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?

#601

Post by whynaut » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:27 PM UTC

roncesvalles wrote: post #460

kelnos wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made plenty of real, meaningful, long-term friendships at work. But I also have solid friend groups of people I've met outside work. I value all of them, but I'm not going to give up the opportunity to have more flexible working arrangements because some people seem to think they can only make friends at work. > We go to school and make friends with other people at school. Why is it wild that you'd want to go to…

This is exactly the attitude that I'm protesting against. I don't agree that you can make even close to the same depth of friendship with someone who you see 2 hours a week, vs someone you see 8 hours a day 5 days a week for months. Work or school are really the only places where you can spend that much time with someone. Then again, part of the problem is that people have forgotten what real friendships are like. "F…

> that’s not friendship, that’s just people you hang out with

weird I thought you were talking about coworkers for a second

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

#602

Post by whynaut » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

krabizzwainch wrote: post #558

krippe wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm supposed to deal with the hassle of commuting, losing hours of my day, because YOU are starved for human connections? Get out of here...

If you care that little about the social interaction at work, then you probably aren't someone that we are talking about or miss working with...

And yet you have an issue with them not wanting to come in!

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

#603

Post by Gigachad » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

goostavos wrote: post #591

Gigachad wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got friends but you can’t fill 100% of your social interactions with meeting friends. Unless you have a very large number of them, you won’t be able to see them daily, and even if you do, you end up consuming all of your free time with socialising and having no personal time left. Remote work left me choosing between fulfilling social interaction or personal time after work, either option leaving me unsatisfied.…

>I can’t wait to get back to the office, those were the best years of my life. Huh. It's wild how different two people's experiences of the same thing can be. I hated the office. I hated commuting. I hated meeting in stuffy rooms. While I like (most) of my coworkers, and enjoy the occasional drinks with them, I could also never see like 99% of them ever again and never even think about it. I vastly, vastly prefer WFH…

> surrounded by people who think of them so little that the flexibility of doing laundry during the day beats ever seeing them again.

My coworkers have all gone back to the office part time, they go out and do stuff in the city almost every week after work, they go to huge javascript meetups, go to the pubs and clubs, and I'm here sitting alone doing very little because my city doesn't have a large tech scene. Remote work has given me the ability to work senior level jobs which just don't exist here, but it's not enough.

I've decided, I'm packing my stuff and moving state this year primarily so I can work in the office with everyone.

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

#604

Post by irrational » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

joyfylbanana wrote: post #66

irrational wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite for me. At home I start working when I wake up and often don't stop until the evening. When I go into the office I have to get ready and commute, and then at the office there are so many distractions - our campus has fantastic fitness facilities and I'll often spend a few hours each day over there. So, at home I probably work for 10 hours. When on campus I probably get 4 hours of work in, if that. Plus, I am…

It is always the employees telling these stories, but how managers are supposed to know if they are really working? When they are at the office the see it with their own eyes. Common counter argument to this is that the manager sucks because he/she can't measure the work otherwise. But from managers perspective it is much easier to force people to be on-site than fix his/her own problems.

1. My manager lives and works in an entirely different state. 2. We do not have assigned seating on campus. We are just required to be on campus, but can find a place to work in any building. So, even if my manager was in the same state as me, I certainly would not be anywhere he could see me.

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

#605

Post by jltsiren » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #530

jltsiren wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look at the bigger picture. People usually find friends as a byproduct of of some activity, such as work, studies, hobbies, or activism. If you remove the activity people spend a third of their waking hours on from the list, the result is a massive reduction in the number of friends people have. And it's going to hit the people who can't easily make friends the hardest. This is not an individual problem. I…

> This is not an individual problem. It's an issue that affects the entire society. Social isolation feeds many undesirable things, such as political polarization and extremism. If a society wants to survive, it has to deal with the issue somehow. Agreed, and I think the best way is for people to realize that "the people I chat with at the water-cooler" are not my friends, and take action based on that. Job loss and…

The friends you meet at work are no different from the friends you meet at dance/martial arts class. They are tied to an activity, and if you quit the activity, you are likely to lose most of them.

The core problem is that remote work can easily mean 8 hours/day of social isolation. Especially because those are the hours people have the most energy to try new things. If people spend that time avoiding social contacts, they are obviously not going to make many friends.

