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Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

In broad strokes, it's just old vs new, and an age thing. I'll pick '40' as the mid-point:

Old = over 40s (myself included) who are senior, their careers have been in offices and commuting, and still believe that 'managing people' means real-life first person interaction, and are completely invested in offices, and the cost of paying for them, rather than downsizing.

Young = under 40s - have grown up with the internet, github, working/studying remotely and so on.

I've worked in companies where the CEO and senior management are all 50 something, and in a couple of companies where they're all approaching 40. Can you guess which company used PCs and which one used Macbooks?

Going back further, I can remember working on Sun boxes, because management was reluctant to use that 'new fangled NT3.51 or even NT4.0'.

The point being, as the workforce demographic changes, so will the opinions and approaches. And the cycle will repeat.

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I'm 37 and a factor that I haven't seen much discussed is that in-office is a vastly higher burden for my generation. Commutes are longer, more families have two working parents (and need to, to pay the bills).

In-office doesn't mean heading out the door at 8:30 and coming home at 5:30 but something more like leaving at 7:00am, dropping off kids at before-school daycare ($$$), driving back to the train station to make it in by 9 and then coming home at 6 after your 1-hour commute to the closest affordable suburb. An 11-hour day, and you are paying out the nose for childcare if you can even get it, and you'll spend all your PTO on kids doctor appointments and parent-teacher conferences and the like.

Totally agree. I was that age "a few years" ago, and I'm not playing working-hours-one-up-manship, but I was leaving the house at 4.45am, and getting home 7.30-8pm (London).

That was probably the low point in my, and others, working life that coincides with the age for raising a young family. It sucks.

This almost exactly described my life as well (also 37, lived in a major metro). Not to mention the (surreptitiously unpaid) evening calls we'd have with other TZs after spending that 11-hour day, because take-home laptops.

I think we really screwed up. We're using WFH to hide child care while saying it's more efficient. We should have just demanded better work hours but here we are.

WFH for me gives me more flexibility in the childcare options. It doesn't eliminate my need to have my family needs met. I can't just watch my toddler and not work.

However, I can be more flexible and drop my toddler off at daycare after my daily stand-up since he mostly is fine watching shows during that. Then I pick him up right before his nap time. This scenario is awesome, but albeit just temporary until my family resumes our previous arrangements that was interrupted by a surgery.

My responsibility hasn't changed and I'll fill in randomly throughout the week as needed but, now I just have extra flexibility that I would never have in an office. Even comparing it to a small city, living in the suburbs easily meant a 15-30 minute commute and wouldn't allow me to have the opportunities I have now.

No, I won't return to the office and I'm not sure anyone will actually convince me to do so. I'm mentoring interns and juniors developers without any concerns remotely.

In my case, no. WFH because I prefer it. I manage a team of 7. In our team there are people all across UK. Childcare would be easy for me but commute, oh no!

There's talk about less than 40 and more years old. I'm over 40 and prefer remote. In our space it's younger folks that prefer hanging out in the office.

> still believe that 'managing people' means real-life first person interaction, and are completely invested in offices

You hit the nail on the head. Senior managers who are unwilling to learn to do their jobs slightly differently are a big part of the problem. Imagine forcing an entire work-force to commute so you can physically stop by someone's desk to interrupt them vs sending a message or scheduling a meeting. Senior managers want productive staff, but instead of listening to what they need to be productive, they set up roadblocks to satisfy their own lazy vanity.

They say they want a productive staff but actions speak louder than words.

Besides the old/young divide, I think there's the geek/suit, or maker/manager divide.

As a geek, most of my time is spent working alone, even in ill-defined projects that require a lot of coordination and communication. Working from 'home' (more from wherever I want) is better. Also, although I agree that we lose something if we communicate remotely, I don't terribly care. When I communicate, information is more important than emotions. And they want me to work in an open floor office, ugh.

Suits spent most of their time in meetings. They also care much more about the emotions and human touch. They've spent years optimizing for firm handshakes, nice hair, good smiles and that weird clicking noise :).

