Returning to the office is costing you untapped talent | Hacker News Reader

Returning to the office is costing you untapped talent

blog.testdouble.com

62 pointsmooreds148 comments

Going back to the office would be more palatable if employers hadn’t spent the past 15 years turning them into open-concept hellscapes full of distractions that benefit only the extroverted political operators and actively causes problems for the people actually doing the work (always with an implied “whaddaya gonna do about it? I’m the boss here”).

If the battle to remain WFH will be ultimately lost (which I think it will), we can at least get back private offices, or at least smaller rooms for teams.

> that benefit only the extroverted political operators and actively causes problems for the people actually doing the work

"only people like me contribute! the others do nothing!" - tired argument.

Anyways, I'm starting to think that skirting any lines here for a company doesn't really help. They should make a call and (mostly) stick to it, then let people figure out what environment they want to be in (and change jobs accordingly).

> "only people like me contribute! the others do nothing!" - tired argument.

I agree, when taken to extremes. However the amount of time spent vs actually useful work produced by people jabbering on for an hour in a meeting is far less than what someone truly focused can achieve, most of the time.

People can (and do!) jabber on in virtual meetings, too. It's only a vaguely related topic.

Totally agree. I only ever worked in an office as an attorney at a large law firm. Even summer associates had their own offices. I have no idea how lawyers at tech companies are able to get their work done, with the need to have confidential calls (related to HR, securities laws, and other legally-protected matters).

IME legal is always on a separate floor with much less open offices. Eerily quiet like the executive floors.

Lawyers without offices would have to book a conference room for anything requiring confidentiality.

If they do this 8 hours a day, they essentially have a (larger and more expensive) private office without any place to store files or books.

Pretty much every company I've seen, even the ones with the "not even the CEO has an office" ethos, still have offices for the lawyers and HR. Basically they spend so much time having confidential conversations that it was cheaper to give them an office than have them always in a conference room.

I wish there was a word for hearing someone express a thought that so perfectly captures something you feel but had not yet realized you felt.

I dunno.

I've been unlucky enough to have worked in a brown carpeted cube farm, and I'd take open offices over that any day.

I've also worked at a specific EMR company that used to advertise, "Everyone gets an office" but they were piling us up two-three per individual office anyways, which also just made the building a cold dark maze of corridors and doors.

Really, WFH is superior in all regards for jobs/roles that can do it.

It's the end of office. Prices of transport (both public and private) are going up and it's either work from home and pay rise due to rising cost of living or get into the office but 50% pay rise.

Our household income is in top 5% in the UK and we are already seeing our monthly budget for extra activities and savings way down. Not sure what will be left if we spend extra £800 (that's how much the train and tube + Greggs sandwich cost for two people if you go in 20 times/month)

One of the biggest revelations of the pandemic: how effective I am when I work in an environment of my choosing.

I know, I know … so much has been written about this.

I'm 36, and every office I've worked in has been open, so that was my baseline.

But I had zero idea how much more effective, stimulated, inspired I could be until I got full control of my space ant time: I've grown, done, learned more in the past 2 years than many before. I've found an entirely new gear or two. I guess this is what people mourned when doors with offices went away …

Yes, some of this may be the shock & euphoria of drastic change; some of it is obviously personal makeup/psychology.

As you said, if where we land is "a good chunk of companies are OK with people working wherever/however, and another good chunk that aren't at least create environments for people who thrive differently," I'm happy with that.

Of course, there will also be the "chunk who aren't OK with that, and still demand no walls or door" … more power to 'em, just not for me.

The office vs wfh decision is one of no winners and no good compromise.

Previously office was the default and it was a bad fit for many but had some good points. Now wfh is the default and while I think it’s overall an improvement, it’s still a bad fit for many although perhaps not as many as office default. But it is still early days so nothing can be said conclusively, long term may be more nuanced.

But what seems impossible is a set up that actually works for both the office types and the wfh types. Hybrid has not been worked out. Going into a deserted office for zoom is not a solution.

Come in if you want, we'll offer relocation assistance. Simple.

Does that solve “Going into a deserted office for zoom”? At best it makes it going into a maybe not deserted office for zoom, still zoom with team mates…

Does that solve other issues like wfh team mates feeling possibly justifiably left out if there is an actual tight knit office?

I'm fine going into a deserted office for zoom, as long as I'm not in some kafkaesque manner forced to do it (while all the people I'm meeting with aren't.)

> wfh team mates feeling possibly justifiably left out of there is an actual tight knit office?

That's the tradeoff they have to make, just like putting on pants and having to commute is the tradeoff I have to make if I want to come in to the office.

Come in if you want to come in, don't if you don't. If you have any particular asks for how your org should run to better accommodate either of these, it's fine to have a concrete discussion about it. What's less fine is bellyaching without action items.

So stay home if you want. I'll stay home if I want, and the social cost of that is on me.

For many teams there is benefit of in person interactions beyond the social cost, but those benefits are limited if part of the team is still remote. A white-boarding and planning meeting with one or two key players on zoom will slow down the process. Maybe some tool or process will come along that fixes that gap, but for now it still exists. The key players may be more productive individually at home, but when within a team, nothing yet beats in person collaboration.

I do think the right long term solution will be mandatory days in office for the whole team, but only for 1-3 days a week, and those days would be the same for everyone.

You're still cutting off truly remote folks at that point. I want to live in the middle of nowhere, there's no benefit (for me) to remote if I can't. Regular IRL team meetings are fine, that's a wise thing to do anyway.

