you could rent a small office away from the crowds where it's cheaper. This is what I've been doing since pandemic start. Sure, I wish the employers would pay for it but it's still so much better that it's worth it. On fuel alone I save enough every month to pay the rent a couple times over. And my commute is ~5 minutes on a bike instead of 60-90 minutes sitting in traffic.
Where I live, it’s not really good for the home to leave it very long without at least the dehumidifier running.
May through August in Atlanta it doesn't really make sense to turn the AC off while out of the house (down a few degrees, sure - but not off). You're going to either pay for the ac to run normal cycles while you're out, or you're going to pay for the ac to run full blast for an hour at 6pm when you get home to bring the temp from 90+ back down to ~78 (which is still in the peak power rate times for GA power - 2pm to 7pm).
The house heats up more and more until it reaches temp equality with the outside. If reaching equilibrium takes longer than you're out of the house... you save basically nothing by turning the system off. It's going to either pump the heat out slowly over the day, or all at once when you get home, and there just isn't much savings to be had.
That's not even talking about the condensation and expansion/contraction issues that will damage your home.
Where I live, this is even written in my rental agreement, that when I leave home for long winter vacations, I must leave the heating ON.
Yes, you can go a bit colder if the house is empty.
US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years.
My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total.
I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there.
One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who already have a tendency to stay home and not socialize much at work.
The majority of people are not like that, most people don't have the means (spare rooms, gear, technical abilities) to do it _and_ are marginalized for not being able to socialize in person, because they tend to lean towards depression by staying home all day.
Also WFH tends to discriminate people doing "less important" jobs, like for example in a couple if one of the two has a highly paid job or a responsibility job, the other one will tend to be the one doing chores (cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids) while if both go out to work there's less pressure to compensate because both can't physically be home to do what need to be done anyway.
There are studies showing that WFH makes gender inequalities worse.
Basically the point is that many people find meaning and purpose in their jobs, if you remove the "purpose" (getting dressed, going out, meeting other people, sharing work experiences with them) it simply becomes a tedious activity to them that fulfills none of their needs.
Emperors, scientists and other productive members of the elite have done this since age immemorial. If anything, the average person finding their work meaningful (versus simply toil) is a recent phenomenon.
It is easier finding meaning in your labor if your labor is directly creating or providing a meaningful service to your community.
Do you see how I am not saying job? Because no one wants to do the same thing for 40 hours with surveillance. However finding meaning in labor has been a thing for millenia.
That's the point. People finding or striving to find meaning in their work are far removed from the "serfs."
To let it go for good we'd need people to make themselves entertain in different activities other than working.
But mostly it's because (I think) it's activities they enjoy doing and actually have meaning in the real World, even if on a much smaller scale than the global one.
Good places to see this are New York and New Orleans.
New Orleans' French and Spanish quarters have residences on top of business concerns. We Americans, on the other hand, built separate residential and commercial neighborhoods with a train connecting the two.
Likewise for Manhattan. Dutch-settled areas have homes on top of shops. This pattern continues for a bit under the British, but converts to distinct residential and commercial streets before going whole hog on the pattern with non-commercial neighborhoods.
Doesn't engineering in general select for these personality traits?
Is there a way to measure the loss in productivity or product quality?
>>I have never seen a more disengaged engineering staff.
How does the perceived lack of engagement by your team members (by choice, for the most part) impact the mystical, (un)measurable "collaboration" factor?
It might help managers and/or senior leadership to better argue points for hybrid in-office arrangements if data points could be brought to bear to counteract the very real benefits (for some) of WFH combined with varying individual social preferences.
The suggestions in the last paragraph of the article are so simple to articulate, yet difficult for (especially lder) managers across most levels to crisply quantify.
The engagement factor is realized with a very terse "yesterday I worked on recommendations, today I'll do the same". At that point the developer disappears for a few hours, never participates in any chat where less senior developers are asking questions. It's very siloed. The hardest part for leaders is to see how this translates into metrics they can understand. I'm absolutely ecstatic our org has adopted a "forever" WFH policy. I'm just cautious in how it'll all play out.
If your team is shipping and hitting deadlines then they realize that all this extra socialization stuff is useless cruft and rightly are rejecting it.
