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Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

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Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#171

Post by phil21 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #83
n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I call bullshit. This is the claptrap that upper management always uses to to justify RTO or keeping separate bus lines or whatever, but it doesn’t match reality. In 25 years of professional experience, I have never seen collaboration done by random encounter. At most you’ll ask a question you were already going to…

> In 25 years of professional experience, I have never seen collaboration done by random encounter.

This sounds so horrible as to be unbelievable to me.

I've worked remote since I was 19 years old, managing remote teams and/or entire companies most of that time. I have advocated for remote work since before it was a thing, so I guess I'm a remote work Hipster.

That said, some of my largest accomplishments started out via a chance in-person encounter. I can't understand how anyone would see unrealized opportunity in any other way? It'd have been realized if so.

Just simple and silly things (e.g. a customer at a random lunch stating they had a trivial to solve hardware issue that saved them millions a year) tend to add up.

I understand this definitely depends on your role but I'm absolutely stunned that someone could have 25 years of experience in an office setting and never have had a serendipitous unscripted moment.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#172

Post by phphphphp »

Remote is high risk, high reward. If you’ve built a great organisation filled with talented, motivated and trustworthy people who have autonomy then remote work can be a fantastic boon to productivity because it’s an extension of the autonomy that helps the workers thrive…

…if you’ve built an average organisation filled with people who are demotivated by bad management who have no autonomy and struggle to drag themselves through the day, then remote work will shred what little value you’ve managed to extract from a dysfunctional organisation.

Remote work isn’t the problem, the problem is further upstream: if you work for a company that is restricting remote work, whether you love to work remote or in office, it’s a sign to leave.

I love working in an office and do so every day, and consider in-office collaboration to be very valuable, however, autonomy is far more valuable.

So, from a managers perspective: if your organisation is struggling with maintaining output while permitting remote work, you can either radically rethink your entire organisation and engage in a multi-year project to undo years of mismanagement… or you can just ban remote work. Of course, the latter is just kicking the can down the road, but kicking the can down the road is usually the only real option without buy in from the board.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#173

Post by 21eleven »

fishcrackers wrote: post #103
0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

I’m a CTO at a small startup, not forcing RTO on anyone BUT the vibe I get in my peer group is that managers don’t know how to manage remote teams, don’t want to do real performance management, and they personally have some loneliness issues they solve by working from the office. I work from an office with my cofounder 1 day/week, and it has been great for my mental health to leave my living room. I think broadly spe…

sounds like it would be effective if the cto was in latam too

I worked at an American company (smallish ad tech) that was fully remote and the CTO was a citizen of a LATAM country while CEO and most engineers (but not all) were USA based. Worked great.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#174

Post by hfbff »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

I’m a CTO at a small startup, not forcing RTO on anyone BUT the vibe I get in my peer group is that managers don’t know how to manage remote teams, don’t want to do real performance management, and they personally have some loneliness issues they solve by working from the office. I work from an office with my cofounder 1 day/week, and it has been great for my mental health to leave my living room. I think broadly spe…

This has been my experience too. The transactional vs familiar thing is a tradeoff IMHO and people will have different preferences.

Also: I'd like to ask you a few questions on Latam remote work. My email is in my About if you have the time!

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#175

Post by atsuzaki »

jpeterson wrote: post #102
n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

"There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes." I've seen this idea repeated many times, but in over 20 years in the tech industry, I've never once seen a meaningful collaboration spring up in a kitchenette or hallway. It's invariably "how was your weekend?" fare. Don't get me wrong, there's value in connecting that way, but it's never the sort of thing that dire…

I scored most (if not all) of my career-defining opportunities from hallway convos after a meeting, or chatting while waiting for coffee to brew, so YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#176

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

thisarticle wrote: post #131
fishcrackers wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like it would be effective if the cto was in latam too

Right? Funny how C-level employees never think they’ll get outsourced. Ten or twenty years from now there will be great CTO level talent founding companies in Latam if they aren’t already. Then the whole company can operate in a cheaper country with lower taxes and benefits. Good luck competing with that in the US.

They won't because they don't have anywhere near the same access to capital. There is no country even close to the US in this regard, and US salaries in software engineering are the exception, not the norm.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#177

Post by turtlesdown11 »

n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life

May be true in some small, limited segments of the States. The vast majority commute by car. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death. Very pleasant!

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#178

Post by asveikau »

n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes.

I can't believe the amount of people here denying this exists or that they've ever seen it. I wonder if they are the type to neglect social dynamics over cold, detached, ultimately flawed and incomplete metrics? They can't even conjecture about unseen forces and subtle influences, a sort of butterfly effect where an off topic conversation about the weekend leads to different technical decisions? Because all that stuff does happen. It can be very hard to quantify or understand.

That's one reason I hate cultures they put too much weight on performance reviews. They think they can measure individual contribution and productivity. They don't get the less obvious things that arise from group settings and informal collaboration.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#179

Post by gedy »

fishcrackers wrote: post #103
0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

I’m a CTO at a small startup, not forcing RTO on anyone BUT the vibe I get in my peer group is that managers don’t know how to manage remote teams, don’t want to do real performance management, and they personally have some loneliness issues they solve by working from the office. I work from an office with my cofounder 1 day/week, and it has been great for my mental health to leave my living room. I think broadly spe…

sounds like it would be effective if the cto was in latam too

No wait! Um, they need to have these important and serendipitous hallway conversations in SF office!

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#180

Post by arikr »

1) Managing remote employees is harder. Managing in person is easier.

Both are doable, but managing someone remotely requires either the manager and/or the employee to be really good at remote comms.

2) in person spontaneous collaboration

3) my experience is most people get less done remotely. Some do more, but most do less

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