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Comment by lghh | Hacker News Reader

> Neuro normative? Good grief. They don't want to work in the office - no need to gobbledygook it up in some bizarre appeal to authority.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you not think neuro-normativity is a real thing? Or do you think that neuro-divergent people will be worse off with a truly flexible work-from-home policy?

I don't think they are requesting that the office cease to exist. It sounds like they want a hybrid approach that has no required office time.

> A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate

This is condescending. It assumes that people who want full-time remote are not aware of the trade offs. I try to think better of people when they make an effort at self-determination. They know their lives better than I do, I imagine.

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There is no possible way for someone just out of college to actually understand the tradeoffs. Young people have little to no experience with building a career or what it entails.

There is no possible way for you—or any of us, at this present moment—to know just how those tradeoffs and the shape of work will be changed over the next few decades by this pandemic, its aftershocks, and the new understanding we have all gained of just what is really possible with remote work.

The idea that because you've been working for a decade or two and know how things were before the pandemic, these poor, dumb college kids should just listen to you and let you tell them that everything has always been this way and always will be this way just doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.

They should just accept that they voluntarily joined a company that has always been very skewed towards in office work.

lol - the pandemic isn't permanent. It was a great force to help force normalization of remote work at organizations that otherwise would have never embraced it - but thinking that all companies are going to suddenly change their corporate culture because of a couple year event is laughable.

Maybe Apple will loose enough talent over time to where their corp culture will have to adapt. I doubt it. Wouldn't mind if I'm wrong (I think at least having the option for at least some remote work is overall very healthy overall), but I'm not holding my breath.

We can just generalize this to "you don't know what you don't know". It's not like HN has any shortage of late career professionals peddling asinine takes on things they just don't have the subject matter experience in or have out of date info.

Frankly neither do most old people- the number of older folks who still think you can show up to a business with a resume and get a job at the start of your career are out of their mind.

I've been working in this industry for 17 years now, and only five of that was in an office. I make an obscene amount of money, so it's not like this has harmed me. The idea that the kids need to suffer through an office so they know what it'll do to their career is about as out of date as the resume advice above.

Working remotely is career limiting. Period. I’m saying that as a remote worker. I would not recommend that you get into full time remote work until you’ve decided you are OK with no significant career advancement.

I have significantly advanced my career working remote full time. You sound like you personally have been unable to advance your career and instead of being introspective about it are blaming it on remote work as a concept. Period.

You are the exception that proves the rule.

Trying to force my neuro-divergent brain to work in an office setting where I'm surrounded by noisy people (any people, really), lights that may flicker, and temperatures I can't control is going to limit my career a lot more than failing to have serendipitous conversations in a hallway.

What works for you may not be what works for everybody, and that's the point.

It could be that remote work would have limited your career advancement.

For me, it's the only reason I can have a career at all.

>What works for you may not be what works for everybody, and that's the point.

Instead of making it personal, lets make it general. According to you how many people have a problem working in the office for the reasons you listed?

What difference does it make whether their reasons are the same as mine or different from them?

You're right it wouldn't matter. I think I had a brain fart here. What I wanted to say was the thing with 'everybody has a point of view' is that not all points of view are equally represented in the population. I'm not going to dismiss the viewpoint of the people who do like coming in to work, if one person hates it. It would be nice to accommodate everyone's individual preferences in every situation, but realistically you can't make everyone happy if they're outside of whatever standard deviation a workplace can manage.

I would not recommend that you get into full time remote work until you’ve decided you are OK with no significant career advancement.

I think I'd agree with you unless something crazy happened, like a global pandemic that completely shifted the way companies think and made them massively more likely to recruit remote workers.

If that happened then you'd have to be daft to think it wouldn't change anything.

I got promoted twice in 6 months having never been to the office. 100% fully remote. Without distraction of meeting everyone around the office I spent more time on results and selective 1:1 zoom calls.

This is just wrong- it is completely and utterly wrong. "No significant career advancement" yet my career has progressed pretty damn well, as have my colleagues.

The eye rolling part is trying to tie a preference for working from home into the broader civil rights movements. You aren't just making people come into the office, you are systemically oppressing this list of marginalized people groups!

From the OC:

"They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce."

I, for one, have no idea what neuro-normative means.

Anywho, u/EricE isn't agreeing or disagreeing. They're just advising that people can just state their preference plainly, no tortured nonsensical rationalizations necessary.

"If you're explaining, you're losing." -- Lee Atwater

Labor now has greater power. Wield it. Those who would take away your power don't bother to explain themselves. Why should Labor?

Unless, of course, you'd rather be right, over actually winning.

>Unless, of course, you'd rather be right, over actually winning.

And thus the majority of friction in todays discourse.

Something I still fall prey to more than I like and try to stay vigilant of so thanks for pointing it out!

>I, for one, have no idea what neuro-normative means.

Having no psychological/developmental conditionals recognized by the DSM

Thats quite a privileged statement. Psychology applies cultural and personal norms to fit people into little boxes.

Yup. There's a term for that: neuro-normative.

More seriously...

I'm totally on board with navel gazing. But I don't see how (mis)using such terms helps this letter's authors make the case for having the individual choice to work remotely.

So performative.

> I, for one, have no idea what neuro-normative means.

So do you plan to learn what it means, or do you believe that language should remain exactly as it was at some arbitrary point in the past?

I hadn't. But it's a fair ask.

Sadly, this group of authors didn't know the meaning either. Typical.

As a rule, I avoid using terms I can't define. If you know any of the authors, please pass that tip along. Thanks.

> ...or do you believe that language should remain exactly...

Wut?

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