Basically, suits want the office, geeks don't. Productivity doesn't have much to do with it :)

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Another example: I've noticed older folks (45-50+) repeatedly say "stop sending emails/texts/Slacks, pick up the phone and call them". Meanwhile, everyone under that age (and to be fair, a decent number even in that age group) considers an unexpected phone call to be rude and disruptive.

I am 50+. I call people often and encourage people to call me without the typical hours long build up per chat "Hi", "Hi", "How are you?", "Good", "I have a question", "OK", "Can I call you?", "Yes", "Now?", Yes" and so on. I think remote work loses a lot of agility if you communicate only through chat.

That feels like more of a problem with the communication than the medium of it? Or rather to say there is a mismatch between the communication method and the way it is being used.

On async channels it is recommended to get to the point quickly. Sure send pleasantries, but no need to wait until they are answered. You can immediately also get to your point. Instead of sending "hello" and then waiting you would be sending "Hello. I hope you are having a good day. It seems that the turbo encabulator is complaining a vapour lock in the secondary log file. Have you seen that before?"

The https://nohello.net/en/ site describes this communication style better.

Seems like you (and/or your interlocutors) are using chat like it was a phone call and concluding a phone call is better to have phone calls.

I am a strong believer in "nohello" https://nohello.net/en/

If you use chat like it's a conversation then you'll have a bad time.

If you use it like it's business communication like short-form email it's better.

It's bizarre that the same people who will send an email that says "Hey, send me this information asap" will start a text chat with "hey how's it going"

People who say hello and then wait for a reply will wait a long, long time for a reply from me.

I dislike phone calls, but handle them in two ways:

If a chat conversation isn't getting a point across after a couple of back and forths (five minutes is too long,) then it's time for a phone call. Discussions in chat are fine. Flat out lack of understanding is best fixed when they can hear and interrupt for clarification.

If I do need to call someone, I simply message them and ask if they're available for a call. There's no need for preamble.

People starting chats with "Hi".....5 minute wait......"You there?" is an entirely separate problem not related to what we're discussing here.

You can call but I might be taking a dump or something. If you chat, I'll answer within a couple of minutes. Seems more efficient to me.

That’s some boomer slack usage. If anyone sends a message with “hi” they get a stern bollocking by me immediately. Our company handbook specifically forbids doing this.

Can you say "Hi, I need XYZ"? Or are pleasantries forbidden?

That's usually not an issue. It's the empty "Hi." and then indefinite silence that's an issue.

You wouldn't send a letter with just the salutation, you'd include the message! Why treat a Slack message like it's a phone call instead of like a (short, rapidly delivered) letter?

Agreed, just wanted clarification!

The boomers actually get to the point quickly. The young guys are the ones that send ten messages before getting to the point.

This. All most of 20-30 that I interact with are. Hi, how are you doing today? And then pause. Boomers just go straight to the point.

I'm also huge proponent of https://nohello.net/en/ in the workplace and elsewhere.

Yesterday I had to tell a couple of people in our extended team meeting: "guys, stop arguing via email over several days with 10 more people in copy, pick up the phone and clarify the problem in 10 minutes". This is not a sign that I am over 40 (I am), but I know a bit better what are the most efficient ways to communicate in different circumstances.

The people in that argument were located on 2 different continents 7 hours apart, that would be a non-issue if they were in on the same floor in the same building. This is not an argument for working in the office, just to adjust to the environment.

That is a bit different though. That's not calling someone out of the blue. It's setting up an impromptu call after chat/email isn't doing the job, which I have done many times.

The thing is, I'm over 40, and I love working from home - and I'm not alone. However I feel that we are very spoiled by having had the opportunity to form our relationships and networks during the in-office era, and that this feels very unfair to the up-and-coming junior generation.

Maybe you are right and they are just fine having not experienced the in-office environment.

I'm over 40, but only spent about a year of my career in an office. I haven't seen an office since 2001. I don't feel I missed much in the subsequent years. I still stay in touch with people I worked with remotely. I never spoke to anyone in said office again. Your stated opportunity seems rather romanticized from my perspective. Relationships can form anywhere.

