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Comment by MSFT_Edging | Hacker News Reader

> it's the lack of people nearby which sets the temperature of their workday.

This is what bothers me, why should I lose an hour+ of MY day because some people like the feeling of others around them. I don't get that time back, I don't get the money for the wear and tear on my vehicle, all so someone feels warm and cozy, unrelated to the actual productivity of the work.

Employers love to treat employees as numbers, but when employees say "Hey I'm a number, look at my productivity, don't make me participate in these rituals", people act like its childish.

I don't owe anything to my employer, because they don't owe me anything except the legal compensation for the work.

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The argument is that your team’s quality of work, whether you like it or not, suffers without some amount of human interaction. You need to address that, not just parrot the personal preference to be a good little Jira closing productive remote cog and not interact with anybody at all. Not that I don't agree that companies should do a better job understanding individual productivity, but that’s not the argument.

For software, at least, whole 8-figure-equivalent software projects have been carried from ideation to delivery & maintenance, largely overseen by software developers, not managers, mostly over email and IRC (hey, look, human interaction!).

If professional managers with the power of economic incentives behind them can't match that with a remote team, holy fuck, they're terrible at their jobs, literally providing negative value.

Citing examples of successful remote projects doesn't address the argument. They're just examples. I can also say that entire multi-billion dollar companies have been built on the foundation of offices and in-person collaboration. So what?

There are clearly preferences for both styles. Choose the style you want and work at a place that can accommodate. No need to force everything to be one way or another. Why is that such a hard concept?

Right, but I was addressing the post I was responding to, not this stuff. All I needed to do for that was to demonstrate that building software products remotely with pretty damn good efficiency and effectiveness isn't actually all that hard, and I think the examples (what do you want, a law of physics?) are abundant enough to prove that pretty decisively.

In an office probably works fine too, sure, but I don't think remote needs to prove anything, in the software world. It's proven. It's very proven. Managers that can't do better than some developers self-organizing online, with the same or better tools and a budget, must be pretty bad at what they do. I'm not making the point that some of them evidently find that incredibly difficult and even impossible, they are, which seems to me like telling on themselves. Guess they're bad at their job, should let a developer do it. It's pretty clearly not rocket science or something that requires some kind of expert, since it keeps being done over and over by people who aren't professional managers. Seems to just require someone halfway competent.

Nobody has to prove anything, that's my entire point. Both stances are valid and it's a company's leadership's decision how to handle their employees and how to structure their operations.

So if a company says, "we prefer a hybrid work model", then shouting out "but look fully remote projects can work as is evidenced by all these successful ones" simply doesn't matter.

My comment (that you were responding to) was explaining that apparently there are leaders who have seen a difference in product quality, velocity, collaboration, team morale, what have you, between fully remote and pre-covid in-office work styles. Presumably they believe that bringing people together is best for their company/product/team. You simply can't argue with that, at least not generally, since it's a valid viewpoint.

Rhetorically the existence of anecdotes to the contrary does not invalidate an argument/position/viewpoint.

Where's the numbers to support that argument? The jira closer has tickets to point at

Rate of Jira tickets closed does not equate to "quality product". It (optimistically) means "lots of work done". The numbers you're looking for would come from user product feedback and bug reports, but it also comes subjectively from the product owner/leader's assessment of the product's performance. That's the nuance that leadership deals with every day and which we often overlook as good little Jira closing robots.

I just watched this "Why Companies NEED People Back In The Office" from How Money Works. They explain this clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrsRvozsUQ8

So this is all just your opinion stated as fact? Your total lack of structural critique and reliance on relativist takes makes me wonder what your point is? Is it “do what your employer wants you to do?”

This whole topic is a relative subjective thing. If leadership/management feels like their teams' or product's performance is not what they need under whatever model they use currently, then they are at liberty to adopt whatever other model they think will make them more successful. If they choose wrong then boo hoo they failed. That's not an opinion, that's just how things work. Add liberty to dictate your own work location and collaboration habits regardless of your employment contract to the constitution if you disagree (not saying I wouldn't support that lol).

There are valid anecdotes from people being more productive working remote. And there are valid anecdotes from people feeling like remote work has take a toll on their mental health and productivity and ability to collaboratively solve problems. And there are valid anecdotes from people who feel like a balanced hybrid model is exactly what they need. And there's even data that shows hybrid and remote work does improve productivity.

The only opinion I've state as fact is the observation that there does not seem to be one perfect solution for every person and situation and team out there. The only opinion I've truly state is that people should consider compromising on their work requirements because it's silly to rehash an unresolvable argument about which work style is the ultimate global best, ad nauseam.

If I were in charge of this topic at a large company, I do believe this is one of those "every scenario is a bit different" situations and I'd advise managers to work with their teams to make the right call. But I'm not so who cares.

So when are we starting our new political super pac to add freedom of working anywhere to the constitution?

> I don’t get the money for the wear and tear

Arguably you do, but there’s evidently a disagreement on the value.

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