Return-to-Office Mandates Aren't Worth the Talent Risks
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It doesn't matter what it is that makes the job worse: You either provide counterbalancing incentives to your best workers (see retention bonuses after an acquisition) or you are gambling
strongest does not need to be in the same physical location as the juniors to interact with then, and that has being the case for decades already, it only got easier over time..
I would not mind full RTO in a shared office, with possibility to isolate for 1 on 1 code reviews/pair programming.
Also I'm the definition of a mid-level dev, but i'm the only one pushing for more communication and shared time, organizing remote tea breaks, pair programming sessions, weekly code review and bimonthly 'formation' where we can show off skills or domain specific knowledge to others. I feel that now that I have enough seniority to propose that regularly, we are a better team, and better for juniors/interns, even if we are even less in the office than we used to be.
* Juniors need help in a structured, systematic way, which is not dependent on who is or is not in the office.
* If a team member (no matter if it's junior, new, or just anybody needing help with their ticket) can not receive help and has to fight with his task alone, you have a management problem, not WFH/RTO problem
* In my humble experience, collaboration online is much better than in open-plan offices where you either disturb your colleagues by loud talk or need to find some private room (good luck with that) that is usually smaller than a farm animal's cell and gets uncomfortable after 15 minutes.
* The whole discussion is moot because if you force RTO you will lose seniors, so who will do this whole mentorship?
Many global open source development projects are very, very, successful. There's no office there.
If anything, a fully remote set of developers should encourage a significant uplift in information transfer via design and documentation.
Walking across the office and asking 'the guru' how X works, means there's little incentive to share that knowledge, simplify the code, and document it.
And that's a problem that has existed in most companies forever.
"Juniors" should be self-starters, and the 'interaction' is often and frequent code reviews.
I work with people in 4 different continents, in Europe my team is spread around 4 different countries. We manage to interact, remotely.
I do not understand why people think being interactions require an office together, there are other ways to foster interactions, it's a culture. If the culture is bad remotely then it's also bad in office, just in different ways, the only thing a remote team loses is the ability of poking someone else's shoulder which is generally good, you don't want interruptions. You want people to have enough slack in their work that they can be called upon for pairing or helping with something.
If everyone is so busy remotely that they don't interact anymore then in-person you'd be having issues with frustration from senior devs being interrupt to help juniors. It's the same issue, just presenting itself to the surface in a different way...
I don’t have the space, time or incentive to set up a home office in the place I live. This unfortunately means all the stuff around me become distractions. I find it harder to sustain long work sessions at home.
I miss having quick chats with coworkers by their desk. Sometimes I hit an issue and all I need is a 30-second talk with the dev 2 aisles over. And it’s mutual: I find these quick chats great for helping folks out and keeping myself in the loop. Instant messaging is not an adequate substitute.
And lastly this is tied to my work and company policies but usually I can only access test hardware at the office, due to logistics or confidentiality.
This to say a thing: it's not viable stating "allow those who want the office or WFH individually decide", it's simply too costly for a company, that's why office spaces are often crowded, because being larger cost much more.
So, if a company decide to go remote it MUST go remote PERIOD, if a company decide to have offices it must use them, there is no point in Zoom-in from the office because some coworkers are at home or abroad.
Long story short it's about time to admit that the need of the office is essentially ended, and for certain activities where it's still a thing there is no hybrid option. Companies mandating RTOs prove only to pursue external interests maybe of some inside the company against the interest of the company itself.
That’s nonsense. My company pays 25x more for my salary than the office space that houses me. Increasing the cost, or decreasing the utilization there is not going to move the needle.
At least, not considering how much extra salary would be needed for me to accept working in an overcrowded office.
You don’t have to be pedantic about it to see that it’s fairly irrelevant in terms of cost.
- office (rent or property)
- furniture, including all safety equipment
- energy
- surveillance
It's just 1/25 of the salaries? It's very hard to believe... No balance sheet I have ever read is near that dimension.
Beside the fact of why the office anyway, because even if it's free why keeping up something useless in the modern world sound very strange to me. Why making absurdly big costs to keep up the city now that with globalisation (since '80s) and remote work the city have exhausted all it remaining reasons to exists it's really a mastery for me. The sole explanation I have is to support the large slice of population who refuse to evolve.