But your sentiment is exactly the point I was trying to make. Many (if not most) developers really aren't interested in any social benefit/experience. Your use of the word "rightly" puts you (and forgive me for broadly categorizing, I don't know you at all) in the "I come here to do my work and get the heck out so I can live my real life" group. For others, it's not so binary. It's not Work vs Life. Life bleeds into work, and work bleeds into life (with obvious healthy boundaries). For example, my lunch times with other developers was a high point of my day. I looked forward to talking to those folks. We tried it via Zoom. It was just awkward. My current team seems to fit with your sentiment. I'm the oddball and I'm okay with that.
If the only purpose you have in a job is to put on uncomfortable clothes and socialize I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
if you remove the human aspect and insist on framing the issue like that, can't we say the same thing for almost any job?
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to boost your ego and brag I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to chose the colors in an excel spreadsheet cells I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to do something a machine can do better I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to farm kind animals to later cruelly kill them I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to make money for yourself I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
...
not a great analysis if you ask me.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to boost your ego and brag I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to chose the colors in an excel spreadsheet cells I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to do something a machine can do better I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to farm kind animals to later cruelly kill them I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to make money for yourself I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
Well... yes, we should. The last one is obviously unreasonable since we live in a society where money is required to live most lifestyles. I recommend reading Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...
Wait, what? That literally is the purpose of the job for the employee. If you don't agree, try setting total compensation to zero and see who continues to show up.
You are mixing pandemic with WFH. When you work, you still need childcare and otherwise be working. Doing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO.
If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said, especially of people that don’t like direct “confrontation” of large meetings and “loudest first” prioritization. Video conf chat has become a valuable and documentable discussion medium that can include comment not urgent enough to interrupt the speaker in the moment, but still useful to the overall context. I hope some of these inclusive benefits are retained with hybrid or whatever approaches are utilized for work in the future.
Another interesting inclusivity question is the location itself. People tend to congregate by common traits, so locating an office in a given neighborhood or city implicitly discriminates those groups who do not have a large presence nearby. Remote definitely allows (but importantly does not guarantee) a much more diverse employee population and greater fairness in access to these jobs. There are of course counter points with availability of working space and internet connection, so this is a very complex issue.
No, I am not.
> oing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO
If people are home, they can be pressured to do more, because they literally have more time to do them and are literally physically available for exploitation.
Simple as that.
> If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said
You are mixing self segregation with inclusiveness.
> Video conf chat has become a valuable and documentable discussion medium that can include
Only if you sell video chat software.
Least path of resistance states that video chats pose less barriers, so you're making more of them and they end up lasting longer than before.
It also enables more monitoring from management and the idea that workers are always available. (guess who's not saying no to the boss? the more vulnerable or the less vulnerable?)
Again: it's been observed.
I definitely don’t sell software, but I do see it as my responsibility to make sure all of my team members are heard.
On the exploitation, unfortunately domestic abuse is possible regardless of work styles and homes are not always the safe space we expect them to be. That problem exists with or without ability to work remotely. Society and employers should be aware of that and have means of helping those affected. There are many great NGOs and non-profits doing great work in this area and I’d encourage all of us to donate more to such causes and do volunteer work.
EDIT: On self segregation, that may have started that way, but demanding that people leave family ties and their friends to move for job opportunities is not all that positive either. Give people a choice and the ability to, but don’t require it. That is much friendlier and fairer.
Anecdata but my partner and I have a huge income disparity. I'd say our responsibilities are pretty even. There are things I tend to do and they tend to do. But in my mind at least it evens out.
Then I started thinking about all the massive skyscrapers that are just offices that people show up to for just 8 hours a day and then reallocate the space crisis to their residence elsewhere. It seems like a comical design choice almost.
If I end up renting the office for a decade, then it won't end up cost effective. But I've never stayed at any job for that long before so I assume my job situation will change in a few years.
If my job changes such that I am required to report to a physical office which is not the one I currently rent, I can cancel my lease (with 3 months notice). This provides me with good flexibility and minimizes my risk, my upfront costs, and any need to remodel my home.
Having an office where other people are around also gets me to socialize for a small part of the day.
