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Comment by getmeinrn | Hacker News Reader

>Employees, having tasted the fruits of flexible work, felt averse to relinquishing these newfound freedoms.

Translation for sociopathic leaders: never let your workers taste something good. It only took a global pandemic that forced people home in order for us to experiment with something that a huge portion of the population sees as beneficial to their well-being. Where were the small scale experiments before the pandemic, and why did they never catch on?

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I think there were small scale experiments. Look at Gumroad, which not only is fully remote but only pays by the hour, so you aren’t actually obligated for the full 40hs/wk if you don’t want it. Look at Gitlab that was fully remote. They don’t catch on because large institutions that functioned on an office culture by definition are only led by people who thrive in said culture. Those people re highly unlikely to go with something that they wouldn’t thrive in (like wfh) unless forced to, and they actually have the political power to ensure it so.

People could say trials are exceptions that don't generalize. Now that everybody's tried it successfully at scale for long enough to eliminate short-term effects, the excuses are discredited.

I was working at home on and off for many years before the pandemic. It wasn't that unusual. Which is why so many companies could switch over to it fairly easily when the need arose.

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