Comment by willhslade | Hacker News Reader

Comment by willhslade | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of comments here, but what I don't see is anybody speaking the quiet part out loud.

No judgment here to those who did, but during the pandemic, several people, including several software engineers, took the opportunity to work multiple jobs. Notably, at Equifax, which is probably the worst place to do it because they have records of most people's employment. https://www.businessinsider.com/equifax-used-itsproduct-to-f...

This is the main reason. Management doesn't want you pulling 2 salaries, even if you could, so they are trying to make it difficult so you don't even try.

In addition, if WFH becomes normalized, there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities. So most people that manage you and manage your managers are aligned against you. https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/real-estate/huge-midtown-offic...

Lastly, and I'm only mentioning this because I think it needs to be said, but I think that most people who are pushing WFH are short sighted. If it is proved conclusively that software development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs. Anecdotally, this is already occurring.

> This is the main reason.

No it's not.

According to your own article, Equifax fired 24 out of 10,000 employees for working multiple jobs. That's 0.24% of their employees.

This doesn't even come close to being a factor in their decision.

> there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities.

Why is it bad for senior management, outside of senior management for commercial real estate? You think Google gives a flying fuck about the fact that there are empty buildings and that it's costing money to the few massive companies who own most of the commercial real estate in the US and in the world? No. Do you think the stock market cares? No.

> If it is proved conclusively that software development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs.

You say it yourself, "Anecdotally, this is already occurring", so why isn't it generalized? Why is there still ANY line of code written in the US or in western Europe? Because outsourcing simply doesn't work for the vast majority of software.

I appreciate the pushback.

Fine, if it isn't the real reason, what is the real reason? Why can't any executives, at any organization, proffer a reason that makes sense?

Executives at pretty much every organization offer the same sensible reason. Working in an office together greatly reduces the cost of collaboration, which is valuable in its own right as well as leading to more inventiveness and better mentorship.

The problem is that, as you can see a bit upthread, a lot of ICs don't notice or don't care about the collaborative aspects of their job. To someone who feels that writing out lots of code is their real job, that sensible reason sounds like a weird deflection, since "reduces the cost of collaboration" means by definition that I'm getting interrupted or distracted when I could be heads-down programming.

There's very little in the way of evidence demonstrating your "sensible" hypothesis. On the other hand, a lot of ICs have experience working in office and at home and have noticed we do better work at home.

The question is what you mean when you say "better work". Are you able to unblock new grads more quickly at home? Are you able to achieve consensus on a new product direction more quickly at home? Or are you able to write code better at home, because you can keep the the new grads and product managers in your Slack backlog for as many hours as you need to maximize code throughput?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but every time I've had this conversation in the past it's been that last option.

What you will be doing in your office environment will be unblocking that new grad in 20 minutes and then putting your noise-canceling headphones on and concentrating on your screen for the rest of the day.

And if new grads and product managers are actually able to easily disrupt an IC who is concentrating, that is a sh*tty workplace.

Well, right, that's what it usually comes back to. If you expect to spend all but 20 minutes of your day concentrating on your screen doing solo work, remote work is definitely the best model. The managers pushing RTO want ICs to spend more time collaborating than that.

Frankly? I think this is a whole mix of things. There isn't a "real" reason, there's a smorgasbord of them.

Why do "FAANG"s RTO? Because they're massive people-movers, and cities that host them likely hold C-level meetings to pressure RTO so that people spend more money. More on transport, more on food, more on coffee, more consumption = more taxes = more movement = growing value to office spaces = win for the cities. Not to mention that managers at these corporations are pretty wealthy themselves, and likely hold investments that would depreciate were WFH to continue in any great scale.

Why do smaller companies RTO? Because what works for FAANGs surely works for them, too. Literally. I've seen multiple managers push for RTO because the big tech leaders are doing it. Add that a certain 'magical' belief that RTO means more productivity and an enriching 'office culture' where new profitable ideas brew - they're all only human, after all, and are as prone to magical thinking without any concrete evidence as we all are - and you've got perfectly good reasons. And mostly irrational from a business PoV.

Is this the case for literally everyone pushing for RTO? Of course not, I'm sure there are legitimate reasons there, but most of the justifications I've heard, as a huge advocate for WFH who always seeks to understand pro-RTO management, have little basis on evidence that it is something good for the business.

> cities that host them likely hold C-level meetings to pressure RTO so that people spend more money

They don't pressure them, they give them tax breaks. But besides this you're on point.

They don't proffer a reason that makes sense because they don't really need to. They make the rules. They can BS their way through a question at the All Hands meeting or on CNBC. It's pretty apparent that at many companies the real reason is soft layoffs but you won't hear the executives say this part out loud.

Because they’re not being reasonable. You’re assuming that they’re reasonable people and they’re not. Reasonable companies, of which there are many, are running successful remote teams and not demanding RTO. You’re not hearing about them because they’re doing the reasonable thing for their employees.

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