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Comment by jeroenvlek | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly I see some startup founders (e.g. Delian from Varda Space) and some SF VC types on Twitter lobbying against WFH, so I wonder how long startups will be different from BigCo's. At the mean time my current client (a large Dutch insurance company) actually promotes WFH and says they will never go above an average office occupancy of 40%, which translates roughly to 2 mandatory office days per week.

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I wonder if more companies will start giving in as they lose applicants to companies that offer WFH.

This assumes that WFH is equally as productive as in-person for all companies.

Some companies may have conclusively determined that for them, in-person is far more productive than WFH, and so losing certain applicants is an acceptable tradeoff.

As an anecdote, a friend works on a team that does a lot of hardcore low-level algorithm development. They require at least three days of in-person each week, since collaboratively doing math on whiteboards just doesn’t work as well over Zoom.

But even if this is true (and I definitely believe there is merit to f2f interactions), it will come down to the labor market in every respective sector. Software engineers, for example, are in short demand, so if they prefer WFH, they will go to a company that offers that to them. Obviously not every job is appropriate for WFH, [insert YMMV disclaimer here]

“Never” - I don’t have much confidence in things people say when they say it with such surety. E.g. if they found out more office days equals more productivity, they would stick with 40%?

Agreed, although that is actually my own phrasing, so I'm probably to blame here :)

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