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Comment by thenerdhead | Hacker News Reader

> Remote workers may find it in their best interest to show their faces in the office as their job security becomes more uncertain.

Glad to see this FUD being shared still. Did we learn nothing over the last few years?

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It seems like every day there is a new article on Business Insider or Forbes or Fortune about how remote workers are the scourge of all things workplace related. Almost feels like a semi coordinated push from executives (especially those with commercial real estate interests in one form or another) to pay to have stories in these outlets to shift the hive mind in a direction that favors them.

As a millennial I appreciate the "cause of doom" distraction some

I agree...I've wondered who is sponsoring all these articles?

I wonder. It seems as though historically commercial real estate is a gigantic industry with strong relationships to other industries. Anecdotally it seems as though companies that lease their real estate have been much more inclined towards wfh.

Nobody is sponsoring those articles, they are simply writing what their readers want to hear, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Much like when the papers write so much nationalistic tripe that the people reading them actually start both believing it, and expecting it.

> writing what their readers want to hear

No, they're writing what gets clicks or shifts papers. Saying WFH is bad pleases a (large) subset of managers and enrages a lot of the rank and file, but they all click. So that's what they write.

Not only pleasing managers. I feel as well a certain envy from people who can’t work remotely, that find pleasure in seeing such articles.

And I say that as someone working in tech missing the office.

Marketwatch is a subsidiary of Dow Jones which is a subsidiary of News Corp, which also owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Investor's Business Daily, among others.

to simplify this, they’re all owned by the Murdochs

If we go down this rabbit hole everything is owned by 7 companies.

Yeah, maybe also those folks are the target audience and enjoy reading content that reinforces their way of thinking?

Not so sure about "semi"

It is not just commercial real estate. If you think about it, there are several market segments that benefit from people commuting. Transportation infrastructure companies, car manufactures, office supplies, oil companies, etc.

I have a conspiracy theory that collusion is exactly what's going on here, and not just with the "back to the office" push, but also with how kafkaesque the hiring process has gotten.

With remote work, an employee can work multiple jobs simultaneously, and they're unbeholden to any one employer, what with how easy it is to apply and switch to a new one. So how do companies combat this? They introduce friction at the very start of the pipeline - hiring. Multiple rounds of oral exams, take-home exams, leetcode questions that can only be answered with weeks or months of deliberate studying (something an already-employed person has little time for) - flaming hoops galore. They'll still compete with one another, sure, but they've found it's in their best interests if they all agree to hire in this kind of fraudulent manner.

It is plausible, but at least the medium and small fish in the pond seem to be doing it out of typical human stupidity rather than a conscious effort. Or worse, they try to imitate the big fish.

I’m all for hiring employees without interviews. Most of them will quit their job, work for me one day, then stress out because they didn’t match.

So, out of respect, I do perform tests.

But some employees who seem perfectly good during tests come into the company with plenty of grammar mistakes, then I notice that they only master the surface of everything and they get fired.

I should charge employees for passing my exams, since it lowers the risk of misadventures. I’m so tired of this “Employers are evil” trope often suffixed with “because going to a coding interview is like working for free.”

I should do lengthy tests just to filter out stingy employees. (and I talk as someone who gave a 78% raise to one employee who’s been here 10 months, and 30% to the other).

Doing deliberately lengthy tests doesn't filter out stingy employees, it filters out employees with self-respect.

I fear that's exactly what an employer wants. They get more hours for less money out of an employee like that.

They also get substandard solutions. IME, confident people are just better.

A subjugated worker doesn't make a very good problem solver. They're really good at following procedure, though.

Wow feels like we just witnessed a microcosm of the wider market forces.

Or you could very well hire them for a few days (on holidays at their ob or on unpaid leave for contractors), see how it goes and take it from there.

I don't think employers are evil, they don't get value out of the interview process. I would say both employer and prospect employee gets a similar value out of it (the chance of hiring / being hired).

I think employers (or better, their middle managers in charge or recruitment) are mostly stupid and inefficient.

Working together for a bit is the only way of actually checking if someone will be fine doing the job or not.

Demonstrating some random knowledge is not a good predictor of success. I worked with people who passed leetcoding and were trash and people who didn't who were amazing.

I found out about their qualities only after a few weeks of work (not even full time, even just on and off).

I'm assuming you're pretending to be some caricature for comedic purposes, but it would be a lot more clear if you clarified that somehow.

I do think like you, but working in many places at the same time would not be possible in many countries, just because of tax declaration.

But yes, I think it cannot be coincidence all those articles pushing the back to the office, when (at least what I have seen) the productivity has undoubtedly raised.

