Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by muyuu » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #331

mensetmanusman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nearly the entire developed world after their growth booms. China will get there too. It’s a common enough pattern for wealthy countries worldwide.

China has been in (artificially) in demographic decline for a while most of the country remains dirt poor.

There is no such cultural determinism. Many countries won't stop having children as their economy grows, in fact the opposite is happening in many places around the world.

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

#392

Post by muyuu » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

aix1 wrote: post #335

sleepybrett wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something great about video conferencing. Forced to attend a meeting that has no bearing on your work. If you are there in person, banging away on your keyboard the whole time in the corner is considered rude. On video conferencing you can just mute yourself, turn down the volume and just keep your ears perked for your name and keep working.

Probably stating the obvious, but isn't being forced to attend a meeting that has no bearing on one's work is a sign of a pretty significant organisational dysfunction?

it might be but it's still commonplace, and not just in America

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

#393

Post by lazide » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

katbyte wrote: post #328

lazide wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you aren’t listening to youself? Folks have to meet in the middle somewhere if we want a society - some people want full office, some people want full remote, some people want a hybrid. They can’t all be happy. Saying ‘I want to meet my coworkers face to face at least some of the time’ seems like the compromise position if anything.

That’s what team offsites, conferences and company outings are for. There’s more ways to get face to face time then “go to the office to work”

And you’ve got a bunch of people that want one at least every week, so they can talk to their coworkers - but without all the overhead from scheduling a big event. The world is made of many different kinds of people. Hand waving a huge portion of them away on either side isn’t great.

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

#394

Post by Breza » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #323

neilwilson wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'hybrid model' is just a marketing trick to try and force people back to offices using the Fear of Missing Out routine. It's classic foot in the door sales psychology. Go find a firm that has genuinely embraced full remote and understands that remote can only work properly if everybody is operating in the same mode - precisely to avoid the natural tendency of people to ignore others that aren't in the physical ro…

> We all have a finite life. How much of it do you want to spend incarcerated needlessly in a transport device? Assuming that there is ~260 working days in a year, subtracting 30 years for holiday we have roughly 230 days that one would have to commute on. My average London commute was 1 hour each way. That's 2 hours per day. That's 10 hours per week. 460 hours per year. 4.6k hours over a decade. This is not a chill…

> Also ironically ~20 years of commuting adds to almost 10k hours which supposedly would put me on a world-class expertise level in terms of being a train passenger. The problem is I'm a Software Engineer, not a professional underground train passenger.

Oh wow, that's such a good way of looking at it! I used to have a 3h20m daily roundtrip commute. Now our office is permanently closed. I work on a treadmill desk, have lunch with my wife, and after work I walk a block to my baby's daycare. I can't imagine ever going back to an office.

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

#395

Post by h4waii » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #209

disrael wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how close are you trying to be with your co-workers? My parents don't live in the same state with me but we talk weekly on the phone and meet once in a while in person. If you need hourly contact with your co-workers I hope it's more about doing the job then socializing. If it is about doing the job and your job is software development then are alternatives to endless meetings.

Humans were not made to spend 40+ hours/week not socializing.

The nice thing about "remote work" is you can choose who you want to spend that 40+ hours a week with.

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

#396

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #388

marcus_holmes wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really suggest you read up on management styles and leadership. Again, you sound a lot like I did before I got my eyes opened. And the leadership stuff in my MBA really helped me to see where I got this so badly wrong.

I appreciate your advice but I’m a bit of an old hand now. I appear to be coming across more forcefully than I actually act. It’s really important to me that my team is happy, and with half the team following me from a previous job I’m fairly confident that they are happy with my style. But that’s an assumption of course, and it’s always better to get evidence.

fair enough :) good luck with it :)

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

#397

Post by dsyrk » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #338

tazjin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ this is a troll post

My outrage blinded me of that possibility, thank you for bringing me back to reality

If you have a minute could you describe better your outrage, for me the levels expressed are fascinating. All I’m describing is a system for WFH that automatically measures if someone is actually working on the system. Other workers clock in/out, Uber drivers paid by time, many jobs measure productivity in many ways automatically and often unknown explicitly by the workers, and certainly not with their consent. What makes people react so intensely? I guarantee you this is being done for real as I describe and there isn’t any law against it as people imagine, those laws are about video, audio, and communication surveillance that could be used by employers to violate employee privacy, but it’s legally delusional to believe that employers would be restricted from measuring if employees paid to WFH are actually working at home, and also delusional to believe the company has to disclose what it uses to measure productivity to their employees. This explosive thread, created by me on a whim with a dystopian imagination has been quite interesting in the strong reaction provoke and I gladly take all the downvotes for it’s entertainment.

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

#398

Post by dsyrk » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

the_gipsy wrote: post #348

dsyrk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I do that to and did that before the pandemic. I review all code commits and review reports and results from the system. I also track completed tasks and assign them complexity level. Am I stupid or something? How would I know who is completing tasks or not. This was how we operated before WFH, the change is implementing direct surveillance telemetry on employee activity on the system. Another improvement i…

> Am I stupid or something? To be blunt, yes, unless you're trolling. Nobody could like you, you'd be the laughingstock of the company. The literal bootlicker too inept to rise and just tries to make others miserable. I say try because I guarantee you nobody gives a shit, they all just cash in the paycheck and wonder why it takes the company so long to fire them.

You guys are really sad cases. One guys replied that he reported me to the FBI, imagine the laughter at the report:

Internet user is reporting an employer who pays his employees to work from home has an automated monitoring/surveillance system to determine if the employees are actually working from home at the level they have been requested. Damn! I’m glad they called the FBI on this one!!!

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

#399

Post by FredPret » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

jhawk28 wrote: post #92

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages haven't kept pace with productivity since the 70's, and income and wealth inequality has reached astronomical proportions. IMO its time for a bit of inflation and improved employee leverage.

Inflation isn't a good thing. It is probably going to exasperate the wealth inequality and I don't see how it will improve employee leverage. It is an invisible tax caused by government artificially increasing the money supply.

Mild inflation can lead to higher employment. We had a super tight labour market before Covid, I remember reading about factory workers getting signing bonuses (!)

Here’s hoping we’ll just pick right up where we left off!

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

#400

Post by pdimitar » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #355

pdimitar wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too wide a generalization. I believe your parent poster simply outlined the two polar opposites and that if somebody doesn't thrive in an environment where ideas are "bounced back and forth" then you shouldn't mandate them attending such sessions. Nothing else.

If they don't thrive in that environment, maybe they are in the wrong environment? Is it important that the org bends to the will of a subset of workers with specific preferences, or is it important that we get a group of people who are going to get the work done? I suppose I'm firmly in the latter group. I have goals that I need to achieve; I need a crew that can achieve them; and whoever I pick necessarily has to b…

> Is it important that the org bends to the will of a subset of workers with specific preferences

Huh? Where did this come from? Why "bend"? You can just post on Slack: "The 'Ideation' event is coming, attendance is not mandatory, come if you want to hang out and discuss ideas about tasks X and Y!"

Whoever wants to -- and loves that way of work -- will come. Everybody else will keep on digging on their own tasks and job will still get done. Win-win, no?

> or is it important that we get a group of people who are going to get the work done?

I don't understand why are you conflating "not willing to spend an hour with people enthusiastically discussing ideas" with "I can't get dev work done"?

Too much polarization and "us vs. them", dude. Your colleagues are not your enemies.