WFH solves a number of different, somewhat unrelated problems, and not everyone suffers from each of the problems. It solves:

1. A crushing commute. If you're a mega-commuter like I was, WFH gives you back 4+ hours of your life daily. Maybe you actually like your office and in-person conversations, but not as much as you like to avoid the soul-sucking commute. For people like this, maybe the occasional jaunt into the office is bearable, as long as you dont have to always do it.

2. Needing to live in a high COL area. For others, WFH means you can save tons of money by moving to another town. For them, no amount of coming into the office is acceptable (except maybe 1x or 2x a year) because they are no longer in commuting distance.

3. Terrible, unproductive offices / social anxiety. For others, maybe they are already OK with their cost of living and commute, but they hate their loud, crazy office. Again, maybe infrequent trips to the office are acceptable, but then you need to accept severely reduced productivity during those days.

Probably others I don't think of. So, it's a solution to multiple problems. One size does not fit all.

I've noticed that WFO-proponents (especially entrepreneurs and senior execs) tend to downplay 1 (just move, lol), not care about 2 (isn't everyone rich?), and deny 3 (our loud open office is actually great for me).

I work with programming hardware devices which need interaction for work. I have never felt during this time i need people to babysit me or collaborate in person.

Most of the time, the work is split between our worldwide teams anyway, where one team sits in switzerland, other in germany, and then some in usa and canada. Even the support for our hardware is distributed in different countries and 99% of the cases totally works remote.

I think keeping it optional is the best way to leverage happiness/collaboration. Whwnever i need to collaborate with a team member we individually agree to meet up at office.

we had been doing home office way before pandemic, now all of a sudden businesses feel the need to have people a minimum number of days in office per week. I have actually seen hostile behavior from some employees to just come to office and chill all day during the ma datort office day since its a collaboration day anyway ;)

That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work like that. That wasn’t my point.

My point is it’s like Goldilocks and the three bears minus the middle bear. The soup is either too hot or too cold. It used to be one extreme, now it’s the other. There is no just right.

10 years ago. I spent 3 years going into an empty office to work with remote people. Then spent 4 years WFH for a remote company. Realized I had started thinking of co-workers as imaginary people that didn't really exist. They felt more like hallucinations.

Okay, screw this I need to go into an office. Did that for a year, loved it. Pandemic hit...

A good company would augment remote culture with in-person events.

The problem is choice. Once another choice is given, there is (almost) no way to go back.

have wfh, get a smaller office and have people fly in once a while to collaborate.

Can one family not raise both healthy introvert and extrovert children? Well, if a parent is unwilling, then no …

But if they are willing?

IMVHO the issue come about culture: WFH does not means "take this craptop and crapphone, you are ready to work" witch is a fairly common approach for most not-hyper-important-workers and substantially not different by "get this good set of tools and there you go" for some more valuable ones, nor does not means async works, by targets, now holidays or illness pause etc

The point is that WFH should, must means:

- on the worker side :: I give a locked room, large enough, silent enough, to the company I work for, for the duration of the contract, with a negotiated monthly rent, they give me furniture etc OR I rent mime to them. The rest is the same of any other job;

- on the company side :: we are hired someone from home, we have to check he/she give us a good enough, safe enough, served enough home office, eventually inspecting it, negotiate rent and work terms in it. The rest is the same of any other job.

This is hard to see in Europe at least. On both sides.

Secondly there is habit and tools: to work effectively we definitely not need metaverse virtual conference rooms, but we need to been able to talk out loud well, IF needed and only if with one or two cam (face + deck/LIM) retaining the ability to move a bit around like we do in conference rooms. Yes there is the hyper-expensive, buggy, unsafe Night Owl and something else equally crappy, expensive and unsafe, but not much really usable. Most company decide to use third party services for convenience because Zoom/Meet/Teams are far simpler than offer a homegrown BBB instance, a SIP service with deskphones, a VPN just to add a layer of isolation, ... that's another issue must be resolved: WFH must be equal to work in office so we must NOT need anything from third party if we do not need it in the office. Not to mention crappy WebUIs for various purposes from Jira to Alfresco. The entire software stack we use is NOT a real connected desktop software stack so we can't really work with it properly and WFH means relaying so much to desktops that such issue must go away.

It will probably take a decade of polemics, issues and schizophrenic moves before a stable WFH model...

"As a remote organization, Test Double is constantly revisiting employee connectivity and providing new ways for our folks to spend time together and with leadership in order to build relationships and alignment across the company."

Not sure if what I'm about to say applies to Test Double, but I have interviewed for several remote positions recently and all of them have said I would be required to attend team building events in a city half way across the country from me. This is a deal breaker for me. I'd rather go into the office, locally, 3-5 days a week than to have a company require me to attend some silly team building event for a week where they expect to own my time 18 hours a day.

If a company is going say it is remote work, then be remote and don't try to force these bizarre team building activities on everyone.

My fully remote company has done a handful of hack trips where we live and work together in a fun destination city for a week. They have all been optional so far. Everyone who has chosen to attend has reported feeling more connected to their team, more willing to ask questions (less fear of looking dumb), and generally happier in their role in the company. We intend to continue doing these once or twice yearly, assuming we have the financials to make it happen.

Zoom has created a lack of communication not more. It's like arguing over the phone, but now with 10x the people. In person you can simply communicate much better.

Any meeting in person or otherwise with 10s of people is normally a waste of time if any collaboration is expected. Not sure why we would think any different with Zoom.

I think it's hard to argue that interrupting or finding a space to talk isn't easier in person, with the benefit of body language, than over Zoom et al.

Does zoom not have a hands up mechanic like google meets? Haven’t used it in over a year and can’t remember the UI

It does, but it's awkward in practice and falls into the same UX trap -- any advanced feature requires training & consensus on its use, and nobody has time or inclination to train on meeting software.

