I'm convinced that this is just the first part of a plan to eventually have people working 5 days in office again.
The reason I am convinced is because there is no clear value proposition to even being in office two days "mandatory", which tells me that it is not really a gesture of flexibility but rather of temporary appeasement.
What do you think?
Converting the office into a collaboration space for people who need a reliable internet connection and/or a less disruptive environment (ie. than a noisy family) to get work done in.
0 days mandatory in the office; days in the office by collaborative decision amongst teams.
It’s quite obvious if you’re in camp A or camp B.
If you don’t like it, just leave. Plenty of remote jobs open; the good thing about a remote first company is that they collaborate in person as required; not because it’s required by HR.
For my own part, I prefer companies that force some shared in-person time. I vastly prefer in-person relations and collaborating. I would also prefer companies that provide some time at home, so for me the hybrid option is ideal and the question is how many days in-office are required. I can't imagine I'm unique.
I fully recognize different people have different preferences and I don't think there's one size fits all here. I'm glad if we can self-select on this.
And yet I would argue that going remote is going to collapse the junior level talent pool.
For example, most of the shit hot programmers I know who don't have a degree generally became so because they had smoking good mentors that they had easy access to--and they absorbed from them like a sponge. (This is also true of those with degrees--but it's easier to argue that mentorship is definitive when someone doesn't have a degree) Online crushes that avenue of interaction.
Even worse, there is no reason to put energy into training as someone will just leave to another company. Corporate training was already viewed as something unprofitable, and all the online makes that value proposition even worse.
On the plus side: this may revitalize the in-person "user group" which has been kind of dead for a while. I find that my interaction with several users groups is now probably stronger than my interaction with coworkers.
Friendly reminder that not everyone can just leave their jobs. Women who are pregnant or who are trying to become pregnant. Men who are expecting to be a father. People with healthcare requirements.
There coverage will not stop if they switch job because they already paid for it.
More seriously,and to the point of "switch job if you are not happy"
being pregnant open right to :
A) specific time off
( your employer have to let you go home, and have to keep you a spot open for when you get back. To buffer the cost to your employer specific financial help are issues to recruit a temporary replacement )
B) medical attention
( Doctor visit and so on, at very little cost to you. Again, the state want that new citizen in the making to be healtly )
C) plain old money
( "Natality grant", no idea how to translate that. Some fiat is wired to your bank account. Not enough to live off, but enough to help buy baby stuff or pay for babysitting. Some is conditional to a specific use, some is not )
None of that is really attach to your employers. You are free to not come back to your jobs after given birth or to switch job after the fact if you wish.
Does that answer your question? I'm not sure where you were getting at.
There may be better coverage in some companies that go above the national standard, though. But again, it will not be a matter of accumulated years.
The push to get butts back in seats is 100% about job security for middle management and maintaining the value of commercial real estate. I've seen evidence of CRE leaning on the media and politicians to push a "return to work" narrative.
Now is really a good opportunity to redefine the relationship between employer and employee, and 'work' in general, and I hope we collectively push forward with it, not just sink back into the semi-abusive situation of before.
Managers really do need to communicate with the team and the team really does need to communicate with each other. That really does happen better in person. Even if it feels like a distraction when someone needs to communicate with you but you don't with them.
Says who? Some management study? My anecdotal experience tells me I’ve formed stronger relationships over zoom and slack than I have working in person with people I truly cannot stand. At least with zoom and slack, if I don’t like you, I can hide your window behind my IDE.
And there’s no rule that says I have to like everyone and everyone has to like me. There’s no rule that says I should want to spend my free time with so and so. How about, I choose who I spend my time with and you choose what I work on and pay me for that?
I mean if you can't stand the people then you're going to have poor relationships with them regardless.
I once worked with a dude that would come into my cubicle every morning eating chunks of watermelon out of a sandwich baggie. He would just stand there smacking his lips and slurping up watermelon juice, purposefully trying to be a dick.
I shouldn’t have to deal with that or be expected to get a new job. And management shouldn’t have to sift through that passive aggressive behavior and make arbitrary judgement calls of who the dick is. Just let me spend the least amount of time as possible with him, and I’ll be happy. Respect my freedom to choose who I want to associate with.
Confronting bullies is a game of chicken and most bullies can't really take it. You just have to hold the line or make them think you will.
Did you try asking him to stop, or to eat somewhere else?
if the elements of a person we find objectionable are things that only exist in person then different modes of communication may mitigate those.
For instance, if someone doesn't like me because I interrupt conversations with irrelevant anecdotes in a way that derails the topic and being on a zoom call makes it much more effort to take over the conversation, then that might actually improve our working relationship.
Prior to 2020 this was certainly the conventional conjecture, but the world has had two years of full remote. That’s a natural experiment, and the results are in. Companies didn’t collapse. Therefore, that’s not true.
Even in The Before Times, I lead a team that was effectively 100% distributed across North America, with only about half us capable of physically meeting once or twice a week. There as no difference. Slack the person, or hop on a call.
Personally, I think the real reason that’s driving return to work is big companies wasting literally billions of dollars on real estate. Better stick folks in those boxes, or the execs made a huge mistake, and of course execs didn’t make a mistake, because the execs are geniuses to revival the demigods.
Your argument doesn’t follow. GP claimed that in-person is better, not that it prevents companies from collapsing.
Frankly I don’t think there is an amount you could pay me to do back-to-back Zoom meetings all day every day. My price would be high enough that I’d retire on it pretty quick. Management doesn’t have to flee the industry in protest of intolerable working conditions; it controls the working conditions. We should it expect it, all else being equal, to secure the working conditions best adapted to doing management work. And that means presence.
I think the original comment is around owning the employee's time, which is most effected when you have some ownership of their physical presence.