> because of tax declaration.

Can you expand upon this?

A company could see you are working at multiple places, but the tax authorities could say you can't work multiple full time jobs maybe? In the us I bet you could just do it. You'd have opt out of those horrible places where companies want to share your salary info. I really can't believe that is actually legal still, even though I know it is since my own salary history was mostly there. Little companies like startups I have worked in didn't do that.

Tax authorities never prevent you from doing it. You might have to file some more forms though.

In Australia employees provide a form to their employer which is basically "set aside tax from my pay as though this is my only source of income" vs "tax me at a higher rate".

IIRC the wording on the form is simplified to make it seem like the question is "do you have another source of income?"

That makes sense. In the USA, we can just specify additional withholding without any justification. This can be the result of other income (stocks included), but also due to people having a working spouse.

Or, it could jsut be that middle managers are extroverted and extremely desperate for social engagement, like in meetings because they have no life outside of work. Harsh, I know. but, several friends i have that are managers admitted to me that they felt the covid lock downs were hard on them because they couldn't see or interact with anyone in person.

Is this true? That's insane! And who benefits from all this?

Agree, plenty of people across different companies told me that. It's not even a secret, they admit it in meetings.

Oh and the amount of meetings skyrocketed.

Dumped my last client because it turned into basically 8hrs of meetings

There's a whole subreddit for people working multiple jobs remotely: https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/

I tried to check the overlap with /r/churning but it looks like overemployed isn't in the database.

https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/overemplo...

edit: the concept has made appearances on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666867

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633083

would you ever do that?

I don't, but I wouldn't judge someone for it unless they were violating a legally enforceable contract. People work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive. Nothing in my mind is different just because some people do it with remote jobs.

> people work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive.

but the difference here is the concurrency. In-person jobs require the person, so you cannot do two at the same time.

But a remote job, where the employer assumes you have their job at full attention, might be short-changed if you were to work two remote jobs at the same time. That is, of course, unless you work remote for two employers, in two different time zones (so basically the same as the two in-person jobs).

I don't see the issue as long as they get the work done right. If they don't and aren't fired, the company has bigger issues than people working multiple jobs. If they do the work well, then practicing arbitrage between the employer's expectations and the realistic time requirements with automation is just doing what the employer does from the other direction. I'm sure the employer has used technology and outsourcing to get rid of at least as many jobs as multi-jobbing employees take using the same technology.

Not everyone just accepts the promise of automation to free us from tedium is lost to ever-growing corporate balance sheets.

I have done the concurrent remote job thing for 15 years now. I'm open about it and nobody seems to really care. I expect they would prefer my full attention, but they also know I have another job right there, so they're pressured to work with my needs so long as they want to benefit from the value I provide in kind.

If you could do it all over again but today, how would you do it? I may just act on it

what's the best reaction to outsmart their strategy?

I wish I knew, I think about this problem all the time and have yet to come up with a feasible path. “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”

As someone who does hiring, I can say that (at least my organization) has not conspired with any other company. I suspect what you're seeing is the result of what I'm seeing: it is extremely challenging to assess a candidate remotely.

I'm not saying all of the things you mentioned are a good solution to that problem, but I do believe they are how some organizations are (poorly) attempting to solve it.

We have now hired 3 (that we know of) people who turned out to be different from the person we interviewed. I suspect one other, and one of my colleagues suspects a fifth. The is a problem for several reasons.

We have talked about many of the ideas that you mentioned, and tried some, but ultimately decided that they are too burdensome. So, now we only hire remote people in cities where a long term employee already works and they can attend the interview in person to verify the person being interviewed in not cheating or getting assistance in any way. Our solution isn't perfect, but it's what we're doing until we can find a better solution.

It's pretty obvious when you look at who is quoted in these articles that someone is paying for at least one PR push related to this. PG wrote about how this works in one of his older essays, in fact: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

This is so insightful, thank you so much for posting it as I have never seen the article yet it clarifies so much I have always hypothesized. I’m curious if there is any level of transparency (anywhere, not simply the US) as to what PR firms work with specific groups of publishers. Of course I highly doubt this, but I’d love to trace the origins of a lot of these coordinated narratives.

Absolutely agree. They are doing it to change the narrative and make people think that being back in the office is what the majority want. These executives are the ones that have access to mainstream media to get their propaganda out there. The average person does not.

Why is it FUD?

Who is more likely to get fired if you are choosing between two similar competent people and you have been told you need to pick one: The one you sit next to and have lunch with a few days a week and possibly lives in your general neighborhood? or the person which you have never met in person and lives 2000 miles away?

