No idea how large that group is. Maybe it's zero. Maybe this is exclusively moneypeople doing moneypeople stuff with their spreadsheets.
2 days to fix a gennuine bug or 4 day weekend?
For a 300k dev with a team working on tight deadlines that's meaningful.
In person still has the same problem but it gives a quantum of more accountability like helping identify those mooning with multiple remote jobs.
If a dev isn't performing well go through the PIP protocol and then fire them. If a dev IS performing well but you're afraid they might be working two jobs is it really a problem (and if so, why)? This is the sort of thing that'll shake itself out over time and feels like fear mongering more than anything. People screwed around in the office and took way too long to do things too, they just had to be sneakier.
The Office people think the WFH people are poisoning the company culture. It's like if you had a neighbor who dumped sewage into your shared pond: "I prefer not to dump sewage into the pond, they prefer to do so, so let's accommodate both groups and allow each to do what she wants."
It's important to make the case that WFH does not poison the company culture--that it can result in a more successful/effective/healthier organization. I think it requires a change in mindset and/or working patterns for certain manager types to see things this way.
I think it also threatens them, because we're challenging a norm, and change is scary. They like the office, and us wanting to WFH makes it seem like the office is bad, and they're bad for liking it. No one likes their cheese moved.
Also really puts a crimp on their dating / sexual harassment game and would force them to spend more time with the wife and the kids.
There's a greater need to schedule, document (generally more writing things down), and coordinate when working in a team with remote culture. (Either that, or you have a team with really strong social capital and everyone knows what needs to be done with little coordination overhead)
Now management type have more work on their hands to keep everything coordinated and that's why you have this showdown.
"Social capital is what gives companies momentum. And social capital is what makes companies robust. It means that time is everything because social capital compounds with time. So teams that work together longer get better because it takes time to build the trust you need for openness and candor. And it’s time that builds better value."
Brian Chesky of Airbnb also talks about this as "culture" [1]:
"Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. And if we have a company that is entrepreneurial in spirit, we will be able to take our next “(wo)man on the moon” leap. Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes."
[0] https://www.npr.org/2015/10/02/443412777/is-the-professional...
[1] https://medium.com/@bchesky/dont-fuck-up-the-culture-597cde9...
I wouldn't say that, it just requires better juniors.
You can't do as much hand holding remotely but remote mentoring is definitely possible. But it requires employees that have above average communication skills and an ability to debug and investigate themselves.
These abilities aren't cheap but pretty much required to pass a serious Engineering/CS program. The difference is just night and day.
> Things which were solvable in office by going to someones desk are now in need of coordinating some meetings
Or a well written email.
> Stupid things like drawing something on whiteboard is impossible.
It just works on my iPad.
WfH group wants to collaborate remotely, digitally. In-office group wants to collaborate locally, in person.
That is the difference.
WfH group takes this opportunity away from in-office group; like in-office group takes the opportunity away from WfH.
Can't have both. That's why the discussion is hard.
The same reason they could never accommodate the two groups of people who respectively loved and hated open offices - the people who love it only love it because everybody is forced to participate. If it doesn't include everybody, it's not what they're looking for.
There is a decent % of people that do close to nothing while working remote. It’s not black and white, there are tradeoffs and it varies based on the person imo.
It’s why companies with the leverage to push for it (Apple and Amazon, Elon Musk companies) do so - they believe it to be an advantage.
I honestly don't know if it's actually better or it just appears better. Sure, there are times when fast communication is important, but as we see with Twitter lately it's obvious that rapid fire decisions sometimes aren't the best and while things seem very active and dynamic maybe it'd be better if communication was more considered and thoughtful. Isn't that why that whole "this meeting could have been an email" meme exists?
I agree the companies believe it's an advantage, but I don't know that it is. I don't know that they know it is. Leadership definitely thinks so, and there's a ton of institutional momentum that still hasn't shifted after the last few years, but I don't that it's actually empirically better.
Though I wouldn’t bet on it.
The real question there is: Are the minor issues associated with working remotely so bad that it is better to
force everyone to risk their lives on the roads every day (including in snow and other bad weather which exacerbates road death rates 100% purely because of employer demands to come in anyway)
destroy the environment with all of that unnecessary exhaust,
give asthma to their neighbor's kids,
harm parent/child relationships due to work schedules being out of sync with school schedules and work/commute demands leaving little time for parents to properly interact with their kids,
pass flu and cvoid around to everyone,
cause unnecessary deaths among their parents and grandparents,
drive up housing costs in specific areas causing homelessness as well,
and otherwise add layers of stress and unhappiness to every person's daily existence?
Or might it be better to just solve the few issues with collaborating in a remote work setup like we already did for the office?
I don’t care about the other stuff, imo it’s not relevant (putting aside I don’t really agree with your characterization). That said, I also think some of the issues are not so minor (remote is a lot harder for junior people starting out in their career).
I'd love to see what makes you think think almost everything that matters to most people for most of their lives is irrelevant to the question of how people live and work on a daily basis. Please elaborate if you will.
Since you disagree with my characterization, I'd also be happy to consider what you think I have misattributed there.
Overall the point is simply that you are not working with a steady state system here.
Whether one mode of working confers a competitive advantage probably has more to do with how much effort has been put behind streamlining that process. If that is indeed the case, then you might find yourself saying this about any change to any process that doesn't just wipe the market and create a whole new competition environment.
There's no good reason to throw our hands up and say there's nothing we can do to make one or the other situation work better, especially when the benefits are great, numerous, and include increased productivity overall.
For example:
“Are the minor issues of working in the office so bad that you’d force everyone to isolate devoid of human contact during a period of increasing loneliness and depression?”
“When you’d hurt a fresh graduates career prospects further cementing people already established in their careers in positions of power”
“By having people spread out instead of together we increase the carbon costs of supporting all these areas inefficiently instead of all in one place and that’s bad for the environment!”
Etc. Etc.
I find the useful way to discuss is to narrow in on the core issue (is working from the office an advantage or not) vs. ancillary effects that we can debate unproductively forever depending on who can rhetorically make shit up that sounds better.
Ultimately it’s this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...
And ultimately if it is a decisive advantage to be in the office (not obvious to me, but I suspect it is in most cases) then the market will force it anyway.
"Over 700 people joined a pro-return-to-office group. Its description says employees need to "Think Big" about the return to office policy. (By comparison, the pro-working remotely channel has around 28,000 members.)"
So more people want to work remote.
Such a huge discrepancy would make me wonder which side the wheat is mostly sitting in.
Presumably the pro-office group is employees
On the other hand: would you go to the office if it looked like your home? No, it's not about the physical place. It's about the interaction with your team and colleagues.
paraphrased:
A: Why can't we just let them choose where they want to live? B: The issue is we want to live here and those that don't want to live here.
==============
In other words, individual needs don't matter. Management clearly wants people back for one reason or another. The question is only whether 'wage junkies' will stick to their guns. I don't think I am being cynical here.