For example, we often have mandatory company wide meetings where the subject is only of interest to 5% of people but yet everyone is forced to be present and attentive for the entire period, adding another level of forced fakery to our daily lives.
If it seems like I'm projecting some anger at a specific scenario, I am. Let me pivot.
Hybrid seems like a good option for teams, though it takes away the geographic-flexibility perk of WFH. I think WFH can be successful, but I absolutely 100% think a lot of people are bullshitting how effective they are at home, because none of the workers want to lose the time- and location-flexibility of WFH. So we all just say "yeah it's great, it's just as productive" where I can plainly see a number of people are not. Flat out. Does that mean we should all go back to the office? Maybe not, but it takes more and better management, not less.
Personally, the banter and whiteboarding and trips to get coffee and lunch with coworkers made working together better and more effective, it made work more enjoyable, and we worked together on problems a lot more effectively. Who enjoys Zoom meetings in themselves?
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I respect some people work better remotely. We need to respect that some people genuinely work better in person, and stop accusing them of "just wanting to wield power over others" or something. There are legitimate benefits to the person and to the mission when people are in person.
don't make me talk to you. you've already said you hate introverts. i don't want to talk to someone like that
But that doesn't make it a healthy lifestyle when taken to the extreme.
As it applies to work, I feel there is a war going on between those who recognize and remember the social and professional benefits of working in person and building professional relationships, and those who don't.
I think extreme introversion is as unhealthy as eating poorly and refusing to exercise. Running isn't always fun, but we do it. Interacting with humans isn't always fun, but we do it.
You think being an introvert is so negative to your health that it will literally reduce your life expectancy?
What exactly do you think introvert means?
"A tendency to turn inward, first examined by Jung, which often results in avoidance of social contact, isolation and loneliness."
I see introversion/social anxiety/disdain of others in the modern world to be like depression, or getting winded after going up one flight of stairs. It doesn't make you a worse person, but it shouldn't be embraced - it should be seen as something to periodically work against to keep the condition in check.
When we get winded after walking up some stairs, we see we should go on more walks or jogs. When we have depression, it is beneficial to get therapy, change habits, and/or take medication. When one finds themselves disliking the idea of interacting with people (even the occasional stranger), that is a signal to periodically flex one's "emotional muscles" to counter the condition.
I don't like making appointments on the phone anymore. It causes me anxiety. I find that to be a fault in myself. It is a flaw. I sometimes don't get back to friends quickly when they ask how I'm doing or if I want to hang out. That is a flaw, and one that I need to work on. I don't embrace it. When I have a negative feeling about "people" - like "ugh, people are so annoying" - I remember that is poisonous thinking to mental health and put the thought away. Or at least, I don't embrace it.
Nowadays it is generally accepted that introverts find socializing to be exhausting while extroverts find it energizing. That's the key difference. This is thought to be due to a physiological difference in how the autonomic nervous system function. It's not a muscle to be exercised.
Also, how you draw parallels between introversion and mental illness is really telling about how you view it.
Being an introvert isn't a "condition" or a "flaw", and not wanting to be involved in social gatherings that you aren't interested in is not unhealthy. Being anti social or a misanthrope is a completely different issue.
It's estimated that between 25-40 percent of people are introverts. That's a massive population you are writing off as defective and "needing to work on it"
But maybe it should be. Just as you can lack physical strength and exercise to become stronger if you view that as desirable, you can be too introverted and work to become less so if you view your level of introversion as undesirable.
OP isn't being unreasonable. It's certainly possible to find yourself in a position where you are extremely isolated. For some introverts that would be an ideal place to be, but for others it would be depressing and they would then have to learn how to become somewhat more extroverted.
I think you're reading too much into what he's saying.
This is just baffling to me. What are you even saying.
Are you under the impression that being more social makes you less introverted? The way lifting weights makes your body stronger?
It doesn't. It just makes you appear that way to ignorant people who still think being an introvert means you aren't very social.
Being social is a skill you can practice.
Being an introvert has nothing to do with that skill.
What I meant is that it is possible to reduce your level of introversion and actually enjoy being around people more and having it become less draining. In a way it's the reverse of what you said: becoming less introverted makes it easier to be more social.
Yes, I've done it. No, I can't really explain to someone else what it was that I did.
The only reasonable path is to strike a balance of both.
Take a hike with this sanctimonious judgement.
I see extroverts as people who are so needy they need constant socialization to counteract their feelings of inadequacy and hide this by performing social dominance rituals (see BMW owners).
See how stupid that sounds? Maybe look in the mirror and think about how judgmental you're being.
My broader point is that there is normal, balanced; and there is abnormal, unbalanced, in all things. It's up to each of us to feel how we feel about what is normal, and it's culture that shapes it.
I have ADHD. I am certainly depressed, but I am not diagnosed. I don't know if "bipolar" fits, but I can be extremely outgoing and center of attention one day, and extremely emotionally drained another. I'm also skinny-fat from stopping working out while continuing to drink. I have many friends, some incredibly close and genuine, but still feel lonely.
All of these things are abnormal. They are flaws. They don't make me evil or wrong, but they are things I don't claim are normal or fundamentally healthy.
I'm reacting to the sentiment I see online, mainly reddit and sometimes here, that thinks disliking people and/or wishing not to interact with others and/or being unable to cope with minor interpersonal annoyances at work is normal. It isn't.
I like interacting with family and friends. I do not like going to game nights or parties to meet new people. I don't like going to bars. I don't like being forced to interact with coworkers.
So yeah, I recognize we're social animals and we have to interact to be healthy, but technology has made it such that it's now easier to be selective about who you interact with.
That's a huge benefit. Why should I have to be forced to get along with some passive aggressive or outright aggressive asshole in the workplace more than necessary. I believe hanging out with such people who make you miserable causes premature death. I shouldn't have to change my attitude about such things if I'm happy with the friends and family I got and technology enables me.
