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Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this discussion is missing the hybrid part of the policy. 2 days at home for flow state work and 3 at the office to collaborate doesn't seem crazy. Maybe it should be 2-3 instead of 3-2 for some people, but in my experience the biggest productivity disruptor is meetings. And you’re only getting two “no meetings” days a week anyway. And the biggest downside from working at home is the hit to socializing and collaboration. You’ll hear anecdotes for days from both sides. A hybrid policy addresses both perspectives.

Now if you just want to work for a fully remote company or in a remote role, why not take a job at a place where that’s the philosophy? And on the flip side, if companies want productive employees over the age of 28, and deliberately don’t want to be remote, maybe they should start providing offices instead of desk clusters…

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I did the force hybrid thing for a while (team showed up on the same days).

It was awful for productivity. One in-person day per week would have been OK, but the other time in the office was a waste. The only work that got done that day could have been done via a few scheduled 30 minute 1:1’s.

If management must force people into the same spot, I’d suggest considering a “Thursday we grab beers or go hiking, etc at noon” schedule.

It would be better for morale and productivity, and also cheaper than maintaining an office. They could even give everyone a free coworking account.

This is a great idea and an example of thinking outside the box to actually achieve a goal, rather than cargo-culting the corporate conventional wisdom that collaboration has to be in the office or can't be constrained to a small amount of actual work time, mixed with activities.

Yeah, for sure. I can't get anything done in the office anymore. At this point, we just go in once every couple of weeks, when we can all arrange a lunch, and it generally just turns into a: Do a bit of office maintenance, and socialize with coworkers day. I actually quite like it.

> Now if you just want to work for a fully remote company or in a remote role, why not take a job at a place where that’s the philosophy?

Because during COVID a lot of companies started saying that's their new philosophy and are reneging on it now that they feel they can, and a lot of us shuffled around during that time. People hired onto remote teams and are getting rug pulled now.

To my knowledge nobody said they were 100% remote, you are in a remote role, and are now reneging. If they said they’re remote then they’re still remote.

They did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23155647

> you are in a remote role, and are now reneging

It's completely unreasonable for a company to force you to move, if a company asks that of you start looking for a new job immediately. There are companies out there that respect your personal life and don't want to consume it.

Twitter reneged? We’re talking about Google here.

The post we're replying to said:

> Because during COVID a lot of companies started saying that's their new philosophy and are reneging on it now that they feel they can, and a lot of us shuffled around during that time. People hired onto remote teams and are getting rug pulled now.

Twitter is one of those companies. Any company that didn't say "you can work remote temporarily", but now wants to force RTO is also going back on their social (and potentially legal) contract with their employees.

I'm trying to clarify my understanding. Is it the case that Twitter has reneged on telling employees they can work fully remote? I have no disagreement with you that there are social and potentially legal problems with companies that have said that. I am just trying to understand if Twitter and more relevantly Google have done that.

Yes, Twitter promised "work from home forever" and Musk unceremoniously reversed that. Same with Slack: https://mashable.com/article/slack-remote-work-permanent-cor...

I'm sure there are other but those are the two I know off the top of my head that promised work from home "forever" then went back on their word.

Then if I were a Twitter employee I'd be pretty upset. In terms of Google and Amazon and Apple telling people to come back to the office, though, not sure there's the same grounds for outrage.

They should have never used “permanent” or “forever”. New leaders come in, old leaders go out. Realities change. Should every subsequent CEO be bound by some promise of a prior CEO? Seems unsustainable.

If there is value in interacting in the office, hybrid work that has people coming in on random days seems almost like the worst of both worlds. If the value is to get face time with your teammates, then the in office days need to be aligned.

The "solution" is for everyone on a team to come in on the same days.

Yes, but that doesn't seem to be what is happening in most places.

But it sounds like a management problem, if they cannot organize their team to get together on one day. Shouldn't that be easier than just forcing everyone to be in every day?

Which can only work if you have a team entirely located in the same place, working on the same project.

I don't like hybrid because what I say about ruining flow is still true on the days that you have to come in and even worse, you're forced into the real-estate market by the office vs living where you want and where you can afford.

That should be a discussion with your manager and HR department. Most places assist with relocation expenses. And nobody paid you to move away from the office in the first place.

Hey dcow, maybe they were hired for remote work and are now being forced into hybrid. And absolutely no company is going to help their employees pay for the cost of living in places like Vancouver, San Fran, London. So let's bring the argument back to reality, ok?

> And absolutely no company is going to help their employees pay for the cost of living in places like Vancouver, San Fran, London

Well this is definitely not true.

I WFH and would never work in the office again. If the place I was working demanded that I go into the office, I wouldn't talk to the HR department, I'd find a new remote job.

Good, that’s exactly what you should do!

> And you’re only getting two “no meetings” days a week anyway.

My experience working from home was that it didn't change the amount of meetings at all.

Right that was my (slightly ambiguously worded, my bad) point. WFH hasn't materially changed the amount of time I spend in meetings, which ultimately is the thing that pulls me out of flow states aside from typically distracting stuff that can happen in any environment.

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