There are obvious bias sample issues with the survey group, but as long as the company provides the costs for travel, etc, and it moves around to try to distribute the travel hassle, it can work well enough.

Industry conferences can also provide a useful target (meet before the conference, go to the conference, etc).

Sounds super parent friendly.

It’s far easier for me to arrange a week away from home every few months than go to an office every day - if I were to do an 9-5 that would mean not being able to take kids to school or pick them up, ever.

I still don't see why your company should steal two or three weeks of your family time away.

You can see it as a perk, but I see this as a theft.

And someone else might see 10-20 hours commuting and 40+ hours in an office every week as "theft." Take the job you want and can get which has expectations you can live with. There were a lot of jobs at least in pre-pandemic times which required quite a bit of travel or even near 100% during the week (consultants).

It might be easier to arrange, but I don't want to leave my kids for weeks at a time. Young children change every day. I've been away from my daughter for a few days and have already missed out of some of her development.

What some great companies have done is addressed this with their offsites, either by making the offsite family friendly and paying people to bring their entire family (destination vacation on us!) or paying for childcare while the working parent is at the offsite.

That's what our company does and it's an incredible perk. All expense paid trips with planned events and child care. Even pets are welcome.

We have several new parents at the company. For our last event, two attended and one did not. I think it depends on individual preference and spousal support.

However, please note that we have unlimited PTO (not a scam - I have not turned down a single PTO request in the last two years) and strongly recommend at least 1 month paid paternity/maternity leave.

As a candidate for a remote role, who hates to travel, this is off putting to me and I would not accept a role at your company. While it is "optional", I know how office politics work and, when you choose not to do the "optional" things, someone is thinking you aren't a team player.

I don't mind full remote -- if it's full remote. I also don't mind going in the local office (for the reasons you mentioned people like your company trip -- I feel more connected and communication walls are broken down).

I would probably never assume I would never have to (or at least be pressured to) travel at a remote company. Maybe there are examples. But being that person who refuses to ever travel would be, as you say, disadvantageous over time. Heck, for a lot of roles, some amount of routine travel is pretty much expected at most companies, especially as you become more senior.

I can confidently state that nobody who chose not to attend the last one was punished or ostracized in any overt way. But nobody can help the fact that if some people meet up and feel more connected, then those who choose not to meet up will feel (relatively speaking) less connected.

This is one of those situations where there's no obvious perfect answer. If we didn't do regular meetups, then we'd lose out on the benefits for those who like them. If we do, we lose out on the talent that fears them.

Trying to get together physically now and then is really a big benefit. People on this thread are belittling them by calling them "team building" but it really is a good setting to get to know people informally, exchange information in a way that isn't half paying attention on a video call, etc.

You can make them optional I guess but the outliers who don't want to go will often end up dropping off of others' radar screens over time. Personally if periodic offsites (or for that matter attending certain other types of events to, say, give a presentation) really aren't your thing, you should probably find a company that better matches your preferences.

This is the strange anti-pattern I've seen. If someone is looking to work remote traveling across the world is an extreme negative for many.

I want to be remote full time, but also want 2x (max) destination trips to build face time and bs.

I know a lot of people who would rather work remote - but are willing to go into the office just to spend time around other people. They would be 100% on board with this.

I personally prefer an office (if it's close) for the distinction between work and home, but I'm also fine working from home. That said, a biannual reason to spend time with coworkers sounds great.

And, if teambuilding is like a second-tier vacation where I don't have to pay for stuff or use vacation time, that's even better.

I'm not against going into the office because I hate being outside my home. I just hate commuting.

> than to have a company require me to attend some silly team building event for a week where they expect to own my time 18 hours a day.

Is it like an annual thing? A monthly thing?

It depends on the team building event. Some could be awesome. There are team-building events I would be thrilled to go on and others I would dread. Hell, there are some where I would ask if guests are allowed.

I have a family and I have friends. If I want to do something awesome, I'll do it with them :). Just let me work with co-workers and let's not try and force me into friendships. These work outings are like the play date for kids -- it's more about the parents (leadership) than the kids (team).

I have family and friends. And I do things with them.

I don't have the money to just party with them 24/7. And I'd rather go on a teambuilding exercise than write code. And that's the choice for the week.

Also, frankly, I enjoy shifting which groups I socialize with.

It’s entirely a lifestyle choice to treat work like that, and one I constantly consider. However as a manager who gets to hear what other managers are thinking away from their employees, you are going to end up being treated like a piece of machinery.

There are some bad bosses who might do this on purpose because they feel snubbed, but even good ones who are looking out for you will eventually succumb to this. There is only so much time in the day and the human brain likes to save energy by not thinking about things that come up much. If you try to cut out all socializing with other humans at the job and just do the work, they’re gonna stop even remembering that you’re on the payroll.

This can be positive? I’ve seen a few engineers get a niche skill(frequently in some esoteric home grown software) and just work away at that for 40 years till retirement. I’ve also seen some of those same engineers cut because new management came in and wasn’t given the run down on how important they were because the old management forgot they existed.

You misunderstand me. I'm not cutting out socializing at the job. I manage a large team and never schedule anything outside of working hours for the team. We can socialize, joke around, and make small talk all day long. But once it's quitting time I have other (and to me higher) priorities.

On some occasions, someone from work has transitioned from a coworker to a friend. That was a natural transition and not something that I needed team building events that compromise my personal time to achieve.

I don't have an aversion to socializing at work. I have an aversion to work trying to steal my personal time.

Ah, I did misunderstand then. I’m onboard with what you mean now and do something similar.

