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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?

#251

Post by downrightmike »

siliconc0w wrote: post #228

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 compro…

Well, the recent graduates will be fine because they've spent the last couple years learning remotely and getting work done. You have to develop that skill.

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

#252

Post by 8ytecoder »

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…

I’ve never ever ever have had all my team in one place. I’ve worked in two different countries and six different cities. Not one team has had everyone in the same area. Water cooler conversations always ended up isolating and creating in-out group dynamics. We always had to fight to force communication through async global channels as much as we can to make sure people don’t feel left out or lack important context. It is a challenge.

Pandemic changes in work has thrust into the open the challenges with remote. But you ignore it at your own peril or curl up to the familiar return-to-work ass-on-the-seat model and be left behind.

Btw, if you need good ideas, you schedule and organise a brainstorming session or create an idea board org wide. You encourage challenging assumptions and involve your team in decision making. All of this need to happen irrespective of whether your team is local or scattered. Might as well use modern technology when you can and support remote and local discussions.

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

#253

Post by ktosobcy »

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…

I think this boils down towards being extrovert and introvert. you seem to cheering lots of "people interaction" and thrive on it while "the remote crowd" can get by just doing work without the need or pressure for in-person interaction.

From the about 1 year i spend in the office about 10 years ago it was mostly annoying to have to "connect" (and the worst thing was force "team building", after 8h spend together in the office). Sometimes we had fun and laugh aut at the end of the day work is just work. everything beyond that is some weird, twisted invention by the HR and corporate mumbo-jumbo (especially part about "corporate culture") - remember, you don't own anything to the company, you are not a slave and corporation doesn't own you anything (which was shown by the recent lay-offs)..

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

#254

Post by ilyt »

phil21 wrote: post #171
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…

> 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…

> 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 u

Developers rarely get to lunches with customers even before covid

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

#255

Post by polio »

paulgb wrote: post #88

I suspect HN skews senior/established in our careers, but it’s interesting comparing the sentiment of people on here (almost universally pro-remote) with candidates I’ve talked to when we’ve listed roles. A lot of candidates, especially more junior ones, explicitly want an in-person office culture.

It's very easy to forget about people who are remote.

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

#256

Post by treis »

cweagans wrote: post #197
treis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're supposed to be actively participating in refinement. Reading the story being talked about, looking up documentation, checking on potential solutions, and other things of that nature. You can't do that with raw chicken on your hands or while walking to the fridge to get veggies.

The fact that this has to be explained to people is why there's a push to return to the office.

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

#257

Post by xwdv »

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…

Not good enough.

In fact, a counter example: people regularly spawn random threads of conversation like the one you mention in Slack channels. A lot of times nothing comes of it, but some of these threads tag senior executives and managers within the company who have followed insights from threads into new cost improvement or even revenue generating ideas.

These conversations are unlikely to happen in passing hallway conversations and even if they did would likely not develop further than a couple remarks without forcing people to creating meetings to discuss topics that may or may not be important, which quickly gets overwhelming and makes people lose interest in further discussion. Having people sit around all day at an office in case such a conversation spontaneously happens is very inefficient when it can be done online in asynchronous fashion.

The central tenet of your argument is thus unraveled and the conclusion you must come to is that we don’t need offices. Accept it. Office workers aren’t here to serve as NPCs to fill your pretty little cities.

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

#258

Post by zwayhowder »

jonathankoren wrote: post #162
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…

This goes away, if they have better management and coordination. They’d be in the same mess even if they were physically conference rooms. Unless you somehow think that people spontaneously drop by meetings they’re not invited to

I should add - now that I've googled you - you and I work in very different areas of 'IT'. The problems I imagine you deal with need a lot of quiet dedicated focus time; while my problems need me to be able to wrangle a dozen cats into something like a coherent strategy that sometimes involves whiteboards, sometimes coffee and sometimes vodka. That's a people problem that requires people solutions, not technology products marketed as people solutions.

But I've been in your shoes too. (ok, not that smart, but I sat next to an ML guy for six months once troubleshooting his Kafka woes). I don't every intend to imply that there is one perfect answer for everyone.

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

#259

Post by koliber »

silveroriole wrote: post #225
thisarticle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Have you ever received constructive feedback that did not feel like criticism?

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

#260

Post by balfirevic »

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…

> if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life.

I'm supposed to move whenever I change jobs?

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