You can only get so much done by working on a Jira ticket in complete isolation. While it might work well enough for a mature group, it fails completely when bringing new people up to speed.
I've worked with more than a few people like this. Perhaps they get all the social interaction they can handle at home and just want to be left alone at work. Or perhaps they just dislike their co-workers. Others find working in groups of more than two people to be difficult. I don't think it's strictly a personality trait. It's more of a cultural thing in some companies.
How far of an extreme do you take this to? Do I have to enjoy spending time with other inmates if I’m in jail with them? What if I’m surrounded by pedophiles? Do I need to force myself to cooperate with and respect them too? I mean, where do you draw the line? Just because you work with somebody doesn’t preclude them from being a despicable shithead. To me, that’s just obvious.
If we are going back to the many-independent-clans structure our ancestors had, we probably also going back to their material standard of living and their exposure to violence. For a while, until we get slaughtered by or assimilated into a culture that can get people who aren’t necessarily friends or family to have lunch together in between raiding our huts.
If there are performance losses, why are they not being addressed? Why is there a blind assumption A or B is better? How are people able to BS their way through in a way they wouldn't in the office?
This is an incredibly negative take when the opposite may just as well be true. If people don't want to lose this flexibility, that's an incentive to not drop their performance in a way that is measurable, making them at risk of losing that privilege.
>Maybe not, but it takes more and better management, not less.
Better, yes. More? Why would the assumption immediately be that we need more management, given that WFH resonates primarily with people who tend to be far more autonomous and communication-independent than those who want to work in office?
If anything, this shows just how much management has been pushing a one-size-fits-all solution for decades to make it easier on them, at the cost of ICs. WFH is the tip of the iceberg in this regard.
For some people just seeing the faces of co-workers while working can help quiet a lot to not feel alone. Plus they can see you working so you feel social control. It is also super easy to have a quick chat whenever you want to as you can see who is in deep concentration and who is available.
People that don't feel like being social can stay out of it. In practice, nobody is fully extroverted or introverted, so people can do whatever mixes their current needs. DO NOT MAKE IT REQUIRED. That will ruin it.
I am always shocked that people still haven't figured out how to do remote properly.
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds. Why don't the offices down size and give people the option, while admitting there are time when people need to come into the office. Training is much more difficult (usually) when done remotely, so - when possible - why not take a month and come in to get the ropes tight and the boards nailed in, then everyone can figure out what's best for them. This saves the company money and makes people (ostensibly) happier.
The team I'm working on is both remote and in the office, right now. A few people get on a conference call at the offices - sometimes in separate rooms, which is odd - and everything gets hammered out. I have a disability, which makes it MUCH easier to work at home, but if I have to, I can work in the office, and I did for years. It just required extra preparation and planning, etc. etc.
At the end of the day, if it's just as productive (if not more) WFH, then your personal likes and desires about lunch and a date with coworkers is just more BS that needs to die. Go work for a full office company, but don't make other people have to fill in the holes in your social life.
It's "maker's schedule, manager's schedule" - you don't need power-hungriness or real estate cost calculation to explain why management types prefer the office, it's just inherent to their worldview and the kind of work they do. Don't like it? Try to build a company whose managers do not come from the management community, and try to prevent them from developing this kind of mindset even as circumstances make it optimal for them. Good luck.
Your comment does not have anything to do with realpolitik. You're just expressing your personal preference, and spinning it as if it was norm. Except that it's not. Far from it.
Is your personal preference an adequate tradeoff for forcing all the inconveniences and downright degradation to the quality of life of everyone around you?
I mean, why would I waste 1 or 2 hours of my life each day and be kept far away from my loved ones, and in the process be forced to endure a more expensive cost of living, just because some dude at the office doesn't feel like having an occasional 10min Zoom call?
Extreme commute times are very bad, but they aren’t facts about working in offices; they’re facts about housing choices, and probably also our deranged housing & transportation policies. I will happily join you in getting angry about those!
I don't find being in the other side of a webcam much different than being on the other side of a table. Maybe that's a sign my own brain is weird but really, it's the same to me.
> We should it expect it, all else being equal, to secure the working conditions best adapted to doing management work
No, we should expect it to provide the working conditions best adapted to their team's needs.
Fuck this whole idea that managers are more important than ICs.
> We individual contributors may not think about this much, but the absolute thrill of being above others in the hierarchy only reaches its fullness when the employees get out of the damn pajamas and into the open offices. Please pick me up a coffee while you are at it.
This is a wildly cynical take. If you're dealing with managers like this, you're not in a normal tech office environment. Every decent tech company I've ever worked with has put a lot of pressure on managers to treat employees well. Retention is a huge issue, especially in this market, and managers actually spend a lot of time trying to cater to their IC's wishes rather than jerking them around.
Any tech manager who acts like you describe will steadily fail out of tech companies due to employee attrition.
* Whether people should go into work
* Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org
I work remote. I manage remote teams. I love it and I think it's great.
But it's definitely not for everyone. A lot of people can't handle remote work. A lot of people don't have the self discipline to get work done without being in a social context (some of my remote team members work in coworking spaces as a workaround). A lot of people see remote as an opportunity to isolate from the team and dodge important communications.
I think we need to get past this idea that one type of work is best for everyone and every team. When people try to say that remote is superior, they don't know what they're talking about. It's one the most "it depends" topics out there right now.
> * Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org
Let me answer this indirectly:
If companies saw a net increase in productivity and employee well-being from going remote, they'd be falling all over themselves to go all-in on remote work. Getting rid of office space and being able to hire anywhere is a huge advantage and every executive team I know was enthralled with the idea.
