‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by pandaman » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

jensensbutton wrote: post #232

philote wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At my FAANG they did studies and on average people are working MORE hours each day since the switch to WFH. If they were concerned about maximizing hours then they'd leave it as in. I suspect there are other concerns.

This had been my experience too. I don't think I had been more productive - many times I've just stayed late poking at the problem I'd normally leave for the next day when working in the office. Most of these times I still solved it the next day with the new ideas after a night's sleep. Not to mention I've got many ideas from random discussions with colleagues, which ceased with the WFH. So return to the office is a win-win for me and my employer: I work less and I am more productive.

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

#482

Post by kondro » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

r3trohack3r wrote: post #478

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…

Taking objection to the N in “FAANG” Netflix engineer here. The portion of the company I work in has been hiring remote during the pandemic and we have a company wide permanent WFH policy (well guidance from HR) in place. The policy includes pay tiers depending on where you live, but the pay adjustment doesn’t take place until COVID WFH is lifted. I work on a team that, post covid, has engineers in two countries. I p…

Is the cost of living in the Bay Area really $100k+ more expensive than AZ? Or does the difference in state income tax offset that?

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

#483

Post by bigmattystyles » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

joefife wrote: post #254

achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

Several of your reasons for wanting to return to the office are the very reasons I want to stay at home.

Yeah, I don't want to be asked out at work - ever

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

#484

Post by snowflake_ptr » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

srswtf123 wrote: post #192

throwaway743 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, your examples of organizations are homogeneous in their nature, and borderline cult level communal. Unless you're in management or one of those workers who's an over zealous corporate kool-aid drinking yes-man who screams about company culture and has substituted any outside social life with the office and coworkers, these examples might be extreme and irrelevant. We're all slowly dying, and personally, I val…

> I value having more control over what little time I have left alive This right here is the entire argument. It's about control , and nothing more. The pandemic displaced a large group of socially successful people from the social hierarchy. Those people want to return to the old normal because they want their status back. They want control back. "You'll do what you're told because I said so, that's why." lies at th…

> We're collectively asked to give up our lives to these companies.

"Give up our lives"? Ridiculous. The vast majority of paid jobs in the US are either on a 40-hour workweek (which is a fraction of the 168 hours in a week) or by the hour (wherein you can work far less, even if not an arbitrarily small amount).

This is utter hyperbole, and even more so when you compare American working hours to Asian ones, such as the infamous Chinese "9-9-6" schedule (72 work hours a week).

> To willingly give over our ability to determine how we order our days.

Well, yeah. That's kind of how jobs work. You provide labor and get capital in return. You're free to opt out and not work if you want.

> To look the other way as our various employers build a literal dystopia.

Nobody is asking you to look the other way. Unions exist for a reason. Political activism is legal and actively practiced.

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

#485

Post by freyr » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

fatnoah wrote: post #419

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. WARNING: ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE I manage a team of 12 people at a FAANG. One team member just quit working entirely until offices open again. Any information about offices opening is immediately pounced on and celebrated. While most folks have stated that they enjoy working from home, a few others hate it. Intere…

My experience with my teammates is the same.

I’m the sole member of my team that moved out of the Bay Area during the pandemic. I can’t imagine moving back, but my teammates (all 10-15 years younger) can’t wait to get back in the office.

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

#486

Post by test_epsilon » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:06 AM UTC

ItsMonkk wrote: post #256

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more-or-less the person described in the GP, and I live in Manhattan. Being in a city doesn't mean crap if I spend the day sitting alone in my tiny studio apartment. 40 hours a week is a huge chunk of my life. I don't want to just be a robot during that time, I want to be part of a community of some sort. (Even as I do try to maintain connections outside of work too!)

Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them. As these offices are sitting empty and are no longer required, instead of letting them sit empty, let them be free to all. Community involvement is the only way to get this done.

> Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them.

The lack of of "community" is not due to lack of concrete boxes, in my opinion. How busy is your local library? From the odd occasion I've been, mine is not very. And seemed to be almost entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free computers/internet and were pretty solidly absorbed in facebook / paying bills / online shopping / whatever.

