Most bosses regret how they mandated workers return to the office
fortune.com
fortune.com
> Without that data, nearly a quarter of them admit to making decisions based on “gut instinct
> I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.
To me its rather obvious most management (and sales) do not actually understand what work means, other than sitting in meetings the whole day talking to people. That's their job. Management wants everybody in the office to facilitate them, they don't care about what their employees need to do their jobs, let alone the personal well-being of workers.
We don't need data, just talk to employees as if they were normal adult human beings and try to understand their perspectives. Management is there to help employees do the work that actually brings value, not the other way around. In management-speak: management is waste. Companies who understand this will get all the talent, the rest will need to compensate with very high salaries to attract good developers.
RTO is needed to keep up a slice of businesses useless for the society, but profitable for some, let's start from high rise buildings rentals to services for those working there, living around.
Only marginally is a middle managers and lower management issue, whose job is actually in the series of "not really useful jobs".
Perhaps they should return to the Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark
This is self-contradictory. If facilitation is needed for "work that actually brings value", then the work required to facilitate also has value.
I worked for a company with maybe ~800 people in the IT division (IT in this context means software, DBA, security, help desk, actual IT, everything). Our reporting structure over the entire department, for each group, was something like Manager -> Sr. Manager -> Director -> Sr. Director -> VP -> Sr. VP -> Executive VP -> CIO -> COO -> CEO. We had about a dozen programmers, all one team. 12-14 people reporting to one manager. One manager reporting to one Sr. Manager. Two Sr. Managers reporting to one Director. I am not one of these "managers are worthless" people, I was a manager before and it was a lot of work. But you could have nuked half the management in the entire IT department, and probably 90% of the SVPs and EVPs, and after the dust settled work would have continued at exactly the same pace if not faster.
I think that one of the things that make it hard, is not always knowing exactly what overhead can and what can't be eliminated (and how). This might be why its more helpful to just call it all waste (lean) to have a lens of optimization on both types.
This is merely a semantic play though, let me quote something:
"Muda means wastefulness, uselessness and futility, which is contradicting value-addition. Value-added work is a process that adds value to the product or service that the customer is willing to pay for. There are two types of Muda, Type 1 and Type 2. Muda Type 1 includes non-value-added activities in the processes that are necessary for the end customer. For example, inspection and safety testing does not directly add value to the final product; however, they are necessary activities to ensure a safe product for customers. Muda Type 2 includes non-value added activities in the processes, but these activities are unnecessary for the customer. As a result, Muda Type 2 should be eliminated." - https://theleanway.net/muda-mura-muri
Muda is usually translated as Waste. Perhaps 'overhead' would be more accurate for Type 1 Muda. However this distinction between value-adding and 'required but not value-adding' is central to the way lean approaches optimization. Actually I don't really know why it isn't just translated as overhead, the term waste is bit offensive I think for some. Maybe that is the goal though.
Everyone was sold the dream of their own little tenth acre in the exurbs. The end result was a life spent in the car.
- too dense, yes you read it correctly
- too zoned
Too dense in dense cities means too costly to evolve, that's most an EU problem, but is a USA problem as well in certain areas. Too zoned means to much space between work and living places.
The modern ideal density IMVHO is homes, not apartments, mixed with small (one to three stories max) buildings, shops and so on to allow short-commute (also in bike/feet range) for findings small services (grocery, perhaps a nearby dentist, a gym and so on) and just for some also for work, plus the slice of remote workers (who are perceptually a significant slice of population in developed countries at least) etc.
That's the "dense enough, but not too much" density for a modern economy of scale. We need to mix works and homes, at least for most productive activities, leaving districts just for things we can't do otherwise like certain manufacturing industries, automotive and so on.
As an apartment-dwelling European, maybe GP's point about density is based on the fact that having neighbors sucks big time. Sure, you can build apartment buildings that are well insulated, but most stock in my neck of the woods isn't built that way. You can hear your neighbor taking a piss at night. Of course, this doesn't help people making the median salary in the city actually afford those places.