So why would they want to retain expensive office space and limit themselves to hiring only nearby candidates? It's because for every 1 person who's great at remote work, there may be 1-3 others who aren't doing well at all. Juniors and new hires suffer the most because ramp-up times become extremely slow when the rest of the team is isolated away working on their tasks and uninterested in talking to anyone they don't have to. Interpersonal conflicts are way up because people misinterpret things as insulting or offensive because they can't see the other person's face. Fights and arguments break out everywhere because there's little difference between the company Slack and the other Discords where the person alt+tabs to argue with people.
In short: Remote is hard, creates more work for management, is detrimental to juniors and new hires, and doesn't work for everyone. If a company is willing to invest a lot of money and time into hiring more managers to deal with it and churning through hires who can't handle remote, it can work. But it's often easier and happier for everyone to just go into the office a day or two per week to resolve these issues in person.
Even as a remote team, flying everyone into the same location is hands down the easiest way to get people communicating efficiently and treating each other as human team members instead of Slack screen name enemies. Remote is hard.
The increasing value of property and the need to collectively keep office space prices high is a big reason. Do you know how much Apple or Google's campus is worth?
I agree. I really enjoy working hybrid myself - going to the office every now and then to have some human contact, otherwise working from home or wherever I am.
It also depends a lot in the living situation: A 20-something single who lives in the center anyways might enjoy going to the office, a married 40-something in the suburb would rather work from home all the time.
5 years ago, I exercised my privilege (as an IC with a lenient boss), to work from another state for a few months.
During that time, I dialed into meetings that were otherwise held in person.
My experience:
- Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting
- Often, people just forgot to open the telcon, so I was ignored on hold
- Often, people forgot to present the slides / visuals over telcon as well as the projector, so I had to interrupt them and cause 5 minute delays
- Whiteboard designs? Flat out of scope
- Try pitching ideas over the phone to a room full of stakeholders. They treat you like a spam caller
A project I was leading for a new design was "killed" and "revived" with exactly the same team, but another (onsite) person swapped out for my role. That person is now in charge of the project, and it's a big, big deal, with attention all the way up to Washington. His career is skyrocketing because of this.
Working hybrid may not be a scam in and of itself, but I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism.
> Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting
that's not much because of you or others but the actual management organization is crap. The basic idea is have a workforce, at any level, made of stereotypical Ford-model workers, those who ancient Greek's call "useful idiots", people just able to work but mentally unable to be citizens, to be adult, autonomous. So there is the idea of creating a hierarchy of shepherds to keep the flock "as it should" and that does not work because such social model does not work.
A proof? We have not invented anything really new in the last decades. We have improved anything, popularized anything, but nothing really new have seen the light. Now for the first time in human history after industrial revolution began we see a decline in quality of anything not because of scarcity or war but because of a system that can't anymore sustain itself having consumed itself from the inside.
That's the classic failure of merchants societies: they are skilled in making money, but they only exists if there are some others society to commerce with, different society who develop and produce. Now that everything is commerce...
> I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism.
I think it's already there: most talented escape, lest talented start the so called big resignation with vague autarkic attempts doomed to fail and resulting in a mass of future new poor ready to be inserted in the WEF 2030's agenda new society.
Being in person offer benefits form human interaction we can't have on remote BUT have the downside of the physical location need. In a changing world people want freedom and actual cities does not offer that and have no visible chance of improvement. Remote allow living in good place with enough services at interesting costs (at least in theory, in practice for some a bad cold shower of reality for others) trading the less benefit from human interaction to a far more comfortable life. In a society designed around the panem et circense concept at the start of a scarcity era most prefer the circense in absence seen the scarcity of panem...
Beside that, at another level, economy of scale have reached the tipping point of density where we are now too dense and so the scale benefit drop crushed by the density costs. A reset is needed and nobody want to be in the places to be resetted and no one know how will be the new world. So no one want brace the new trying to save resources in classic reactionary moves.
Here the real schism.
It was eye opening to me. If in an environment when people are trying to accommodate the remote person they still got left behind, what does that imply in other circumstances
I’ve been in 100% remote team since but I would be really careful with being one of the few remote resources. It’s a recipe to grind your gears alone while the team is moving on.
My only personal experience with that was being remote for a few week at a time. I always felt a disconnect settling in.
Let's all recall that IC-Turned-Manager is a rarity in the general management space. Engineers choosing from amongst their own is an anomaly, not the norm, across many industries.
> across many industries.
ime, bad managers are more common than decent managers. Also, most managers are not IC-turned-manager at least at any significantly high level.
In my whole career (17 years at this point) I've encountered only one manager who was in it for the power and control... and he got fired.
I spent a significant proportion of my career as an IC but I'm a senior manager now, and I can tell you that "power over people" is precisely not what I'm after. The fact that I have power (and not forgetting that that power comes with responsibility), is not relevant to me and not a positive part of the job.
Telling people what to do is orders of magnitude less effective than convincing, inspiring, and motivating them to do it.
The company seemed to select for extreme psychopathy the higher you looked.
Well... two of the best bosses from whose perspective? Your perspective of a great boss might be way different than the perspective of a metrics-obsessed "data driven" CFO.
Can you name one business leader, just one, who has demonstrated no desire for power (in all its forms) and who didn't even want the position. Just one of "The best leaders" you're talking about.
Many teams find it easier to work sitting close to each other. Is this superior? Is WFH superior? Is hybrid superior? I don’t think there’s a fixed answer because such things work both individually and collectively.
WFH can be better for you but not for 2 of your coworkers. Now who’s supposed to adapt to what?
For example: for me meetings and discussions are too many times better in person.
And hybrid is worse imho. You are stuck to living close to office so you can’t live wherever you wish. And then you’re working from office but also working from home so for many teams and folks that expectation of some sort of “always availability” (work/life blurred line) will continue.
Tech people often don't make the transition to management well.
