At least 2 days home office, should be the ideal mix
Make it how many days of WFH each employee wants. This way all 3 camps are happy.
Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
111–120 of 194 posts
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#112I had to go into the office for the Fortune 500 company I work for; talked to the security guard and was told that every Monday they are handed a stack of security badges to process and remove from the system--people inform their managers they are leaving on Friday and hand in their badge.
The commute time, the price of gas, and the nature of the work in this building (tech work for customers who are themselves remote, with everything handled by a ticket system) are no doubt all factors. It is seen as a power ploy by management, I think, to have "butts in seats" again.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#113Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone. When I'm doing UI work, it's far more efficient to have a real-time session with a designer rather than multiple rounds of email/Figma comments.
Can't you schedule a meeting at a time that works for both of you when necessary, instead of forcing the whole team to be synchronous by default?
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#114Earlier 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…
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…
Your not the bass player you are the record label worrying about if a single exists.
If you interrupt the songwriter every 20 minutes because you have a question around lighting you end up without a song.
Many rock bands create their parts separately or one person creates it all and everyone else learns the material.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully “the next pandemic” will not be like this one at all. Because how “the experts” handled this one was shamefully wrong. At virtually every decision point these “experts” did the exact wrong thing. From years of school closures to two years of forced masks to intentionally frightening the daylights out of people. They did everything wrong. History will not look fondly at what was done. I hope to god we never…
How else would an someone, expert or not, respond to an contagious airborne virus other than masks and closing schools/offices??
For one thing how about being open and honest about your own publicly available data . Maybe start by clearly articulating the actual risks of Covid instead of letting the media fly away with garbage like “4% kill rate”. To this day people still parrot back “Covid kills 4% of people who get it” when the actual rate is several orders of magnitude lower, even with OG Covid.
That would be a start. Hiding facts and data that goes against your narrative and then labeling people who point said stuff out as conspiracy theorists is not cool.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a CTO and startup founder. We ship faster and more often than any team I’ve worked on or observed (multiple times per week). I think your assumption are bad.
Without being dismissive of your opinion, being the CTO of a startup doesn’t really say much. I can be the CTO of a startup after I finish an undergrad in computer science or I can be the CTO of a multiple rounds of funding unicorn. So qualifying your opinion with the generic “I’m a CTO and founder” perhaps isn’t a sufficient credence to suggest your experience holds clout.
The reason I mentioned my title is that I don’t think many would consider a CTO an IC. Saying remote and async only works as an IC is wrong.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#117Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone. When I'm doing UI work, it's far more efficient to have a real-time session with a designer rather than multiple rounds of email/Figma comments.
And this can still happen under async. But I wouldn’t recommend it all the time. It just feels like a crutch for bad working practice.
Also, kill email use internally. It’s absolutely not needed in 2022 when literally every app you use on a daily basis has an activity feed.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#118If the office is so great, pay me extra for the commute.
Many companies try to! The problem is that paying extra for the commute deterministically implies that people who do end up working remote are penalized, which they understandably aren't happy about. As the article describes, when companies like Spotify try to come up with an employee friendly policy they inevitably conclude that remote employees should be paid the same as in office ones.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
It's frankly dishonest for the article to characterize Blind, a well-known "complain about your job" app, as a "polling site" which might have meaningful results.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incompetent engineers need to share work hours, otherwise they will get stuck and not get much done if nobody has overlapping times to help them. Not all engineers are high caliber.
This is also true for competent engineers. No one knows everything.
Wouldn't you go to experts outside of your companies? I may go to the company who makes the product for support or to a popular forum and ask a question.. none of this needs to be sync vs async