Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office? • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by mort96 » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

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 have a ton of informal conversations with people I don't have formal meetings with, just because we happen to go to the coffee machine at the same time or happen to go eat lunch at the same time. Some of those conversations are non-job-related (which is valuable, since strong social connections with colleagues are valuable), but a lot end up being on job stuff. I end up just informally talking with sales people, customer service people, managers, etc, and hearing about stuff from their perspective or the stuff that's on their minds is incredibly useful.

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

#442

Post by camgunz » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

I have every sympathy for you--social contact is a basic human need. But I see this argument here and there and I feel like I have to point out that this is an argument for you to get social contact, not to make millions of people commute to/from work every day.

Getting on the social on-ramp is hard, especially if you live in a culture where overwork is praised and normalized. I had that problem too (I moved from the US to the Netherlands and this was one of the major reasons why). I super suggest taking a step back from work--it's clearly keeping you from doing other things that are critical for your mental health--and then using that time to invest in other parts of your life.

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

#443

Post by DiggyJohnson » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #425

Gigachad wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve asked around my friend and coworkers group all 20s and everyone feels this way. Remote work is terrible for young people.

Anecdata, but my friends in the 22 - 26 range don't feel this way. _But_, they have an active social life (football club together) and go out together every weekend or every other weekend. And they don't mind remote work. So I don't think it's an age issue, but more a socializing issue?

I have a strong social group but am also in the single 20s group, and realized I cannot stand remote work.

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

#444

Post by djbusby » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

My solution is to go to the pub once or twice (or thrice) a week

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

#445

Post by bilvar » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #426

bilvar wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and when people going to the office get more opportunities, more advancement and higher compensation, he/she will be complaining for making "less money for the same work". Or they will start complaining about how unfair is that those opportunities only arise in the office and demand that there will be "procedures" for them to be available remotely.

Long ago I accepted that if I want better work-life balance and more flexible arrangements, there would be consequences. In my post above I explicitly called it out as a trade-off: I am totally fine with lower pay and fewer promotions if it means I get to live more of my life outside work. If you're not ok with that, that's your choice to make: find jobs that give you those opportunities, and tilt your work-life bala…

I commend you for having this approach. I'm biased from my experience from colleagues that got annoyed when they realized they couldn't have their cake and eat it too.

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

#446

Post by bilvar » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #422

bilvar wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and when people going to the office get more opportunities, more advancement and higher compensation, he/she will be complaining for making "less money for the same work". Or they will start complaining about how unfair is that those opportunities only arise in the office and demand that there will be "procedures" for them to be available remotely.

Not speaking for GP, but as far as I’m concerned I’m happy to stay far far far away from office politics games and getting paid less than those who do while having half or a quarter of their workloads.

See reply to GP. I commend you too.

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

#447

Post by mort96 » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

sekai wrote: post #373

jpeterson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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've seen this idea repeated many times, but in over 20 years in the tech industry Exactly, and how many of those conversations are wasted on nothing? Sure, there's a social element to it, so how about we highlight that aspect and not some "lightbulb" moment that derives from small talk.

Conversations which let you get to know your colleagues better are "wasted on nothing" to you? Is there no point to knowing your colleagues?

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

#448

Post by kochbeck » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

I see a lot of “good” answers where good translates to reasonable business or social goals. But I can think of quite a few bad reasons.

The top reason is, management wants workers back in the office because managers never learned how to manage people, so they practice management-by-walking-around, aka interrupt-driven behavior. Many companies have a culture of MBWA, and it’s a hard curse to break.

Another bad reason is, distanced work has led to a substantial reduction in workplace unfairness behaviors such as sexual harassment and race-based favoritism. And this, logically, has made female and minority employees more valuable and better performers. But in many workplaces, favoritism is the order of the day, and women and minorities were not the favorites. The favorites are now performing worse than the people they stepped on to be unfairly promoted, and it makes incompetent executives look, well… incompetent.

Another reason is that many people, particularly executives, have more authority, respect, or control in the workplace than they do at home. For quite a few people, their office has become their primary social outlet. And taking that away has proven unlivable for them.

The other reason that immediately came to mind is that executives are, by and large, older than the rank and file, and they (we) come from a time when building, maintaining, and overseeing an office space was both a critical part of the job and a source of pride / ego. For older management, offices are still a real-world manifestation of the success of the company that signals to other people how effective the leadership of the company is. People are less able to derive the same sense of awe from abstractions like sales numbers. If people don’t return to the office, it will not continue to make economic sense to have flashy offices, and this ego outlet will disappear.

Are these good reasons? They are not. But these reasons, honestly, ring truer to me than “hallway collisions.” In the real world, all motivating reasons are self-centered reasons, and executives simply don’t benefit from hallway and breakroom magic or mentoring of the young. They do perversely benefit from showy offices, discrimination, avoiding overt displays of their lack of skill, and forced social conduct, though.

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

#449

Post by projectazorian » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

prpl wrote: post #261

thewebcount wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don’t think the “bad for younger/junior people” thing is speculation. My team had an intern who was toiling away at something for two+ weeks that I resolved for him in 10 minutes the one day I went to the office for that month. It was slightly mentioned in stand ups and even meetings, but remote work doesn’t mean less meetings and frankly people (myself included) have even more divided attention during remote meeti…

Sounds like a management failure, why wasn’t anyone checking in with the intern and diving deep to see what the problem was? Did the intern have an assigned mentor? Where were they?

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

#450

Post by Cub3 » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

I've worked remote for several years as both a senior engineer and team leader, these are the problems with remote work I haven't yet found good solutions for:

1. I don't know how my employees are doing; many times in my career I've had to tell programmers to "go for a walk" or "time to go home" when they get stuck on a frustrating task or fall in to a flow state far past leaving time. Solutions I've found to this put onus on the employee or create more restrictions that hinder in other areas

2. Brainstorming whiteboard sessions are harder; the issue with remote meetings is that you need each person to finish speaking before the next person can start, which IMO slows down collaboration. Also I still haven't found a great tool to replace the whiteboard, Miro / Figma (Figjam) come close but also are slower at spinning up a flow diagram or sequence diagram or describing a stack.

3. Juniors / Grads need handholding; I've written frameworks to train newer developers in a remote setting but the remote divide creates an invisible barrier between the seniors and juniors for base support. I used to purposefully sit them next to eachother to enable the quick "do I use this or that?" questions or, better, have the senior look over and spontaneously create a learning opportunity related to whatever the junior is doing.

I guess the themes here are speed and spontaneity

(I haven't had my coffee yet so I hope above made sense)