I don't think people like to invest a lot in public shared spaces because antisocial behavior from a few can easily ruin it and is difficult to police without being extremely restrictive.

Private clubs, groups, organizations are much more successful, and those are everywhere and (in my small experience) have good community spirit. You just don't necessarily see them easily because you can't necessarily walk in the door and start doing what you want.

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

#487

Post by dag11 » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #433

achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

Not criticizing you, but almost everything in that list is in direct contradiction with work/life separation, which you also listed.

I think there's different types of work/life balance. Temporal, spatial, social, etc. Some people strive to keep their work and personal locations explicitly separate. Others set timers and hard boundaries as to exactly when they're "working." Others avoid mixing their personal social lives with work social lives.

The person you're replying to is pretty similar to me, where I use the fact that I have a physical office as my work/life boundary. But I also don't shy away from having a social life when I'm within the work side of the boundary, and another social life when I'm on the outside. If you spend 1/3 of your life on the inside, you can have fun there without contradicting your personal work/life balance.

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

#488

Post by fooey » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

zffr wrote: post #359

bhub wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 45 and have been working partially remote for 4 years and fully remote since the pandemic. I really enjoy working from home. Spending more time with family and finding a good work/life balance and not having to commute are great perks. I have recently started a new job and was interviewed and onboarded entirely remote. The process was fine and in the future I am not required to be in the office a lot either. Howe…

IMO what's great about slack is that you can send someone a message and they can choose to respond whenever they're free. If async communication is too slow, you can always ask do to a zoom call for a few min. In an office I think it is pretty hard to tell when someone is actually available. If you make a mistake and interrupt someone while they are actually thinking deeply about a problem, you can cause a pretty big…

In the office, I was distracted by coworkers massively more often.

Maybe if the "office" actually gave everyone enough space to have their own office the push-back against going back wouldn't be so bad, but it seems like no company wants to spend the money to have comfortable and productive working environments.

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

#489

Post by fooey » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #450

zippergz wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My purely anecdotal experience is kind of the opposite. My friends and co-workers who are eager to get back to the office are mostly the ones who have kids and want to get away from them during the day (which I am sympathetic to).

FWIW, I have a kid (and a second on the way), and I want to go to an office, my office - not back to the office. That is, I want a separate place to work from, to make work-life balance easier and better insulate myself from the kid-related chaos during work hours. But this can be solved with just renting a separate flat and using it as an office; something I actually considered, except small flats are the new fad fo…

Exactly, if I could go back to an office that was even remotely comparable to my home office I wouldn't be so resistant.

I don't want to go back to a small room crammed full of programmers shoulder to shoulder, stuck on depressingly out of date equipment, with shitty air conditioning and public restrooms.

I'm sooo much more productive and happy working from home

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

#490

Post by wisty » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #364

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…

My take on HN is that there's a very vocal and fervent anti-office crowd here that cares more strongly about it so will dominate conversations about it, and that the "typical line-level engineer" employee will roll their eyes, not engage, and just continue waiting until they can get back to normal.

I like to bring up the Theory of the Firm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

It makes no sense that employees exist, right? Why not just pay everyone as consultants, gig workers, piece-work, etc?

But employees do exist, possibly because the best way to manage most people is to pay them to be in a room where all they can do is work.

Do you have a great idea to save time? Well you tell your boss, and you're pretty confident that this won't result in you losing billable hours, because you're an employee.

Are the requirements kind of bullshit? Not a problem, figure it out, you're paid to be here.

Do you need a break? Have a break. Maybe chat to some colleagues, that might even add some value.

All the anti-office folk seem very set on believing that they should be paid for the value they add, not the hours they are in the office. This is fine if you're delivering pizza, but for a lot of jobs this just isn't easy to measure.

Yes, there's some consultants and B2B, not everything needs to be employees, but for a lot of work and a lot of workers and managers it's paid salary that ends up being fairer and easier.

A lot of employees became more productive in lockdown, but I suspect this is partly due to novelty (change often has short-term benefits), partly due to there being nothing else to do, and partly due to all the uncertainty that the business might have mass layoffs.