Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work” • Hacker News Board

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#41

Post by staticassertion » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

voisin wrote: post #6

It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. When you do the math on the occupancy cost per square foot relative to the labour cost on a per square foot basis (using a company’s occupancy numbers divided by square footage of the office), it works out to 4 - 7%. If you increase employee turnover slightly or decrease productivity in the long run by a small amount,…

Sure, but there's a lot more than just the savings on the office space. What about savings on employee sick leave? At my last company there was always an 'office plague' at least once a year, around winter. What about employees no longer commuting? What about being able to hire talent when they don't want to move to wherever you're located - how much will that save you on recruiting? There are so many other wins. And losses.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#42

Post by nathanlied » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #31

Lammy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we'll all come to love the new routine — get up, have some coffee, work until you go to sleep. Even if you personally are capable of enforcing work/life separation there's zero chance an entire company will when so many people already fear the Performance Review looming over their head.

That's just not gonna happen. I currently work remotely as a software engineer at a BigCo (not a tech company) and the company policy has consistently been to great weekend work & long hours as a team & company failure. I just don't see an every-waking-hour workday dystopia ever happening if the industry goes more remote.

And even if someone consistently cannot separate work from home life - 'traditional' employment will not vanish. Many companies will have zero WFH (or very little), while others will have a gradient between full-office worker and full-WFH.

I'm a "WFH Apologist", really, but I'll readily admit it's not for everyone. Many people genuinely like in-person socialisation at the office, others can't separate 'work' from 'home life', and we could go on forever on potential issues. Which is why no one will ever see me advocate for all tech companies to go as remote as possible normally - that would exclude a pretty wide pool of potential candidates.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#43

Post by slavapestov » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #35

slavapestov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. And also, that not every potential employee who can add value to the organization wants to relocate to the same place. I think that’s a more important bet in the long run. > Oh, and if you give your employees a bunch of money to fit out their home offices and start paying for their internet at home and give them mone…

> Isn’t this called “salary”? I don’t expect my employer to cook and feed me lunch You might not, but many tech companies in SF do exactly that, and it is a legitimate part of your compensation.

The cost of my lunch is a trivial fraction of my family's grocery bill though. Are remote workers going to ask for a clothing stipend in lieu of company-branded T-shirts as well?

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#44

Post by swiley » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #24

rcurry wrote: post #15

Working remote just makes so much more sense. My old routine was - get up, have some coffee, start dreading the one hour commute, then do the one hour commute, then get to work and spend an hour decompressing from the one hour commute... now it’s get up, pour a cup of coffee, start enjoying working on stuff in my bathrobe. And the coffee is way better than what the office was paying for :-)

I'm sure we'll all come to love the new routine — get up, have some coffee, work until you go to sleep. Even if you personally are capable of enforcing work/life separation there's zero chance an entire company will when so many people already fear the Performance Review looming over their head.

Where I work there are one or two people that are online outside of normal hours (usually managers who already didn’t have great work life balance) most people seem to be pretty good.

Also, as someone who’s worked remotely before: working longer does not mean more work done!!! in fact I think I can safely say you’ll get less done if you start working more than ~7 hours a day because then your workspace and relaxing space start mixing together (and your brain will force you to relax sometimes.)

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#45

Post by edoceo » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #35

slavapestov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. And also, that not every potential employee who can add value to the organization wants to relocate to the same place. I think that’s a more important bet in the long run. > Oh, and if you give your employees a bunch of money to fit out their home offices and start paying for their internet at home and give them mone…

> Isn’t this called “salary”? I don’t expect my employer to cook and feed me lunch You might not, but many tech companies in SF do exactly that, and it is a legitimate part of your compensation.

The lunch is comp for having to be on-site.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#46

Post by owl57 » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

nicksergeant wrote: post #33

highfrequency wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main potential savings is not from avoiding office leases, it's from hiring engineers for 1/3 of the cost or less from places like Europe, India, and Brazil.

Time zone sensitivity is a very real thing for companies who hire remotely, so I don’t think this is necessarily going to change. Much of the “ can now work remotely” is likely predicated on the fact that those employees are in the same time zone.

Effective time zone is somewhat more personal, though. As a night owl, working with local early risers sucks a lot.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#47

Post by downrightmike » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #26

k__ wrote: post #25

I'm saying this for years now. Companies burning billions for real estate alone, while all their teams are working remote in respect to each other anyway. My hopes are, this will relieve cities from the huge burden these companies were...

How are cities hurting? The cities are the ones refusing to build. The landlords are profiting from this and so is the city. (Higher land value => higher tax revenue) Do you really think this will "relieve" anything except push the problem onto other cities that also refuse to build? (And will inevitably push out people who already had to leave the big city due to the cost)

Massive tax cuts and other packages, look at what cities were offering Amazon to put another office in their city.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#48

Post by Lammy » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

swiley wrote: post #44

Lammy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we'll all come to love the new routine — get up, have some coffee, work until you go to sleep. Even if you personally are capable of enforcing work/life separation there's zero chance an entire company will when so many people already fear the Performance Review looming over their head.

Where I work there are one or two people that are online outside of normal hours (usually managers who already didn’t have great work life balance) most people seem to be pretty good. Also, as someone who’s worked remotely before: working longer does not mean more work done!!! in fact I think I can safely say you’ll get less done if you start working more than ~7 hours a day because then your workspace and relaxing s…

I totally agree that working longer does not mean more work gets done. The people I'd need to convince are the hundreds of scared lower-level engineers who have a to earn a promotion within two years or probably get fired.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#49

Post by bobthepanda » Mon, May 25, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

voisin wrote: post #40

bobthepanda wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it makes some people more productive, it also doesn't necessarily apply to everyone , and wasn't a core complaint of remote workers that remote work policy was too one-size-fits-all? I would imagine you would see more flexibility afforded by employers but full remote is probably a fantasy.

Individual flexibility can have detrimental impacts to team performance. So then shouldn’t the flexibility be awarded to whomever’s P&L is hit by a decrease to productivity? How else do you internalize the negative externalities? How would this differ from the pre-Covid status quo?

Personally I don't know how much of a problem this is. Where I work, the preexisting policy was "feel free to work whenever so long as you are still available during work hours and doing what you're expected to do". So for me flexibility was already the status quo.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#50

Post by valuearb » Mon, May 25, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

> each employee in the San Francisco Bay Area costs an extra $20,000 to $35,000 per year

This is where they lost me. I can make $140k working remotely for a job that is a minimum $200k in San Francisco. And that is just salary. It doesn’t count rent, lunches, and other office costs.