I do allow for trips at my remote job but only when they are to an area I already wanted to go, and I can bring my spouse along so we basically get a free mini vacation on the evenings. I usually also pair that with staying the weekend before or after as my jobs so far haven’t cared about scheduling a return flight on a different day

I don’t have but three people who I consider “friends” at work. I also work remotely. But it does make working together a lot easier when you have actually met the people you are working with at least once whether it be clients or coworkers.

There are also times where it just makes sense to all get in one room together and get things done. It’s especially helpful during project kickoffs and design sessions.

Luckily, my company has a very liberal travel policy where my team members can choose one of our offices anywhere in the country and meet up. We just have to be “frugal”. (Guess where I work?)

I have the opposite opinion.

I work for a 100% remote company that does two team building events per year. The first is a fiscal year kick-off event that the entire company attends, the other is a set of 3 regional events (US West Coast, US East Coast, and Europe), of which you will attend one.

I've only been at the company for a year, and I've only been at one event, but it was amazing. We had our fiscal year kick-off in Chamonix, France. In August, the US West Coast event will be in Lake Tahoe.

I really like these events. I really think meeting my co-workers in person strengthens relationships. It's nice to be able to meet the actual people behind the screen.

I have no problem either remote with travel. They pay all expenses and I rack up hotel points/airline miles.

I visited the office yesterday, because it was team lunch day. Someone next my table had a hour long Zoom call helping someone and guiding them how to focus. It was great since all I've heard was "you goota focus..." ok, headphones on. After 1.5 hours my ears got fatigued and removed them, she's now on another call, explaining stuff. Then a group of devs returned from a meeting, having a beer and loudly chatting about things.

Bottom line is that both options suck now. At home I feel isolated, at the office I feel distracted.

Maybe it's ok to have rough-sailing every now and then, so we can toughen up?

I'm sorry to say this, having lived through various life-served situations, but you sound very spoiled. At home isn't good, at work isn't good.. everything is the problem except you?

An alternative interpretation:

Humans are social and many communities in America aren’t structured for independent relationship building leading to isolation if you don’t belong to a community (I.E. an office space, gym, or religion)

However offices are poorly structured for focus. Counterintuitively, many of the companies we focus on in the WFH vs WFO debate are _knowledge worker_ roles where the product is ultimately a result of concerted focus time.

It might not be that working at home and working from work aren’t good enough in general. Maybe offices have failed to incorporate what we know about optimizing a knowledge worker’s time while communities have failed to incorporate what we know about fostering relationships. So many are stuck picking their poison: forced relationships with co-workers in an office at the cost of focus or optimizing for focus at home at the cost of relationships.

From your interpretation, it sounds like the office/business is solely responsible for creating an environment for the employee to thrive in.

Even when given the opportunity for the knowledge worker to optimize and set up their work environment, the business is at fault if the worker is not satisfied.

It's just ridiculous how many complaints there are in IT field. I doubt that anyone is missing out on talent if the "talent" complains about situations they themselves can improve.

> Even when given the opportunity for the knowledge worker to optimize and set up their work environment, the business is at fault if the worker is not satisfied.

To make sure this point isn't being lost: It's not complaining about the impact on me. At the end of the day, I'm trading value for value. I select jobs where I can provide value - generally building a new system for my customer - and, in exchange, I receive value - generally money.

My observation is this: the value that is being squandered isn't the workers, it's the businesses! The worker is getting paid, they are receiving their side of the bargain when trading value for value. The output of the worker is the value that belongs to the business which is exactly the value being squandered.

Businesses are, of course, welcome to do that. I know upfront that if I subject myself to that work environment I will not be able to provide the maximum value for my time - and I bill based on the value I provide. I aim to maximize the value of my time and won't adjust my bill down to accommodate the impact of the office spaces they provide. Since I wont be able to provide them sufficient value at the rate that I charge, my moral code doesn't allow me to do business with these kinds of companies.

It's just surprising to me that MAANG will give an engineer $500k per year, and then drop them into an environment that is known to be devastating to that worker's output. What gives me pause is that MAANG is _buying the output_ of that worker, appraising it at $500k annually, and then squandering it with a floor plan.

> If the "talent" complains about situations they themselves can improve.

Personally, I improved it by making remote work a strict requirement for jobs I'll accept. It didn't limit my salary as much as one might expect - my current job is paying parity with what I made at Netflix as a non-remote engineer.

Short of my strategy, which could be summarized as "just say no," I'd be interested in hearing what other strategies there are for office employees to improve their conditions themselves.

This is such a disingenuous article.

You know what what is costing you untapped talent? Not having an office. Just as there are people that prefer working remotely, there are people that prefer working from an office.

I can say personally that I know a lot of junior devs that have not gotten the mentoring they deserve due to remote working.

Just have an office and let people choose to come in or not. Maybe have junior members of the team come in to the office on a regular basis at the start until they're onboarded. It's not that hard.

I agree that younger talent has been especially underserved by remote working, but simply having an office to optionally go to won't fix that. The young talent will come in, and the older talent will stay home. My company has an office that is optionally attended. I sometimes stop by. It's like a ghost town.

Recession is here or fast approaching barring resolution of several serious global economic dislocations I won't rehash here.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/recession-probability-soars-as-...

The past 5 recessions saw unemployment between 6.3% - 14.7% with a mean unemployment of roughly 8%. These recessions saw job markets where commute, remote work & office environment were secondary to simply having a job.

Will it be different this time? Probably not.

I don’t think high unemployment is a certain outcome. Layoffs are trending higher, but not because of bad economic metrics. Companies are laying off employees in anticipation of bad times. There’s a scenario where inflation returns to lower levels and the economy doesn’t deteriorate.

I think there's a non trivial chance that the inflation reverses a bit because it was never actually the currency's problem but rather things just getting more expensive due to war and covid and shipping.

