Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 178 posts

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#81

Post by ItsMonkk »

Fordec wrote: post #56
darth_avocado wrote: post #34

The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the sa…

On point 4, I think this is where co-working spaces have a moment to shine. A fully remote environment that you still get to leave the house to go to and no impact on how the rest of the team live their lives.

College was by far the best time in my life because of the environment of campus, even with the pitiful dorm room sizing and sub-average dining options. If I could move to a campus - perhaps that was focused on people in their thirties - where people from many companies would go to work remotely and live, that would be an absolute game-changer for me.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#82

Post by narrator »

phkahler wrote: post #71
darth_avocado wrote: post #34

The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the sa…

The problem with fully remote work is that once you accept that a job can be done from anywhere, you have to compete on a global level. It can be done from India, China, Pakistan, or any other place where they have smart people willing to work for less than you! So don't get too excited about it ;-)

This is why it's good to be a lawyer. It's one of the last remaining guilds of knowledge workers with any power. It's literally illegal to have someone from wherever do certain tasks if they are not properly licensed.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#83

Post by arrosenberg »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
thrower123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just have twenty years of experience that any initial cost savings generated by outsourcing are illusory and come due with interest on the back end.

Depends what you're outsourcing. We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory. A lot of communications type work suffered from outsourcing due to language barriers and poor connectivity and poorer skillset from workers in other areas of the world (or even the US). That may not always continue to be the case. I'm guessing the top 10% or 20% of workers do not need to be worried since t…

> We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory.

Sure they are. The expertise and factories to build a lot of components are no longer in the US, which has a ton of knock-on effects in the economy - job loss, decline, etc.

That's a hidden cost that offsets whatever cash savings were experienced on the front end.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#84

Post by AJ007 »

phkahler wrote: post #71
darth_avocado wrote: post #34

The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the sa…

The problem with fully remote work is that once you accept that a job can be done from anywhere, you have to compete on a global level. It can be done from India, China, Pakistan, or any other place where they have smart people willing to work for less than you! So don't get too excited about it ;-)

In the immediate term, instead of competing with people in a 60 square mile radius, you have to compete against the rest of the country. That’s great if you are really good at what you do. If you aren’t, it isn’t.

Also remote workers are easier to automate because employers know precisely what they are doing.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#85

Post by lotsofpulp »

arrosenberg wrote: post #83
lotsofpulp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you're outsourcing. We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory. A lot of communications type work suffered from outsourcing due to language barriers and poor connectivity and poorer skillset from workers in other areas of the world (or even the US). That may not always continue to be the case. I'm guessing the top 10% or 20% of workers do not need to be worried since t…

> We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory. Sure they are. The expertise and factories to build a lot of components are no longer in the US, which has a ton of knock-on effects in the economy - job loss, decline, etc. That's a hidden cost that offsets whatever cash savings were experienced on the front end.

Those are societal costs, not costs for the company making the decision to outsource or not. A company taking into account those societal costs while others do not will end up not being able to competitively price their products.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#86

Post by altacc »

commandlinefan wrote: post #6

Well, if remote work isn't feasible (for the reasons stated), neither is offshoring. Or outsourcing. Or physical satellite offices.

That depends upon your communication patterns & architecture. If your outsourced/offshored workers are tightly knit into your development team, then they're basically the same as WFH workers.

But if they are discrete teams, working on discrete services, then the issues tend to be around management, collaboration & communication patterns (both human and technical). Those are the areas which many companies can't handle or don't have correct to enable useful outsourcing.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#87

Post by thrower123 »

bluedino wrote: post #80
thrower123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just have twenty years of experience that any initial cost savings generated by outsourcing are illusory and come due with interest on the back end.

Why does every vendor I deal with still do it, at least for support?

Cognizant and TCS and Infosys and the like have this market on lockdown, and nobody cares that the experience is terrible because it's just a cost center.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#88

Post by Fordec »

bluedino wrote: post #63
darth_avocado wrote: post #34

The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the sa…

>> productivity increased Did it, though? GDP has just reached pre-pandemic levels.

The economy is not 100% office work.

Worker productivity is not measured in GDP. It is a component of it, but asset and resource prices also factor into the equation. Nobody is going to suggest taxi drivers can go fully remote and work from home, yet that still feeds into GDP.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#89

Post by ghaff »

matwood wrote: post #32
commandlinefan wrote: post #6

Well, if remote work isn't feasible (for the reasons stated), neither is offshoring. Or outsourcing. Or physical satellite offices.

> Or physical satellite offices. This is what's interesting about the 'remote work doesn't work' group. My first bigCo programming job in the late 90s was at a satellite office with another single developer. We built a lot of software with developers from other satellite offices using only email and phone calls. /shrug

If I went into my office every day--which I haven't had a desk in for a while--I'd spend a decent chunk of time every week on calls with people across 2 continents, multiple offices, and fully remote.

Re: Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

#90

Post by cosmotic »

wrs wrote: post #36

I'm trying and failing to think of any important part of "company culture" that only works for people in the same room. Culture is made of shared values (codified in actions, not PowerPoints), communication norms, peer reactions, shared history, inside jokes...all of that stuff can work remotely. If your company has more than one office it already has to work remotely.

In this instance, corporate culture is a stand in for 'what the boss wants the boss gets'. I can't think of a company culture that is healthy and also different from what it appears everyone wants: flexibility in their work location and schedule. Who are these worker-bees that prefer to waste 2 hours of their day in stressful transit to get to a stressful environment that have no negative health consequences from the stress?
Post reply on HN