I already see it on my own team. First, there were "no expectations" to come into the office. Then, it would be "really nice" if everyone tried to come in on Wednesdays "but only if you want to!" Then it became "highly encouraged" for everyone to come in for the three-year brainstorming. Now we're encouraged to come in to meet the other team. And now we're being asked how many days we would be comfortable to come back. It'll be one day, then 2 days, then 4, and finally fully back in the office before you know it.
Despite EVERY metric showing that people are as-productive (and often more productive!) working from home, they just cannot stand the idea of not being able to enforce dress codes, and mandatory morning stand-ups, and being able to interrupt us and have us listen to the damn dog barking down the hall while someone's cell phone is going off because they forgot it and oh how do you get this conference phone to work I've only worked here for four years and make $500k can a techie person do this for me. I really really don't care about what you did over the weekend and don't want to hear about your kids when I'm just trying to get coffee or go to the bathroom.
fuck I hate the office and I know we're going to be 100% back before the end of the year.
And if anyone says "just leave" how about you try finding a Remote Job that is ACTUALLY Remote. Because I've not found a truly remote job. The "Remote" in posting is pure bait-and-switch.
yeah I see this comment a lot. its not that simple for most of us to change jobs, for various reasons. not wanting to deal with 5 step leetcode interviews, not having access to the best job markets, having other commitments..
I may be an outlier, but I did exactly that. My company was talking about coming back to the office (it was oscillating as COVID spikes came and went) and I started looking at roles elsewhere.
I did not interview with anyone who wasn’t legitimately, actually, remote I took a job last October for a company on the other side of the US. My manager is in Toronto. His manager is in Scotland.
It can be done. The companies are out there. I agree though, you need to be very specific upfront and make sure you’re getting what you want.
(Disclaimer: I have to telecommute, I've been doing it since 2014. Because of where I live, I can only go in about 2-3 times a month.)
For example: I worked for Intel in 2005-2007. It was hybrid by necessity: They had offices all over the world, and were so large that it was impractical for everyone to be on one campus; and even if everyone was on one campus, travel among buildings was somewhat time consuming. Thus, many meetings were conducted via teleconference, and no one cared if you were in the office. (I would always take early morning calls at home and leave after the call.)
While I was there, it became obvious that people were abusing the liberal telecommuting policy. My boss went on vacation for one week, and then "telecommuted" the second week. I quickly realized he had an agreement with his higher up to get a 2nd week of vacation as long as he checked email and kept up appearances.
A few months later Intel cut out most telecommuting. The rumors that came back to me was that a lot of people were just goofing off; and even running 2nd businesses, like liquor stores, while on company time.
There's also the story of Yahoo. This is well documented, so I'll leave it up to someone else to dig up links, but the general belief is that many Yahoo telecommuters were just keeping up appearances and not really working. The company cracked down because it was going broke paying people to do nothing.
So, I don't think it's a "ruse." I think it's a case of a company doing what it thinks is in its best interests. If it's in your best interests to be 100% remote, or 90% remote, ect, have a frank discussion with your boss, and if they can't accommodate you, find a new job.
"Thinks" being the key word. Although I would posit that anybody who think this way hasn't thought about it very hard. I mean, it's trivially obvious that a worker can be in the office, and still contribute absolutely nothing. You can sit at the office, or at home, or in Tahiti, and surf Hacker News all day just the same. At the end of it all, companies that don't know how to measure the productivity of their people, and make any necessary adjustments based on those measurements, are going to get screwed.
That was why Intel and Yahoo made work for home only on a case-by-case basis.
Obviously, well let's take Intel - I mean you're building semiconductors so you probably need to be near machines/equipment/etc. so I'm not suggesting everybody in the world should or even wants to work remote.
Of course everyone here pretends to be the 10x, hyper motivated individual contributor, because the world's a stage and HN is part of it.
Ha. I know what you're saying. Not me though. I'm just a 1x. Motivated and interested for sure, at least for my part.
I think this might be an agree to disagree thing. I think most people genuinely want to just do something interesting and enjoyable, and make money so they can live fulfilling lives. There are a lot of disconnects though, ranging from flat out opportunity, to lack of available training - i.e. something like a bootcamp - full-time pipeline, bad corporate incentives and structure, and lack of investment in best practices and communication tools. I mean take Microsoft Teams. Absolute dog shit product (sorry guys) - stop using it and use something better. It'll make your employees lives easier and better, and you won't need people to be in the office in the same way because you're using better tools.
Ultimately if a company has to "settle" for an employee who they have to monitor and watch from behind their chair, in my view it's still the hiring company's failure. It says nothing about remote/hybrid/on-prem. If they have to "settle" then that's still their fault, and bringing people to the office doesn't change that fundamental fact.
My entire point about "flawed individuals" was that this is not binary. It's not wonder employee vs do absolutely nothing unsupervised employee.
Office environments for sure push up productivity for some folks from, say, 40% to 60%. Mediocre folks being boosted a bit by having structure in their lives. And mediocre folks are most folks, by definition. So that boost adds up over large numbers.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
(The fact that some managers get off on having a room full of people at their beck and call is also a factor too.)
Even in software, it's notoriously hard to estimate how long a project is going to take. You just assigned some bug to someone and told them to fix it by Tuesday. Is the employee slacking off if the bug isn't fixed by Tuesday, or is the issue actually more difficult than it seemed to be? Is it a bit of both?
People will always find creative ways to get paid while doing nothing. The hastily set up WFH system just happens to contain more loopholes that the higher-ups aren't prepared for.
That's the sign of a company that should pay for work instead of time.
There's plenty of value in in-person work. Body language is an important part of how we communicate. Spurious social interactions in the office are often the inspiration of important company initiatives. Async communication (e.g., Slack) is, IMHO, much less efficient than sync communication (e.g., tap on my colleagues shoulder).
