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Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

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Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#181

Post by forz877 »

theli0nheart wrote: post #58
marmada wrote: post #56

I think there's a pretty big downside to WFH: lack of in-person contact reduces team bonds which causes much more... volatility? I.e arguments are more likely to spiral out of control since you don't really know other people / care about them. A concrete hypothesis might be: Less people would have left Base Camp if they were not remote.

I mean, it’s your choice if you don’t want to meet up with your team. Lunch or coffee probably won’t be forbidden by company policy.

Not really true is it? WFH can mean I'm in Seattle and you're in San Diego. Not exactly a quick trip to the local cafe.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#183

Post by grecy »

chillel wrote: post #172
mlang23 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute is a 5 minute walk. And thats no accident. I very deliberately chose my flat to be quite near to work. Has saved me about 5000 hours of commute time so far.

I love how that's an obvious option for everyone else too! /s

I have a hard rule on myself - if the commute is more than about 20-30 minutes or particularly unpleasant, I must change jobs or move house. Life is too short to spend such a huge part of it in a commute you don't enjoy.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#184

Post by beezle »

karaterobot wrote: post #84
repsilat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It’s also still a relatively small number in absolute terms: > In April, the share of U.S. workers leaving jobs was 2.7%, according to the Labor Department, a jump from 1.6% a year earlier to the highest level since at least 2000. If those are monthly figures they are roughly going from "quit once every five years" to once every three. It's a pretty big change, I think. Positive, IMO -- mobility is healthy for the…

But the caveat should be that we can't extrapolate from a unique event like emerging from an 18-month quarantine, which is the context of this entire phenomenon. I think that at least part of the original commenter's point is that the article shouldn't try to frame what may well be a temporary correction as a revolutionary shift, which I agree is what it's trying to do.

Exactly. It should be expected that (for many people) after 18 months there would be an excess of people who would have wanted to leave, if they could. Now that they can, there is a log jam at the exit door.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#185

Post by dsyrk »

davedrouin wrote: post #163
dsyrk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really where? Certainly not in the United States and I don’t see any reason it should be illegal. Your an employee not a citizen.

This is illegal without employee consent in the EU and in most other civilized countries around the world.

Can you provide a reference for that? I am logging the employee’s use of the corporate computer system that they don’t own and are being paid to work on. That is total nonsense it can be illegal, there is zero legal expectation of any privacy on a private companies computer systems. Why in the world should there be?

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#186

Post by d110af5ccf »

xvector wrote: post #3

Can’t imagine not having at least partial WFH after this pandemic. If my office doesn’t let me WFH, I will also be leaving. A good portion of my team is similarly minded, but management is insistent on disallowing WFH. I can’t wait to see their faces when the company bleeds massive swaths of engineering talent. It’s about damn time that companies realized that they ought to treat their employees like the adults that…

> ... the extremely rare spark of whiteboard innovation is not worth ...

Crazy idea - install a whiteboard at home and point a 4k camera at it. The broke college student version of this involves a pen, paper, and the camera on your cellphone; it works quite well.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#187

Post by kevinmchugh »

chillel wrote: post #171
gremlinsinc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just do like a 3-4 day retreat to "bond" every 3-4 months? Or even monthly have maybe a 2-3 day mini-retreat work a day or two on-site and do some after-work bonding for those who are staying in hotels, etc... I mean if it's just about bonding. I had pretty good bonding with an agency I worked with and we'd do once a year retreats and it was really nice to hang out with the team, then go back home and hang ou…

because people have families, and parents can't just bounce on their children?

The parents I know have their lives greatly complicated by commutes and having to ensure childcare while they're in transit to or from the office.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#188

Post by magicalhippo »

prirun wrote: post #134
pavel_lishin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of meetings are much easier to have in person. Socializing, as other people pointed out, is also much easier in person.

A lot of meetings are also a complete waste of many people's time.

Whenever I get a meeting I don't understand why I was invited to, I just ask whoever invited me, or my boss if customer did, what my purpose is in the meeting.

Almost always I can avoid the full meeting with the understanding that they can call me in if they need my expertise. When that happens it's typically just a couple of questions and I can go back.

Sure some weeks can get a bit busy with meetings if we have a lot of projects going on, but I'm almost never in a meeting where I feel I'm wasting time.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#189

Post by mensetmanusman »

dcolkitt wrote: post #140
xkqd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always held a belief that a lot of America’s social and economic inequalities are fueled by the consolidation of good, high paying jobs around a few major cities. I’d get behind any party that tries to tackle this by incentivizing the distribution of these jobs across America. If cheaper, quieter lifestyles result from this, all the better.

At the very least, crowding the most intelligent and ambitious people into the country’s lowest fertility metro (the Bay Area) certainly seems like not a good idea from an inter-generational perspective.

The entire west is not having children, it’s not just the Bay Area.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#190

Post by bradlys »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #4

By “quitting” they mostly mean getting new jobs or career changes. Not necessarily refusing to work in an office. The headline is misleading. It’s also still a relatively small number in absolute terms: > In April, the share of U.S. workers leaving jobs was 2.7%, according to the Labor Department, a jump from 1.6% a year earlier to the highest level since at least 2000. The higher turnover is expected in a booming ec…

Seems most commenters on HN for this thread didn’t read the article.

We’re at a daily occurrence now of these “I can never go back to the office” threads. I thought HN was supposed to be an area of intellectual stimulation - not droning on about the same thing for months with no end.

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