Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls • Hacker News Board

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#131

Post by andrelaszlo » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

chews wrote: post #122

dSebastien wrote: post #119

Same here. Everyone was "happy" and "proud" about our remote performance and now they force us back to the office 50% of the time. Many people seem to see it as a great leap forward, but I don't. One of the company value is supposed to be "independent"... This week I was supposed to go, not see my kids in the morning, waste 2 hours in the train, expose myself to Covid, just to sit alone in an office and discuss throu…

Quoted post unavailable.

Are you implying that renegotiating terms isn't an available option, and the only way to deal with an unpreferable situation as an employee is to switch jobs?

I am trying to make sense of your comment but I don't really get this attitude either :)

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#132

Post by renewiltord » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #3

Have any of the pro-RTO folks on HN experienced this phenomenon? There's definitely a contingent here who do not prefer remote work, curious to read what they think of going back into the office only to have to continue to call in order to collaborate with coworkers.

We’ve been in-office since early August 2021. It’s been great. Since we have two offices, we dial in every day for our daily meeting.

The rest of the time we talk in person and sync up after. We’ve found it quite enjoyable so all of us come in every day.

We’re in HFT so if an action would leave money on the table, we’d prefer the alternative that grabs the cash.

In this case, we started this office because part of the team was remote in SF and expressed an interest in being in one. It costs a lot per year so we didn’t make the decision lightly.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#133

Post by ryanSrich » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it, gather my thoughts, and then send you my questions?

And don’t get it twisted. I’ve been in these types of meetings. Client meetings, project meetings, etc. It’s always been as an outsider, but they’re all the same. Small talk, people arrive, someone always has to have everyone introduce themselves, then there’s a quasi-presentation/conversation, and eventually everyone leaves. I can’t think of a less efficient means of communicating an idea than that.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#134

Post by closeparen » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

fartcannon wrote: post #96

icedchai wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss in-person activities, especially going to lunch with coworkers, trying a new restaurant, or one of our old favorites. Remote has become pretty old.

What stops you from doing that now? You still get lunch breaks when WFH.

People whose common ground in life is that they both liked the weather or got good deals on big houses - at least this is how I understand geographical community in a remote-first world - would seem unlikely to produce nearly as engaging of lunch conversation as coworkers. And coworkers at lunch were not famously engaging to begin with.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#135

Post by closeparen » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 6:59 AM UTC

mylons wrote: post #111

icedchai wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, but it's more than exception than the rule now.

the opportunity this presents is getting lunch with people that aren't ephemeral and transactional. you can experience something OTHER than work on your lunch hour, expand your horizons, and build meaningful relationships. of course you will on occasion get one of those relationships from the office, but they're the exception to the rule imo.

How are you going to build more meaningful relationships with a collection of people that’s essentially random (neighbors) vs. one with a lot of built in common ground (coworkers)?

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#136

Post by WWLink » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:00 AM UTC

spideymans wrote: post #82

freyr wrote: post #40

This is the most frustrating part of being forced back to the Bay Area. Even before the pandemic, we always had distributed meetings, with people calling in from various buildings, conference rooms, phone booths, etc. So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a…

>I did have previous jobs where we worked on hard technical problems, and spending face-to-face time with a couple colleagues hashing out solutions at a whiteboard was invaluable. But that is not my FAANG job, where the whiteboards are rarely used for anything other than interview questions I hope that I get to work on some actually hard problems at some point in my career. Sounds fun :)

Grass can be greener on the other side. Usually hard problems are expensive to solve, and the business end wants nigh endless amounts of justification and planning for those solutions lol. You think you'll be designing cool architecture (and you will!) but you'll also spend a lot of your time making powerpoints and sitting in meetings to "touch base" and "tag up" and whatever lol.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#137

Post by ryanSrich » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:00 AM UTC

proc0 wrote: post #87

I was thinking returning to the office is sort of a 'prisoner's dilemma'. Everyone has to make the same choice for it to be effective, otherwise the office experience is diminished and working from home is better at that point, since you'll be in remote meetings anyway. I still think it's a matter of control that the office is preferred. There's absolutely no reason why software problems can't be solved remotely, esp…

The reason to have anyone in an office is because it makes managers and executives feel better. It’s really that simple. No one who has ever worked remotely themselves could possibly believe that employees are more productive in an office.

I think the delusion most people tell themselves about in person being better for spontaneous conversations, and better productivity comes down to just wanting human interaction. Which is totally normal. But all of the talk about how being in person is better is just a cope. Working from home is better in every instance where it’s possible.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#138

Post by tuckerman » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

freyr wrote: post #40

This is the most frustrating part of being forced back to the Bay Area. Even before the pandemic, we always had distributed meetings, with people calling in from various buildings, conference rooms, phone booths, etc. So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a…

I had plenty of interactions at Google over lunch, in the hallway, while taking a break, etc that we brought to a whiteboard and either ended up with a potentially interesting project or saved us time by finding out something didn’t make sense. These often came from a series of multiple, low stakes conversations that were much more difficult to have remotely. I don’t contend they are impossible, but for me they were at least much less frequent during wfh.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#139

Post by ryanSrich » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #50

This is exactly the case for my company. Since the pandemic started the majority of our engineering hiring has been remote, because why pay Bay Area salaries when you have perfectly great developers willing to work out of Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Portland or really anywhere else in the same-ish timezones. Now that our HQ has fully opened up and local employees are being asked to come back, how do you deal wi…

> What would have been a 1:1 over coffee or a corridor huddle now needs a meeting room reservation, and there aren't nearly enough of them to go around.

Genuinely curious because I’ve yet to encounter this myself - but why would you need a meeting for something like this? Can you not just ask your colleague via slack, teams, etc? Or better yet, can either of you write up a proposal and put out a RFC on it? That way there’s no burden of having a meeting just to discuss something?

Sorry if that comes off rude. I’m just genuinely curious what you’d need to meet about.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#140

Post by ttGpN5Nde3pK » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

I don't understand why we continue to legislate all these rules around cars, but yet companies that are perfectly capable of employing a remote workforce are allowed to mandate that people drive to the office to sit on a computer.

I guess it's more fun banning shit than it is building a world where we don't _need_ to drive _ANY_ car to an office. Or, a world where I can simply get on a trolley/etc to go where I need to.