That seems more likely, but can just as easily lead to an inflationary spiral.

Prices go up because of supply shocks, companies raise wages, people are able to afford higher prices, prices increase further to increase (or maintain previous) profits, expectations set in, cycle continues with wage increases.

That's the entire point of central banks boosting rates to crush inflation / slow economic expansion. It hurts, but as least it's a shorter hurt.

> Prices go up because of supply shocks, companies raise wages,

Why would companies raise wages ?

More likely:

Prices go up because of supply shocks, demand slows down because of price increase, supply normalizes

Because it's a competitive labor market with low unemployment.

But that has nothing to do with supply shock and inflation

No, but my point was that a supply shock + that feedback (which is what our current labor market looks like) can create an inflationary spiral.

None of the supply issues that preceded price inflation have been resolved and the demand destruction that has followed and will continue is what is giving rise to increasing job losses.

Sure. And in fact will probably get much worse if Europe gets truly cut off from russian gas long term. Yet the fear that the power of the american dollar is declining, in my opinion, is incorrect.

Most of the tech companies that are laying off people are money losing startups that have been spending other people’s money like a crackhead - or crypto.

Personally I'm in favor of remote work, but here's the opposing viewpoint: https://twitter.com/zebulgar/status/1538182508310777857

This person isn't really making an argument for work in office, just stating that they want to hire people who will work in office.

Well that's kind of a collection of things that includes working in the office, but doesn't really provide any viewpoint at all as to why they're so comically misunderstanding how to track productivity. On my team, I want everyone working wherever they produce the best output.

Some people slack off at work. Some people slack off more at work if they're at home. If your management team isn't exclusively sourced through nepotism, they should be competent enough to track output and know who needs to be in the office or not. Sending everyone back to the office is admitting that the managers/executives are so hopelessly incompetent at knowing which of their employees actually does the work, that the only way they can get anything done is to hide the unproductive people in teams with the productive people.

I mean, this guy wants people to go to the office, I suppose for the meaningful personal interactions that might happen there, but then doesn't want workers to fully and freely express themselves?

Sounds like those workers would be better off WFH.

> * Employees are expected to bring their work self to work, not their whole self

So basically, the plot of Severance? That went well

Really depends on the business. I'd argue that for forging product market fit, there's nothing better than a small team sharing a common space, feeding off each other's creative energy.

For later stage companies where you're optimizing something that's already mapped out, it's quite a different beast, but you're also probably hiring quite different people at quite a different scale.

+ open plan offices are hell

There are so many ways work would be better if we had more whiteboarding time.

But also most office time is wasted so it's pretty fine on net.

I recently moved jobs so I could be in-person again after 2+ years remote. Whiteboarding and micro-interactions (bouncing ideas, quick clarifications, brainstorming) are very difficult to duplicate remotely and I felt the lack of these were having a significant negative impact on my work. This is a way bigger deal to me than any of the negatives that come with coming in

Why do we keep considering a return to the office so negatively?

For sure, some people enjoy WFH and we should cater for those.

But optional return to the office can be a great deal of fun / social interaction.

Probably because of the real reason - supervision.

There are people whose work ethic is such that they don't need supervision and then there are people who are bad at managing everything in their life - from food to setting up work schedule.

At our workplace, the ones who were the loudest about hybrid model were the ones who don't pull their weight.

If you don't trust your own employees, fire them.

Being able to function without constant supervision is expected. Otherwise, you are running a school, and consider employees, children.

> Why do we keep considering a return to the office so negatively?

The office is a completely negative place for many people.

Just read around here and empathize with others experiences.

Working from home I can make my work environment fit me instead of having to conform myself into some HR Bean counters corporate vision of an ideal work place.

I'm personally a fan of remote work, but I also appreciate that it's something that I've been able to enjoy after already establishing my career and also being able to afford having a workspace at home that suits my needs. Those that are early in their careers may not have the means to create a great WFH setup, and also may not be getting the proper supervision and learning that comes from being in office and surrounded by your colleagues. I'm not saying that you can't be a successful junior employee in a remote-first world, just that this is an area of the discussion I don't find brought up enough.

"The private corporation or firm is simply one form of legal fiction which serves as a nexus for contracting relationships and which is also characterized by the existence of divisible residual claims on the assets and cash flows of the organization which can generally be sold without permission of the other contracting individuals."[1]

To the extent that working from home does or doesn't impact the ability of the firm to serve as such a nexus for contracting relationships, should function as a sufficient supervening factor in deciding to permit such arrangements. Anything else is ego-driven perfunctory management and is right to be examined critically.

What we've all been forced to experience is the barriers to contracting relationships in the digital nexus are much less than what we thought they were and that blanket demands for a return to office willfully ignore the evidence as experienced by workers for the last two years - one that amounts to egopilled tantrum-driven management.

1. Jensen and Meckling 1976

its a nexus and conduit for cash flows

but yes your primary point about how management tactics are largely irrelevant are spot on. I say the same thing about employees that try to make a corporation "use their platform" on political issues completely unrelated to the contracting relationships and revenues

Interesting, I've come to the opposite conclusion regarding the latter. It's too bad it's outside the scope of the topic. It would be a fun finding out how we both arrived as such different results.

501(c)4-(c)6 entities are better suited to “using your platform”

noteworthy is that many entity types can achieve 501(c)4-(6) status as the entity type is state/tribal/territory/individual level and the tax exemption is at the federal level, and this is merely mapped as poorly as possible

let the for profit corporations do their thing even if thats a foreign concept to the current aspirational echo chamber

I would like to go into an office pretty often IF it were in a nice location that was a short walk away from me. If I am doing more commuting than a 20 minute walk, I would rather work remotely. Also if it were not open office plan that would be better. I think a huge complaint of in office work is really a complaint about commuting, and how poorly designed our cities and lives are. If we fix that in office would be much better for many people.