Historically, neighbors were a key source of friends, because they were the community you lived in. 20th century changed that. Today neighbors are simply people who happen to sleep near you temporarily. They are probably away from home during the day, their jobs are unrelated to yours, and they will likely relocate sooner or later.

Who will form the community you will spend your time with by default, if it's no longer your neighbors or coworkers?

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

#606

Post by chrismatheson » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

phoronixrly wrote: post #327

Kharvok wrote: post #140

Some of my teams were fully remote about eight weeks in 2020, while others have been remote the entire time. I don't believe in full RTO, just hybrid. 1. The last few years have demonstrated that projects with teams that are primarily remote require a higher degree of project overhead staffing. I think this is most evident with very small teams. For example, it's fairly easy for a small internal tool team to coordina…

> I'm constantly seeing in meetings where highly compensated employees are providing childcare during working hours Do you really think it's good, and that people should be separated from their children for 8-10 hours (or more if commuting) each day? I don't. Also, since you don't want your employees to get distracted by childcare, does your office offer daycare for their children? Edit: And yes, they daycare questio…

Not that I’m particularly defending RTO. But specifically on the daycare thing. No. They offer you a large salary and let you choose and organise what works for you. Not deciding for you and staffing some daycare as an afterthought on the 3rd floor or whatever :)

IMHO most “perks” are just someone else spending your money for you.

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

#607

Post by TomSwirly » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:34 PM UTC

pxue wrote: post #381

nostromo wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in person isn't the issue here -- not having friends is the issue. People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. (Friends and family won't lay you off like a job might. Having a network outside of work is critical if that ever happens.) Asking your coworkers to come into the office just so you can get some needed face time with other peop…

C'mon that's just bullshit. Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. Making friends as an adult is hard. Work is the easiest shortcut in establishing meaningful relationships with strangers. Edit: addressing some of the comments b…

> It's by far the easiest way to make friends

But I generally have nothing in common with the people I work with.

I'm friends with people who share my world outlook, my moral and philosophical and aesthetic views, and there's no correlation between that and working with people.

> Friend just means someone you have established a platonic relationship with right here right now.

NO, that's not friend, FFS! That's an acquaintance or a coworker.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a very sociable guy, I love hanging out with people, but I only have a few actual _friends_.

> Some of the commenters describe a friend as someone who will maintain a connection with you no matter the circumstance (loss of job, moving to a new city etc)

> I believe that is an unrealistic expectation.

I'm sorry, but if you leave a job and lose all your connection with someone, _you were never friends._

I moved to a new continent in 2016 and I'm still in touch with my small group of actual friends, and I even made two more here.

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

#608

Post by fsociety » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:34 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 tried to join clubs and a maker space, but no time - I was working all day.

This is the problem in my opinion. Not the fact that you were working all day, but generally that our work now bleeds into personal lives or leaves no time for it.

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

#609

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #553

giantg2 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Technical folks simply cannot do their jobs without solid working relationships, and those are not as well formed digitally." Any real data on this? All the data our company has shows increased performance during WFH, such as an increase in deliveries and decrease in cycle time. So even if it's not as well formed, it seems it's formed sufficiently.

I think you focusing on delivery and cycle time is kind of emblematic of my point; none of that matters if you ship the wrong thing, and don’t correct over time, but to you that’s where the conversation ends. That’s not where it actually ends, however. How do you know what to work on? How do you know if you built a profitable thing? Being remote lets you ignore those things in ways that are harder to do in person. Hy…

"I think you focusing on delivery and cycle time is kind of emblematic of my point; none of that matters if you ship the wrong thing, and don’t correct over time, but to you that’s where the conversation ends."

Lol don't tell me what I think. Those are the metrics that our management uses. That's their focus, and are pervasive in the industry. Sure, you can talk about shipping the wrong thing. What's the metric called for that, or would it fall under rework? Our rework has not gone up. There's no noticeable increase in failed projects either.

"Being remote lets you ignore those things in ways that are harder to do in person."

No, it really doesn't. These same ritual and due diligence conversations take place remotely. Or maybe your org doesn't have good procedures?

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

#610

Post by whynaut » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

joxel wrote: post #345

giantg2 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for managers. But really it should be about delivering completed projects, especially for technical folks.

If you’re not just a code monkey than those chats are great for coming up with new ideas and fleshing them out over time. But hey you can also just be a code monkey that completes projects assigned to them. To each their own I guess.

My career has advanced just fine over Slack and Zoom.