The psychological toll it took on me while travelling through crushingly crowded trains and buses still terrifies me.
If large number of paper/computer workers do not have to commute, space is left for people who have to travel for more serious reasons and have their commute less unpleasant.
At work I have a windowless office and a lopsided desk chair, and people have stolen my food from the fridge.
The key observation is really that the societal costs of supporting a commute culture are so enormous that for it to make any sense, the productivity of being in-office would have to be many multiples higher than remote.
We can argue whether remote or office is slightly more productive this way or that way, and there are plenty of studies showing both directions so it's probably a wash, depending on team.
But no study ever suggests that in-office could possibly be so immensely more productive than remote that it could justify the costs to society of doing it.
Of course, it'd be great if there is some research attempting to quantify this more precisely (including road construction & maintenance, inefficient land use, pollution, time lost, health impact from the stress, and on and on). Any links?
You do something good for me and I give you $X for that.
Now on top of that for $X I want you to also come to a building I built for you , stay there for 8 hours a day and do the thing I want you to do. All for $X.
However there is Joe who will give you $X for the same job and a little more.But you get to choose where and how you do it.
Which one will you do?
My commute to the office is about a 10 mins walk - maybe that’s the difference with many others here. Either way, I like the separation between work and home. I also believe that online meetings and chat are not a great substitute for actually talking to people, especially when you are building something together.
That is exactly the difference. Every single comment in here from someone who likes or doesn't mind returning to the office mentions that their commute is short and simple (quick walk/bike)
But this hybrid setup is literally the worst of both worlds. Why come to the office, when nobody is there anyway? There is no upside.
I have a friend who's entire company is remote. Employees in the multiple states, as well as multiple overseas companies. Extremely successful, top tier company in his field. This is the model for most tech companies for the rest of this century.
I think the motivation to work from home is inversely proportional to your commute distance / time.
I found WFH was great when we all left the office en masse and had already got a close-knit team. Changing jobs during the pandemic and trying to build new relationships remotely was really, really hard because that human-level interaction wasn't there.
I'm glad people are seeing how ridiculous this was.
But, omg, I really don't want to go back to office. I like not having to travel there. I like breakfast in peace taking my sweet time for it and lunch at home. I like extra sleep I am getting in the morning. I like extra exercise I am getting. I like being at home when kids come, have quick chat with them before returning to work.
I am still trying to build a social network on this new city, but it's a very hard process and a very long one. For now, going to office, makes me feel less lonely and I get some interactions and also do some activities with co-workers.
This happened to me working in an office every day. I moved to a new city for work and lived alone. My friends and family were hundreds of miles away.
Co-workers are not going to solve this problem for you I am sorry to say. They're a temporary reprieve at best. You're going to need to build some sort of social circle for yourself outside of work.
You really should treat that situation as a major problem that needs to be addressed. You wouldn't drag around a broken leg, don't drag around loneliness and depression. Going into the office can't be your only in person socializing. It's only going to end up feeding into depression. It's not a fun spiral to get on.
How did you approach this issue? Did you manage to create a strong social circle outside of work? Any helpful tips for the lost me would be appreciated.
You are still required to live/reside near the office.
Fully remote allows me to live in a very affordable area while still earning a great salary
At some point, somebody will start asking why the Indian working remotely in India is paid less than the American/European expat working remotely from Bali.
That has actually become a trend in Portugal: people are quitting local companies to get US/German/UK salaries working remotely for US/German/UK companies.
Next companies create more attractive work places in cheaper areas and lures employees there.
If you actually tried to hire in the region, you would know.
If you find a really good programmer in the region, his pay will approach European pay, and he will escape to Europe/US as soon as he can.
Also I cannot imagine US expat working in Bali, as the time difference is 12 hours. That's very impractical for any collaborative work.
My company should not call itself remote if they also want to decide where I must live... :)
My bike ride to my office is 10 minutes. I miss my commute.
Everyone can have all of these things and work from home 100% of the time. It requires greater self awareness, self control, and communication with your family. That can be easier said than done, but if its accomplished it is in all ways better than relying on wasting a large portion of your day in a building you wouldn't otherwise want to be in every day.