You don't have to go too far back in time to when work from home was also the norm (when everyone stayed at home on the farm). The office age was the aberration.

I'm 38, remote, and can't imagine working in-office ever again. Our small-ish team (~25) works very effectively remotely.

But I suspect you're right. I learned a huge number of skills being in high velocity office environments, shadowing/observing others, etc. Starting out remote must be much harder.

I thought that older people with families and bigger houses prefer WFH, because it is more convenient and it makes more time for the family. while younger single people with smaller apartments prefer the office, because it’s less cramped and lonely.

I'm of a strong opinion not to form big friendships at work. I now started making friends outside of work at 37.

At work I'm looking out for myself.

Forming professional friendships is looking out for yourself. It helps you get you new jobs -- ones that you won't have access to otherwise -- or employees, if you are hiring.

I'm not sure it's that simple. I've been effectively remote for a long time and have zero interest in going into an office for the most part. (Though I'd do it more if it were easy, I'm a 2 hour commute to the only office it makes any sense for me to go into.)

Anecdotally, I hear it's more younger employees who like going into an office for the social interaction.

That's the same thing I thought: it was the younger people who yearned for the office. Junior employees tended to do worse with WFH, especially those who were onboarding, whereas more senior folks were more comfortable working without much supervision. Younger people also don't tend to have larger homes, with dedicated, quiet office space. Younger employees pinned more of their social life on workmates than older employees who might already have established families and community ties.

Anecdotally, I know that on my team, the younger teammates were the most eager about returning to the office. I'm nearly 50 and wouldn't go back in if you held a gun to my head.

At least currently there's probably a bell curve going on in terms of what age groups want to work in office vs remote. I've also seen younger employees want to be in the office, they enjoy the social side of it, and early in your career its easier to learn and progress if you're colocated and able to ask questions of people easily. The old-school managers are also attached to being in offices, at least partly just because that's how they learned to work so it's easier for them then adapting. You've then got people in their late 30s and early 40s who are all in on remote work, a lot of us have kids, or we moved out of the urban centres, have a network of friends outside of work, so really aren't that bothered about being in the office.

What's going to be interesting is seeing what happens as the current generation of senior management age out and retire. Do companies start to lean more towards remote work? And if so what happens about the younger workers coming into industry at that point, presumably they're still going to prefer being colocated for the same reasons, and that will need balancing with the older folk's preferences.

My observations agree with your anecdote, but in my experience it was the youngest employees who go into the office for social interaction. Meaning, fresh grads to ~26 year olds. They openly admitted they didn’t want to sit in their 600 sqft apartments all day and that they didn’t have anyone to talk to otherwise.

This sounds more like a way deeper loneliness and community problem than a workplace problem.

The model needs four buckets:

20-30: Needs mentorship, can live closer to the office

30-40: Has young kids, moved to the burbs

40+ AND Management: Developed management approach pre-pandemic, pre-Slack

40+ but IC: Could go either way

This is still HUGELY simplified, and please do not take offense if you are e.g. 30-40 without wanting kids. But "young kids" is just a huge difference in terms of the morning schedule and flexibility needs, especially as most families near urban areas have both parents working.

>Old = over 40s (myself included) who are senior, their careers have been in offices and commuting, and still believe that 'managing people' means real-life first person interaction, and are completely invested in offices, and the cost of paying for them, rather than downsizing.

Absent the Covid years, I'd probably agree more. A lot of managers, execs, and other senior people may not have liked commuting but it was just part of the job. But they're people too and many realized they could manage without going into an office all of the time. People do come in, especially for things like customer visits, but it's mostly a sometimes thing.

It varies from country to country, culture to culture. Here in Norway work from home was so normal that during COVID there really wasn't any qualitative change, just a quantitative one. Anyone in a salaried position is being paid for the work they do not where they do it. In the winter my boss would occasionally rent a cabin in the mountains and work there while I, mostly, went in to the office because it was quieter there than at home (three children).

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