Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work • Hacker News Board

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#41

Post by eunos » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #25

vhold wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to spend money into those rental or real estate markets.

The weird thing is that residential prices have gone way up, even in cities. It’s been a great year for the value of Seattle homes ( https://www.seattlepi.com/realestate/article/seattle-2021-ho... ). So I don’t think this has to do with executives protecting home values. It might be about the business protecting the value of office buildings, though - if they own them, and don’t rent, anyway.

Isn't that caused by 0 interest rate mostly?

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#42

Post by pm90 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

todd3834 wrote: post #10

I’ve been part of a lot of these conversations and it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. The trick is how to please everyone. It is easy to say, let those who want to come back come and those who don’t stay home. However those that want to go back say it is because they want to be surrounded by their coworkers. Having gone back to the office vo…

I don’t see why those that want to work remotely need to suppress their needs for those that do not. It’s one thing to have the freedom to choose the option you’re comfortable with, but to force it on those unwilling to so doesn’t seem right.

You’re right that it won’t be the same. We’re past the point where everyone being in the office was the unquestioned norm because we never really tried mass remote work on a large scale. But we have now, and it worked just fine.

Companies and employees need to figure out solutions that don’t involve forcing people to do something they don’t like just to “get back to where we were”.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#43

Post by notpachet » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

goalieca wrote: post #37

notpachet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. Agreed. Most of the issues that you highlighted that cause employees to prefer being in-office (loneliness, children and other distractions at home, work/life balance) are not attributable to being remote per se. Exacerbated by it, sure. But we should probably be addressing those problems head-on in a more intentional…

> (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned I’m not an old fart but I’m on my way. I find is brilliant to talk about house repairs and kids and vacation tips with my colleagues. It really brings some chill to an otherwise chaotic day in an absolutely volatile industry.

To be clear, I'm not saying you can't socialize with coworkers; I enjoy that, too. It just shouldn't be someone's only source of nourishment.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#44

Post by MattGaiser » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #35

Company I work for is remote-only and has been for years. Since they already had that in place the pandemic didn't really hit them from an organisational point of view. The reason I was so interested in the job (other than the fact the work is interesting) was because they where remote-only before pandemic - so there was no risk of "right, it's over, everyone back in the building". I'm not sure what someone would hav…

> with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer.

I had an earlier comment on how those against WFH might change their mind if they had a good chair. It might work in reverse too.

The office might be far less annoying to people if they had a budget for equipment or at least got high quality equipment.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#45

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #9

vhold wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to spend money into those rental or real estate markets.

This is why zoning is really bad. Those company could have converted some of those space into housing. Provide it to the employee as benefit for cheap/free. I believe quite significant number of employee would happily live on campus.

One step closer to a company town. And makes the prospect of a job change that much more painful.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#46

Post by axpy906 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

Personally, I don’t consider an employer if remote is not an option. It gives you a view into how their management thinks about work and that’s important for not just getting things done but long term development. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#47

Post by eplanit » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #22

I came out of retirement last fall for a while to work at an AI startup. One of the really nice things about the all-remote setup was randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week. Given that I had a lot of samples (N ~= 50) of co-workers opinions on remote vs. in office work, I feel comfortable making a generalization: young single people mostly wanted to go back to the office while people in relationships…

"randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week"

Really? As in you and someone else are each assigned a meeting with each other on Zoom (or whatever) at a given time? Would your co-workers not socialize, otherwise? It sounds like it was a positive experience for you, which is great.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#48

Post by toptal » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

I’ve written about this extensively https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/remote-not-re...

The problem is they built campuses and feel stupid about devaluing them. Combine that with a backwards mindset and, for most companies, the situation becomes clear.

It’s really that simple.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#49

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #38

If a company isn't allowing remote work, they're voluntarily cutting themselves off from a large portion of the available labor pool. That's their choice, but they can never again complain about a shortage of talent. Which should affect their ability to participate in work visa programs, for example.

This cuts both ways: people from wealthy countries with high cost of living can never complain about competition from people who will be happy to take 1/4 of their salary to do the same job.

Re: Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

#50

Post by gz5 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

todd3834 wrote: post #10

I’ve been part of a lot of these conversations and it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. The trick is how to please everyone. It is easy to say, let those who want to come back come and those who don’t stay home. However those that want to go back say it is because they want to be surrounded by their coworkers. Having gone back to the office vo…

Exactly - different strokes for different folks. Therefore, there is no one size fits all approach. The same was true before the pandemic - 100% in office was not ideal for everyone.

Mature in-office companies - generally larger companies with established business models and median employee tenures of 5+ years - have it the most difficult. Some may have rapidly adjusted during the pandemic. But other in-office companies will not adapt so quickly - people were hired into a certain culture, got used to it, build core processes, systems, workstyles etc. Even if in-office wasn't ideal for them, and it wouldn't have been for all of them, it is ingrained. For those companies, if they choose to go hybrid or remote now because they feel it makes more sense long term, they still may have a multi-year adjustment, and that may include losing some people and gaining others. So, if you are one of those companies, this may represent a massive refactoring type decision and the complex systems between people and processes can be difficult to refactor.

Would love to hear from folks at these types of companies (we have always been remote-first so can't really put ourselves in their shoes) who are successfully pulling off that refactoring.