My main social life has never been my coworkers, it's been the salsa parties I used to go to 4-5 nights a week, primarily after work. If I'm already in town, it's significantly easier to motivate myself to go to them.
For me its now beanie hat, wireless headphones with music, head down and don't bother me please.
Eventually they'll get sick of me and stop asking me to attend i hope.
I saw this even before the pandemic. Open office situations are noisy and distracting, everyone set up their desks so they would stare at walls, put on headphones, and used Slack to talk to people right next to them. One CEO even doubled down on it, giving attaboys to the people who sent the most Slack messages.
I don't have a problem with Slack. I like it, and feel it helps remote work. I just feel that this article is 100% correct that if everyone in the same room/office is using slack to talk to each other, something is broken with communication within that organization.
But, well, "collaboration".
I'm sure it's time and cost effective for senior management that are paid $$$$ and only have a really short commute from the office. But not for the other 99% of the workforce.
Our team was already split between the US and UK, and we tend to work outside of our team across multiple projects with people all over the world. So all meetings were always video calls even pre-pandemic.
Some senior managers want us to be in the office 20% of the time to get that nebulous "collaboration" thing... Which literally never happened in person anyway. On the other hand, my managers have said we shouldn't come in unless there is an actual reason to do so.
Fingers crossed sanity prevails...
Most people have a problem of neglecting what isn't front of them, it's not malice or anything its just how it is. We ourselves have forgotten people with whom we don't have in person check often. People change with time, and people tend to work more closely, and are more likely to give promotions, rewards or anything for that matter to people with whom they have a daily check-in.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, compensation, benefits and overall career trajectories of people who work with top bosses at office is better than those working from remote.
You haven't seen your cousin or a friend for a while? What is your perception of them now? I am sure all that Facebook liking and commenting hasn't given you a clue of what they are now, and more importantly even the perception of them from when you last had a chance to see them often has now been long forgotten/hazy.
The facts here are anybody you don't see often, you don't know them well enough and they don't figure anywhere in your list of top people to give anything.
Then you leave and find work with someone that doesn't have the attention span of a goldfish. If you're producing work of value you should be compensated. If the company is doing well then all of the employees should be doing well. No one should have to put on a song and dance for their managers to get their work recognized and rewarded.
If your manager can't remember you unless you're in front of them at all times they're not fit for their job.
Which is basically every where and every one. The bad news is you now start at the bottom of your level at the new company.
>>If you're producing work of value you should be compensated.
How naive are developers really?
>>If the company is doing well then all of the employees should be doing well.
There's a pyramid everywhere, even at F/MAANG's. Some one is always paid more than others, and that some one isn't always making it up on merit.
>>No one should have to put on a song and dance for their managers to get their work recognized and rewarded.
Work isn't an anonymous exam, subjective judgement follows by merely existence of more than one person in a team.
>>If your manager can't remember you unless you're in front of them at all times they're not fit for their job.
Yeah sadly, in a performance review, its us being evaluated not them.
I wonder if people that brings up this understand what they are really saying. Because it's not like WFH reduces the amount of promotion that goes around. Its just have the potential of reallocating it differently. And this means that they are afraid that they will be out competed by others that are willing to be near decision makers to influence (or rather manipulate them).
I would argue that this says more about those people than about WFH.
True, I was not talking about true remote job in truly remote company - if there are no possibility for in personal meeting than the power dynamic changes and the play ground is leveled for all players.
Not sure what your argument is, if a person eats lunch with another person on an everyday basis, or may be goes for a tea break walk, they are also likely to talk things about family, games and other such stuff. You really shouldn't be surprised if this sort of a relationship has a stronger bonding and more meaning, and this just can't be developed by some one calling another person for a 2 minute call. And by the definition when some opportunity comes up they are more likely to remember them due to both proximity and frequency of interactions.
If you have a friend whom you only occasionally ping on Facebook for a 'Happy Birthday!' message, you shouldn't be surprised if you aren't invited to parties after a while. It doesn't mean 'it says more about them', they are just reciprocating your feeling towards them, you don't want to see them in person, now neither do they.