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. When you say statements like the one noted above which aren't true, but I mean..."hey, it sounds like it could be true and do you want to take that risk?"

Just because you don't want to believe it, doesn't make it not true - its human nature to be more protective of the people you know better/personally than those you have never met.

From what’s I have seen remote workers tend to survive layoffs more than office workers. I don’t know if this is a common trend, but remote workers are generally cheaper including overhead which is a major point when it comes to cost cutting initiatives.

then they are not 'similar' people are they? if the cost structure is completely different - that is a completely different calculation.

Similar or higher pay being offset by vastly cheaper office space is not about the person.

Selection bias. Remote workers also tend to skew more senior/experienced. The new guy who isn't providing much value is always the first to get cut, and he's also the same guy who is less likely to be trusted to WFH.

Possibly, though selection bias the other way means people who are more likely to survive a layoff are also more likely to become senior.

A lot of remote workers on here seem to expect to be paid the same salary regardless of where they're working though. So they would indeed be more likely to get laid off, as they cost the same amount but haven't developed those in-person relationships with the decision-maker.

Excuse me? I expect to be paid more because unlike on site workers i deliver more work and of higher quality. Also i play less sleazy politics and do less decision maker boot leaking.

Why would anything besides performance and value factor into this decision? "Mary just gets more done for the money than Bob does... but I haven't seen her in awhile... Gone."

That assumes rationality, unfortunately. It would be nice if performance was the only factor in a managers decision, but we all know that managers have a tendency to prefer the employees that they see often. That being said if you were hired as a remote employee, I wouldn't worry.

It's 100% rational from the manager's individual POV to choose to lay off someone you don't know so well vs someone you see every day in person and consider a friend.

Performance is pretty hard to measure without resorting to gameable KPIs.

There is always a "perceived performance". Once a year (typically) managers evaluate the associates; same evaluation is performed when one has to go. If seen somebody everyday plays a role, yes, maybe.

But for example, 5 years ago, I worked in a team, when I was only couple of days in the office. Others every day. I saw my team manager the days I was in the office... and also at weekends, because we were friends... so... it all depends.

Yep. It can help if you ask their coworkers across the business for multiple types of feedback, but it's never going to be anything close to perfect. How do you define "performance" of someone who spent time helping 5 other teams deliver with their expertise, but then didn't quite do the thing they were given to do? It's not an absolute thing, and so we shouldn't be bemoaning that it's not used enough as a measurement.

One of the arguments is that people do not objectively determine performance and value and are likely to become biased by spending time with people in-person.

> Why would anything besides performance and value factor into this decision?

Because people making decisions are often influenced by their own biases and social preferences, unfortunately.

We have never operated as a meritocracy like that at a society wide level.

How do you measure performance

My upper management wants me badly in the office. It’s 12 seat open office. These people have their own comfy offices, but work all days every week from home. What a paradox.

https://youtu.be/zLQ2d89vCiw

Flexibility about where and, to some degree, when/how-much, one works, plus how surveilled one is while working, is a status-related perk (and connected more broadly to social class). No surprise execs who are used to maximal freedom on those see expanding those perks to the peons as a threat to their own status.

"But what if they fuck off to play golf at 2:30 PM or sneakily take a vacation to the beach without using vacation time while in fact only working part of the time for that week?" says the exec, before fucking off to play golf at 2:30 PM and then help the spouse and kids pack for for tomorrow's vacation-disguised-as-a-business-trip.

That's the truth right there.

My girlfriend's uncle told me over Christmas dinner, his job is to go golfing with US bank CEOs. That's how they do business! We're being scammed, and them too.

There's even one[1] of these in the show Silicon Valley. The seasoned, solid-track-record, expert exec they bring in the show to be the "grown up" in charge as the startup begins to take off, who's out of the office messing with his horse-breeding hobby half the time. Like everything else in that show, it's not even really satire.

[1] I haven't finished the show, so maybe "at least one"

It’s not a paradox. It’s hypocrisy.

Hum... You are just assuming similar competent people get on this situation a with relevant odds.

What is a very odd assumption, because if a company is firing based on competence, similar competent people will get on the same bracket and both fired or kept. And no large company knows enough to fire based on personal competence anyway. So yeah, it's FUD.

It's a lot more complicated than that. How much more does that in-person employee cost, for example.

Even with the current uncertainty there are employees choosing to change jobs rather than go to an office. Even if you freeze hiring, you need to make sure you're retaining the employees you have.

>choosing between two similar competent ...