My company has also implemented a hybrid pilot program: 3 in/2 out, with 4 weeks of discretionary remote work. I believe the idea is that there is value in remote work, and there is value in office work. Let's see if we can benefit from both.
I know there are cases where in person communication makes sense, but it should not be mandatory for all. This is why I say hybrid is a ruse because it applies to all and not just "flexible" for those who may need or prefer it.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of hard-and-fast rules. If you think remote work is what is best for you and the company, you should discuss and arrangement with your manager. I'm sure the company is just setting these rules because they need to send a clear message, and they want to try and contain remote work.
Keep in mind that working remotely is still seen as an impediment to career development. People who work in the office tend to get promoted faster. Their work is more visible, they are presented with more opportunities, and, for lack of a better word, they can "schmooze" more.
But I recognize that other people feel the opposite and I have no problem with that. I'd like to be able to work my way and for them to be able to work their way.
No, it is not. A deferral comes with overhead and is not always required. Some people, including myself, enjoy the spontaneous conversations sparked in the office. When I need to focus, I communicate this with my team.
If you do not like being disturbed, communicate this with the people around you. Everyone wants to be respectful of your time and focus.
Say we're working together. You're saying that the default should be that you can interrupt me at any time for an interactive conversation. I can override that default by saying explicitly, "hey please don't interrupt me for X period of time".
I prefer the opposite default, where you would not assume I'm interruptible any time I haven't explicitly said that I'm not.
Whereas I said in my comment that I understand that some people prefer to work the opposite of my preference and I just prefer not to work with them, your comment is pretty clear that you think your way is best for everyone. I don't think that's right.
That's what I was trying to say.
NO THEY DONT
> There's plenty of value in in-person work.
There's plenty of value for me in in-person work, so everyone should work in-person even if there's no value in it for you.
> Spurious social interactions in the office are often the inspiration of important company initiatives.
I only know how to socialize in person, so nobody should be allowed to socialize virtually
> Async communication (e.g., Slack) is, IMHO, much less efficient than sync communication (e.g., tap on my colleagues shoulder).
I want to be able to physically interrupt your concentration and intrude on your personal space without you having any way to stop me
I hope this comment can help elucidate for you and other readers how miserable offices are for people who don't actually do better in-person, and how frustrating it is that people who want to work in-person feel the need for _everyone_ to work in-person with them, despite pro-remote people not needing others to change their working circumstances.
If you are miserable at your job, I would suggest talking to your manager about it, or seeking employment elsewhere.
And also major company conflicts. They are not all positive - many of these "social interactions" are bonds over hatred of the company and working to get out. But we ignore these sorts of interactions, for the narrative...
This reads like a parody! The people who want to WFH don't _want_ shoulder tappers to be able to tap shoulders :)
Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and not being a complete jerk about it.
“The purpose of the ‘boil the frog method’ [is] to do it subtly and thereby avoid difficult questions and conflict”
https://fortune.com/2022/04/04/former-google-hr-chief-laszlo...
It will be interesting to see how the competitive advantages work themselves out. We'll see if in-person communication is as important as legend has it.
Even though I have the worst commute on my team I want to be in the office a couple days a week (it's going to be 3). But our campus is great, we have real cubicles and standing desks, and even free meals.
We did some in-office tests in a coworking space and productivity went through the roof. We seem to be seeing that offices are a kind of thinking and focus tool.
Approx. half of our team is remote, so we're kitting out the office with TVs, cameras, and microphones to create a "hybrid space". We're probably going to add some practices like, "all meetings are video calls". Things like that.
But then again maintenance, utilities, toilet paper, sickness, taxes, etc are all burning a hole in their pocket. So better to force people back to the office?
Worse yet, any big corp that announces back to work has an army of recruiters cold calling all their employees offering them exactly what they want. More money and work from home.
It's an impossible situation for businesses.
Flipside, what's more important to look at is only what you can control. You wont change your employer's mind on whatever bad decision they make.There are only bad decisions to make.
You can control yourself. Do you even want to go in for 2 days a week? Personally I'm not interested in paying for parking, 1 ply toilet paper and pointless chitchat about moon knight or some other tv show i havent had the chance to watch.
You can instead make the decision for what you can control. There's an awful lot of employers who will accept completely remote workers.
In other words. From most expensive to least
* all employees at office
* empty office, employees remote
* no office, employees remote
Business would do whatever is cheapest unless they believe they won't hit their targets. So it's got nothing to do with the buildings existing.
Must be some other reason.
Like in OP's pov, the intention is 2 days a week but as he expects, it's just to slowly ease back into 5 days a week. No doubt seeing that the lower cost being to take some HR losses is less than the huge discount in selling the building.
Rent + Monthly Expenses > Rent
So an company who only cared about money wouldn't pull employees back into the office as that's more expensive for them than letting them say at home, even if they company is still paying rent. They'd need some other reason, like they believe employees are more productive at work. Short of that, they'd just let them stay home, even if they have to keep paying rent on an empty office it's still less money than rent + office expenses.
That only makes sense if they derive value from people being in the office. Otherwise there is nothing lost by simply leaving the office empty.
Having the building is a cost.
The better thing that OP or OPlikes is that they should be considering unusual options to discover a not-bad decision.
What if instead of forcing people back to the office that they instead buy a ton of hydroponic systems. Start growing food with their unused office space.
If enough businesss do this, we might not have a food shortage. We might avoid a disaster that seems inevitable.
edit:conjunctions
What is clear to me is that hybrid is the worst of both worlds: Incurring the many costs of having to come to the office, only to find that such and such colleague is at home, and there is little to zero added value to your presence there.