If you can resist checking emails after your commute I'm sure that with some self discipline you could also do it without the commute. You're basically admitting that there is no good reason or expectation for you to be working after hours anyway.
When I predominantly work at the office, I can kind of compartmentalize my working mindset to that place. When I leave, I'm done, finished, checked out. Laptop closed, in a bag (or even left at the office). It takes actual effort to return to that state.
When my office is just another room in the house, it's far easier to be stuck in that work mindset. The computer is all set up, it's just a quick password away to getting back exactly where you were when working. It's easy for me to think about a problem I was working on and easily slip back into it. Not so if I need to go grab my backpack, clear off a space for the work computer, hop back on, etc.
During COVID I was in a small apartment. My office was my living room. It felt like I was just always in the office, always working, never at home.
I can see how this can happen, but at the same time it seems like there's such an easy fix: just stop doing it.
But it may actually be a form of addiction, so maybe eaiser said than done. I could probably say the same thing about someone who wants to quit smoking but can't. People that smoke typically enjoy smoking, though, so they probably don't actually want to give it up, they only try to stop because they know it's bad for them. This may be the case here as well: maybe you have a hard time disconnecting from work because you actually want to work.
I'm WFH and I have absolutely zero problem flipping the switch at the end of the day, notifications off, done. I didn't sign up to work nights and weekends and it's not something I want to do, so I'm simply not going to do it (unless it's an emergency).
> it may actually be a form of addiction
For me it absolutely is. It is pretty much telling a drug addict "just say no." I get a lot of enjoyment out of many parts of my work. It gives me a lot of pleasure fixing some REST endpoint or optimizing some problem. Given the opportunity my mind will just keep chewing on the problem at all hours of the day when it is a problem I like. It is a dopamine rush to get that thing working. And since its work, there's actual deadlines and what not, real customers waiting, so even though I mentally know I shouldn't let those things affect me personally, emotionally it is harder for me to step away especially when I'm literally sitting in the same chair at the same desk with the same keyboard and mouse I'd use to solve those problems instead of tinker on my own projects that are far more nebulous.
In the end with my office at home set up primarily for work, personal projects take a back seat. With work at the company office, my work setup stays primarily there. My desk at home is free to be littered with my halfway done projects. Breadboards, soldering irons, all the various parts I'm toying with, etc. can take up the whole space. When I get home, that's my space, not their space.
> you actually want to work
Yes, I actually do enjoy what I do most days of the week. There's always the overhead and paperwork and what not that isn't the fun parts, but actually digging in to solve a problem is one of my favorite things to do whether that be at a datacenter or in the cloud or on a car or motorcycle or plumbing or an embedded device or a radio or whatever. Getting paid to be able to work on cool problems is practically gravy on top for me.
And FWIW, it also cuts the other way at times when I WFH. Sometimes my mind wanders and starts thinking about the personal projects at home. Let me go check on this thing, maybe I could just slip out and spend a few minutes trying to dial in the new irrigation controller, I probably need to check the chemical levels in the pool, that glue on the rocking chair repair is probably dry now let me move that along, I should really look into that leak on the wet bar drain, it'll only take a minute...suddenly it is an hour later.
If it was such an easy fix you wouldn’t be having this discussion about them going into the office I imagine.
For what it’s worth, I completely relate. If computer is sitting in the place I’ve just been working from the whole day then I’ll walk by and automatically start again.
Also, while I'm lucky enough to afford a whole room of my home as an office two little kids can still end up being quite loud and interruptive. It's nice having a dedicated space to have some quiet on my work schedule.
Plus, free gym for exercise, free tea/coffee, free AC/electricity, there's a free bike share if I drive in and want to ride through the nature preserve near the office or to the restaurants or other parks nearby, meetings in person when we're all right near each other seem easier, free car charging, etc. There's a lot of amenities in the office for me as well.
My commute is only like 2mi from home. It's a 15 minute bike ride. It's not like I'm spending a ton of time and money commuting. If there's something important for me to go to in regards of the kids it's not like I have to hop out for over an hour; the pediatrician is like 10min from the office, the library is closer than that, their school is across the street from the library, etc.
I get not everyone has great amenities, I understand some people have like half-hour commutes or worse. Everyone has their own math to do on if coming in is good or not. But it's not like having kids is instantly a remote work is better.
