Yes, so it's not about preferences, it's not about the pros and cons, it's about not forcing people for needless suffering. Forcing people who want or need (professionally or personally) to work with other people at home is absurd, and forcing people who provide better work at home (for jobs were it makes no difference to be in office) to commute and work in an open space just to reassure bosses is as absurd.
I call BS on all of these. Employees faking work - your hiring problem. Employees working multiple jobs - again your problem, keep them occupied with meaningful work, if not bring in legality to protect your IP or whatever. AFAIK no one working multiple jobs are revealing IPs.
In person collaboration - There may be some truth to this. High profile decisions are best taken in person, that being said during covid almost all decisions were done on Zoom not just for a week or so but for 2 years. Isn't that proof enough that even government level decisions can be done on Zoom ?
Design discussions are best done on Miro/Google docs than on the whiteboard. Multiple people can collaborate efficiently on Miro, especially with an iPad. Not only this, every voice is heard instead of just 2-3 folks standing at a whiteboard and driving discussions.
So many tools that make even pair programming or production debugging a breeze.
I can pretty much negate every argument that mandates in person office presence.
What I really vouch for is in person collaboration events once or twice a month where everyone comes together for a couple of days and hash out key issues and have a totally unstructured time for collaboration.
And of course, have an office for those who want to come in to collaborate. Not everyone has a spacious home, people like to hang out with co-workers during lunch etc. However make it mandatory that all group meetings will be done on zoom, in order to provide equal participation opportunity to remote workers. These hybrid meetings with a few people in a room and a few on zoom are a total disaster.
People fake work sitting in offices. If someone is going to fake work in the office, why not let them fake work from home and safe everyone a hassle. Or maybe incentivize real work over fake work.
I worked with someone in the office next to mine for a few years and he was running a side business the whole time. It was bizarre how brazen he was, but people are interesting and varied.
Remote work isn’t perfect, but it’s not like office work was perfect either. It’s like showing an example of a welfare cheat and saying “we can’t give welfare to help parents because people claim imaginary kids.”
I think they just don't want to admit the reason: That if they knew the worker was getting their job done in 20 hours, they'd simply raise their expectations to squeeze more out of the worker for the same pay.
When a service worker or retail clerk does multiple jobs, it's seen as hard-working and hustling, but when an office worker has multiple jobs it's somehow taboo.
Employment contracts are typically tied to number of hours (much like service and retail). If you dedicate the 20-40 agreed hours per week to the employer and don't tread on noncompetes or NDA, reasonable managers will have no issues with side-hustles.
At any moment in time, your attention can only be working for one employer. That's what you're paid for as an employee. Much like you typically can't wait tables for several restaurants simultaneously. If you want delivery-based contracts you're looking for a different kind of relationship.
I got at least 2 colleagues that were working multiple jobs from the office, of course it wasn't 4 hours straight, but committing fixes to their 2nd job/ mini-startup they started was extremely common.
Depending on the job, you won't be on all the time. I have about 2-3 days a week where I'm on and pretty hyper productive and 1-2 where I'm kind of coasting or spending more thinking/learning/reading time.
I do find, I prefer office culture to working remotely... it's much more productive and team cohesion is often much, much better. International work is much harder still to coordinate. Right now I'm working on an East coast team, living in AZ... I'm about to have to start getting up yet another hour earlier next week, and so not a morning person. That said, given the market shifts really remind me of around 2001, and I'm holding on where I am for as long as I can and generally like the people I work with.
Mandatory office presence cuts both ways, you're less likely to gain top talent and even then, you're going to pay above relative market rates for it if you do. I've seen companies try to pay relative to cost of living for developers in different locations, and to me that just doesn't work either. Splitting the difference between top locations and local relative cost of living seems to be the trend, and I'm frankly happy to see it.
There's no one-size-fits all and different companies will work with different models. You're not forced to work at any particular company and no company should be expected to be the right place for all profiles.
(Within that the employer of course does have responsibilities to accommodate employee differentiating needs, some of which is in scope of regulation and contracts)
This is just false. People can be stuck at a company for a variety of reasons.
Edit: Unless one finds themself forcefully bound and therefore literally stuck.
Obviously there are many situations, but I think many people can be selective about where they work.
Because recruiters can't tell the difference.
Most people know me from furry events or furry writer Telegram groups. :)
I think this highlights a distinction between "the career engineer" and "the expert engineer". The former treats their career as a profession (invests in progression) while the latter masters their craft.
Skill alone does not dictate trajectory; the career engineer intentionally charts their course forward.
I think that certain things being "normalized" industry wide has better outcomes, such as someone with a bad commute being able to speak up about working remotely could get rid of that, because remote work is considered commonplace now. Or maybe someone who has a busy home life could be able to spend more time in the office with reserved seating or get a coworking space funded.
Remote work wasn't always "normal" and many didn't even see it as viable if not for the pandemic. Some are mandating returns to the office and a part of that extends to the shaping of the public perception of remote work, along exaggerated statements like "remote workers are worse at collaboration and don't even have the discipline to get dressed properly". While I don't follow Joshua Fluke, I think he had a few videos about similar statements on his YouTube channel a year or two back - sometimes outright misrepresentations of remote work, made to fit a particular perspective.
But as long as people don't attempt to misrepresent what remote/in-office work is like, I think it's perfectly fine for organizations to structure themselves around whatever works for them. I just figured I'd mention the public perception aspect of it all, because sometimes stigma is harmful, e.g. how discussing one's compensation being "taboo" in some places can make one's perception of how much a certain kind of work is valued at inaccurate.
It’s like saying that Tesla “forces” people to work on electric cars. It’s what their business is!
You’re not being forced to commute if your job is in-office anymore than you’re forced to eat canned asparagus if it’s the only vegetable in your cupboard. You can choose to not eat it or you can go to the store and buy something else.
It doesn’t matter if you work better at home if your company is in office. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a job where being in office makes no difference. You either go to the office or look for a new job.
Because I definitely don’t:
> You either go to the office or look for a new job.
In case it’s not clear from that, I agree with you. There’s parts of every job that suck. You just have to choose whether the benefits outweighs those sucky parts.