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Comment by bratao | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI (https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/openai-ceo-sam-altman-remote-...) is a example of a high performing company where remote work is an exception. That's why I say that there is no cake recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work is better than the other. Each company has its own culture and employees have to look for the culture that makes the most sense for them.

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"That's why I say that there is no cake recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work is better than the other."

You should really choose a different saying

The more common expression is "cookie cutter" implying that anyone can follow a simple process to achieve a good result. Cake is hard in general so even having the cake recipe is fairly useless for execution.

It's true though isn't it? But, I guess, there is also no souffle recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work is better than the other.

Wait 'till you taste my AI-generated ramen recipe that does guarantee it! (Spoiler: it contains bleach, and is fed only to those in the office.)

Remote work seems like a bigger liability for a company which is expecting future legal battles and anti-trust cases, especially since all communications will be entered into discovery. It's easier for VPs to discuss AI ethics in hallways and unrecorded meetings rooms.

Eh, unless there's current ligation forcing record retention, just having a really short retention period is an easy enough solution.

Didnt Sundar ask disappearing messages to be turned on on an internal communcation tool ?

I believe so but from what I recall, he still wanted syncing between phone/computer which required the messages be stored at some point, alebeit with an extremely small ttl (minutes? seconds?). This miniscule retention meant the record was created despite a low ttl and so when the record was removed, it became a violation of the court-ordered record retention. Again, this is all just from fuzzy memory but I think that's how it approximately went down.

You might be interested in https:// www. jwz.org /gruntle/ rbarip.html (I'm obfuscating the URL a bit because the website's owner does something rude if your browser sends an HN referer header)

https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html

HN turned off referrer globally, so that no longer happens.

HN uses rel="noreferrer" on all links so perhaps this is no longer an issue?

Let's see: https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html

I’m pretty sure everywhere I’ve ever worked has notified me that there is a legal hold on deleting my communications. And I’m just a simple programmer.

Presumably doing illegal things is the bigger liability for legal issues?

Yea, ya know... if your reason for avoiding remote work is because you're afraid a paper trail will expose your company breaking the law.... your company.... has some big problems lol.

Is there any large high performing company where remote work is the norm? OpenAI is the normal case here, not the exception.

GitLab is a famous example

can they even be considered "high performing"?

Feels like they were ahead around 2018 but just lost all that advantage to GitHub.

They are not high performing. They are a mediocre company, not a leader or an innovator and they pay shit wages (60k/pa).

If you think top 1% of companies is mediocre then yes. Any company that makes is to their size is way beyond mediocre.

GitLab? Top 1%? Of what?

Companies in the world. Very few make it to GitLab's size.

Yeah. I’m not some spoiled Silicon Valley tech bro. I don’t even live in the US. I’ve never been given a single RSU in my life. But I was genuinely shocked when I saw GitLab’s compensation.

The company that uses remote work to pay salaries less than what a store manager at Arby’s makes?

Agree. Their salary offers were awful the last time I looked.

They did IPO in 2021 - I wonder if the equity comp makes up for it?

Crowdstrike's engineering department was/is mostly Remote

Microsoft is turned remote during covid without mandatory RTO so far.

Disclaimer: I'm working remotely at Microsoft

Based on the output of certain parts of Microsoft, I don’t know if I would classify them as “high performing”

The problem is they have to use Microsoft Teams.

My workplace is split between Zoom and Teams. Almost department by department. A salesperson books a meeting with you? Teams. Someone in technology? Zoom. It’s just enough to lull me into a false sense of security, and BAM, Teams.

The rumor is once the new office buildings complete; they will also do a RTO

I am not sure my employer is high performing, but I work from home most of the time, and I don't think anyone has really noticed.

Meta is liberal with remote work for people with tenure in the company.

Dropbox and Booking are good examples. Depends on what you call large though.

Similar to Apple. Apple seems to understand whatever this sort of structure is really well, and have followed it for a long time. Facebook thought they were different but now they seem to need the same. Less openness externally, but a lot of collaboration internally. Google recognized this more quickly than Facebook, but less quickly than Apple.

This is silly when you go into work to remote into meetings with others sitting at their desk in the build across the street.

Facebook, Google, Apple have been laying off people. The return to office was about real estate, local power and getting employees to move or quit.

That's very much intentional, they often strongly want teams to be in the same room for a significant percent of the time, but vastly prefer internal remote to external remote.

There does seem to be a gain for the company, one that very often isn't necessary but all other things equal the company will try to capture. I see the argument that remote work should be mandated as part of labor rights in many more cases than it currently is. Until it is, companies like these will continue to favor on-site work.

I need to get out of the habit of calling it in-person work and instead call it on-site work in these cases.

Most on-site work has a significant telework component.

I should also call it telework when it's on site to avoid confusing it with true remote work. Or whatever the most clear terms are.

> That's why I say that there is no cake recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work is better than the other.

I'm not sure this is all that insightful. I don't think anyone is saying that if you force all your employees into the same physical space (or, you allow for remote work) you will instantly become infinitely successful.

There are lots of people online who claim remote work is an asbolutely superior model for any tech company.

That is a different claim.

Remote work can be the absolutely superior model for how/where people work for any tech company, but you still also fail for one of many other reasons companies can fail.

I would assume no one can work remote because of who they’re actually doing work for vs. it actually being necessary to collaborate.

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