Whenever I do take the trip to the office, I spend on average 1.5 hours less time with my 4 year old. This is why I will always refuse to work in an office for as long as my services and talents are marketable with WFH arrangements.
However 3 of those days are to be spent in the office. There is a dress code. And you need to be passionate, they aren't to looking for a 9-5 mentality. Office parties and company outings aren't mandatory but if you intend to never visit them, you probably aren't a good fit for the company.
Hard pass.
For reasons beyond my comprehension they are number one on the "Best Workplaces Europe 2023" list in the 500+ employees category.
You know, the ones that believe that worker's rights and unions only benefit low-performers, and not alphas like themselves.
I spent 30 years with a lengthy city commute like many people. There is no way I am ever returning to the office for anything more than a day a month.
"Will my train turn up?" "Will my train be on time?" "Will I get home in time for my kids sports game?" "Will I be standing for an hour?" All mentally draining.
The quality of life improvement for employees, especially mentally, benefits employers as well.
I think a lot of people who "hated WFH" had to do it out of necessity during a global pandemic, in the middle of their living room or bedroom that they shared with family or roommates. Big difference.
This is how I'd do it: Three in-office days, same weekdays for everyone (e.g. Monday to Wednesday). The choice to have a 5-day or 4-day week.
An energetic, quietly humming work atmosphere, with incidental information sharing and a spirit of collaboration, with colleagues present and nearby, sounds best for me personally. Among other advantages, the presence of coworkers helps me focus.
Different strokes for different folks. Obviously, the prerequisite is that it's a team of nice people you like being around.
Sure, people who prefer to work from home would leave that company. That doesn't mean that this company will lack talent. People who do want to work like that will join it.
They had a cycle of HR making big sweeping proclamations, followed by leadership (a group I was part of) spending 2-3 months trying to corral the raging employee anthill it created, settling into a norm of no one really doing it, and then a few months later HR would decree RTO and start the cycle all over again.
It was hugely frustrating and disruptive to a workforce that, at the engineering level, really just wanted to do good work they could be satisfied with and live their lives outside of that.
The overwhelming sense that I had was just confusion. It was a company who’s entire overcomplicated and wildly over engineered business essentially ground down to running a very niche and specific service for our clients.
They spent _so much_ time focusing on RTO chaos and changing internal systems, reorgs, reworking processes, moving and consolidating branches; things that are NOT “run this service for our customers”.
I am always just baffled at the amount of attention this type of thing gets from companies. As a now-owner, my feeling is that you should care about exactly one thing: doing $YOURS_BUSINESS more so that customers give you money. Anything that distracts from that is something that deserves the minimum amount of attention you can give it to be dealt with before getting back to your core business of doing the thing you’re good at so people give you money.
RTO mandates (note: not working in office as I recognize some people’s preference for that, but the mandate) are so hugely distracting and bear such an enormous cost in talent, finances, productivity - it touches every area of the business in a negative way. I will never understand how some people can justify it to themselves, not because of some moral argument or anything but just because of the distraction and cost it causes.
But, it was the final push I needed to go do my own thing, and that’s a very happy new norm for me. So maybe I should be thanking them?
I was in a lunch with our CEO where he told us about all the issues he is trying to address related to generational shifts and succession. While trying to explain that we need to be attractive to generation Z and Millennials he insults them (with some in the room) with littany of stereotypes lifted straight from articles he read on the internet.
Dude is clueless, and he knows it and is just trying stuff to keep the board happy until he can cash out.
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"Factors that contribute to Lower Intent to Stay at Job: Average Employees: -8% Intent to stay"
https://emt.gartnerweb.com/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/imag...
Wat? That factor "Intent to stay" contributes to the intent to stay by -8%?
So for all groups, intent to stay is lowered with a RTO mandate. Some groups are more affected than others, or claim to be.
So the problem that you pointed out isn't optimization as a concept, it's dumb people.
It's a beancounting optimisers wet dream.
They were already friendly with remote work before, i for instance have worked fully remote for over 10 years already.
Before the pandemic they had space problem in their San Francisco office, if you were not in the office at least 3 times per week you were at risk of loosing your desk space.
