Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 921 posts

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

#631

Post by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh »

lolinder wrote: post #573
dsugarman wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put yourself in the executives shoes for a second, they're not stupid people, they know how large the risk of blowback is and how many employees they might disenfranchise or lose. They're that confident that remote work is a bigger threat to their long-term performance and they don't want to get lapped by the companies with an in-office culture

This argument is an appeal to authority that I just can't buy. You don't have to be a stupid person to succumb to your own biases, you just have to be human, and plenty of executives make irrational decisions based on their subjective feelings.

FWIW, I read GP's comment as more an elaboration of incentive structures rather than an appeal to authority.

You're still right that plenty of people make irrational decisions under whatever incentive structure they're in, but I think that the steelman version of GP's argument would probably go something like:

    If we see a large % of companies going full-RTO, then maybe there's something to be said for the bet that RTO is a long-term competitive advantage.
...or, they might all just be lemmings, too. It's hard to say just yet, but I think it'll be interesting to see if there's an effect on stock performance over the next 10 years based on what companies decide now. (I feel like that's probably how long it'll take for the full impact on company culture to play out.)

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

#632

Post by calsy »

mettamage wrote: post #421
pxue wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Digital nomad here. I like being one. For me making friends, the best places are: Tinder (it took a lot of effort) and just giving compliments to people on the street (it took some effort to learn). Regarding complimenting people on the street and potentially turning it into a conversation, it takes some practice. 10 years ago when I did some solo traveling (before uni even) for the first time, I had the choice to st…

What bizarro world is this?

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

#633

Post by no_wizard »

golergka wrote: post #382
no_wizard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I do get it, cost of labor sucks as a business. It’s always disheartening to me though that it’s just so easy for people to justify undercutting labor in just a few swift sentences like this, especially because the nuances of culture are very different, for one, and for two, there are downsides to this form of recruitment that never gets acknowledged from issues with time zones to acceptable quality standards and…

> No you don’t need to hire in traditionally geographical Silicon Valley areas every time or by default, but you don’t have to go all the way to latam either. I'm sure all the latin american developers are super hyped about this advice not to hire them.

It’s not that. It’s about hiring developers with the same divinity and respect across the board.

It’s meant as a counter ti the idea of hiring them just because they’re “cheaper”

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

#634

Post by watwut »

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…

> Day in, day out. All alone. I don't have a girlfriend, friends, or a life in this city.

You expect to find a girlfriend on the job? I don't mean it as a snark. But in office means that work and communiting takes even more of your life. Unless she comes from the job, which is unlikely in male dominated profession, being with team won't get you girlfriend.

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

#635

Post by bri3d »

ktosobcy wrote: post #285
bri3d wrote: post #31

For those who are replying with "all my projects were remote before anyway" or "I was on video conference before fully remote work too!" - how many of these co-workers on video were at another office site, or had worked at an office site before "going remote?" Before 2020, I also had video attendees in almost every meeting, but they were either at another office site where they still had a peer group and some co-loca…

it's funny that some assume that before 2019 remote work didn't exist and everything was done in-office... :-)

Of course remote work existed before 2019, but there are also an enormous wealth of statistics indicating that it was not very common. On the flip side, some Hacker News users assume that because they had an extremely rare remote job before 2019, it's the "normal state" of the world.

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

#636

Post by ravenstine »

scrollaway wrote: post #583
ravenstine wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. Yeah... good luck with that. Not to say that people don't make friends outside work, but there are many variables involved with that. But just use Meetup.com, right? Sure, if you want to spend a few hours with people of retirement age, not if there's anything wrong with that. Not having friends is j…

Meetup works great in many cities and plenty of young people use it. If you’re joining a tricot or bingo group though don’t be surprised at finding yourself surrounded with “retirement age” members. In some cities it’s unused though. When I lived in Athens it was terrible, just crypto groups used it.

That has not been my experience in the LA region for many years. Some get some RSVPs, but be prepared for everyone to drop out the very last minute or not show up. Long ago, it was pretty great.

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

#637

Post by idonotknowwhy »

Gigachad wrote: post #377
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 story is very similar to yours. Used to be ok with remote work but then I had a break up last year and need to get back to the office. Unfortunately all the tech jobs are in other cities of Australia so I can only get remote jobs. Made the decision this month to pack up everything and move to Melbourne so I can work in the office among other things.

Welcome. Plenty of 3 day in the office and even 5 day in the office tech jobs here.

Also great cafes you can work from on the remote work days.

PT and urban sprawl sucks though, which is why I did the opposite and work remotely 100% now.

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

#638

Post by smashers1114 »

Gigachad wrote: post #397
cal85 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> frankly that feels like a you problem It's also a me problem, so there's at least two of us.

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

Not true of my friend and coworker group. You should think carefully of confounding factors before taking anecdotal data and extrapolating to something that applies to a much larger group.

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

#639

Post by bri3d »

tonnydourado wrote: post #248
bri3d wrote: post #31

For those who are replying with "all my projects were remote before anyway" or "I was on video conference before fully remote work too!" - how many of these co-workers on video were at another office site, or had worked at an office site before "going remote?" Before 2020, I also had video attendees in almost every meeting, but they were either at another office site where they still had a peer group and some co-loca…

Fully remote teams didn't come out of Zeus head fully formed in March, 2020. There was less of them, but they existed. I consider the dynamic you described, of local teams in separated locations that have to work as one, actually to be a major antipattern. The communication doesn't flow as well between locations as it does inside each location. It's much better to shape the teams to the geographic organization.

I think the worst anti-pattern is the "soft return to work" pattern that's sprung up, where one cohort of people have met and work together in person while the rest remain distributed and have never met. I think that "partially distributed" works if the team have all met and worked together in person at some prior date, but otherwise it's a minefield which demands very careful management and ideally (if possible), periodic in-person meetups.

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

#640

Post by The_Colonel »

projectazorian wrote: post #594
The_Colonel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Lac…

I used to prioritize communication and collaboration because I’m better at it than most engineers I work with. A problem emerged where I noticed that come review and promotion time, I was always coming up short due to concerns about lacking technical seriousness. My interview performance was also suffering due to not spending enough time in the codebase. I deprioritized collaboration as a result and now I get much be…

That's an interesting experience. I agree that this advice is probably more valuable to people who are already quite senior technically. Before that, it might be better to simply focus on sharping your technical skills. Reflecting on my experiences, I remember junior-ish people who chose to focus on communication rather than technical skills - without being able to back their communication with hard skills, they seem to kind of drift toward scrum master / project manager role.

But once in a senior position, a person should start thinking "larger" than just their own code, especially if they want to further advance.

> but until then collaboration needs to take up a minority of my time.

For sure. I would say from Staff position upwards, the collaboration aspect might take a larger chunk than pure engineering.

All this is of course very organization specific.

Post reply on HN