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Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

bbc.com

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Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#161

Post by bradlys »

xeromal wrote: post #84
gorgoiler wrote: post #39

Some 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…

Honestly, it sounds like what happens when you have too large a workforce that it's easy to behave this way. I work for a small company of about 50 devs and it's really hard to be "the angry nerd asshole(tm)" without no one wanting to work with you. I think the onus is mostly on leadership to sniff this behavior out and fix it or throw them out. Life is too short to be an asshole or to deal with them.

The problem is that leadership is also the same type of person. I’ve found that leadership is often more troubling than any ICs.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#162

Post by kcplate »

gorgoiler wrote: post #39

Some 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…

> get small pieces of code landing in different places before I can start to see results

I long for the days when developers worked on big pieces of code and had ownership much more holistically in what they were developing

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#163

Post by kcplate »

bbarn wrote: post #137
vermooten wrote: post #45

I'm still genuinely uncertain why companies are so desperate to get staff into the office. 'Business people' like HR, sales, marketing LOVE being together in person; Engineers somewhat less so. Given that companies tend to be run by 'business people' then yeah I think I just answered my own question.

I hate these kinds of statements. Your occupation does not define your personality or your ability to work with others closely. Without someone capable of bringing others together socially, team standards and practices either get dictated by the manager or the loudest voice in the room. The ability to foster collaboration is woefully underappreciated as a skill in our field. And yeah, I've met plenty of antisocial HR…

>I've met plenty of antisocial HR…

I originally read that “sociopathic HR”, and thought no shit, then reread it correctly.

I am pretty much convinced that in 2022 the average HR person’s sole duty to to try and justify their own existence.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#164

Post by kcplate »

elric wrote: post #11
dijit wrote: post #2

I’ll be honest: I feel somewhat vindicated due my own personal struggles with the open office[0] and people arguing for the status quo on hacker news[1]. I am extremely sad at the extreme loss of life and horrible conditions caused by the pandemic. So I feel exceedingly guilty for feeling glad that an upside of it is that we can finally do away with this horrible practice of crushing everyone together so the managers…

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’d be interested to know how RTO dissatisfaction correlates to open office environments. I’d be willing to bet that companies that have the big room full of lined up desks and elbow to elbow developers might be getting some pushback.

I recall reading this blog post a couple of decades ago and being jealous, because finally someone really understood developers and what they needed to be productive. I’m remote now, and thankfully not returning to office, but this would be one I would return to willingly. An open office? Not a chance, I’d fight it every step of the way.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#165

Post by gorgoiler »

kcplate wrote: post #162
gorgoiler wrote: post #39

Some 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…

> get small pieces of code landing in different places before I can start to see results I long for the days when developers worked on big pieces of code and had ownership much more holistically in what they were developing

This sounds like an interesting perspective. Could you elaborate a bit more on what it is different today, and what you are comparing the present situation to?

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#166

Post by aiisjustanif »

spookthesunset wrote: post #26
axg11 wrote: post #12

Earlier 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…

Your comment is definitely centralized in a US mindset but I promise you can still have rights as an employee and not have some much company culture stuff at other companies outside of the US. Being 1099 contractor has too much exposure to risk as an employee IME.

> 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.

I do not build cool stuff everyday that other people spec out and wouldn’t consider my job being a developer these days. I would say I very much care and like the company I work for. The people that spec out things can also work remotely.

> As long as the pay is competitive one day they might be building a healthcare mobile app, another day an online car dealership portal.

I work in Cybersecurity and very much have a preference on what I work on and who I work for. I also have a strong preference on working remotely and having employment rights or benefits.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#167

Post by nprateem »

jjeaff wrote: post #154
nprateem wrote: post #107

I've decided to quit since my remote job won't let me work abroad. That's a dealbreaker now given the summer. I'm just left wondering why I should be tied to the UK instead of being able to explore all of Europe and further afield. There's no real reason, so I've started looking around. If anyone wants an expensive, fully remote contractor with experience as an AWS SRE (golang, python, k8s, terraform, bash), full-sta…

How would they know if you are abroad? Couldn't you just setup a static IP in a data center in the country you are supposed to be in and VPN through it?

Corporate VPN pops up an alert. Plus even though I may be able to circumvent it, it's unethical so I haven't tried.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#168

Post by nprateem »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #153
nprateem wrote: post #107

I've decided to quit since my remote job won't let me work abroad. That's a dealbreaker now given the summer. I'm just left wondering why I should be tied to the UK instead of being able to explore all of Europe and further afield. There's no real reason, so I've started looking around. If anyone wants an expensive, fully remote contractor with experience as an AWS SRE (golang, python, k8s, terraform, bash), full-sta…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but “expensive dev” in the UK means $100-200k, whereas in SV it’s more like $600k-1m. Hope you find what you’re looking for, consider SV firms as they pay way better AFAICT.

Yes you're right. Has anyone who's been successfully hired as an international contractor by SV companies got any tips for how they made the relevant contacts?

I may consider full-time but I hear people in the US work insane hours which I've no intention of doing.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#169

Post by incrudible »

db48x wrote: post #87
incrudible wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing is always going to be slower, especially if done well. When it comes to UI, tight feedback loops are crucial at virtually every step of the way.

A feedback loop can be tight, or high–bandwidth, without having low latency. You just have to increase the sending window. Either that, or delegate more. If your designer tells you to implement X, and after that is done tells you to do Y, have them increase the sending window by telling you to do X, Y, Z and W up front. Then, when you implement W and it doesn’t feel quite right to you, you can implement W’ instead; t…

That is not a solution. You do not get to just decide on whether latency or bandwidth is the bottleneck of your task.

Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies

#170

Post by incrudible »

shakezula wrote: post #160
lamontcg wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh no, I mean the doctrine of code review in general needs to be put on a diet. I'm definitely opposed to everyone sitting around synchronously nitpicking everyone else's code in enforced meetings, but I wasn't considering that. Onboarding new devs is where code review and pair programming is obviously useful. And honestly I've seen it go both ways, where onboarding a new dev was an opportunity for the old veterans t…

> looking at a PR by a dev who has been around for a long time This is precisely the case where I think you need code review the most, because in my experience, time makes people complacent. Code review is peer review, the key agent of the scientific method. I just can’t abide a process that doesn’t include peer review. > Donald Rumsfeld's unknown-unknowns. are an excellent reason to have others question your code. C…

> Code review is peer review, the key agent of the scientific method. I just can’t abide a process that doesn’t include peer review.

The key agent of the scientific method is making predictions and comparing them to reality. In other words, you should test if your code actually does what it should do. If so, peer review does not necessarily offer any net benefit.

If you absolutely insist on code review, then you do not belong on the team I am envisioning, which is totally fine. Like I said, the approach has obvious risks, but that is often a tradeoff worth making.

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