During pandemic when everyone was forced to go full remote and performance was not impacted they just moved to a much smaller office space and kept everyone remote.
What really REALLY is behind managers/executives pushing for RTO.
My theory so far is that they believe that employees working from home take advantage of decreased supervision to slack. Now on HN you'll read "doesn't matter that I'm working fewer hours if I'm delivering work". But I think managers/executives fear they're not very good at assessing how much tasks are meant to take. If a task is mean to take 1 day and I take 3 days and I explain why it took me longer, some times it's really difficult to assess whether the explanation is true or I'm BSing. (Of course, they don't admit this. They use their own BS to justify RTO. Enhanced collaboration or whatever.)
Bottom line, managers/executives don't know how much output they can realistically expect, but they suspect it will be lower from home.
Many such businesses failed during COVID knockdowns due to lack of customers. Some are still struggling to become viable again with a low RTO percentage.
For some medium to large businesses, these struggling smaller businesses or business owners are their customers. So there is some self interest from many companies to go back to the way things were.
Arguably the failed or struggling businesses could be being replaced by other services, eg home food delivery, but I've not personally noticed anything like that happening.
The opposite is true as well. Many (likely more) small businesses have gone bankrupt because of people concentrating to other locations due to urbanization.
It already happened before and during covid (that's what the gig economy created/captured). That has its own problems, not the least of which is the overhead costs passed to consumers. Overall, the scale required of such businesses keeps small ones from flourishing in any large numbers compared to brick and mortar.
Irrelevant, the motivations of middle managers and executives is not the broader economy. It's their companies results and/or they are perceived by their bosses.
The person I was responding to asked "what drives RTO?". Everything you said might be true, but it doesn't drive RTO. Yes, of course if you own a restaurant you want more foot traffic. But that's irrelevant for an office worker having his boss pushing RTO.
Perhaps the restaurant was leasing the premises from a landlord. The landlord may still have a loan for the business premises. That loan could be at risk of going into arrears if no other person decides to try their luck running a restaurant in a location that doesn't have sufficient patronage.
Consider now that the office workers who have refused to RTO work for the bank that holds the loan for the business premises. There is a risk to the bank now that the premises is less valuable because it can't be leased and is less attractive for a future purchaser.
The point is that most businesses don't operate without having other businesses as suppliers or clients. When one business does badly it can affect other businesses in their network. A small number of isolated businesses failing doesn't cause knock on effects. However, if a larger number of smaller retailers, dependent on foot traffic close in the same locality it will have a ripple effect out to many other larger businesses.
Business owners and executives have an interest in trying to maintain a healthy business network. Some will believe that pushing for RTO should help other local businesses in their business network and thus will be beneficial for their company in the long term.
You're missing the point of this conversation.
My gut tells me that's mostly nonsense, considering how much I see delivery drivers driving around neighborhoods and picking up orders (when I'm picking up my takeout, for example).
The demand didn't go anywhere, it's just that the people are now getting delivery to their suburban home, rather than walking to the food place from the office during lunch.
A far bigger decrease in demand is due to some crazy price increases in outside-of-home dining options. A single mediocre burger will now easily run you $12, whereas pre-COVID you used to be able to get a whole meal for $10. Basically, if you feel "bad" for the small restaurants guy, your first place to look should be in the delivery app corporate grift, not blaming the WFH employees.
I would take this a step further:
My observation has been that many managers (at all levels) subscribe to a very feudal and classist belief that every employee (with the possible exception of those who actively brown-nose) is always looking for as many ways to screw the company as possible. If not being constantly monitored, they will slack off; if they claim to have a disability they need accommodations for, that's just a way of getting you to endorse their slacking.
Essentially, it's a mindset that views the manager-subordinate relationship as a fully adversarial one, at all times, no matter how good a performer any given subordinate is.
It may not impact highest performers that much but makes it worse for everyone.
Big players play the game, the rest just imitates.
If we were paid to commute to the office then our commute time would be part of the work day.
But I am paid for the work i do during work hours and if i have to commute that is expected to happen out of work hours.
So actually the Company is already saving money by having me remote, so now i am also expected to get paid less for doing the same work while also saving the company money?
Pay is compensation for work done.
