Many traditional companies are bound to the office for a simple reason: they have offices as a financial investment. This is true even for super rich tech companies, who went into a big real estate buying spree during the last few years. If they don't have use for these offices, the value of such real estate will go down precipitously. They are forced to keep the office style, at least for a majority of their employees.
Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
301–310 of 434 posts
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#302Can’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…
They will be happy to replace you with a H1B worker (who himself will be happy to migrate from India to the USA). The current situation is temporary since COVID immigration restrictions remain in place.
That is very job specific if H1B exist with the skills and experience needed
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh I don’t think so. If it comes to that Americans will just stop letting people come here to work and dismantle these programs. It’s actually something that has been unifying the Sanders/AOC and Trump camps for some time. I don’t know if he has but if not I don’t see Biden really changing much in terms of opening up/increasing H1B visas or any others in the foreseeable future. Maybe more refugees or asylum seekers t…
The current state of affairs is that we have a labor shortage. The country needs more and more service workers. Tech is the go to backup plan for any college graduate (from any major), so the white collar work is perfectly saturated at the moment due to tech (not just developers, pm’s, sales, designers, etc). The only need for h1b are for the truly ruthless cost cutters. Otherwise, you can continuously undercut just…
we do not have a labor shortage. We have a wage shortage
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#304Many traditional companies are bound to the office for a simple reason: they have offices as a financial investment. This is true even for super rich tech companies, who went into a big real estate buying spree during the last few years. If they don't have use for these offices, the value of such real estate will go down precipitously. They are forced to keep the office style, at least for a majority of their employe…
But why? Isn't that a sunk cost fallacy? In fact, running those offices is going to cost more in operations and maintenance that having them under-utilized?
Presumably they bought empty commercial real estate. If it remains empty they'll get back most of that investment when they sell.
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#305I will absolutely quit if my job tries to force me back into the office.
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#306Can’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…
I hear this a lot of times recently — what I'm interested by now is where the new equilibrium will be going forward. So far us software engineers have often seen jobs as replaceable and we know we'll have another one at the snip of a finger should we quit. But with enough people actually quitting, how many remote or soon-remote companies will there be to scoop up the supply until quitting an office job cold could be…
[deleted]
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
What people miss in these discussions about going full remote is that the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever. Many companies are surely going to embrace full-remote once they have built up the right processes and infra. When that happens, it is not going to matter whether you live in California or Mexico or Brazil. It is much easier to replace an employee who is working…
I think you are very much correct - for all the people lambasting working in an office, I hope they realize it will mean they will be competing against a much larger swath of humanity. Also, I'm glad you highlighted "Mexico or Brazil". Unlike decades past where lots of outsourcing was done to India, I think many people now realize the inherent inefficiencies when teams are 12 time zones apart. The Americas don't have…
I think realistically this is very far a way. South America does not have schools that compete with MIT and Stanford.
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find in person meetings more effective. I’d rather meet once a week or 2 and get all the big meetings done then go away to code, than have Zoom meetings every single day. I predict that in all the full time WFH companies, some small group will start having in person meets once every X. Or some other startup will innovate past an incumbent by having a hybrid model. Then hybrid will be the next “new” thing.
Zoom is the new power point. Has anyone noticed we've replaced the concept of "the thing that is annoying about meetings is power point" to just blaming zoom. I don't even think we have a point to make, it's just like a thing we say... like oh god another power point meeting, oh god another zoom call. I think the real thing is "oh god another thing I have to do I don't want to" - but we're afraid to say it.
Oh, I’m not afraid to say I hate teleconferencing.
And I assure you I wasn’t imagining the average of 3-4 hours of online meetings every single day that was compressed to 1-2 days every 2 weeks once we started meeting in the office again.
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve worked at the same company for nearly 20 years. I’ve had precisely 0 lunch and hallway conversations in all of those years. Lunch time is when I go work out. If I’m not working out, I’m sitting at my my desk working. Socializing is for non-work hours. However, I’ve learned a lot more about coworkers (some of whom I’ve worked with for more than 10 years) during the pandemic from talking at the beginning of zoom c…
You sound like a fun person to work with!
Does it bother you if someone doesn't socialize at work? I don't understand why it would.
Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead
#310IMO these people are shooting themselves in the foot long term. If companies learn to WFH full time these people will eventually be replaced with cheaper labour from oversees.
yeah - been thru that once..twice..wait 3 times...
lets see: india, china, russia...
And yet, all the developers I know actually managed to stay employed/get jobs/etc.
The world is full of doom-sayers...and someday they'll be right. I just don't think thats day is today :-)