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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?

#221

Post by downrightmike »

skhameneh wrote: post #184
gemstones wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I echo others here - I've not seen a meaningful, revenue-driving conversation happen in these in a decade of work. Do you have specific examples of valuable collaboration in one of these environments? > Edit: full disclosure, I’m not an employer but I sympathize and spent a lot of time thinking about these things as…

Depends on the environment. If your team is open to casual conversations and comfortable going off topics, then this likely isn't an issue. But, if your team is very metrics focused, you may not see levels of casual conversation that build rapport and build on ideas that come up on conversation. Sometimes a casual conversation is all it needs to hook a random thought into successful action. I like having casual talks…

You need to get a life and actual friends. Coworkers are NOT friends.

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

#222

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Here at ardour.org "head office" (my home in a small village in new mexico), we just had a 5-6 day hangout of myself and the other main developer. We have spent years collaborating online on this large project, but in those few days we were able to resolve some high level design issues (well, we hope we resolved them) that have proved resistant to online discussion.

This experience isn't enough to justify the idea that we (or anyone else) should work in close physical proximity all the time. But it does point to one of the plusses of doing this at least occasionally.

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

#223

Post by phil21 »

junofan wrote: post #124
mostlysimilar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe for every person out there like the parent poster there are people like you and I who can hold back that flow. It's incumbent upon us to not give our skills or our time to people who treat us like disposable resources. It's also incumbent upon people like us to build companies and hire people who share those values, and to treat them with dignity and respect.

The people who think like that want RTO, which is part of what GP is saying. The disposable resource people champion remote work.

Yep. This.

I can't believe HN zeitgeist cannot understand this.

Why would I hire a US employee for twice the cost when I can hire someone 95% as good remotely in a low cost area of the world and actually get an employee that sticks around for a decade vs. a year?

It's honestly not even really a decision at this point if you have the management infrastructure in place.

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

#224

Post by klyrs »

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?

I can talk and listen while chopping veg, but okay

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

#225

Post by silveroriole »

thisarticle wrote: post #105
snozolli wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every element you mention as being part of an in-office experience has been completely absent from my career. Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance, I was always simply given a task and expected to complete it. Company culture doesn't even feel like a real thing outside of HR blurbs. Spontaneous collaboration was outweighed by interruptions and meddl…

> Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance That sounds awful, none of your senior or principal engineers offered/provided any mentorship?

I’ve not had mentorship or real guidance offered in my career. I would say I’ve made connections, but my experience was very much just “you’re in charge of this team now because someone left. Why are you sucking at being a lead? Geez, we even sent you on a single day management course! I don’t get it!”. And the same for being a manager. People are very complimentary about me when I’m just doing programming because I don’t need any help, but as soon as I get into a situation I’m not very good at, it’s criticism all the way. I would bet this is pretty normal since many managers don’t seem happy being managers, and that only a minority get significant career development value from managers/leads.

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

#226

Post by thisarticle »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #176
thisarticle wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much capital does someone need if wages are low and you’re building an auto-scale enabled SaaS business without an office?

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

#227

Post by moneywoes »

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.

Why not have the ceo in latam as well? What’s the US advantage?

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

#228

Post by siliconc0w »

Junior and some mid employees seem to do worse - at least in the small amount of data I've seen since the pandemic. This is likely part culture, which emphasizes individual performance rather than team performance. If you're a netflix-style organization that only hires seniors then this is less important.

I think hybrid, with ~2 days a week - one dedicated to any team meetings and the other pure work is a good compromise plus regular in-person summits if you have a geographically distributed team. Don't just get in-person to meet, working together allows you to learn the the many subtle things about people's workflows that may be good or bad.

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

#229

Post by zwayhowder »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #183
zwayhowder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you do but I've solved problems and saved companies millions by overhearing a conversation in the office that would have been a Slack DM remote. At one customer I was able to identify that 3 separate business units were all competing for the same tender, they were all undercutting each other not realising. There were 3 separate private channels in Slack #customer_tender #tender_response_customer and…

> But without a fundamental shake up of the structure of the companies remote work is very, very hard. While I agree, I could rephrase your argument as "remote work is very easy provided that you adjust your structures accordingly."

I see you've worked with me before :)

"Zwayhowder, the way you've phrased this sounds very angry, could we just tone it down a little" is comment in slides/reports that I receive often :D

I'm just passionate, I swear.

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

#230

Post by treis »

hikingsimulator wrote: post #150
treis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that they also take advantage of the flexibility of agile. If a story is pointed for 2 days and it takes 3 it's better to take that as a missed estimate than a developer not producing as much as they should. Hammering them because they let a deadline slip leads to all sorts of bad things. But, again, even as a fellow team member I can't tell if they worked for 2 days and fucked off for one or it legitimately j…

To me this reads as wanting to crunch developers out of more value than one is paying them.

Expecting people to pay attention during meetings and not be a ghost during a day is crunching developers? Give me a break. We're all highly paid professionals. It's not unreasonable to be expected to act like it.
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