Not having to commute does not affect the company at all, they still get the same amount of work done and it is still have the same value to then so i can assure you that the work i do did not became less valuable to the company just because i did not spend hours of my personal time moving to the office and back.
Pay should either stay the same or, ideally, it should go up because while they are saving money by me not going to the office, i on the other hand have extra costs because i have to get good internet, will use my electricity for doing the work.
Where i work not only pay did not get lowered when the team moved to fully remote, they actually pay us extra to cover costs of working from home. They also offer a one-time pay to cover the costs or assembling your home office so you can buy stuff you need like desk, chair, printer, etc when you change to remote or when you are hired as remote.
But in my opinion this mindset is the wrong one when you already have a job and is changing to remote.
If you already have a job that the company already evaluated the value of and agree on a fair pay.. Then moving to work remote does not change the value of your work to the company while changing the costs the company have..
Where i live they cannot legally lower an employee pay, but if they could and had done when i changed to work remotely i would surely have accepted, but i would also start looking for work elsewhere. But i know they have not done it in countries they could have and like i said, they pay us extra to cover internet and utilities.
Wanna expand on that? Why does that "make sense"?
Some distributed organizations strive to bring even international teams together from time to time, even if it's just once a year.
(I work for an international corporation and we have hybrid meetings once a year but it never works 100% in person because people work from different continents, it would make no sense.)
If collaboration is beneficial in some situation then in office meetings should happen with a situation that would benefit from this collaboration arise. If the need is not there then there is no point.
In my team we go to the office once a month mostly for social interaction, it is usually the day we are lest productive because we basically drink coffee and catch up and even then it is open if you have other personal needs to participate remotely or not at all, we had months were there wasn't anyone in the office and we just meet virtually. I have not gone into the office yet this year myself for a number of reasons.
I still collaborate constantly with my team mates, we have enough tools for remote collaboration that make being physically in the same space irrelevant, this also allow collaboration to extend the team members in other countries so i am not limited to the people that live close by.
For many there's just a preference/productivity boost for working in-person. That's fine, remote is not for everyone. However my hunch is that if decision-making management is mostly comprised of older millenials and gen X, they're just habitually used to working in-person and refuse to change.
Then you can go into the darker reasons:
Ego around owning an office space and then having to use it, "fairness" (read: superiority complex) against workers getting the same perks as managers, inability to work in a remote (read: digital first) culture, easy way to get rid of people without paying layoff severance.
Though, I do know for myself I am very productive at home. So, I personally will avoid working from some office. I prefer to manage my own time and also be flexible in how I divide time in my day. I also don't feel energized by working with many colleagues (as an introvert, it's quite the opposite for me, actually).
My conspiracy theory: executives are the kinds of people that could have a lot of money invested into commercial real estate. The value of which has seen a massive hit in the past few years (and is at risk of a 2008-style collapse), because fewer people traffic those properties, and thus, fewer businesses rent them. In order to counter those forces, they mandate that everyone in their company return to office in order to prop up the value of their portfolios.
I think it’s more basic. Many cities rely on business/commercial real estate taxes to generate funds. Many of these governments also give tax incentives if businesses are working in the city. If the companies aren’t doing this they lose out.
Most cities cannot make up the loss of funds through residential taxes so the pressure of RTO can help ease it.
Boston is a good example of this, residential property taxes are quite low but the city has a hard time making up the difference with the loss of commercial property taxes. So there was a big push to get companies to RTO.
It’ll probably take a good 20 years before city governments are able to adapt, hopefully that means more mixed use buildings in the city core like Chicago (commercial store first level, condos/apartments above it) rather than why you commonly see across US cities (entire buildings dedicated to business).
Good grief this has been a strange 4 years.
And then they wonder why the best talent starts leaving, and the jobs they do start hiring for get few decent applicants...
My back is against the wall at my current employer. As in, my employer had a return to the office mandate, and I had little realistic choice but to follow it. If I could quit and find another job, they know I would have already.
I should state too, at my company, this same problem can be mapped on to more people than just myself. But hey, at least I get a paycheck. Things could be worse.
I prefer to also focus on not doing soul destroying work, working with good collaborators, and earning enough to enjoy the rest of my waking hours. That narrows the employment pool down a lot.
If you're skilled enough and have options and a network, it can even be more prudent to sit out the employment market and contract for a while until a good role comes along.