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Comment by wokwokwok | Hacker News Reader

An across the board, “2 days mandatory” is a brute force HR policy to appease management; a genuine intention to continue to support remote working indefinitely would be phrased differently, like:

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.

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Companies looking for the best engineers are slowly going to realise that not offering fully remote is going to considerably limit the pool of available candidates. Obviously, money can sway that though.

100% agree.

I think there's no question that employees are going to have the expectation that they can choose their work environment and this will affect recruiting. However, I don't think it's a given that remote options are an unalloyed good. People have different preferences. This is a sorting function and both remote and non-remote companies are going to have limited candidate pools.

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.

> Companies looking for the best engineers are slowly going to realise that not offering fully remote is going to considerably limit the pool of available candidates.

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.

Most companies need to get over themselves and realize they don’t need the best engineers. OK is good enough a lot of the time.

THIS. I wish HN had the ability for us to upvote comments.

It actually does but you need a requisite amount of points, karma, whatever it is called here first.

I don't think I ever noticed that period when I created my account here.

I also don’t remember not being able to upvote, just being unable to downvote until a certain karma score was reached.

For downvotes not upvotes

gave you an upvote to get you that much closer, HN is a product from a time before the term UX existed, not that it would matter

That’s what the little triangle does on every comment.

Noone say anything...

> If you don’t like it, just leave

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.

Friendly reminder that a lots of workers outside of the USA have access to healthcare that are not tie to their jobs, but to previous payments they made to a national healthcare system.

There coverage will not stop if they switch job because they already paid for it.

Ok, and how does it work for pregnant women or women planning on starting a family?

You mean about to produce a new citizen in states where the natality rate has been dropping since 50+ years? You get pampered.

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.

Not necessary previous. In Europe (generally speaking) you get the same health coverage whether you have worked one day or 40 years.

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.

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