Regarding TFA there is a lot of untapped talent all across the US, and even more globally. How many really great engineers are there working for Lockheed Martin or some small web development office because they live in a Rust Belt city or a rural area, and their choices are extremely limited if they don't want to upturn their whole lives (moving away from family, friends, etc). Expanding the talent search beyond a few metros is a huge win for orgs.

I love working from home, but I love it because it's personally convenient for me. The quality of my work is definitely lower. I honestly don't know how people think working from home is more effective. Even as an engineer, which is generally not regarded as a highly collaborative job, the lack of collaboration opportunities takes a toll. I find myself spending more hours reading code when I would normally turn around and quickly ask someone how something works. Or when a complex decision needs to be made, I would normally turn to my co-worker and chat with them about pros and cons for a few minutes. Now I don't do that, so I take much more time mulling over options. And then some days, I just want to take a nap, so I do that.

I don't mean to discount your experience, but I do think that those problems are solvable. There is something about that fluid collaboration that yields a lot, but I don't think being in the same room physically is a hard prerequisite.

I haven't played with Slack's huddle feature but that could be it. I know my small team of 3-4 devs spends most of the day in a breakout room in a big permanent zoom call that we use for that sort of fluidity.

It's also worth keeping in mind for every office worker like yourself there is at least one who would complain about the constant interruptions, so they need to be considered in this equation too. Different work styles.

(Also the absolute societal waste and ecological damage of daily commuting along has me wishing we would mandate WFH for all jobs where it's feasible. A total waste of time and resources, a luxury we don't have anymore as a species.)

interestingly my experience is the opposite. I find that I'm more consistently communicating with a wider variety of people that I might not have interacted a ton with before. I don't have random desk drop-ins pulling me out of work flow, either. Conversations are either consensual or they can wait for later.

This whole thing has made the entire world work the way I want to work, which is pretty much opposite of how it's been for my entire life so selfishly it's pretty great.

> I don't have random desk drop-ins pulling me out of work flow

Yes, in my experience the people who enjoy working from home are those that prioritize their work over the work of others because it allows for fewer "distractions." I'm not saying that people don't distract others frivolously, but I think it's typical that when someone distracts another working person it's because they need immediate help to get unblocked. While the distracted worker may lose out on some productivity, the whole is more productive.

This is definitely not the case - I work quite collaboratively WFH, but I get to filter which conversations about who bought a boat or whose kid is sick or which tv show is great are appropriate for that moment. This comes as a shock to a lot of people who view this kind of smalltalk as essential that it in fact is not all that essential to the thing we are doing, which is completing work.

Interruptions make people forget ideas they had just developed. I send questions to my team’s chat channel all the time and someone will be available to answer pretty quickly (even after business hours), and my teammates also learn from reading the answer. I’m not blocked because I always have other tasks waiting.

> I’m not blocked because I always have other tasks waiting.

Sure, it's not like every time you need to talk to someone you're blocked. But, at least in my experience, it's definitely possible to be blocked waiting for someone. And it might not be a hard block. Like when I want to talk about a design decision with someone, I'm not technically blocked if I can't talk to someone. But I don't really want to continue seriously working on the problem at the same time either.

Do you not have some sort of work chat? Video calls? Peer review of your work output? I haven't worked with anything with oversight as lax as you are describing in at least a decade.

Yes, of course we have work chat. But everyone is just a little green dot. Often people will be in another meeting or afk, so you'll send a ping and then wait for 30 minutes for them to get back. Or you'll forget to ping them when they're done with a meeting. In person, if someone isn't at their desk, you just wait until they come back, which you know happens because you see them.

As a physicist, in the spaces I've been in we did not find a way to successfully adjust to WFH in terms of scientific communication. The most important developments occur when we sit together with one person at a whiteboard and we are just sitting and thinking in silence for extended periods. This isn't really possible on zoom, where there is a constant pressure to either talk or end the call. I understand that some have made it work, but I haven't personally seen it work. Even hooking up an iPad to draw some equations is too much friction for most people (assuming they have one)

I'm surprised by the paucity of opinions in favor of the hybrid approach. And not a single article discussed on HN so far provided any statistics.

Your location alone is a huge factor. To say that commuting and offices in NYC are different from the Bay Area is to barely scratch the surface. In the Bay Area alone working in SF is different from the Peninsula. Large companies can afford cubicles and decent food which startups cannot.

As a side note, the popularity of leetcoding proves that there are too many candidates and companies need to cull them down by artificial means.

The argument of untapped talent simply doesn’t influence my employer. Middle managers have been pushing to continue remote, and executives have told us in department meetings that the company values culture above all, and part of our culture is being in person. Many people moved during the pandemic and if they want to stay on they need to go into a company office every day. My team of nine is spread across five offices and we’re all required to go into a company office 5 days a week, regardless of whether we do work with anyone in that office.

Not returning to the office does that too. One isn't strictly better in all cases, you just need to decide what tradeoffs you're okay with as a company.

Just make it optional! If you wanna go into the office, go for it. If you wanna work from home, that's fine too!

I think making it optional is a good choice, but I think it still has tradeoffs and it might not be the best fit for every situation.

I keep seeing this argument and it's missing the point. The benefits of being in the office, collaborating humans like we evolved to over millions of years only works if everyone is there.

