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Comment by NoPicklez | Hacker News Reader

So much focus has been put on the FANG's in how they have managed remote working since the pandemic, but many of them have clearly got it wrong or have swung large mandates either way.

The answer is simply hybrid working. I myself prefer to be in the office and I get to work with others who are also in the office. However I have other colleagues who prefer to work from home.

Do I think that you can have a better work culture if everyone is working together physically, yes I do. Do I understand that our ways of working have changed and that might not be possible for everyone every day, yes I do.

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> The answer is simply hybrid working

Hybrid is NOT the answer, much like the answer to "being kicked in the balls hurts" is not "how about you get 3/5 as many kicks in the balls"?

I think hybrid is fine if they mean "if you want to have an office, fine. if you want to wfh, fine."

Which is how I took their comment.

It's not clearly defined what hybrid means, and there's different interpretation by different people (and companies).

Some may call 2-3 days in an office hybrid. Some may call hybrid when they can choose to go in or not on any day.

One problem i find is that those who do prefer to work in an office don't actually want the office itself, but the office atmosphere - including the hustle and bustle of people. I imagine that they would not prefer office, if they're the only person in the entire floor.

So instead of thinking in terms of hybrid, i would think in terms of face-to-face or audio/cam over-video.

> don't actually want the office itself, but the office atmosphere - including the hustle and bustle of people

Yes, they want to dictate to others how to live their lives. Quite an antisocial view, don't you find?

i wouldnt call it anti-social. I mean, can't you make the same argument to WFH people dictating the opposite?

WFH people do not stop YOU from going to the office. We simply do not care if you do or do not. Only the RTO people seek to control others.

> I imagine that they would not prefer office, if they're the only person in the entire floor.

I am often the only person in the office, as I am today, but I like it; the commute is a pleasant half-hour's walk, and I appreciate the clear separation between work and home life. I have a large comfortable desk here, with a killer view of the city; I genuinely prefer this to working from home. (This is convenient because my wife, also a software engineer, strongly prefers the home office.)

On the other hand, I once spent seven years working from home before this was a common thing, despite the money I could have saved if I'd moved to the lower-cost-of-living city where company HQ was located, because I just didn't want to. I liked my life as it was, and I couldn't stand the idea of a car commute.

In many workplaces where almost everyone could work remotely the number of days of work from home an employee is entitled to is an accurate, and possibly intentional, brown-nosing metric.

As someone that likes working in person it should be down to the team. Either in person or fully remote.

That sounds fine in theory, but who decides which teams are remote? How do you avoid a situation where someone comes on a remote team and gets the rug pulled out when someone else decides that team is now in person?

It's much easier if we're talking about a new company. IMO companies formed after the pandemic have a much easier job of figuring this out. You can set expectations from the beginning about which teams are remote and which are not. Some teams should be remote. I know of a hybrid company that has always had SREs be remote. They operate a global business and want people covering all timezones.

As for getting rug-pulled: that possibility exists with any management decision. You could always get an asshole boss, the company could get sold, etc. Not to fully discredit your point, but it wouldn't be my biggest concern as an employee.

Hybrid is a huge problem because it requires you to still buy a home or rent in a HCOL city.

I believe hybrid in this context means, there is an office and some people come in as little or as much as they want/need, and some people are fully remote.

That is not what any company I know of means by "hybrid" They all mean "3 days in office, 2 at home"

Sure. The company I work at is hybrid in the manner I described.

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