So, given my environment, if I want peace and quiet without having to try out living in multiple apartments until I can find the rare one built with care, it's much easier to just go live in a detached house in the suburbs.
Also, despite dense public transport and "walkability", the traffic is still ridiculous so pollution is very high, too.
> And that’s exactly why folks in the US are so dead set on keeping WFH, their cities are just not designed to allow everyone to reach any arbitrary point in 30 minutes or less.
I only have a sample size of one, but the Paris region is clearly not great for that, either. And from what I hear, other major French cities aren't any better. And we do have public transit that seems somewhat better than the average US metro (from what I read here on HN, I've never lived in the US). But there are still miles and miles of traffic jams in the mornings and evenings. Trains are still filled to the brim with commuters.
That is true, I hear the flushing when it's silent, but I don't notice it when I am watching some video, nor does it wake me up. Occasionally the neighbors have a party and I wouldn't be able to sleep, but after 22:00 it's quiet (there are laws about it).
By far the worst source of noise is traffic. I hear vehicles on a nearby street. But even that is better than my parents' detached house with bedroom windows right in the street.
When some tech change there is space to change. Let's say there is room for a water-water geothermal heat pump instead of a previous methane combustion based heating, there is room for p.v., domestic charging for cars and so on. Something that can't be done in a dense city.
I think that all the talk about modifying city design etc is just unrealistic in the US. You'd need to change regulations, change economic centralization, and most importantly kill the dream of SFH.
In many European cities you can see single family homes next to apartment buildings, offices and shopping malls and it works just fine.
I'm glad that we don't have the same zoning nonsense as in the USA.
Let's say you have a 7 story building, it's typically composed by a certain number of different families (20-30?) with different ideas, agendas etc. Let's say the building start to be aged, time to improve it. It's possible? Hint: no in the mean, just because of it's original design. Let's say remote work became common, but apartments are not large enough to spare a "home office room" per adult inside. What you can do? Buy a room from an old age neighbor who do not need it? A building done in the age where no on-line retail exists, but now we all use it and so we need large external storage to get amazon packages, how can you made it in an already designed building? What about p.v.? Oh, sure the building have a roof, maybe even good for p.v. but it's not enough for ALL apartment self-consumption, so it's just a system to sell electricity not an interesting things technically and in most countries also economically and so on. The point is simple: if you own the land and a light building on it, single owner, a single family inside, it's "easy" change it to adapt to modern needs, a multi-family building is a nightmare.
As a results in certain point in time an apartment is cheaper to buy and run than a home, BUT at another point in time became a nightmare economically and practically. A home can change, so you can keep it up potentially forever.
Since we all need services well, we can't live well in large areas without stores, and that's why US suburbs fails. But in some areas of the EU there are home and small buildings intermixed and they works very well for their residents and in general. I see no reasons why they can't scale. Personally I've left big dense cities for a mounting place in the Alps, a good enough connection (2Gbps/860Mbps FTTH), good roads, enough stores around, a living economical tissue and WFH. It can't scale for let's say automotive industry, but it scale for many kind of other activities.
I had a summer internship in the suburbs of boston and drove out from the city every day in the early 2010s. Practically door to door traffic, stressful unprotected left turns, masshole drivers abound, the works.
After that summer I swore off car commuting. I ended up with the same commute after graduating but by public transit. Since transit to the suburbs is awful, it was a 3 seat ride - train to the commuter rail station, commuter rail to the suburbs, then bus to the workplace, about 1-1.5 hr each way.
After quitting that job for a job in the city (with about 20-30 min commute by train each day) i swore off the suburbs altogether. Life is too short for that nonsense.
I’ve only had one really bad one - about 90 minutes way into the city but not every day.
But when I was going into an office-which I haven’t regularly for a long time a 30 to 45 minute was pretty normal once I bought a house that wasn’t basically next door to the office.
There basically weren’t tech jobs in Boston proper in my memory though that’s changed quite a bit.
If you’re in even a medium COL area, housing has sky rocketed. Even the old boomer middle managers worth their salt know this.
