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Comment by wrs | Hacker News Reader

> This is no different from pre-COVID.

There was no hybrid or remote work pre-COVID? On what planet was that?

I respect the desire to have an in-office company. He’s right, there’s nothing wrong with that. I have much less respect for hiring hundreds of people and then suddenly changing the rules, or for implying remote workers won’t “go the full mile” (whatever that is).

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Pre-Covid, a quarter of my team was phoning in via zoom everyday. There was always someone that was sick, kid was sick, waiting for a plumber, didn’t want to deal with commute etc. There was always something. No one batted an eye.

Post-Covid, people act like remote work is some strange new thing.

Only thing that really brought people into the office was the free food. But I know that has been scaled back dramatically post Covid.

Companies have always picked the venue where their employees work. It’s really only in the last couple of years that certain employees have adopted the attitude that their company cannot tell them where to work for their company. You can certainly exercise your right to quit (at least in the US which is at will…even in Montana for the employees)

At the start of my career nearly 4 decades ago, I worked for a company that was 10 mins from my home. A year in they moved the location to a building almost 50 mins away. They literally asked no one in the company if this was ok by them…they basically said “The office is here now” and expected you to show up there. Reality is for some it was probably closer, but for others like me it was a worse commute.

“Companies have always had this and that power therefore it’s justified” is a poor argument and has absolutely no justification power for the present. Picture this, a bit further in the past, during feudalism, workers aka serfs were bound to the land owned by a lord. They were required to work the land, pay rents, and provide other services to their lord. Serfs needed permission to marry, could not leave the land without consent, and had to submit to the lord’s court for any legal disputes.

So why arbitrarily draw the line 20 years in the past and not 400 years? Only. Because something used to be in a certainty way gives us no guidance if it should be in such a way.

Who arbitrarily drew the line at 20 years?

That’s plain false. For the last 10 years of my dads career he was remote full time because the technology was finally available. Your experience wasn’t universal and some people have grown up where it’s normal and expected for a parents office to be at home.

I’d disagree and tell you that you fall into a minority. I’m fully supportive of remote but to suggest it’s normal implies some majority, or close to. That’s not been the case.

According to this pre-covid article, up to 25% of US workers did "some or all" of their work from home [1]. That matches with my memories.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12097

“Some or all” in that article is really “at least 1 day a week”. I would offer that in 2024, people would not consider 1 day a week at home (or even 2-3 days a week) a “remote work” position. We call that hybrid work nowadays.

So while this article says remote work was increasing, and I am sure it was incrementally in certain tech, marketing, and sales positions, I don’t think its a good example of remote work (as it is defined today) becoming a norm then.

Pre-covid, I worked around 1 day a week remote, but was in the office the other 4 or traveling for work. I believe I knew maybe 2 people in my social and business circles back then that I would define as having a “remote work” job (by our present definition).

And that doesn't indicate its normal, it just suggests that at times people have lives outside of work.

Plain false? You are thinking that it might be normalizing for a certain class/type of work, but “plain false”, please.

No. For me, since 2010 at least, it's been a negotiation in practice, if not in the written contract terms.

This reeks of "I went through struggle xyz so your generation should have to as well."

What if WFH is the best way for a company to operate?

> What if WFH is the best way for a company to operate?

ok. What if the company’s leadership disagrees?

Also, this has nothing to do with any struggle. It’s about who gets to make the decision.

If you don’t want to work in an office, but the company leadership does…quit.

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