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Comment by nelblu | Hacker News Reader

> Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up.

I took a new job in 2022, at that time everyone was still working from home. My boss, who was a VP at that time, said isn't this amazing? We save on fuel, time, spend more time at home etc. Productivity has been amazing and all.

Two years later in early 2024 when they started pushing RTO, same guy repeats the standard bullshit about - we need those sidebar conversations, we need to meet face to face and all. Not a single word of how it wastes fuel, or time etc.

I realized he was powerless against the corporate policies, but just his hypocrisy was enough for me to find another (100% remote) job.

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Why is it not possible both are/were true?

At the time, WFH was new for most organizations - and yes it feels pretty great. Over time, however, fractures in the team, collaborations, efficiency start to show and people change their mind.

Certain tasks can be best done in solitude at home. Others... require collaboration. Collaboration that's scheduled in meetings or the dreaded video call are not the same as spontaneous collaboration or just popping your head into someone's office/cube and asking a quick question.

There's trade offs to both... and if a company has decided WFH isn't ideal for them, then you can leave and find a job that believes WFH is ideal.

What you call “popping your head in someone’s cube”, I call “distraction from doing deep work”.

I’ve seen studies where it takes on average over 20 minutes to recover from an interruption.

My job is to be heavily collaborative with clients and coworkers in consulting. I’m more efficient with a screen share and a shared Lucid chart than I ever was on a whiteboard.

I want an organized meeting on my calendar to discuss things where everyone is prepared to discuss issues collaboratively instead of random interruptions.

No I’m not an anti-social introvert. I am the first person to talk to clients after sales, I have no problem hopping on a plane to talk to customers, business dinners, working with a leading implementation teams, etc - all remotely.

Point taken about the distraction. For me it's the this to do on the working from home days. Office days are all about talking through plans, questions, problem solving or investigation etc. sure you can say that this does not require an office but it works well for me.

1 person's deep work might mean an entire department is stuck twiddling their thumbs because they're blocked and can't reach the person absorbed in "deep work".

wfh can be great for individual productivity, but it can also seriously hamper team productivity.

I have been in some type of team lead/architect position for almost 10 years now. 4+ years at product companies and 5+ in consulting companies. At any given time, I might have needed a decision to be made by my CxO, the client or another team.

On the other hand I might be preparing for a meeting, in a meeting, on a plane, at a customer’s site etc. On the opposite end, there is always a list of things I need to get done. I put that item as “blocked” and move on to my next item. If it is a downstream dependency as a developer, I mock it out and keep going.

If you are dependent on one person to answer a question, what happens when they go on vacation or if they are otherwise unavailable? I make it a point to not be a single point of failure.

Also, I keep my calendar up to date, including time I need to do “deep work”, when I’m traveling for business, of course meetings automatically show up. Anyone is free to put a meeting on my calendar if they need to interact with me synchronously.

That seems to indicate a catastrophically low bus factor--people get sick, take vacations, sleep, quit, etc. If you’re blocked on an IC doing anything other than finishing their task you've got a bigger problem than them going out of pocket for a day, fix the real problem.

(If they're a manager/decisionmaker of some sort then they better learn how to multitask online, which is like a 30 year old skill requirement at this point)

Obviously there are pluses and minuses for both but the pluses outway the cons otherwise companies wouldn't have survived after years of it. No this is just popular because the elite noticed workers were feeling happier and more empowered and they feel threatened by that. So along come Trump with an escape hatch, and they make up bullshit about DEI and WFH not working even though it worked for years and stock market was way up. Nope this is all about the old boys network trying to keep the peasants in place and save a few bucks this quarter.

> Over time, however, fractures in the team, collaborations, efficiency start to show and people change their mind.

Also from what I saw, juniors struggled without always-available guidance while mid and seniors could get a lot done by avoiding interruptions. If the mix of employees changed in those couple of years, that alone could have been the entire difference.

Company people will say anything to align with corporatespeak.

It's likely that both can be true: he meant what he said in 2022 but _had_ to mean what he said in 2024.

Also that somebody could change their mind after two years of experience.

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