Maintaining good relationship with bosses is just one of those hygienic things you do at work, like dressing well, or using a mouth freshener or showing up everyday etc etc. If you want any influence at all, there are a few set of things you need to do, there's enough literature written about this. Things like talking well, agreeability, consensus building, clarity, having the other person empty their thoughts etc etc. You just have to do this regardless of whatever profession you are in, because this is how humans work.
The thing is that I was just really trying only to point out what a shitty system we have all developed together (we as a society) through this kind of tactics. I suspect that You are looking at this only through the point of view of individual that is optimizing their own outcomes (the individual being yourself probably). But I try to look at this from a bit more systemic point of view. And what I see from up there isn't pretty.
Of course for me this isn't only purely theoretical thing - what really buggers me are the logical consequences of this system. For example I really do not want to work for someone that becomes by boss only because he can play social game (and maintain proper relationships with key persons in company). But the thing is, that in this system, almost always this kind of person wins.
My boss isn't my friend. He's my boss. Clear boundaries are healthy boundaries.
My mom lives 2000 miles away, I only get to see her once a year. Yet we talk on the phone, write emails, have FaceTime, and yes, like on FB or Instagram.
A cousin I haven't seen in a long time will take catching up at meals and activities; that's the role of family reunions.
The idea that you need to be physically close to be emotionally close is just silly.
Note this works with one's mom but not wife. Meaning what is the nature of relationship you are pursuing here? Deeper the stake closer you need to be.
The way people find new jobs today is already largely digital. Networking events still exist as a once-every-so-often opportunity. The majority of recruiters and employers are still looking at personal projects, all which are accessible from a distance. Realistically there is very little reason the majority of people are affected by this when it comes to new jobs.
The majority of people don't grow well staying at the same job. This immediately lessens the impact of removing physical connections as a means to get better compensation. We've seen dozens of articles regarding this. As an added benefit, I wouldn't be surprised remote workers would have an easier time job hopping too.
I see many reasons the above would unfold, but even without WFH things have been trending against company loyalty and dedication being a great way to further oneself in most of the west.
And never got a manager trying to change that. We are in a mercenary industry and the faster we accept that the better for us all.
People who bother to go on HN probably skew more towards career-focused than not, but plenty of people are very happy doing the work given to them and no more.
One advantage of WFH: Zoom has put me in front of more senior leadership on a more frequent basis than I’ve ever seen while in the office. I’ve talked to managing directors on a weekly basis, sometimes daily, for the past 18 months or so. Prior to that it was quarterly at best.
I'm sure my experience is not universal and it varies a lot with team and company.
When in the office, the un-performing extroverts could schmooze, bullshit, and kiss ass to maintain status. They've lost that now, and it's obvious how they're performing (though measuring performance in IT is very tough).
The extroverts who previously performed well are doing the same, but have learned how to use online tools to maintain their status. Now it's even easier to kiss up privately to your boss or scheme with another manager behind your bosses back.
The introverts are even more interesting. Past underperformers have improved dramatically. Whether it's not having to play the Game that they're unable or uncomfortable, they've all inarguably improved. The introverts who were doing well prior to WFH are also improving, though not at as dramatic a rate.
And when they hire managers to take care of these details, they hire people they can identify with. People who are like them, but lower in status and experience. Yet people with the same goals towards climbing the corporate ladder. These managers (I lump anyone below C-Level Officer in this group) also lack hands on experience in the current environment, but they know how to play the game. They quickly find out who the decision makers are, what they want, and their vulnerabilities. This allows them to advance.
Then these executives higher and promote people who do have current experience. They expect them to manage the workers/ICs. They base their hiring decisions on the same fallacious ideas that they believe in. And when a manager presents them with differing opinions, that challenge their world view, they both resent and dismiss these opinions. One because they don't understand the technical side of business, and two because they are threatened. So they try to exert control.
For them, it's all about status and schmoozing; cronyism, nepotism, corrupting vendor relations, all cloaked in talk of "culture, collaboration, cooperation." When they reach out to employees with a satisfaction survey, bad results (less than high approval ratings) means that the lower status managers failed to impart the company line effectively. The parallels to the Soviet Union are unmistakable.
When you view it in terms of Managers are from Mars, Workers are from Venus, you'll start to understand how status, power and privilege play a huge role in how workplaces are designed and managed.