If it's just you and a handful of other people who aren't even on your team/people you directly work with, you're gonna be sitting in video calls, and typing away into Teams/Slack/whatever just like when you're at home. You're working from home at the office. Except it's probably worse because it's you and a bunch of other people in an enclosed space, all hearing every other person chatting away in a different video call, feedbacking into each other's calls. The only benefit at that point is it's a change of scenery and maybe an escape from the wife and kids.

Alright, well if we have to take someone's personal work preference and make everyone do it even if they don't want to, let's pick WFH!

If you really think there isn't a major, tangible benefit to collaborating with humans in real life to get a common task completed, you are lying to yourself.

We didn't evolve to work in offices. We evolved to use tools to perform tasks better or more easily. At this point in our history, that includes Zoom and Slack. If there are growing pains or inefficiencies involved with the use of these tools, it's not because of a biological drive to have in-person standup meetings.

While it's true that (at least some of the) benefits of the office only work when others are there, I don't think it's quite black and white.

Not all communication needs to (or even should) be all to all. I can benefit from being able to directly discuss a problem or a design question with a colleague who's also at the office even if others are remote.

My workplace is pretty much optional remote. I go to the office most days, as do some others, while many more are remote most days. But usually at least one of my closest coworkers is also at the office, so there can be benefits to communication.

I feel it's a pretty good compromise. I'd feel less comfortable and focused either at a deserted or fully crowded office. Optional remote is still good for some focused work or if it makes scheduling more convenient.

For professional office workers, there are short term and long term benefits to all individuals (entry level, middle management, executives / younger, older) and to the company as a whole. There are also short term and long term detriments to all the same parties.

For individuals, the costs and benefits are easier to grasp, though the net benefit is likely higher than for companies. This makes it harder for companies to make a case as to why it's worth it, especially since the longer term costs and benefits for companies is incredibly difficult to prove in the short run, and without concrete evidence, it's very hard to convince people to give up the more tangible benefits they are seeing as individuals.

Then there's overall societal impact as well. Things like the economic impact on neighborhoods surrounding business districts, residential districts as people shift where they spend their time. Things like changes in civil engineering needs as commute and travel patterns change. But even more broadly, the impact of spouses spending more time together, parents spending more time at home with their children, home duties being more evenly taken care of across parents, etc.

In my mind, the level of complexity and decision making issues is akin to something like outsourcing manufacturing from the United States. There were short term and long term impacts on individuals, on companies, on industries, and on society as a whole that were known, that were debated. But how much import we placed on each, how much each factor was weighed in the moment, versus the broader impacts we are finally realizing and grappling with now, decades later, is just an absolute mess.

I will never stop saying that I think we are continuing down a path of reduced human interaction and community that is leading generations to massive depression, loneliness, and anger without feeling like there is anything to do about it.

We got rid of church, because religion is seen as bunk. Now many people don't have anything to "mandate" they come in contact with people outside their home or workplace.

Then we got rid of seeing people in person. Kids are growing up on social media, discord, and other tools that more than ever puts people away from each other physically, not seeing faces, not interacting in a normal human way. (As a gamer since 15 and now more than double that. At least we had LAN parties in my day).

Then we got rid of having to go out anywhere for anything. Renting movies? Buying anything? Even grocery shopping! It can all be delivered to your shelter-pod.

And now, for millions, we are removing the need for human interaction in the workplace.

This is the stuff of dystopian movies. Yes, WFH is great for several reasons, and I enjoy some of them. It doesn't mean I ignore the bad effects.

Indeed, I grew up with graduate, move to a city, go in everyday, socialise with coworkers, make friends, go to meet ups make more friends.

Now it’s, graduate, stay at home, zoom in. Where is the fun in that?

humans always choose the path of least resistance, without any thought to long term implications.

human interaction in communities of your choosing (such as choosing your church from your example) is nice, forced interaction under coercion (lose your livelihood without safety net unless you come to the office) by employers/government with communities not of your choosing (your workplace peers) is the one that sounds dystopian to me. only one of those widely affords the freedom to walk away or refuse an order unrelated to your actual task at hand

> This is the stuff of dystopian movies.

Forcing people to do things they don't want or enjoy _is_ dystopian, and definitely unhealthy.

If a community relies on forced interaction, perhaps it is not a community at all, just a bunch of captive people in a sort of abusive relationship.

Working out is hard, but we should do it even if it is strenuous, because it is good for our physical fitness.

Learning basics of history, chemistry, etc. is good even if it is boring, because it enhances our understanding of the world.

And interacting with people in person is good even if it is sometimes annoying, because humans are social creatures.

To ignore the benefits of social interaction is an extremist view. To think that it is healthy that millions of people glamorize isolation and laugh along at how annoying it is to talk to people, is to cheer on a very unhealthy trend.

As I alluded, I think the pendulum will swing back toward normality in time. We are a social species, and we need in-person social interactions. If one feels like interacting with the grocer is an undue, unnecessary burden, then they are as mentally unhealthy as someone who can't walk a flight of stairs is physically unhealthy.

"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times"

We're in the phase 4 - weak ones creating hard times. There's so many spoiled people who can't appreciate anything that requires an iota of hard work. It's the time we actually give it up and let them lead us to failure. Then, out of hardship - new generation will emerge that will pull us up.

Does this even make sense?

If we were in the midst of the industrial revolution, would you be calling those speaking out for shorter work days and a better work-life balance, "weak"? Where did you draw the line in the first place?

> Working out [...] learning [...] interacting with people...

You are missing the point here.

I love working out. I just refuse to go to, say, LA Gym to do so, and no one should be forcing me to go.

I love learning. I just refuse to pay tens of thousands of dollars, and I don't want to be forced to do so.

I love my job, but it is a _job_. I socialise with my friends and family, not with my coworkers.

