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Comment by dalyons | Hacker News Reader

i really wish we could see some of the data that has made him change his mind so drastically.

Ancedotally, someone close to me who works at Meta has cited several outrageous examples of WLB'ers doing almost no work. Perhaps a few bad apples spoiled the bunch.

It's just as possible to do no work while sitting in an office all day, we've all seen that

That's frustrating though. Just put those folk on notice, fire them if they dont improve, or fire their managers if they cant fix the problem. baby, bathwater, etc.

They are very aggressively doing just what you describe, too. It's not an either-or type of scenario.

ok but that just re-asks the same question - if you remove the people-doing-nothing factor (by firing them) then what is the motivation for RTO?

I get the feeling that remote employees do less work in general, except for the few who really make an effort to stay connected and on top of stuff despite WFH. I've been guilty of this at times, and when I got back into gear, I noticed how slowly everyone else responded to stuff. It's not just a few people going AWOL and ruining it for everyone.

Is people immediately responding to you a measure of the work they do? Does it seem productive they are interrupting whatever they were working on and losing their train of thought to answer your questions?

I know my team has had the talk that Teams is an async communication method, and that we'll get back to each-other when we have spare brain cycles. The message is instant, but there's no expectation the response will be.

No, but I expect someone who has committed to a joint project to pay attention to code or design reviews and respond within a week. Which started happening less often.

If people are going AWOL for more than a week you need to start firing.

They're not AWOL, they just started being less responsive, missing more things, and generally talking less. Pretty often I'll have no idea what most of my teammates are doing. I know they're working on something is all.

Seems like that's a failure to set and enforce expectations.

Just as a counterpoint of anecdata, I saw more or less the opposite behaviour when I was at Dropbox during the pandemic -- I heard from my coworkers more than I ever did working in-office, and was better-connected to the work they were doing. I personally felt more productive, and most of my team seemed pretty productive.

The downside is that a junior teammate was probably less effective than they could have been because of a lack of in-person mentoring -- their learning was slower than I would have expected in-office, but, then, that could be this particular person rather than remote work.

I don't doubt your experience, to be clear -- I just mean to say that I think the situation is more complex than "people are less productive" or "people are more productive."

My first SWE jobs were remote too, as well as one after 2020, and it worked great. I should have mentioned that earlier. Was just thinking about my main big-tech job where things were/are lackluster.

This is why I want to see the data though, I’m not that interested in “feelings” or anecdotes at this stage of the industry-wide discussion :)

There isn't really a measure of SWE productivity. Even granular things like individual promo are more based on what others say than on any stat (unless it's Twitter and they use LoC).

I feel like you overestimate how little people do in office.

I did tons more work in 2021 when I was WFH the whole year. I built a shed and did several other large scale home improvement projects, mostly on my parents' properties. I liked to say that I was the highest paid day laborer in town. It helped keep me from going insane from being trapped at my desk at home for over a year. In early 2022 I found an in office job and it's been much better.

The power dynamic does not require evidence, hence it being the root cause requiring a fix.

i know that's the generic thing to say, and its not untrue. But in this specific case i am curious what went into this decision, as I still have some small respect for the builder focused culture he created at FB for at least the first ~half of its life.

> builder focused culture he created at FB for at least the first ~half of its life

I loved that phase as well. Their culture changed drastically post 2016 elections and they grew too fast and too broad during Covid.

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