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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

So yeah, they're just going to force us all to RTO because pretty much every single company is going to collectively decide to bully everyone into doing it, until there's hardly any companies left doing it, and certainly not enough for the demand for it since the pandemic. Great, just great.

Might be almost time to start looking into freelancing again.

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No they’re not; some of us have become managers during all this and won’t stand for it. Not to mention we’ve hired quite a few out-of-state resources and simply can’t afford to lose them.

Some shitty companies will pursue this but the smart companies will stay the course and hire away their talent. It’s a competitive advantage and companies need to view it that way or suffer.

Also - this will now provide us with a very simple test, is this a shitty company that does not truly value its employees, or are they one of the good ones worthy of my attention.

My question about these policies is are they actually applying them to everyone in the org, or is there a political mess of exceptions and 'key people' who can muscle their way out of the requirement? It seems like a lot of the recent layoffs are intended to give an attitude check to those who think they are essential, but surely these businesses actually have essential teams and specific engineers that would harm the org if they left?

Yes. At GE (yes, the real GE Aviation that still exists) we just said "Yessa master" and then ignored the three day per week in-office "requirement." The managers (directors and lower C-levels) in the trenches had zero interest in enforcing it. Though, that place is a den of malicious compliance throughout.

Just nod, and then do what you want. No need to keep bringing it up.

I agree that some of these instances won't have teeth. I think for companies who already have aggressive attrition policies like Microsoft, Amazon, and perhaps Walmart they will though.

Long before covid I did the same thing, I just started working from home and got some flak for it, but it never entered into my performance equation and I remained employed there.

> Yes. At GE (yes, the real GE Aviation that still exists) we just said "Yessa master" and then ignored the three day per week in-office "requirement." The managers (directors and lower C-levels) in the trenches had zero interest in enforcing it. Though, that place is a den of malicious compliance throughout.

Sounds like Kodak in the 90s. The CEO would announce company wide job reductions and the department heads ignored it and kept hiring.

Apple is giving verbal notices for not complying 3 days RTO, I heard on blind. Here, HR is forcing the attrition: either come 3 days to office or quit.

Everyone’s situation is different, but I know people at a big tech company you’ve heard of who are infamous for being, well, kind of assholes, who when given a similar offer by HR have said no I’m not coming to the office and no I’m not quitting and that has worked for over a year so far.

Of course that’s all predicated on your manager wanting to keep you and at least somewhat go to bat for you. Otherwise I expect it’ll lead to dismissal rather rapidly.

I know some people at amazon, which also has a long-standing RTO policy, that it effectively doesn't apply to engineers, since they were too important to risk attrition.

I don't know why anyone would voluntarily quit though: force them to make a scene and fire you for WFH. Best case you call their bluff, worst case you get severance.

In a large company like Walmart, do the managers really have enough power here to sway outcomes? Without a union, managers seem powerless here unless enforcement falls to them.

Well they’re still going to, no matter how much you fight. WfH will be an exception rather than the default, that’s what they are trying.

they way I see it, having in-person workers is a competitive advantage for the company. those who figure out a way to keep their workers in office will be more competitive than those who don't. from the company perspective it definitely makes sense to push for in-person work as much as the workforce will tolerate.

There's a good deal of debate over if in-person or remote is more productive but there's zero debate that paying for physical offices is much more expensive than paying for a VPN connection.

Rents will find a level for this. It seems interesting that in NY, which overindexes for executives, the office market is not coming back and will have to reduce supply significantly. Is this rule being applied outside the c-suite?

I think there are massive practical issues with remote work. But I am not sure there weren't significant issues with the: paying $10m/year in rent, so your manager can look up and see if you are at the desk...and, presumably, working.

That’s only if being in the office gives you a competitive advantage. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that bears that out so far.

I think it is an advantage if you are building new, complex systems and need to move fast. In that case, you won't need to ask anyone to come in...they just will. Most places don't have that requirement but some managers drool over any chance to cargo cult.

Myself and two other devs are building everything from scratch for a new company involving US direct deposits. We come into the office one or two days per week to demo and meet with managers and operations people.

If I were just supporting a system I would never go in.

There are quite a few non-"shitty" companies mandating RTO for those not hired as remote workers. Classifying good companies as "shitty" because one doesn't like the original terms of employment agreed to by both parties is hyperbola. Sure, it's not your preference, but it does not make it a "shitty" company.

> Classifying good companies as "shitty" because one doesn't like their terms of employment is hyperbola.

