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Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

kenyarmosh.com

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Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#21

Post by karpierz »

wgx wrote: post #8

Anecdata: I’ve noticed that the voices in an organisation who are more keen for a return to the office tend to be the managers, directors, leadership sort of roles. I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

That's a pretty cynical take. Everyone is trying to get their work done, it's more of a question of whether remote work makes that easier or harder.

- People whose productivity is based on regular social interaction will work faster face-to-face.

- People whose productivity is based on long periods of focus will work faster remotely.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#22

Post by tapanjk »

colinmhayes wrote: post #5

> Go look at Buffer, Zapier, Automattic, GitLab, and more, who are Remote First companies with thriving cultures. I really don't think pointing to a couple companies that are remote and have decent culture invalidates the point that offices foster collaboration and culture sharing. No, it's not impossible to do those things in a remote environment, but it is absolutely much harder. It's not that hard to understand so…

> but it is absolutely much harder Agree. But the upside is big too.

Is learning to ride a bicycle hard? Of course. But once you learn to ride a bicycle, the benefits are immense. That is why people learn to ride a bike in spite of the initial difficulty. They know that the payoff is much larger in the end.

If you can figure out how to be effective in a remote setup, you will not only learn how to work remotely, but also how to communicate well in a team. Physical distance should and will become a nonissue for a software development team.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#23

Post by drewcoo »

I still haven't seen any articles about the money. If people are being herded back into offices there's likely money behind it.

The owners of all of that office space are going to lose a lot if nobody goes back to the office. Are they paying to incentivize any of this "return to office" stuff?

Likewise, if the business real estate market crashes, what are all the ripples? Are there people paying to prevent the crash because it would hit them indirectly?

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#24

Post by ryanbrunner »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #12

I'm surprised security and confidentiality hasn't been more of an issue point. Especially for Apple.

I feel like for many companies that was a problem that had to be solved a long time ago. It's pretty rare that you're not taking home a work laptop, or have work data on your phone or at least a company-provided phone already.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#25

Post by tapanjk »

wgx wrote: post #8

Anecdata: I’ve noticed that the voices in an organisation who are more keen for a return to the office tend to be the managers, directors, leadership sort of roles. I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

The thing is, you have to produce results when you are remote. In an office, you can get by looking busy. I think the people who insist on going back to the office are the ones who are missing the stage on which they used to perform without actually doing real work.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#26

Post by noahtallen »

diob wrote: post #14
colinmhayes wrote: post #5

> Go look at Buffer, Zapier, Automattic, GitLab, and more, who are Remote First companies with thriving cultures. I really don't think pointing to a couple companies that are remote and have decent culture invalidates the point that offices foster collaboration and culture sharing. No, it's not impossible to do those things in a remote environment, but it is absolutely much harder. It's not that hard to understand so…

Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.

(I work at one of the listed companies, and these views are my own.)

Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication.

Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places!

And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world.

So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#27

Post by teus »

wgx wrote: post #8

Anecdata: I’ve noticed that the voices in an organisation who are more keen for a return to the office tend to be the managers, directors, leadership sort of roles. I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

> I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

Alternate take 1: If IC positions attract strongly introverted people, ICs as a cohort will naturally be less desirous of returning to the office than cohorts that require some ability to extrovert (such as management).

Alternate take 2: ICs are responsible for their tasks/goals. Managers are responsible for the tasks/goals of their managed individuals as well as the health of the team. People aren't machines. Managing people is not as simple as checking if they're completing sprints on time. Are they overworked? Underworked? Happy? Depressed? Engaged? Disinterested? These sorts of assessments are important yet can be hard to determine remotely.

If managing requires some amount of extroversion, and also the ability to not just measure that boxes have been checked but attest that boxes will continue to be checked in the future, it follows that managers likely are "more keen for a return to the office".

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#28

Post by happytoexplain »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #7

I actually don’t care whether I’m more productive at home or in the office. I’m positive I’m more productive in the office but I won’t return either way. It makes no difference to me . My life is not about my employer extracting 100% of my productivity from me. I have a better quality of life working from home and I’m going to keep it.

Yes, this is an unjustly ignored point. The nigh-100% focus on which one is more productive is a blaring signal of how sick work culture is. At times we seem to simply accept that employers/managers are the dictators, and employees are the subjects, rather than that both are equal humans.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#29

Post by BlargMcLarg »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #3

>MYTH # 2: The office promotes connections I just find this bit entirely unconvincing. I don't have data to back up my claim, but IME 1 in-person interaction is worth ~5-10 'virtual coffee' type interactions via Donut or one of the similar apps. Maybe others feel differently, but I haven't found any substitute for live, in-person get togethers for connecting with colleagues on a personal level.

The myth sounds mostly based on all the other issues the office brings with it. In a vacuum, would people communicate more in face given they had enough similarities, the work at hand would greatly benefit from it and there were no negatives? Well, I think so.

But that's not what reality is. Many people work in a lousy, suboptimal open office. They don't get to handpick their teammates. They might have to spend a lot of time commuting at times not matching their natural rhythm, which inadvertently has an effect on their mood.

And that's really all there is to it. If there's truth to how many people just "glue code together" in their developer jobs, then the immediate follow-up is "do you really need to discuss that much to glue code together, when requirements are already far out of your reach?" For many, the work literally becomes a case of "the more you bother me, the less work I'll get done", which coupled with the above and pressure to perform, is a recipe for disaster.

Given something closer to the ideal with more collaborative requirements, then yes, in-office would be better no doubt. With the caveat of the disadvantages one would still have.

Re: Big Myths Employers Are Using to Force “Return to Office”

#30

Post by LunaSea »

wgx wrote: post #8

Anecdata: I’ve noticed that the voices in an organisation who are more keen for a return to the office tend to be the managers, directors, leadership sort of roles. I wonder if being in the office is just simply more enjoyable for those with power and influence, while individual contributors (trying to get their work done) find they like it more at home?

Manager type roles, where interactions, communication and interpersonal relationships matter, unlike développement care about meeting physically.

What a shocker!

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