Instead I saw one maybe two familiar faces and the rest of the empty office was a doldrum of emptiness.. The undependable nature of the new "who's on first" office musical chairs is gaudy. It's a mishap waiting to happen, and there are no world expert managers who also have experience re-engaging a whole new social scene in a post apocalyptic world of the empty office space. Drudgery is the new office scene... Blehhh
Living close to where you work is pretty expensive, especially when the CEO likes the prestige associated with the building or area (and lives nearby, of course, but he gets 10 times my salary).
When I moved to a different neighborhood, I'd take Regional Rail, which was about 40 mins door to door. Only advantage is there aren't people shooting up or getting raped on RR.
Driving actually would only take ~15min door to door if I left after rush hour. But then parking was very variable. It could be instant (finding spot right when I get there) or I'd have to drive around for 10 minutes.
Honestly, I liked commuting either of those ways (outside of finding needles on the El) since I'd just listen to music or a podcast.
However, I much prefer working from home.
Hahaha, like this wasn't true before the pandemic.
It sure as hell was for me, anyway.
On top of all of that, I have invested heavily in my home office on my own dime (they didn't give any stipend even though work from home was pretty much mandated). I found that my writs and fingers were starting to hurt so I invested in a a more ergonmic split keyboard [1] and mouse which I would have to lug into the office with me.
I feel that my new employer, one that's exclusively remote, has a better approach of us doing an "on-site" every quarter or so where everyone from around the country gathers in a city for those higher level meetings and team bonding activities.
[1] ZSA Moonlander https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/
I never hated being on-site, I never had a monster commute. Actually one of my commutes was a fabulous bike tour of the major monuments of the national mall. I had a beer keg and a dog to warm my feet when I got to the office.
But once I got out of the office environment for a little while it was like being "red pilled". I could no longer ignore the absolutely silly justification for bringing everyone into the same place, I saw it only as a productivity destroyer for myself and others, I saw the relationships for what they were, shallow and transactional. My first and only stint back on-site it felt like coming back to high school after years and being amazed and all the silly things that loomed so large in your former life.
I'm not a hermit or an introvert. The office is still dead as a doornail for me.
I'm going with a 7/3 split, favoring WFH. If it rains that ratio can change.
- we need to redesign our homes, because every working adult needs a study/workspace that is quiet (and preferably not their bedroom)
- we need less office space, and probably don't need an office at all. Commercial real estate is going to hurt
- we need less transport infrastructure. If the Rush Hour stops being a thing, that has huge implications for transport planning (and business models)
- we can hire from different regions/countries/cultures. This has been happening over the last 20 years or so, but it steps up a notch with remote teams.
- we don't need to live near a city any more. Rural villages with decent wifi are viable again.
- "management by walking around" stops working. We actually have to measure employee output, rather than how long they moisten the chair for.
Any more?
I have been back in the office for 2 weeks now and I am already emotionally exhausted.
I had forgotten how draining the so called in-person collaboration actually is.
Also I am cold all the time as I am a very thin person surroumded by slightly larger ones that want the window open all the time.
Wfh is completely optional where I work. And I think I will go back to that 100%.
I never realized how soul draining the office environment actually is and how fast I went from calm and content to stressed and miserable.
Same job, same employer, same team. Wfh definetly suits me better.
More focus…hanging out with the dog…
These things literally contradict each other. The fact that someone can type this out and not even realize that just goes to show why everyone is convinced they have become so much more productive WFH, when companies dhar actually track their employees and their productivity have hard data that shows otherwise (Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up).
Yes they would. Both companies have the same toxic management types that see their direct reports as serfs in their fiefdom. They bitch and moan to upper management to get their serfs back in the fields.
It's not difficult to focus while hanging out with a dog. The sort of attention they want typically isn't the same as a coworker standing over your desk. Petting a dog releases endorphins and oxytocin while dealing with the hovering coworker only generates cortisol.
"They must have the data" is a very popular way to appeal to authority lately.
I have my cat sitting next to me on a window ledge. Every now and then she makes a noise when she sees a bird. Totally disrupts my day. Can't focus for a good 24 hours. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Imagine replacing my cat with my former cubicle mates. One who has ADHD and feels the need to verbally express every thought that comes to mind. And who gets upset when he doesn't get the validation he desires. Now that disrupts my day. Add in 2000 other employees in my company, any of which can walk by my desk and ask me about XYZ.
