Hacker News Reader

I strongly disagree that companies mandating RTO are doing so to improve their bottom line - it seems like it's largely done out of a sense of tradition, to placate management's anxieties, or to justify sunk costs in office real estate. Remote work has worked fantastically for my company, and my observation in working as both a manager and an IC since moving to remote is that both I and other employees are in general both more productive and happier. My company has set the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-person decision to be on the department level, and in general it seems like the departments mandating fully in-person have elderly, out-of-touch management who rarely come into the office themselves.

Employees are justified in complaining about mandatory RTO - it presents a significant impediment to work-life balance and demands extra time, money, and energy from employees while giving almost nothing of value in return and providing questionable value to the company.

> All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement

> Employees should feel like the relationship between them and their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the case, pursue external opportunities.

I'm not following between the two. If the relation is supposed to be mutually beneficial, shouldn't the employee feel entitled to complain and express their grievances?

If your point is they should leave instead of complaining, look at it from the other side: should companies just fire with severance employee that don't feel happy returning to office ?

If that whining and moaning doesn't represent enough of an issue for the companies to act on it, why would you push individual employees you take radical action instead ?

I understand what you're saying about entitlement. It can be tiresome to hear the same topics brought up repeatedly. With the constant negativity that surrounds it, it gets exhausting to listen to.

At the same time, most of those complaints are coming from generally reasonable people. If a company promised no RTO and then went back on it, that'd be frustrating for them. If a company can't state why they want to go RTO, then I'd be frustrated with needing to change my life for the reason of "because I said so". If the company has grown a significant amount and been able to manage the growth and whatnot while working remotely, then it also brings up the question of "why is there a RTO mandate?" I think more people are frustrated with the lack of reasoning and justification beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving.

> beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving

I'm confused what the alternative is that you would like. I'm sure they can link a bunch of studies that show its more productive to work in office, and I'm guessing those that want to stay remote will show a bunch of other studies that say its not; which continues ad nauseam.

I went down this rabbit hole on another RTO thread. Bottom line, it’s all a matter of feeling. Management wanting RTO feels it’s more productive for the org. WFH advocates wants remote work because they feel that they are more productive at home. Reality, both sides cannot really provide a lot of hard evidence to support their position, but the only position that really matters is the company’s position. If they want to RTO, it’s up to the employees to sell the company on WFH…and then be able to deliver measurable results exceeding expectations.

If a company claims they're data driven, then they should use data to make choices.

In this case, they'd need to look at the cost. "will my employees being in office perform so much better despite having to drive through an hour of traffic?" I'm not sure how you'd go about this one.

"Will increasing risk of becoming sick be worth the extra productivity increase, assuming there is one?" If there's a 10% increase in getting sick, and the median number of sick days per year is 5, then will 0.5 more days of being sick for every employee be a justifiable cost?

RTO also has all the costs associated with office space, employees to manage those facilities as well. I always hear that building costs are miniscule in the grand scheme of the business, but I never hear the number as a percent of overall costs.

At the end of the day, some attempt to justify the decision beyond "collaboration" is what I personally want. I don't think putting a bunch of introverts in a room together is going to suddenly increase socializing.

> We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high demand for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what you are looking for.

And we should play our cards well while we have some leverage.

One reason people complain is because, all else being equal, an RTO call is effectively a pay cut.

If the context was Amazon saying "we're cutting all SDE salaries 10%, because its better for the business", would you consider complaining to be entitlement?

The opposite is true. Employees are the ones ultimately doing the work and know what value they add. As they see it, they'd have to make outsized sacrifices to return to the office. Businesses have not provided any compelling reason to come back to the office, the actual workers doing the work know how little value it adds to their own stand-alone job. Raising the subject of maintaining remote work rather than pursuing opportunities elsewhere is collaboration, ironically the argument they put forward for RTO. It's a small concession from the company for the benefit of increased productivity, if that's not the reason then the company should explain it and sure as hell, it will need to be a compelling one.

Employees often have a pretty inflated understanding of how much value they truly provide an organization. Your only slightly more valuable than your replacement sitting in the wings, and only then it’s for a relatively short period of time.

Employees need to be providing the compelling reason to the company about why WFH is better.

If you want to make the case that workers have no power, and they’re always a replaceable cog, then certainly the only course of action is for them to pursue obtaining power under the protection of the federal government and the NLRB.

Wxactly where did I say that they had no power? I was speaking about an individuals perception of their value being greater than it actually is, especially if the point of contention is not a point of contention for other waiting candidates that can do their job.

However, to your point—even a union has convince an employer why WFH is in the employer’s best interest to get the benefit.

Despite what you think, a happy worker is a productive worker. Also people tend to look for meaning and purpose in their day to day job. Naturally they're going to be upset, when they're asked to do something that does not help them do the job, inconveniences their lives outside work and contradictorily goes against a fundamental principle of working, being productive.

The problem tech workers have in the the whole WFH vs RTO debate is that the worker is not arguing from a position of strength. There is a long history behind productive in office work for tech and a short history behind remote work for tech. Whatever productivity gains the worker perceives WFH gives them are either not measurable, not large enough to be noticed by the employer, or not worth other considerations and challenges the employer has to contend with.

For example, if some positions within the organization cannot be performed remotely—as an employer, do I still single out one class of worker to provide a perceived benefit for what may or may not amount to a minor productivity perception gain generally only noticed by the employee? Sure that group is marginally happier, but given time and distance between the WFH and RTO, will the employees just return to the new normal? Usually. However, if I give in and allow WFH do I create a morale problem among other workers who do not have access to that benefit just to kowtow to a group of employees that may (or more likely may not) leave but could be replaced quite easily by equivalent people who do not make that demand?

You make a good point, in a way it's a race to the bottom. The same could be said of any worker right that is not legally enshrined.