I've talked to founders recently who have changed their minds about remote work

If there is new data about remote work that makes this a rational decision, so be it. Absent that, this is just as consistent with the hypothesis that management wants people in the office so they can be seen to do their job, regardless of the actual effect on work.

Agree 100% here, with the assumption that the system is healthy to start with. And it's safe to assume it to be true for startups, which is the focus of PG's tweet. (If it's not, that start-up is already dead or close to be)

For startups, a competitive advantage is to do things that don't scale while you can. This includes "O(n²)" non-scalable communication, since n is still very small. And that kind of communication obviously works better in-person.

Late stage companies where async communication and slow-to-move things is the norm (due to the switch to a scalable communication method) actually benefit from remote work if the in-person office was kind of unhealthy for some people. Unhealthiness can be from the unavoidable slowness of communication/bureaucracy in a 50k+ employees company, or it can be from a rotten local culture in the office closest to you.

For this type of companies, remote options makes sense, the same way that expanding to other regions made sense. At this stage your communication is by nature scaled up, slower, and was already spanned across multiple buildings in original campus, so why not remote?

Honestly, I feel that being able to access a global workforce and needing to create processes that can be followed asynchronously and distributed is a major plus for a startup, even an established company. My gut feeling is that companies that operate like this will be more efficient and scalable, but only time will tell if this is true.

Someone help me out here. Most incredibly smart people I know and even most of you here on HN, we basically grew up on discord, irc,etc... I hate to make myself look bad but if my IRL social skills and sociability is 3/10, remotely it is at least 7/10. Are there really a lot of high caliber people who somehow spent time to develop IRL social and communication skills?

My theory is that people who are now in their 40s or older can't figure out how to work remotely, especially as managers. There are people that talk to me in private message when I work remotely and then there are those that only engage with me in person, that's why I theorized that. They need to train people explicitly and show them how they unconsciously avoid engaging with others remotely.

Also, my coworkers that like to brown-nose the most and they are social butterflies that are very attentive to managers and respond socially to their every needs get the most recognition but really smart full-WFH guys that are getting so much quality work done basically don't exist in the eyes of management. It is a travesty, I specifically chose this field because your technical skills are rewarded, and that was my strength.

I am not an extremist, a balanced approach is what I advocate for. If you can't manage people remotely, you can't manage people. For regular employees, they should let people WFH based on performance and partially (bad performance=3days office, good=1day office). If that isn't viable then at least let it be at the discretion of managers instead of company wide.

I also theorize that founders are very social people and they especially typically can't figure out remote management.

The good things of in person working is comradery, problem solving speed, etc. But most large companies are not designed to work towards this in the first place.

In-person costs: Reducing your talent pool size, raising the cost of that talent, an increase in the politicization of workplace success, regional and cultural myopias from localized hiring (which can damage the output of everything), cost of workspace.

Some of those risks are existential so it’s not a simple “one way is better” equation.

I would try to build a remote-first business and work hard on the communication challenges before surrendering the natural advantages it affords. I think what you lose is often less than what you gain, especially in terms of culture.

"that's like your opinion dude"

The way of working need to change, the way people communicate, how they measure progress, etc.

That is my opinion. I do not believe in going back to commuting to offices like before, I do believe in changing the way we work.

FWIW, while this may be sufficient, it isn’t necessary: our company has been remote for years, and always has been, with hardware and software products and professional services offered. For critical projects and for at critical times we will have in-person meetings at a virtual office, but otherwise everything is remote.

We have no trouble on-boarding new people, working through challenging designs, or otherwise getting things done.

It starts from the top, of course: our owner fully supports and prefers remote work, as do the rest of us.

For software development, IMHO there is no need to be in an office whatsoever. Even the standard 'hybrid' approach makes little sense.

Now, it is useful to meet in person but then I think these occasions should be special days when the focus is to make the most of the face to face interactions instead of being "a day in the office". So no coding but discussions, brainstorming, lunch/dinner as a team, etc.

Would it help to see colleagues in person regularly? Maybe. It’d be mostly useful to those who need it.

for any startup with an office and other place based expenses, a placeless startup with lower expenses is coming to eat your lunch.

where we’re going we don’t need places.

stay hungry my friends.