> These things literally contradict each other.
I don't see how to be honest. I don't have a dog but I hang out with my spouse more now that we both work from home: instead of going to make coffee in the little office kitchen or walking to a cafe we both hang out in our kitchen while we make coffee, we eat lunch together (admittedly we did that sometimes when we worked in offices too because we didn't work too far apart), and we have more time together in the mornings/evenings without having to commute. You add all that up and we get more time together while spending the same amount of time working...
It's the same way that I have more time for housework: I can do things like quickly put a load of laundry in the machine while I'm stuck waiting to hear back from a colleague or do it on my lunch break or I'm waiting for some long process to execute before I analyse the results. In the office I'd be sitting on my hands waiting, at home I can get some non work related tasks out of the way
I don't mind the chance of scenery and would be happy to do it once in a while. I just hope the flexibility we have at the moment is retained. Thankfully my current employer has cut office space so much it would be impossible for us all to turn up if we wanted to.
Rest of the day was just me sitting in a cold space, on an uncomfortable chair, with an inadequate desk setup. I lost 2h30 of my day to get there.
Luckily my employer was always remote friendly and it just works so why change.
I see all the articles about people quitting, and all the articles like this one about ridiculous patches to work life that aren't working, and I have to wonder, is there someone doing it right that is also paying well?
Covid19 created a real short-term incentive for remote work, that generated some momentum around it, there are some companies which saw the real productive value behind remote work but most others didn't see it and they are taking these mid-road of "hybrid" work.
Lots to figure out. Exciting times for HR and recruiters.
It's more difficult for managers to low-level harass or intimidate employees who WFH, and it's auditable if they do.
Joking of course.
There’s nothing worse than the “flexible” options companies are settling on, where people come 2-3 days a week, have no fixed seating arrangements, and need to get used to a new setup every time.
* The office was mostly empty
* The only communication was between my manager and myself and it was pointless
* There were several people in what appeared to be 8 hour long teams meetings
* None of the people who were pushing to get people back into the office were actually in the office. None of the exec team for example none of the HR or any of the older engineers
* You had bizarre rules with the mask which was you didn't need one when you are sat at the desk but moving about you need one. Not only that most people were ignoring those rules completely
* The office actually felt even more shit than what I imagined it to be
* I still needed to do the daily stand up via teams
* I didn't have a webcam / microphone at the desk so I had to use my own headset and go without the camera
* You couldn't it right next to someone and talk to them about their computer so I had to have a teams call with the intern to get them setup
* The intern forgot everything I told him as he didn't take any notes and asked me the same questions that I had already answered for the next 2 weeks
* The normal cafeteria was shut (looked permanently) so I had to drive to get my lunch
* I had forgotten that my chair was actually broken so moving from my £300 secret lab chair to a 10 year old farty broken cheap £25 office chair was a culture shock
* The toilets had every second stall blocked off (pre-pandemic) these were always full and you would often have to wait
* If the toilets had more that X people in them you had to wait in a queue outside
* Only 1 person at a time was allowed into the kitchen not sure how that was supposed to work if the office was full
* I had never noticed this before but the décor in the place was terribad. The carpet was skanky/mostly worn away. Two walls were painted headache inducing red. They had a bunch of shit art on all the walls. The plants were all either fake or dead. There was 0 natural light. The windows didn't open and were facing a 3 story brick wall.
* I felt quite breathless when I was there as you couldn't open a window the place was very stuffy and felt like the o2 levels were low
* The AC would make a loud grinding noise every 30 minutes that felt like the building was going to collapse
My overall experience was that I felt degraded like the company had "done a Will Smith" and smacked me in the face in front of everyone. I started looking for a 100% remote job immediately after this.
Thank you.
For many people this isn't a choice. Specially, if you have a family.
A business chooses their office location based on business needs. The business isn't worried about the myriad reasons people choose to live in a particular place.
So businesses are rarely right next door to every employee's house. Traffic in cities will easily make a short distance into a long duration commute. Living in more affordable suburbs makes for longer distance commutes.