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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?

#191

Post by sseagull »

thewebcount wrote: post #116
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 literally never seen this. I’ve seen people sit around and gossip about coworkers or talk about the latest TV shows or movies or sports, though. (And nothing wrong with that. We can’t think about work for 8 hours straight.) > That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable a…

>> Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc.

> That’s total speculation. When I was first hired out of college, I had 1 colleague I was kind of close with, but rarely interacted with outside of work. The majority of my friends were people I met in real life around town.

These are not the same thing, although you aren’t the only one in this (frankly depressing) thread making this mistake. You don’t have to be completely best buds with your mentor, including outside of work.

Spontaneous discussions and networking don’t work as well online because it requires more intent to talk to the other person. That spontaneous networking is more important for junior rather than senior people.

Being “in the kitchen” is a sign someone is probably not really working on something at that moment, and therefore may be open to conversation about something other than work. That signal is almost always missing online, and therefore doesn’t happen.

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

#192

Post by throw1230 »

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…

All these commenters are unfairly picking on you. There IS value in personal connections and it is different when you have been in the same physical space with the other person instead of an avatar that can send texts and emails.

Spontaneous conversations happen every once in a while to creates an opportunity for collaboration, or maybe someone is working on a problem that another colleague worked on, so you can connect them etc. IMO, Happy hours in front of the screen are boring and feels like more work.

I don't want to go back to the office on a regular schedule, but I actually miss having stronger connections to my coworkers. I think the regular company meetings in a single location is an excellent alternative

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

#193

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #85
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…

> You can find very committed senior talent in latam for 120-160k, the US equivalent would be 180-250k, and the latam folks are less likely to job hop or negotiate a higher comp in month 12 Disagree. Quality engineers will ask for their worth regardless of location. Also I think indexing on "less likely to job hop or negotiate salary" is short-sighted thinking. You're asking people to do a complex job where the key s…

Are you saying that there is no quality talent outside of the US then, since US salaries are not a thing outside of the US?

To give you an idea, Google Warsaw pays just a touch above 100k to local senior engineers.

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

#194

Post by anonred »

arcturus17 wrote: post #138
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 Everyone is picking on the rest of your arguments, and I can sympathize with some of them, but not this one. Never had, nor can I envision, a commute with a healthy separation of work and life or that wasn't orders of magnitude worse than, you know, reclaiming that time for whatever I want.

Biking 10-15 minutes to work on a protected bike path is an order of magnitude better experience mentally and physically, speaking from personal experience.

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

#195

Post by kept3k »

I’m unsure why an engineer would want to be back in the office. There are a lot of distractions and unnecessary stress.

From my point of view, engineers who depend on others to get their work done like to be in the office. Because it makes it look like they are collaborating and getting work done.

From a manager point of view, this looks like collaboration as well. And would benefit the project. This is why they want people in the office.

I disagree with it. There are engineers who like to manipulate other people and it is far less likely to happen in a remote environment.

Just my observation, not 100% facts in all cases.

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

#196

Post by The_Colonel »

hfbff wrote: post #125
jonathankoren wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've talked about this topic with many people and it seldom matches the opinions of many people here in hacker news. I wonder if hacker news is biased towards a specific type of people that is less social / more family oriented / etc? (Of course, the people I meet in real life could be the more biased sample)

I noticed that very technically focused people tend to underestimate the importance of communication. They dislike daily standups, coordination meetings, don't really value informal exchange. All these things take their time out of what they want to do - deep work on solving technical problems.

There's often the hidden assumption that "solving technical problems" equals "creating value", but that's not always so. Lack of communication often leads to solving the wrong problems, solving more general/complex problems than needed, overengineering the solution over actual needs etc. To avoid this, it's a good practice to talk about stuff you work on and getting feedback from other people, including questions you yourself did not think of.

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

#197

Post by cweagans »

treis wrote: post #136
klyrs wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your words. > I think a lot of people are abusing WFH. Some make it obvious like doing meal prep during refinement... What does "it" refer to in that sentence, if not the immediately preceding "abusing WFH?"

Which of the things you mentioned are equivalent to doing a distracting task during a meeting you're supposed to be paying attention to?

You may be surprised to know that one can do meal prep and pay attention to sprint refinement at the same time. For me, having something to do with my hands while talking helps to keep me focused.

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

#198

Post by adenozine »

In this thread: lies, fabrications, misinformation, disinformation, deception, skullduggery, wayward words, dirty deeds, and a case and a half of the finest bullshit you’ll ever read.

They want you back in the office to make the management happy, to make the corporate rent make sense, to make the banks happy, to feed the giant machine whose primary purpose is 100% unequivocally NOT getting stuff done (tm)

If your team isn’t getting stuff done remote, investigate a protocol for communicating the business and product needs to the developers, and maybe skim some commits.

If you are being threatened with back to office and you don’t want to go, make them fire you, use your resources, and I’d estimate there’s about a 95% chance most of you can find a higher paying position elsewhere, or at least equal pay & remote-first. The world is changing, don’t let them play tricks on you.

I’ve fought with DC traffic for twenty years, I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to show up in an office for less than a client-vendor situation or L5/6+ all hands. If it’s on fire, you better call my work phone and make sure my deposits are up-to-date.

I know it’s tougher for the younger bucks out here, and that loans and rent and everything might tip the scales a little further away from you. Do your best, do what you can, but I strongly recommend putting up the fight for more comfortable work arrangements.

If we’re all gonna be obsolete in ten years, they might as well be paying us right and speaking to us right for the next nine!

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

#199

Post by thisarticle »

pythonbase wrote: post #80

Short answer: Control. Traditional employers want their employees back in the office since they are unable to control them otherwise. Employers and managers who have failed to grasp the concepts of remote working, lack in async communication, and have trust issues with their staff, want to keep a physical headcount of the sheep

All of those sound like problems the employer has, not anything the employee is doing wrong.

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

#200

Post by 8ytecoder »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #164
arcturus17 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life Everyone is picking on the rest of your arguments, and I can sympathize with some of them, but not this one. Never had, nor can I envision, a commute with a healthy separation of work and life or that wasn't orders of magnitude worse than, you know, reclaiming that time for whatever I want.

> nor can I envision Actually I implemented this. When I worked in the office, I used to bike to and from work every day. Every week I tried to choose a (slightly) different route. An it was really, really good for my mental health. For the first 10 minutes or so of the ride I still had some thoughts from work, then gradually they started to disappear, I got intrigued by new shops being opened, some random folks doin…

Me as well. I intentionally chose to live within a 30 min bike ride and biked as much as I can. That’s how I got fit. That said, companies don’t pick their office location based on how close it is to where most people live. In all major cities and especially in the Bay Area, commute is a nightmare you just have to deal with rather than do something with it.
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