So from that, it follows naturally that many companies will slippery-slope into full time in the office, aducing that it is an advantage over hybrid.
and the costs of having to maintain a home office. The costs of maintaining a commuting vehicle or transport ticket and office clothes, while not using them at least half the time. The time cost of commuting. The faff of a laptop, or the cost of two sets of equipment and the effort of keeping them in sync. It's the combined cost of working from home and working from the office, without the benefit of being able to work from a cheaper nicer home far away, or the benefit of committing to every day office work and having everyone in.
Programmers love the "union of all the negatives, none of the individual positives" when it's called "cross platform compatible software" so why not rebrand this from hybrid work to cross environment compatible work?
Many were actually hybrid working before the pandemic. Regularly sending emails like “I have no meetings today and need to get this done, so I’m staying home.” Still physically and socially part of the team.
I don't agree with this because I think my office is nice and not a barnyard. I mean a door, a window, nice amenities and easy use of a conference room for meetings. I have worked for tech companies that had offices that were like these giant open floors or cubicle farms. There were all these reasons people said they were good but really I think it was that they were cheap and it was easy to circulate people through them in places with high turnover. I'm never working in a place like that again.
My work is currently hybrid and what I like about it is if I want to work from home to keep odd hours or save time by not driving to work. If I want to have a particular time of focus, or host a meeting including guests, I can work in the office. Also, I should mention I have a short commute. Not everyone has all this, but this is what I think we should aspire to.
Pre-Pandemic, fully remote folks were at a distinct disadvantage since they would be cut off completely from the politics, relationship building etc. that would happen via people being in the office. This strategy is clearly aimed at discouraging people from being fully remote by making them aware of the “benefits” of working in an office.
I feel sorta lucky because my team is distributed between two cities on the West Coast, so even if people are in the office you still have to video conference … making it somewhat pointless.
I was talking to a friend at Apple who had been forced to work from their office. They are really unhappy; primarily they were so used to the peace and quiet of wfh that they’re having a hard time getting anything done in a loud (relatively) office.
In case you're wondering where I'm coming from, my company switched to purely remote. Yet we're still renting a huge office, and we're told to go there every once in awhile. But we're purely remote. It seems pretty obvious that we're just remote until someone can crack the whip and make us go back so they feel like they're getting their money's worth on rent.
I think the other thing worth mentioning, we're not alone. This is going to be done to all of us. Remote work is great, but it turns out companies aren't run for the benefit of the worker.
Management has recently reported that it’s failing and is signaling that people need to return to the office full time. This is absent the evidence of any failures (only allusions to kpis) and with many people already having refused to return to the office for even a fraction of the time for hybrid work. If the company shows stronger resolve the only end game is those people leaving or being let go by the company.
As another poster said individuals know the quality of their work and if they perform better remote or at work. The individuals doing well will never be convinced by management of the need to return.
This is people's callousness reaching heights as people who were able to secure things like houses that are now worth millions and big cashouts in tech are coming to the height of their careers.
The only thing they did to become millionaires was the completely non-productive act of borrowing money to buy property. Now the property values can't be allowed to depreciate so we must all commute into the office, the environment be damned. That's just inter-generational war.
It worked wonderfully. The two days in the office were full of ad hoc conversations, lunches, whiteboarding, pair programming .. all the stuff that's good about office work. The other 3 days a week, we stayed home and focused on building all the cool stuff we'd hashed out together with almost no interruptions. It was very much the best of both world, allowing both introverts and extroverts to thrive.
So hybrid working can turn out great IF it's a deliberate part of the culture. But in the general case of corporate America calling their workers back to the office, it does feel like a ruse.
We end up back-loading all of our meetings and team discussions to Friday, which is our in-office day, and it works really well to ensure that the rest of the week can be free of distraction.
It takes commitment to intentionally defer items to the in-office day, so simply adopting a hybrid approach without doing anything additional is just cargo culting.
I think for junior engineers, being in person is invaluable a few times a week just having a whiteboard around. Early in my career having a senior dev around to bounce questions off of, or work CTF problems together really, really helped me.
Certainly there is some number of managers who just want control over people, but i think that's probably smaller than what some commenters are implying. The The questions i use for if a particular way of working is a ruse or effective is this:
1. What industry am I working in? If you work in an industry physically making things, you're likely to also benefit from being in the office some days. Same with creative work.
2. What's the ratio of "senior" to mid and junior level employees?
3. Is the company willing to let individual teams make more flexible decisions? I.e go down to 1 day a week, 1 day a sprint etc?
My end goal is to understand the nature of the organization I work for, why it makes decisions the way it does, and if leadership wants to send a message, or if they are open to trying to find the way that is productive and keeps people happy.
~6 years ago I switched from full time remote freelancing/consulting to full time at a local startup with just a handful of employees and 1 day/week in-person.
Then 1 day became 2. Then we got a real office and 2 became 3 with a worse commute. Then 3 became, unofficially, if you want to be taken seriously, you should come in every day, or at least 4 days/week. You could still leave early on Fridays! I stayed at 3 days/week until I found a new, fully-remote employer.
That being said, if it was mandatory, I would have negative feelings about it.
Long distance relationships don't work, so why would they for the workplace? I'm not advocating for going back to work 5 days a week, but remote only works when you have a solid relationship with your peers and leadership. But workplaces are stunted socially, with either non existent relationships, or fake relationships that's only self serving.
Conflicts get resolved exactly the same why WFH as remote; you discuss the issue with your manager, they talk to the other person, and have a joint meeting if necessary. No needs for hugs and handshakes...
The onus is on you to prove that remote work doesn't work.
Hybrid teams are a ruse. If you're a remote employee, but most of the team is on-premises, you're a second-class citizen, and you'll be first to go if cuts are made. At least, that's how it's been wherever I've worked.
I was never the one cut, as I was generally on-premises when in mixed teams.
These days, I work only for 100% remote / remote-first companies if possible.
