Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>What do people think that this push to get knowledge workers working back in the office mostly revolves around?

Well, the ugly topic that most workers really don't want to discuss is that management at Google/Meta/Apple/etc thought productivity severely decreased from remote work. It was interesting listening to the guys at the All-In Podcast saying too many remote employees were goofing off and/or secretly working for multiple employers (and bragging about it on TikTok).

COVID was the prime opportunity for workers to convince companies that zero productivity would be lost (or even higher productivity would be gained) by working from home ... but management didn't see that actually happen. This is the root cause of management forcing the employees back to the office at least 3 days a week.

Yes, you hear constant anecdotes from workers complaining, "how am I more productive at office with distractions?!?" , or "How am I more productive if I have to waste an hour commuting in traffic each way?!?" , and so on.

So how to reconcile the paradox of "less distracted at home" and "less time commuting" but management still sees less work getting done? The paradox is solved once you assume (some) employees used the extra "free time" saved from commuting to do things other than work.

> secretly working for multiple employers

I'm one of those who considers that if someone is performing their job duties at multiple companies, there's no problem, and people who aren't performing their job duties (at any job) should be fired. It's hard to think this is a problem that employees should be worried about; instead it's one that employers should deal with.

To your broader points it would be interesting to see evidence that productivity declined. So far I've only seen vague finger-pointing at something that a subset of workers do, which is being presented as a reason for why all workers' habits must change.

But yes, this description that "the paradox is solved" is rather apt; it helps a ton to consider this perspective even if one ultimately disagrees.

> I'm one of those who considers that if someone is performing their job duties at multiple companies, there's no problem, and people who aren't performing their job duties (at any job) should be fired. It's hard to think this is a problem that employees should be worried about; instead it's one that employers should deal with.

There seems to be a philosophical difference for a lot of people. I'm of the opinion I'm salary, so you're paying me to get the work done regardless of hours. Lots of people seem to think that being salary means you're getting paid to sit in a seat for 40+ hours.

Something I heard from a large company in Atlanta. Productivity didn't drop off a ton, but innovation did. People are effectively in silos at home and they couldn't figure out a way to recreate the collaborative effect that was seen when you have a bunch of loosely affiliated engineering teams working in close proximity with each other.

I'm not saying you can't get close to similar levels of collaboration remotely, but it's hard and it requires thought.

The biggest thing I was always pushing for was use of public channels in slack. If you silo all your questions in direct chats, you never get that "I overheard you talking about x" effect. Some companies just don't get it.

For Amazon, they have company offices all over the world. For many projects, there's a good chance you may need to work with people from several other offices, and may need to take early morning meetings to overlap with people from Dublin, as well as late night meetings to overlap with people from Sydney or Tokyo, and everything in between.

So, those meetings are going to be on Chime. Or Slack Huddles. And either way, once you're doing that because some of the people are remote (in another office), you might as well do that because people are remote (working from home, wherever home might be).

Indeed, I think this is the crux of the matter. A long time ago Marissa Mayer found out that her remotes were mostly goofing off and not logging into corporate while still claiming a paycheck.

Now, yes, there are people who are more productive working from home; however, it looks like the majority of people need structure to make them productive and keep them however blurrily focused at least somewhat focused on the job at hand. This is even more the case the people in the administrative and non tech areas.

But then you get pushback from both those who are unproductive without structure as well as those who are as or more productive working from home. Management is trying to reconcile these things and find a working balance.

Merissa "No one can work from home but I'm going to build a nursery for my kid, 'See? Working in an office is great!'" Mayer?

Yeah, forgive me if I don't believe her. In general I think that about 90% of companies stats/KPIs/etc to be complete bullshit.

Proving that was impossible during Covid because, well, you couldn't control for Covid and the lockdowns!

Normal remote work outside of Covid is nothing like remote work with kids screaming around the house (while homeschooling them), dealing with depression from lockdowns and working in an environment that was not yet ready for remote work. One coworker was coding from the cleaning supply storage closet at his family's restaurant because of a particular family situation!

So sure, CEOs have a ton of data about WFH, most of which is invalid due to improper controls.

Yes, I like to say that I was extremely productive while working at home. I actually completed a large home renovation project by working on it full time while also tending to my regular work as needed - meaning I answered IMs as they came up and attended scheduled calls and did little else. There were other issues with that job though. I'm actually not a fan of work from home as it feels incredibly stifling to be essentially homebound for the majority of the day; something I would not have thought myself saying a few years ago.

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