I think most people care quite a lot about their "terms of employment": pay, working hours, work location, etc.

No doubt, but the companies being referred to are generally companies people are looking to be hired at, you know, the FAANG sort who are now bringing up the original terms as agreed upon.

Now, if the poster is referring to some contract shop, sure, their terms are usually lousy, but here the poster is referring to the FAANGs of the world who are now asking many employees to RTO on some frequency basis.

Which companies are you referring to?

I'd suggest, if you're looking, to take a job at a company that is remote first. Skip all these companies that are "allowing it" and go for the ones that make it a selling point. A company saying they are remote first with little office space should insulate you from these sorts of shenanigans.

This. I worked at companies that are "remote" and their solution is to have 254 Zoom meetings per day.

No, companies are going to stabilize on one or the other. Just the other day GitHub announced they were closing all office space.

Remote work isn't ending, what's ending is companies having ambiguous temporary remote work policies. They're either coming down hard for or against.

This is good. Pretty much everyone has a preference one way or the other. No one like it mixed.

Some of these companies have been "bullied" by the tax-receiving cities that they're based in. I hate commuting and getting interrupted by co-workers in the office as much as the next person but this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers.

With the change in interest rates (let's not forget Jeremy Powell wants to use unemployment to cool inflation [0]), layoffs, and return to office mandates it seems like employees are losing the war.

I really hope that companies that aren't saddled with real estate and rental costs of having an office can continue to offer remote work - after all they have fewer costs and can draw from a larger pool of employees.

Management be damned - many people don't need to drive (and waste gas) just to sit in the same place at the same time as some other people.

[0] https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...

While it's true that "this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers", it's not my personal cross to bear by enduring an obnoxious commute.

Only if they can all simultaneously execute the cooperation strategy of the Prisoner's Dilema. Meanwhe every corporation that defects gets to pick from the pool of remote workers with _reduced_ competition from the corporations choosing the "cooperate" strategy.

As a lifetime remote dev it does kind of suck. People have been let in on my secret and now jobs have reduced, it'll be a lot more competitive.

On the other hand remote allows you to work for other countries. So there are still options if your cost of living is low.

At a previous job, we seemed to have had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it came to remote workers logging in from outside of their home country. Then we had a member of the infosec team start logging in from a war zone and the policy suddenly because crystal clear that logins would only be accepted from the employee's home country unless permission was granted ahead of time and programmed into the VPN.

I've seen folks solve for this by VPNing into a family member's residential connection in an acceptable (to the business) jurisdiction before connecting to the corp VPN. Risk tolerance decision. Like having to VPN home so Netflix doesn't take your password sharing away. I make no judgement either way on the topic; I'm simply speaking in technical capability terms.

Edit: @Aeolun https://old.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/10zvbgf/ysk_... (from a quick google search vs an in thread explanation)

Certainly, doable and possibly detectable if one knew to look for it, but likely would work in 99% of cases. Does seem prone to breakage.

> Netflix doesn't take your password sharing away

That's a weird way to frame Netflix enforcing the ToS users like you agreed to.

The same tos they changed to say that? The same company who's ceo encouraged this at the peak of everyone signing up?

It's a little bit creepy that you used the word weird in a negative way here.

It's not even that shocking of a term. Pretty much every single gym these days uses facial recognition on their CCTV to prevent key sharing.

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That only really works if you can leave your office PC somewhere in their house?

Not necessarily, you create a VPN to go through the house first (leave a server for it there, configured for high uptime), VPN through there first and then tunnel the office/work VPN through that tunnel.

My contract says "anywhere with a decent internet connection" for location.

Even with these waves of RTO, surely there will be vastly more remote jobs in 2024 than there were 5 years prior.

I think the point is that if remote roles have 10xed in this time, the number who consider themselves remote-only have 20xed.

Exactly. I'd wager more than 20x - precovid remote work was very much a niche thing, now it's almost expected by a large percentage of devs.

This is going to drive salaries up in the hubs again.

Time will tell how well this remote work experiment works.

If it works well, it will grow and evolve, if not it will fade away.

I got my first remote job in 2011. Whatever is going on right now has very little to do with what works, and what doesn't.

I created my own in 2004

There were plenty of remote jobs before the pandemic. I'm sure that will continue.

Freelancing isn't exactly stable and reliable either.

It is generally illegally to freelance in California unless you're a journalist or an actor

I'd have to agree. If you're not more interested in working as a genuine team member than as a glorified anonymous contributor you should look into freelancing

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