People don't even have to similar in competence... the farther away from the headquarters you are the less influence and importance you have. common sense

You are assuming a good relation... what if the guy who comes to be office happens to be dirty, or loud, or smelly, or whatever discomfort he may impose to the decision maker? What if the decision maker is a lazy manager (have never seen one!) that feels observed but this guy coming everyday to the office? Moreover, what if the manager himself, prefers to not come to the office...

We really didn't.

I came to that depressing realisation a few months into Covid. The whole world suddenly learned

- remote work is fine

- it was so much better for the environment to not commute constantly

- you do not need mass migration for a services economy

and then we all promptly forgot it.

I do not think we forgot it, but we just lack leverage.

I said from the beginning it’s all a matter of time before we all go back. The C suite loves seeing butts in seats. Outside of software, and even some reluctance there, I think most leaders are only not going back full in office because they don’t want an exodus during a labor shortage. Otherwise they’d have required it by now.

I’m privy to the boardroom setting and know the C suite personalities well enough. They make jokes about lazy inefficiency of WFH. They feel out of control if they can’t walk to your desk and demand something is a priority. They don’t know how to lead in a WFH world. Also, by definition their job is usually to be in meetings all day every day and they just don’t enjoy the zoom experience as much because of it. They like to wear fancy dry cleaned cloths when everyone else just wants to wear basketball shorts and a tee shirt at home.

The VP of Sales where I work recently posted about our record breaking month and how he can't wait to get back to the office as it'll be mandatory starting in October.

The irony, as you can see clear as day, is that they achieved the record month while everyone was working remotely.

Someone actually called him out on it, surprisingly, but he simply backpedaled and said remote is just not his personal preference.

No -- they did not learn ANYTHING over the last few years and I suspect that the pandemic will be looked back on with a bit of nostalgia in a few years when we look back.

There will always be the horrors that came with it, but there will also be people who got time off work, fathers who got to spend more time with their kids, people who got a lot of their lives back by avoiding commutes, etc.

I realize I'm opening myself up to get completely roasted in the comments because the pandemic was really rough on people, but I hope I preemptively addressed that here in saying that the pandemic also shed a light in other areas of our life that need change.

> mandatory starting in October

Just as the covid and flu season starts up.

I hadn’t gotten sick until about three weeks ago since the start of the pandemic. Office work is somewhat biohazardous.

Somewhat? Offices are veritable petri dishes, with bugs sourced from public transport and people's school aged children.

Everyone experienced the pandemic differently and your experience is just as valid as anyone else’s. I don’t have kids and walked to work, so my experience wasn’t very different working from home (which I still am). The difference it made on the fathers I work with was profound. They are able to drop off and pick up their kids from school because they’re close by now, they spend 0 time commuting vs over an hour before, and generally seem less stressed than when they were in the office. Productivity has soared as well. We’re never going back.

Economy needs workers though, downturn or not. Not going into the reality of ongoing pandemic (attrition to health is real) but in general the last word on remote mandates hasn’t been spoken at all if workers don’t give in readily. It’s an ongoing discussion that can settle to good learnings / outcomes for all parties involved. Fear is the mind-killer.

You said nothing wrong

What did we learn? That you're not more likely to be laid off if you're remote? I don't think there's enough data on that yet as there haven't been all that many layoffs since covid.

The article doesn't say, but it's a safe bet to assume that the kinds of CEO's they're interviewing are the CEO's of big fortune (at least) 1000 companies, all of which have satellite offices. If remote workers should be worried, the people who report to satellite offices and join every call by zoom anyway should be just as worried (and should have been just as worried during every downturn). How many of us, if we did return to the office, would actually have any physical face-to-face contact with our direct supervisors, or anybody else up the chain?

Maybe not for the software guys/gals but this is unfortunately solid advice for others. My experience outside the normal HN jobs/industry is that if you’re remote you’re considered second class.

This is a great filter for which companies to join or not. Not outcome driven? Not treating employees as adults? Pass.

I've definitely noticed a shift in the investment banking industry over the past two months.

Upper management is being much more assertive in their push to get everyone back in the office, away from the current 'hybrid 3-day a week but not really enforced' model to 'we need everyone back 5 days a week in all hands on deck mode to navigate the coming recession.'

Employees learned, yes. But I don't think big co's have bought into it enough and i'm afraid the "compromise" is going to eventually be a lot of jobs either moved overseas or just a race-to-the-bottom for salaries within the U.S. as employees are sourced from areas with lower cost of living.

If we convince employers that we're "more productive" at home, then whats stopping them from finding cheaper employees elsewhere?

Tax complexity, time zones, and languages mainly.

How is it FUD? No better way to built trust than in person. If your supervisor doesn't trust you why would they hold onto you when faced with a choice?

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