I'd always understood that hybrid was the worst of both worlds. Companies still have to pay for real estate, can't recruit from neighboring cities, let alone internationally, and employees have to commute to work and live in expensive cities, just so they can work in loud offices and be micromanaged.
As a manager, it’s absolutely not to micromanage. People build bonds in person in a different way than online. I can give reasons why that helps with work, but also it’s nice to be around humans?
As for commute, NYC subways are great (or at least as good as America’s got…). We have people in NJ, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Everything has trade-offs, but it’s common for engineers to mention in the interview process that they’re looking for something at least partly in person.
And there is your bias
I see you said "different", which I agree with. But you didn't say "better" - and I do feel that's a mix that goes both sides.
Now this could be for various reasons - company culture, me being a juniorish dev, confirmation bias. But it really seems like humans don't account value to something/someone unless they interact with it in person.
Personally I am completely for remote work, although I think it's wrong to say it's strictly better for everyone in every scenario.
- The person has to agree to the call (tricky if they are already not responding and/or are more senior and/or dislike meetings) - Calls often seem to have a lesser effect than in-person - Plus other standard downsides of Zoom, etc.
In comparison, taking 2 minutes to walk up to someone's desk and directly address them is almost like a magic trick. Instant "pay attention to me now", thanks to the evolved human brain.
Now maybe overall not worth the tradeoff for in-office vs remote, but still I appreciate in-office's effectiveness here.
We work a certain way and make trade-offs as best we can. It doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s okay—non-judgmentally in a completely values-independent way.
In my opinion, startups are really hard if you take them seriously and an in-person aspect helps. There are exceptions, especially if you’re working with people you already know irl (like during COVID) or have worked with a while.
It’s not black and white.
Completely agree on people building bonds in person, hard disagree that you need people in the office most of the time for it.
My employer went full onboard with allowing people to choose if they want to work from home or in an office, we're very distributed (offices in many European cities, in the USA, Japan, etc.) with thousands of employees, having 1-2 events a year where we gather together has already been enough to develop bonds that we maintain remotely.
I live in a city with amazing public transportation but I would not choose to commute again for work in my life, I prefer working from home and doing the odd trip to the office when I feel like it, it's enough to personally connect with people while also avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of office life.
How can you tell this is not because they're aware of present market or even your specific company's preference / conditions and are simply trying to increase their appealing to you and increase their chance of getting an offer?
It's common interviewing advice and CV writing to market yourself according to the job you're aiming for - that includes "company culture", "company values" and whatever other crap helps bias the interviewers in your favour.
> it’s nice to be around humans
Yep. That's what family and friends are for. Work is mainly to make money. Until the time comes when work stops being a requirement for survival, that will always be its primary function.
Making friends can be a nice side-effect sometimes, but is not a requirement.
Hybrid is a requirement so it’s more about expectation setting, and most people who say that bring it up themselves when asked what they’re looking for. Maybe they’re all lying, but it’s a pretty low priority thing to lie about and after interviewing hundreds of people, you do get pretty good at parsing out how genuine someone is. Not perfect! But pretty good.
> Yep. That's what family and friends are for. Work is mainly to make money. Until the time comes when work stops being a requirement for survival, that will always be its primary function.
Agree to disagree. If I’m going to spend a third of my life doing a thing, I’m damn sure going to screen for people I respect and want to spend time with. Work means a lot more than the money to me; impact and people are higher up there.
> Hybrid is a requirement
If they know it's a requirement to work for you, and they're interviewing with you, they either want it or don't want it but have accepted it as a requirement. The former case is the one you say is the majority of your interviewees. I'm not saying you're wrong, but consider the latter case.
A person is looking for a job because they require money to make a living. They know your requirements. They will want to be as appealing to you as they can live with. Since they've already accepted the constraint of hybrid working, they may as well tell you that's exactly what they want.
> most people who say that bring it up themselves when asked what they’re looking for
And that's exactly what I mean by the above.
> Maybe they’re all lying, but it’s a pretty low priority thing to lie about
Which makes it a very easy lie as well. It's harder to lie about the things that have more weight as they tend to be harder to live with.
> after interviewing hundreds of people, you do get pretty good at parsing out how genuine someone is. Not perfect! But pretty good.
This is exactly what bias does to you. You start believing you're good at detecting things. Maybe you actually are, I don't know. I couldn't know. Even if I thought you were that good, it may just be my own biases telling me that.
> If I’m going to spend a third of my life doing a thing, I’m damn sure going to screen for people I respect
I agree. It's very difficult to try to build something with people for whom you have no respect.
> and want to spend time with.
Also fair. There's no need for friendship still. In any case, this is a strawman. I was responding to:
> > it’s nice to be around humans
I think it's nice to be around humans for whom I have more than just respect. That's where friends and family come into play.
At work, even though there will always be a preference to be around people who are nice, it's not a hard requirement.
> Work means a lot more than the money to me; impact and people are higher up there.
This is easy to say from a position of privilege. People interviewing for a job are much of the time at risk of ceasing to exist in society if they don't get hired. That puts them in a position where they will make as much as they can live with in order to get the job.
It's great that you and I can be selective about the jobs and people we work with, but in reality even in tech most people are in the workforce for survival and subsistence first and foremost.
Hell, even though I am at this moment in a relatively comfortable position, in very little time I could go from privileged to desperate and you can bet I would lie (and likely be very good at it) in an interview if it would be the difference between keeping my house and feeding my offspring, and any other altenative.
I had students years ago telling me ´ I want to work in field x because there’s good money , but based on my experience, I don’t like the people/culture’. They tried nonetheless, all gave up.
You might be able to ignore the people you work with, but lots of people can’t . It if works for you, I guess it’s much easier though !
First, think about from which viewpoint your above comment comes from.
Each sentence above could be amended to add "... , from the companies standpoint".
From the employees standpoint it's better on each account. If you understand that companies, and their performance, is just an aggregate of thr employees and their performance. Empower the employees, that's the only company culture worth pursuing.
Your points:
- "Companies still have to pay for real estate" - they need this anyway. If you do it properly you don't have extra space, you have twice as many hybrid people working out of the same space you had half as many full time on site folks. This is the choice of management in how they efficiently use their space. Even explicitly remote first companies I know of have offices and meet regularly in person. This is a red herring.
- "cant recruit from neighboring cities" - Being hybrid actually helps with this, no? I personally know lots of people who work further from the office than they would if they didn't have a hybrid schedule.
- your last point is exactly why people want hybrid or remote positions. I don't see an argument for your point there, only one against it.
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