Unfortunately, at least so far, people in my area aren't coming in so I've shown up at the office and in my space few others are showing up. Also, getting rooms for meetings is no fun
I don't know what I'm going to do but I will likely quit and find an in office team if things don't get better. Humans (most) are social animals https://www.google.com/search?q=humans+are+social+animals
You're stuck in an office with other people 8 hours per day, you might as well make friends. Over a working life of 40 years that's 40 x 45 x 5 x 8 = about 8 full years of your life.
And no, those people don't have to be your direct teammates, especially in bigger companies. Just look for compatible people.
Relationships are based on proximity, heck, even most marriages start like that: highscool classmates, college students studying the same thing, co-workers, neighbors, whatever.
If they want the entire company in for sat Tuesday and Wednesday, that could make sense - happenstance communications with people you don't normally talk to would probably be easier.
If your team lead wants you all in for a specific day for meeting etc that could make sense too. We're arranging a meeting + beers for mid May for example.
If it's any 2 days, then no, what's the point.
Though at the same time, my company opted didn't renew their lease on two office floors (out of a total of 8 floors) due to hybrid work and employees not having a designated desk. So who knows.
This is why good fully remote organisations decided to not have an office, and appreciate transparency, working in the open, supporting one another etc. Of course these values are not exclusively fully remote.
If there's an actual stated purpose for those two days to be in-person days (like your team has designated day for in-person meetings or planning sessions or something, or there's some task that needs to be done in-person each day and there's a rotation of who is responsible for it) then it makes sense.
Although I think that it is probably better for companies to pick a side as neither will be happy with the arrangement as it (at least when i was at a hybrid company) just meant going on Zoom from our office desks.
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds, you're almost guaranteed to have someone calling in and you need to live close enough to the office that you can't really take advantage of cheaper house prices/more space.
I think so too. This is what I vented on Twitter a few weeks ago (pardon the tone -- in my defense, I don't have many followers): "You keep hearing about the hybrid model, but that is just corporate speak to lure you back into office. It is just a matter of time before they declare that they tried hybrid and it did not work, so it's going to be office only from now on."
The way they convinced us that it won’t change on a C-Level’s whim is by drastically reducing the office size so it’s not even possible for anyone to come back full time. But you can work at a co-working space if need be.
The company saved a lot of money by not having an office and I’ve never seen such a productive team in my entire career.
For certain purposes, being in-person can be useful
If the office space is already paid-for, it's silly (from a business perspective) to not use it
If you have needs for scheduled all-hands or other types of meetings, doing them all over Zoom can be much slower / less efficient than doing it face to face
This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you have the space is not sufficient reason to use it.
I agree though, being in-person can be incredibly useful, but it very much depends on the team, the type of work, etc. It's also just nice to see people in a less structured manner - e.g., water cooler chats vs setting up a Teams call.
It may not
Fact remains: if it has been paid-for, there's a strong justification for using it if you have it
At the same time, even though I’m fully remote I’ll work from a coffee shop from time to time. Offices could become such company-provided hub/spaces for when a change of air, reliable internet, or access to physical resources (hardware) is needed.
For other jobs or in different roles it could be totally unnecessary to be there at all.
In my job, being there is part of the job, because I need to fix thing in the infrastructure of the house. I didn't even have a single home office week during the whole pandemic — I also managed to not catch the damn thing up to now.
Yet I convinced my superiors that it would be beneficial to give me one home office day a week, precisely because people will not disturb me there. In terms of pushing out code it is easily the most productive day of the week. And it is friday on top of everything.
With hybrid works you need or fully portable gears or two set of them, witch means not just a craptop in a backpack but also docking station, monitor(s), keyboard&other stuff etc. Long story short or the company spend the double in hw or at home you'll probably use something from you, maybe also the entire desktop with all relevant security risks. Not only working less in the office, but still having an office the company spent essentially the same amount of money and the workers still have to live around, perhaps in an expensive area or in little houses since around the office perhaps there is no room for better accommodations and still need a home office to be in comfort at home.
Personally I think hybrid will last for a short period of disastrous time and here the sole possible ruse might be provoking and using the hybrid disasters to state "look, remote working does not work, we need business as usual". After since we can't sustain the current social transformation in a classic way of life WFH will be the standard for a little slice of potentially remote workers, while others will be forced in the classic South Korean's Goshiwong model with a combination of hyper-stagflation and false environmental claims.
Then the many who still can't understand that:
- no, we can't continue as usual, we can't keep going on oil etc
- no, the Green New Deal is green in the dollar and stereotypical chem waste corroded barrels not spring grass green.
Will finally understand that the new neo-feudal society is now built and they are well f*ked up, too late to change anyway, as usual. Than we still see the reactionary cohort from today saying that we need to came back and the progressive ones saying that no the fault is having not done much more.
That's the real "ruse" (and not much a ruse, since countless think tanks have published black on white since years) but hybrid work is just a small step not specially linked with "the plot"...
The team I was on needed a serious adjustment period because we worked with every other team in the company (1000+ employees). The synergy that existed in the office and allowed our team to be a force multiplier was drained almost immediately.
Ultimately, I had to leave because the pace and variety of work was suffering and not getting better. The culture was also on its last legs from psychologically torturing folks for 2 years.
Different people have really different opinions though and I completely understand there are some people who prefer 100% remote and some people who prefer 100% in-person. Who knows what sort of people your executives are. Maybe your management is just doing temporary appeasement. You'll just have to wait and see.
If the answer is no, then there's your answer. It is appeasement.
I bet what happened at my work will happen at other places of work due to competition .. as if the business loses employees they dont have a business. Joe Biden can try to force employees back for the sake of the old America but that's a joke ... no one needs to work in an office and I wont ever work in one again!
Solve for that problem.
Why so?