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Comment by sottol | Hacker News Reader

WFH and WFO companies are pretty different, from the leadership down. Many existing companies (especially large) can't just adapt so they force RTO to accommodate their existing "style" instead of adapting.

I think we'll end up with two types of companies, WFH and WFO, and right now it looks like the WFH companies will have an easier time recruiting and hiring. So imo this would work especially well for small, fast-growing companies. We'll see whether they can keep up WFH as they grow but maybe there's a limit where they'll need to transition to working from the office.

If that's true, it might be a good time to start companies again and take on some of the incumbents. WFH is a pretty strong selling point to those disgruntled by RTO policies.

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When I’ve been at companies large enough to need to solve communication issues, I’ve seen two major styles:

1) Need something? Post in the relevant channel. Use @s if appropriate. If you’re in the wrong place, someone will let you know. Break off to private chats when it makes sense, but mostly not. Folks have a good idea what‘s going on because most exchanges halfway-relevant to what they’re working on or connected to take place in public.

2) Need something? Ask around until you find the right person to talk to, then communicate with them. If electronic, DM or email them, don’t contact in a public channel (there may not even be one that makes sense for the chat). Communication is a network of who-knows-who-to-talk-to. Messaging app is mostly oriented around ad-hoc group and individual chats rather than channel-focused (thanks, fucking MS Teams, for practically enforcing this style at the tool level). If you’re not around to overhear things in person, you won’t know wtf is going on.

IMO the latter is clearly just dysfunctional, but this dysfunction is far less painful in-person—it seems to work basically ok, mostly, except that everything takes a little longer than it should. However, all its problems are brought in the open with WFH, and for someone who hadn’t seen the other (better, no matter where everyone’s working) style, I can see how they might think their struggles with WFH are because of WFH.

> WFH and WFO companies are pretty different

I think this is exactly the issue. To rephrase: the biggest difference is management. There are different challenges of course, but the most significant is how to manage. Workers have an easier time shifting location. Furthermore, it's often more difficult to troubleshoot and repair bad management than bad workers, so it's not trivial to discover the source of the corporate problem when you flip your WFH/WFO setting.

I think it's also the case that management is less willing to accept that they are the problem, and that they need to change. And since they're the ones who call the shots, they force their employees back into a working arrangement that makes them more comfortable and more effective at management.

> We'll see whether they can keep up WFH as they grow

I don't think transitioning a medium or large company with a WFH culture into WFO is even possible. If companies grow that way, I'm sure they will stay that way.

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