I quit a job in biotech earlier this year bc I would always be paid less for my skills and cannot afford it anymore. Great boss, great director, they know. They can’t just magically pay me more when tons of people (H1B’s included) will do my job for the same or cheaper…it would make them bad at their job.
- Rich, young, childless - Less affluent but still young and childless and able/willing to live with roommates
Once you fall out of those two groups, the benefits of living in an American city do a huge nosedive, and so it's no surprise that people move to the suburbs or more rural areas.
I lived in Japan for several years, and I may be overly harsh in judgements due to the fact that Japanese cities are possibly in contention for the best, most functional, livable cities in the world. But in my opinion American urban development has been an unmitigated disaster that will take decades to heal, if it ever does.
It baffles me how some employers, in their attempts to economize on office rental costs, place more than 20 employees in a single space. This results in constant distractions that disrupt focus and hinder flow, consequently lowering the productivity of these employees.
For employees that have a dedicated home-office, returning to office means constant distractions, coming in early or staying late to be able to actually get some work done etc.
And then, the commute. Wasting my time because my employer is stubborn and wants me in the office.
"But the collaboration!" What, you mean half the office bugging me because they don't want to read a manpage?
Why?
> working in tech limits your understanding of things around you, essentially making you captive in a job with no life
What?
I'm not saying we can't make things better - we can and should - but the only thing "atrocious" about working in tech is listening to coddled techbros whose first job was an $80k/yr internship talk about how hard it is to be in tech.
I started well before internships and other worker type of practices creeped into the tech world. Modern tech work is the old day factory work.
> > by the time you retire you will be dementia ridden
> Why?
Retirement age is usually set as the age where most people stop being useful to society as active workers. You'll see the argument in abundance in debates on raising the retirement age.
You personally might avoid dementia, and you might actually enjoy your retirement time a lot if you had a fortunate life, but by definition most people won't be in the same boat.
Now, our jobs (IT engineers) is often cited to have higher rate of depression and mental disorders [0], and we sure have our fair share of toxic working culture at large scale [1] and smaller scale (startups).
A lot of advice is exchanged openly about desk setup, posture and avoiding carpal tunnel. Which is fine. But my best advice to newcomers would be to look hard for non shitty companies that won't let them burn out in 3 years.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9664232/
[1] https://www.dice.com/career-advice/depression-tech-pros-comm...
This makes no sense as staying cognitively active has been shown to delay dementia: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-physical-or-cognitiv...
Key excerpt:
> These studies are important because they show that, despite an equivalent amount of Alzheimer's pathology (measured at autopsy in the first study and by blood in the second), individuals who were more cognitively and physically active were able to delay their clinical Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and cognitive decline. This means that even if you are likely by family history — or bad luck — to develop Alzheimer's disease at some point in your life, you can delay the onset of the disease by staying cognitively and physically active, and you can start at any age.
As for physical activity, that's a lifestyle choice and has nothing to do with working in tech. At least for me, working in tech is keeping me cognitively active. It's hard for me to even imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be true in tech.
That's not entirely true. A lot of jobs have some degree of physical activity, be it walking around or lifting things. In tech, employers would be happy to strap me to a chair physically if they could, instead they keep me so busy I might as well be strapped to a chair.
There's the other extreme with roles that require regular heavy lifting and bending over that leads to long term health problems like back issues, say home electricians crawling around or construction workers.
There's a lot of in-between with jobs that have a healthy amount of lifting and moving around. Tech isn't one of those. That means you have to make up for it by exercising on your own time, not during time you're getting paid. Things like extra cardio you might not need otherwise.
The benefit is that since you're so sedentary, you get almost full control over the choice and amount of exercise you want. The one downside is its all on your own time. For me I don't mind it, other than the cardio I have to do I wish I didn't.
Get out while you can, indeed.
hmm, why would they want us to think that...
fortune is just a PR for shitty execs.
Comment by zamadatix 9 hours ago - Recent similar discussion :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37093854
The work culture in the west is a panopticon.
Large discussion on earlier post days back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37093854
Oh STOP. This.Is.Literally.YOUR.JOB. And you FAILED at it.