At least 2 days home office, should be the ideal mix
Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
91–100 of 194 posts
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#92Some types of tech work well with remote, largely unalignable staff. Some don’t. I’m finding that where I can build small modules, by myself, that allow lots of flexibility to make final integration possible, I’m getting a lot of work done. When I need to collaborate with a bunch of people and get small pieces of code landing in different places before I can start to see results, then I’m finding the remote angry ner…
Just wanted to echo this - the lack of in-person discourse leads to strained relationships IME. There is so much nuance lost in pure digital (especially email/chat but also video calls) that it puts up communication barriers/friction. As a result people communicate less, or even "come out swinging" (i.e. angry/forcefully) if they feel their work/decisions/etc are being questioned. I am sure pure remote works well whe…
> even "come out swinging" (i.e. angry/forcefully) if they feel their work/decisions/etc are being questioned
That is incredibly unprofessional, no matter where one is working from. No job descriptions include a blank check to do whatever one feels like without justifying it.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#93Counterpoint: For many careers remote work deprives young workers of mentoring, relationship building, and learning by osmosis. This is already being seen at law firms for example. So, enjoy your remote work - and for many professions it won't be an issue - but for some careers watch as your in-person colleagues advance faster, earn more & enjoy greater trust and responsibility.
Counterpoint: For many careers remote work deprives young workers of mentoring, relationship building, and learning by osmosis. This is already being seen at law firms for example.
If the bosses (the higher-ups, not the middle managers) don't like you, you're not going to get this anyway, and 99% of whether they decide they like you is based on preexisting social class similiarity. The pre-anointed winners with rich, connected daddies benefit from this--they're the ones who get tapped to be CEO's proteges--and they'll be just fine without going into an office.
The rest of us, if we have to go to an office, are just wasting our time so someone else feels important, and that's really it. They don't see us as one of them, so they're not going to invest in our careers, so we have no reason to care beyond the minimum and having to pretend otherwise (that is, indulge and uphold bourgeois false consciousness) is emotional labor we're better off without having to do.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I have to guess, they mean within US
So Spotify employees in Stockholm would earn differently than the ones in the US? Doesn't really sound like "continuing to pay New York City-level salaries to workers no matter where they're based" if that's the case. Edit: Here's a source that says they pay the same no matter if you're in the office or at home (basically), but it's limited to countries Spotify agrees you can be in: > Location choices – we will also…
Salaries are set per country. So someone in North Dakota will get the same salary as someone in NYC.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a news article, not a peer-reviewed scientific study - why don't people understand the difference?
I don't really understand the point of a news article where not even a poll is used. Just saying "they've heard anecdotes" does nothing but reinforce existing biases that everyone here will have. Hard data will at least convince some people who have biases but trust scientific processes to change their opinions.
Some poll results can be found in the 3rd paragraph:
"A recent survey of more than 650 Apple employees on third-party anonymous polling site Blind revealed 76% of respondents were dissatisfied with the company's return-to-office plans; 56% said they'd consider resigning over it."
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#96Counterpoint: For many careers remote work deprives young workers of mentoring, relationship building, and learning by osmosis. This is already being seen at law firms for example. So, enjoy your remote work - and for many professions it won't be an issue - but for some careers watch as your in-person colleagues advance faster, earn more & enjoy greater trust and responsibility.
I’ve worked remotely for 25 years, at a combination of companies and as an independent contractor. As an independent contractor of course I was responsible for learning things on my own. At some companies I’ve worked for, mentoring was always accidental; they never planned for it or deliberately tried to do it well. The results were pretty mixed. At others, they deliberately set out to train and mentor people well, even if they were remote. The results were much, much better, and people’s careers did not suffer merely because they were remote.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the concept of async work but I’m also scared of how transactional that would make work. Most companies that preach async now have a very strong, “friendly” culture. If async catches on more widely I’m worried it would be the final push to make software development purely transactional and performance/pay would be directly tied to metrics. I enjoy the human component of work. I don’t like _all_ of my coworkers…
I am beginning to think that many remote developers will eventually become 1099 contractors who can pick up random gigs. Because let’s be honest, the reason most of these folks are doing this is because they don’t give a crap about the specific company or anything like that. They just want to build cool shit that other people spec out. As long as the pay is competitive one day they might be building a healthcare mobi…
Totally agree, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I suppose I'm a bit of a strange case on HN, in that I'm coming to programming from being a film composer, i.e. I've pretty much always been freelance, and so working as a "real" employee is infinitely weird to me even at the best of times. I worked at a large corporation one time, and while I loved the work and my co-workers, the subtle office politics, the whole idea of a "culture," the routine day in and day out...it just did not vibe with me. I'm not totally against going back to being a W2 employee, but it would take an awful lot to convince me.
Like others in this thread, the reality that work is primarily a simple transaction of time for money, coupled with my experience being a "real" employee, has ingrained in me the understanding that, if you want to protect yourself as a worker, being at "arms length" as you put it is the way. At least for me.
I am a company of one (literally and figuratively). Unfortunately that's the logical endpoint of companies not feeling any loyalty towards their employees. So be it, I embrace it, because what else is there to do?
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm growing more and more frustrated with open offices, and with $management's unwillingness any concerns. Quitting isn't really an option: I haven't seen a single Belgian company that has an acceptable office layout for software engineers. Even desk sizes seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Remote options are few and far between (and I don't want to WFH anymore).
I'm also burnt out on WFH. At this point, I'd appreciate an workplace to go in to. But I'd also appreciate that workplace giving me my own office with a door that closes. I've had that only once in my career and it was bliss.
If you work from home, can’t you acquire an office with a door that closes? Perhaps by building an extension on your house, or a workshop in the yard, or renting an office over a restaurant a mile from home (you know the ones that are usually rented by local lawyers, insurance agents, etc)?
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like there are two very different modes of development being mentioned here. You seem to be describing a mode where you just need to concentrate and bang out your lines of code for the day. The previous comment seems to be referring to creative, collaborative development. The industry probably needs both, but I’m much more personally interested in the latter, and I’m worried that async/remote is disastrous for…
> To use a crude example, if you’re in a rock band composing songs together, you would never consider that interrupting the bass player to suggest a slightly different riff would be “an interruption that cost them 20 minutes of focus Bad analogies are not very persuasive
If you think software development can be a collaborative creative process, it’s really not a terrible analogy.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asking a quick question that only takes a few minutes is a nice bonus for you, but for the person you asked it was an interruption that cost them 20 minutes or more of focus. That might be ok if the person you asked has a job that is designed to be interrupt–driven (aka a manager), but if this was another engineer then this wasn’t a net benefit. But the other side of the coin is that if you do need to ask a question…
Asking a question in slack is exactly what I’m referring to. It is async but if we’re on the same schedule then chances are you’ll reply within a couple minutes if not an hour. I massively prefer this style as opposed to walking over to somebody’s desk. However OP is suggesting async also implies you can be working on different schedules with no downside but it’s the differing schedule that is causing the problem.
I agree, we have a sister team which resides half-way around the world (we’re west coast of US, they are in Germany). Over the years, we’ve found the asynchronous communication between us to be a point of friction that has slowed down progress. Waiting for a peer review from them introduces days of lag on what should be faster iterative development cycle.
As a result, we’ve factored this into new architecture plans which further decouple the two teams to operate more independently. We may not have cared as much if we all were operating in approximately the same time zone but asynchronous work will undoubtedly slow development progress on any interface boundaries or when working with dependencies. In a micro-services oriented organization this will almost always be the case. For some areas I can see IC’s being sufficiently isolated in a way that asynchronous could work well but for my organization it would be a nightmare.