I would argue that if you cannot socialise outside work, maybe you are the one with an unhealthy attitude towards it.

I socialize almost daily outside of work. I also socialized a lot with my coworkers at my last job. Then covid hit, and we were on happy hour zooms each week and happily.

It may be a luxury to enjoy one's coworkers. Maybe I hit the jackpot. But it seems weird to me that people don't socialize at all with anyone at their job.

In any case, I agree - work isn't ideally the only social outlet for people. The point is that for a lot of people, that was/is the only time to get interaction with others, and yes, people should be forced to interact with others a bit (not by law, but by good habits and social norms).

I'm lamenting a larger social trend that is riding the WFH wave. My broader point is that, in my opinion, the online trend of "being a loner is cool, humanity sucks, why would I ever want to talk to people" is bad, and I think the group of people who think that way is a subset of the WFH advocacy crowd.

Like I said, WFH has benefits, some of which I currently reap, and perhaps I am overreacting or projecting! I haven't formulated my ideas into a paper, I opened them to discussion.

I agree about the social aspect and if I didn't have pre-existing relationships with my colleagues, WFH wouldn't be as smooth.

But with an idealization of the office experience, I disagree. I view it as a relic of the industrial age where-in output was from an assembly-line and so required everyone to be present physically.

In the knowledge era, a lot of work like programming can really be done effectively at home and asynchronously or just by using video and text communication.

For a lot of people, the office experience is almost a prison-like experience with very low freedom and control at the office. Also, there is even more time for socialization for those working at home and have family at home. Instead of just seeing family at night and on the weekends, at least can have lunch together and spend more time together so WFH is not synonymous with social isolation.

A harmonious civic life requires virtues like chivalry, propriety, patience, tolerance, and courage. These must be practiced in a social setting, whether one wants to or not.

The deterioration of public life, like in an office setting, will inevitably lead to the deterioration of those traits which are necessary for a healthy society.

(ymmv, I prefer working from home, for a lot of reasons, but the benefit of social isolation is not one of them)

> Forcing people to do things they don't want or enjoy _is_ dystopian, and definitely unhealthy

What exactly is this comment based on? All of the research says the opposite of this. Forcing one's self to do things one doesn't like makes you a resilient and capable person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha1ZbJIW1f8.

Forcing oneself and being forced by a third party, are obviously two very different things.

That's your opinion, not what you said, and none of the research shows this is true.

It should never be either or situation, because people's preferences differ.

What you're saying is not universally true. It is true for some people. probably a majority, but it is not true for many, many people.

Personally I have absolutely no problem whatsoever never leaving my home for work. I could probably spend weeks entirely on my own and be absolutely delighted. I understand that's not how a lot of people, all of my family included, would want to live, but I would.

The actual dystopia: your main/only way of socialising is by being an employee.

It's so interesting watching the portion of the world that thrives on human interaction struggle to exist in a world where human interaction is not forced on everyone.

Believe it or not a portion of the human population (a large portion) has felt this strain for their *entire lives* because they live in a world where frequent and varied social interaction, an activity that is quite draining for them, is required to be a successful member of society.

Imagine living with this unpleasant world for one or two years and viewing it as the decline of human civilization. Meanwhile, all these people have dealt with an analogous situation for an entire lifetime and have been told that their stress and anxiety is a character flaw to be overcome with self-training and behavior masking.

Maybe try some of those?

I've never had a workplace give a damn about my mental health beyond its effect on my job performance. They never asked me if my daily commute was a time-wasting nightmare or if I came home from the office each day mentally exhausted from putting on a performance at each trivial meeting. Give me a break.

For a lot of firms, it seems like the question is more of a test of leadership's insecurity than anything else. They feel like they don't have control without bodies they can see doing things.

The company I work for was bought by a huge, old, conservative company. Which sold its HQ last year, because after 2 years remote they determined that a large majority of the ~70k employees can work from home. We still have offices, but they're either for specific groups or are mostly executive playgrounds and meeting space.

It takes a certain amount of confidence in structures and staff from leadership. I think we're starting to see which other firms have confident leaders.

Would an opposing viewpoint to this ever be allowed to show up on the front page?

If you have been around, you would have noticed that there were plenty of the opposite on the front page too.

Everybody just disagreed on the comments.

> create a more psychologically safe space

whatever. people who cant even be around others are somehow capable coworkers

I code best in relative isolation. I'm a very social person, I'm just not a very social coder.

The me too movement would not have happened if these capable co-workers were remote. Work is not a socializing club. If being around others has no relation to your job requirements save the environment and stay home

You are technically not wrong, but this discussion is always treated like a black and white white thing while the reality is far more complicated.

Some people don't have a choice -- I myself moved to a different continent to work in a country where people are notorious for not wanting to be friends (Sweden). If some people didn't go to the office to socialize, I'd have felt so deep into depression that I'd have probably need to leave the country.

Both 100% wfh and 100% office are bad for different reasons. For reasons like that I believe the best option is:

1) Company lets you do whatever

2) Build teams with people that made similar choices

It makes sense in your case. Curious about Sweden and not wanting to make friends. Is this a trend for close neighbours: Norway/Finland/Denmark. Is it a cultural social norm?

So "sexual assault only happens when people are near each other, maintain distance to prevent crime."

My last office job was a hellscape. There was only one bathroom for about a hundred people. The guy at the desk next to me had no gallbladder and continued to eat greasy pizza everyday.

Yeah I worked for years in an office where the toilets barely worked and no one knew how to shit properly. It’s not fun.

Also everyone smoked so you couldn’t touch anything because it stank.

> people who cant even be around others are somehow capable coworkers

Harsh, but this sentence should make us wonder.

I can't say that I disagree.

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