That seems like a dumb thing to say about an experience so many of us have. My productivity, health and state of mind were all better when I worked from home. Why is Altman lying to me?
Are you a corporate entity based on VC money? If not then he's not talking about you.
edit: As all the layoffs even with record revenues show employees are merely a means to an end for employers.
You're thinking about it as an individual.
But is your company's productivity better? Is your team's productivity better? That's ultimately what will come down to.
It's fair to say that HN is overwhelmingly pro-remote work. This is because coding is uniquely "not bad" for remote work. And there are many coders on HN.
But pretty much every other department is worse off with 100% remote work, in my opinion.
Even software development hits a remote-only wall eventually because you don't create those relationships in person. Everyone is just a mercenary. Very little culture or care is created.
That simply mirrors corporate culture. For all the chest-beating to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of companies are not "families" or "bands of friends" - they're groups of people there to make money. When the company has no loyalty or compassion towards employees, employees will do the same to the company.
So for most neurotypical people simply being on at a job for some time is sufficient to form a shared local culture and camaraderie. But that does not happen remotely, not unless people go out of their way to build similar bonds explicitly; the natural process requires being physically close and communicating during routine activities, not just to exchange strictly necessary information.
You most definitely do share local culture and camaraderie with others working from home. I constantly spend my time on chats, calls, meetings and in pair programming sessions.
We definitely have private jokes, productivity tips and everything else that would go on in an office setting.
This whole argument just stinks of people in private offices wanting the plebs in a shared space so they can maintain status.
There's quantified evidence that shared office spaces suck for productivity. If Altman, Igor and the rest want to force people back into offices they should gather some hard counter-evidence. Right now it just sounds like excuses for micromanagement.
Why should companies get to benefit from a process, when they do nothing to foster it? Just because they could exploit it before?
You can certainly get these task shared bonds remotely, think of any guild/clan based video game.
As they should be. I like and am friends with my colleagues. But I am under no delusional that I would be let go immediately if the profit motive of my company didn't justify my being there.
The point is that companies with people who care and developed culture is expected to outperform companies where people just feel like they're mercenaries.
There is no question that companies with motivated employees who care about the success of the company and those he/she works with are more likely to outcompete companies that don't have same time.
Good companies mask the fact that yes, everyone is just a mercenary. It's easier to mask this fact when people work in person.
Who wants to play office team building games with some random office supplies? Nobody.
That's the first time I heard term "office supplies" used to call co-workers
"Office supplies," we might have created a new term for an "office NPC."
Culture and relationships can absolutely be built remotely, but it does require leadership to be deliberate. Another thing highlighted by WFH is just how bad leadership was/is.
The article mentions:
> "I think definitely one of the tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity,” he told attendees. "I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be full remote forever, particularly on startups."
He's talking multiple points here.
1) Everybody (!) go full (!!) remote forever (!!!). These are three extreme points; everybody (as opposed to nobody or the grey area 'some people'), full (as opposed to never or the grey area 'sometimes'), forever (as opposed to never or the grey area 'for some time').
2) Then he goes on about startups specifically.
3) That there would be no loss of creativity.
#1 is a very extreme standpoint (its a cute staw man :) which is easy to counter. Because, no, remote working didn't work for everybody. We can stop the discussion there already. So its meant to get the picture in your head of 'yeah, it didn't work for X or Y'.
Then, #3 seems to still refer to #2 and is specifically about startups. Loss of creativity is a general statement. If there's a loss of creativity for one person, two personae, or one team, and the rest is working happy and productive remotely then the statement holds up. Here's the kicker: where's the gains? Isn't it a huge sum of plus and minus?
Nowhere do these statements back up themselves with actual data and either way, it appears to be an argument against working fully remotely, for everyone, forever, in startups. Yawn.
Rather, I believe its a lack of trust towards employees. In the end, their productivity gets loosely qualified anyway, so its probably the QQ from some middle management or disgruntled over-performer who's trying to be relevant. You can say politics should stay out of work, well... this is politics on the work-floor.
Getting the control back, post COVID-19, I already knew was coming when COVID-19 started and remote work was implemented. I knew that when COVID-19 pandemic would end, some would want to go back to 'ye olde', regardless if it were better or not, regardless if it worked better or worse for the individual(s) below their rank. Because, bad managers are control freaks.
On top of that, you can start your work day on the same moment you'd start your commute, and end the workday on the moment you'd end your commute. And then you just slack a little bit more in between. You'll easily turn more efficient because slacking is a great way to enter the diffused mode of thinking of the brain (in reality, its actually working). Something like a walk in the park at lunch to get your head clear, getting inspired and ready for the next couple of hours? Working. So from my PoV, its actually free labor, but so can a commute be.
If it was based on research or data, they wouldn't hesitate to rub it on everyone's faces.
It's not. It's just feelings. The ruling class has abject fear of losing control over the peasantry. That the plebs have all of a sudden a benefit that was only available to the elites rubs them the wrong way.