Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

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Germany is irrelevant to the story at hand, but I find it extremely rich how since Covid many younger workers now feel entitled to a paycheck and full-time employment benefits even if they refuse to show up at work as requested or actually get any productive work done, whether in-person or remote.

Workers who have entered the workforce in the last few years, especially technology workers, seem to have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of.

I hate to break it to those of you in this camp, but life is hard. You have to go to work to make money and build a career for yourself. Your manager will probably ask you to come into the office at a location that is inconvenient for you and involves hours of weekly commuting time, and you'll have to decide whether you'll sacrifice your commute time for a paycheck and a chance at building your future career.

When we eventually get a recession (it will inevitably happen, sooner or later) these workers are going to have the rudest awakening ever when they discover that yes, you actually do have to work for money, and no, your manager is not required to pay you or keep you employed if you directly disobey an order like "please come into the office 3 days a week."

Man, these kids today, huh? Expecting to be able to use PERSONAL computers instead of punch cards. They're lucky they have computers at all. If their managers tell 'em to use slide rules, they should feel privileged, I tell you what. And can you believe that they're not wearing ties five days a week? What kind of wusses are employees today with these polo shirts? Next thing you know, they'll be expecting to own their own automobiles and to have electric lights, refrigeration and air conditioning!

Goddamn, can you BELIEVE that expectations change over time? What kind of bullshit is that?

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I won't bother to add the sarcasm tag for the humor impaired here, but if you don't believe that most remote workers are actually (checks notes) working, the problem is not with the remote workers. Bosses can demand whatever the hell they want, sure. But if it turns out that some bosses don't demand everybody come back to the office and those companies turn out to do just fine, well, that's that vaunted market at work, baby. Expectations really do change, and it is not reasonable to assume that every "knowledge" worker has to be in the office all or even most of the time these days.

> but if you don't believe that most remote workers are actually (checks notes) working

I never said that. I'm talking about a very specific smaller group of workers: those that started their careers between 2020 and 2023 and believe they are entitled to a full-time salary and employment whether they work or not. Reality check incoming...

Doesn't each new generation of the workforce have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of? Workplace expectations change every decade; just b/c this expectation of working remote is new doesn't mean that it's irrational.

Many tech organizations genuinely do not reap the benefits of working in-office like some other fields might.

If I were an automotive design engineer, being in-person in the company's design studio would make sense; if I'm developing a highly abstracted and distributed messaging system, what office resources would I utilizing?

From my experience, in-office interactions are not necessarily more productive than online interactions. In fact, when a team has a good grasp of the remote-working tools, we, more often than not, end up communicating more succinctly and effectively.

"Life is hard," sure, but no need to make it any harder than it needs to be.

Anyone who has done software engineering on a reasonably sized "2 pizza team" would have to acknowledge that it's easier to do software engineering if you're all co-located at the same physical location in the same timezone several days a week.

The fact that we _can_ get work done remotely doesn't mean it's the most effective way for software engineers (which make up most engineering teams these days) to work.

> life is hard. You have to go to work to make money

That's certainly one approach towards living life.

Another might be:

Don't accept it when your employer decides to start tracking your every move and work for a company that values outcomes more than they do asses-in-chairs. When the eventual recession comes, the odds that it'll disrupt you in any significant way will be greatly reduced because you haven't spent the last three years worried about how to present yourself as "productive", and instead have been focused on actually getting things done.

You can try that approach if you like. Good luck to you!

Another reason to expatriate. The entitlement to demand vassal-like fealty from employees can encroach to become anti-personal growth to the individual. A person is more than their job, and the notion that one’s needs are subservient to career promotion is a limiting belief.

If every person instead operated a bit more like a company, rather than a vassal, they’d be a little more assertive in their negotiating of boundaries.

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