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‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

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Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#111

Post by minsc__and__boo »

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

Simply put: It's easier to to restrict WFH policies and then go lax on them later, as opposed to the opposite which would build a workforce accustomed to WFH that would revolt.

I think there's a chance we'll see WFH loosening up eventually.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#112

Post by underseacables »

I think this will be temporary. Eventually the WFH crowd will get so demanding that it will be easier and cheaper for a company to hire less qualified people. Eventually the wfh crowd will have to..get a job… and we’ll be back to where we started.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#113

Post by totalgeek »

klipklop wrote: post #59
dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

Nobody wants to give up a something once it becomes a part of their life that they enjoy. The FANG workers got a taste of not having a daily long commute and don't want to give this small life improvement back. Getting back several hours of your life is pretty big. FANG companies however have gotten a taste of nearly unlimited power and have not heard "no" in years. They too don't want to give this up. This is why th…

Let's not also forget the ability to take your pay from say a major metropolitan area like San Francisco, and work remote where you get more bang for your buck like Wyoming.

When I was working in the bay area I would've happily taken a 10-20% pay cut in order to work remote from anywhere. I would've been happy with a mandate of 'come into the office for a week (on the company dime of course) once a quarter, bi-annually or whatever'

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#114

Post by saiya-jin »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #42

In my experience at least talking to some younger people there is a clear dichotomy: despite all the talk about Gen Z being "digital natives", people new in their career are much hungrier to get back into the office because they don't yet have good career networks built up and they're eager for mentorship. It is older, or at least more established workers who are less keen on that. I don't think FAANGs will have any…

A lot of domain knowledge and momentum might be lost due to such reshuffling. Losing competitive edge and whatnot.

But maybe they have excellent documentation, knowledge sharing and mentorship, unlike all multinational corps I've ever worked for (where was generally a cost center and frowned upon).

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#115

Post by brandmeyer »

philote wrote: post #101
klipklop wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to give up a something once it becomes a part of their life that they enjoy. The FANG workers got a taste of not having a daily long commute and don't want to give this small life improvement back. Getting back several hours of your life is pretty big. FANG companies however have gotten a taste of nearly unlimited power and have not heard "no" in years. They too don't want to give this up. This is why th…

Before the pandemic FANGs seemed to want everyone in the office as much as possible. That's why they have their own cafeterias/restaurants, daycare, workout rooms, etc. They wanted employees in the office, working a minimum of 40 hours a week. I'm guessing even though remote work is going fine for now, they're concerned they're not going to be able to keep getting over 40 hours of week out of employees. (This is conj…

> (This is conjecture on my part, I have no idea how many hours FANG employees tend to work).

Then don't conjecture. Speculation doesn't add to the conversation. In the absence of evidence, it just spreads a misinformation virus.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#116

Post by kybernetikos »

gaws wrote: post #30
dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

> I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. A lot of people want to work for FAANG. If a current employee resigns because of WFH policies, those companies can likely find a replacement who is more receptive to returning to the office.

The pattern I've observed is that younger and more junior people want to work in the office, and older, more senior people with established networks, family life and nice accomodation with a home office are more likely to appreciate working from home.

This means that if you lose a lot of people because you start being stricter about working from home, then you'll probably disproportionately lose the senior people who are hard to replace and not lose very many of the young juniors who are easy to replace.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#117

Post by acituan »

klipklop wrote: post #59
dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

Nobody wants to give up a something once it becomes a part of their life that they enjoy. The FANG workers got a taste of not having a daily long commute and don't want to give this small life improvement back. Getting back several hours of your life is pretty big. FANG companies however have gotten a taste of nearly unlimited power and have not heard "no" in years. They too don't want to give this up. This is why th…

> This is why they demand the butts back in the cramped open seating office

It is also the astronomical real estate money they had sunken into new office spaces.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#118

Post by dahfizz »

burlesona wrote: post #109

As a hiring manager, a lot of candidates I’ve been talking to lately have been telling me they are looking for a new job in part because their company has decided to stay all-remote and they hate it. The first thing they want to know is if we have an office and/or will open one soon. People just have different preferences. I think what we’re seeing right now is a significant expansion of remote roles. Previously if y…

> People just have different preferences.

I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_ superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their employees to come into the office.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#119

Post by _y5hn »

aikinai wrote: post #57
pjc50 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's individual managers who've never quite got past "if you can't see someone how do you know they're working?" Never underestimate human irrationality in these things.

This is the most blatantly ridiculous straw man, I can’t believe people on HN keep trying to make it especially against FAANG. Do you really think these companies are run by middle managers that just want to watch people work? At least at Google, a huge number of employees already work in a different floor, office, city, or even country than their managers that this couldn’t even be a factor for them.

In Scrum, Scrum Master is a contributing member, just as everyone else. It's a role without power, but servant leadership and can be rotated.

This doesn't work in practice, as people are too bogged down in their work to take on this. So the role is left up to the nearest manager, ex-manager, clueless business people who're not contributing or otherwise people who just reports upwards. This defeats the role, and it's very very rare to see a contributing member being scrum master, ie. taking up slack and do the necessary stuff around the team.

So you end up with such role, or manager, overseeing the desks in open office, of the servants. Such a one-sided arrangement is both intentional, ignorant and about dominance. Feng Shui explains why it is bad for knowledge workers to have eyes over their shoulders all the time.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#120

Post by baron_harkonnen »

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

> perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH

I think the divide between WFH and return to the office boils down to something surprisingly simple: how much longer does your current lease last and/or how much office property do you own.

Companies that are about to have a lease expire, or are growing at a rate that they would need to soon lease an even larger building are going to be surprisingly friendly to WFH.

Companies that have 5+ years on their current lease and aren't planning rapid growth, or companies that spend enormous capital building mega-offices that they likely can't recoup the losses from unless people keep working in offices are going to be very resistant to wide spread WFH.

The company I currently work for has an office, is not giving it up (so I assume long term lease) but has nearly doubled since the pandemic. They are very WFH friendly. Another company I know had a shorter lease, shrunk considerably and is now too small for there old office: also WFH friendly.

I know a few other companies that aren't growing or shrinking and either own or long term lease several large offices in expensive cities. All of them are pushing a return to office.

Any company that owns commercial real estate is going to be very aggressive about a return to work, not just for their employees, but for everyone.

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