Atlassian, Airbnb Boost Remote Work as Peers Order Office Return | Hacker News Reader

Atlassian, Airbnb Boost Remote Work as Peers Order Office Return

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59 pointsBrajeshwar15 comments

Anecdote: I work with multiple enterprise clients and the teams that are in-office are way more inept. They are always late to meetings, meetings run over, and everyone interrupts and just babbles on about nonsense wasting time and energy. Its so obviously unproductive its insane. Ill keep billing hours but in office is so dumb from my perspective.

Counter anecdote.

My India teams that were easily less effective than my US teams have now become more effective than the US teams though the actual devs haven’t changed meaningfully.

What’s different since the pandemic is the US teams are almost completely remote whereas the India teams voluntarily have been coming to the office 3 days/week.

This should be expected if: * the teams in India are all in the office on the same 3 days with a decent turnout, not just 3 random days of each individual's choosing and some that do and some that don't. * the US teams haven't done much to meaningfully go remote other than using Zoom more. When I say "meaningfully go remote" I mean investing in things like daily explicit social time, moving towards a more async, written way of communicating (to avoid endless meetings), thinking about how decisions are made instead of just defaulting to meetings, that sort of stuff.

If neither of those things are true (i.e. your teams in India don't come in on the same days or come in sporadically, and your US teams have put in lots of effort to go remote with deliberateness) then I can't explain things.

Where there is smoke, there is fire. In my observation, forced RTO in tech is just one symptom of larger inefficiencies and mismanagement.

The whole RTO trend in software seems to be just friction-causing busywork for middle managers. People working from where they’re most effective - that should not be “solved”. That is okay as it is. Sometimes doing nothing as a manager is better than doing damage that costs talent, reputation, institutional knowledge, and significant money long-term.

Considering all the harm forced RTO has caused in tech, it seems excessively naive to think it’s the only instance of damage these managers have done.

https://archive.is/FvSI9

Companies that doesn’t offer WFH will simply be less competitive in the jobs market. It’s that simple. I will personally never apply for a non-WFH job ever again. And I know I am not the only one.

Two companies whose businesses are largely tied to remote work...no surprises.

But Zoom just required employees to return to office at least part-time, so it's good to see some remote companies keep the remote work environment.

It's interesting, I worked for Atlassian 2016-2019 and they were firmly against remote work. I would have loved to keep working there (they were easily my best employer) but my priorities forced me to move away. Perhaps I'll consider going back now that they are remote friendly.

I know the Atlassian CTO as well as a number of their engineering leaders. They are fantastic people to with with and for, and are very people-focused.

The only reason I'm not at Atlassian is their interview process is unnecessarily long and I'm not looking to run away from my current role.

Your first sentence contradicts the second one

They're in the process of fixing how they interview so it doesn't suck. The fact that it's still bad doesn't say anything about the current leadership, it just means that changes like that take time.

I worked for Atlassian prior to 2017 and they were indeed very anti-remote work, I don’t see how any of what you said contradicts that.

I'm not sure why people are downvoting you - I agree with you completely. The entire executive team at Atlassian are great, people-focused leaders. I can only hope I can find another employer with such a strong leadership team.

Also, yes their interview process is difficult, unfortunately.

The current CTO and engineering leaders or the previous crop?

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