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Comment by cratermoon | Hacker News Reader

Soon: CEOs at Disney and Starbucks struggle with understaffing, inability to attract workers

I know, right? I thought COVID proved definitively that remote work is not just possible but equal to in-office work. I really want to understand the counterarguments, but all I see is oblique assertions like "true creativity requires body language." I'm keeping an open mind, and I acknowledge that in-person chat features much higher comm bandwidth than video chat, but I'd like to see a well-reasoned explanation of what exactly a business loses by allowing its employees the freedom to manage their time and workstation setup.

I've been working from home since March of 2020. I mostly like it, but I would be willing to go in to an office for team meetings now and then. After almost three years, I have definitely come to see and desire some in-person interactions. But for CEOs to just demand that people be in the office for some arbitrary number of days per week on a vague assertion stinks. It also assumes that everyone's personality and working style matches the CEOs idea of employee productivity.

To be fair, the entire idea of 40 hours/week is arbitrary, despite being common and widely accepted. There are jobs (especially office jobs) which are more demanding, and others less so. More importantly, however, is that some people can complete all the tasks assigned in much less than 40 hours, while others struggle to do so. If I have a manual task that took the previous person an hour a day, every day (and yes, even in 2023 there are lots of tasks like these in HR, payroll and accounting depts especially) and automate it with a macro or script so it completes in seconds, should I get that hour back or should I be forced to find some other work to fill the hour? If so, what would be the motivation to write the script and increase efficiency?

> should I get that hour back or should I be forced to find some other work to fill the hour?

The benefits of the automation is reaped by the business (and ultimately, the shareholders), not you (as an employee).

Therefore, if after having done the automation, and there does not exist any other tasks that you could perform, you will get fired. Hence, it makes some sense to look for some other work to fill up your hour so as to remain employed.

> If so, what would be the motivation to write the script and increase efficiency?

i guess there isn't really any. Unless you're employed specifically to write such an automation, doing it might not get you any rewards.

However, in reality, because there's almost infinite things to automate, a smart business would continue to ask you to automate more and more of the work in the business, and would pay you big bucks to do so.

I think what most people that want some limited office time would really like would be the equivalent of an off-site somewhere with their team. Like 2-4 times per year the team meets up in some city, hacks together for a few days, does fun team building stuff, etc. It could probably be done for cheaper than the equivalent office space for that team.

Work-at-home or work-in-office, everybody would like an all-expenses paid trip to some retreat and spend days doing "fun team building stuff" rather than slogging another normal week at the office (or at home).

I think a better test would be, as a tradeoff for work-from-home, would you subject to one week a quarter locked in a hotel (room, restaurant, conference room, that's it) where you do nothing for 10 hours a day except in-person collaboration on the company's most difficult and challenging problems. Whiteboarding, programming sprints, strategy sessions, etc.

> I thought COVID proved definitively that remote work is not just possible but equal to in-office work.

That's an extremely strong claim. How do you think COVID proved it "definitively"?

Because remote work was the only work in 2020 and 2021, yet a large majority of businesses continued to function mostly well. Some even exceeded their average results.

Doubtful that people are going to start mass abandoning their jobs in a layoff wave.

That depends on the unemployment rate of white collar workers.

In the current market with tons of layoffs? not soon.

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