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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?

#701

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

Adraghast wrote: post #698
SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, but there’s no real way of knowing what you’ve left on the table by working remotely. And I say this as someone who was also working remotely before the pandemic. I’m always wary of people who refuse to acknowledge the downsides of ideas they support…

There's not, but I do know what's on my table: a career doing things I find reasonably stimulating that provides me more material comfort than I know what to do with. I am doubtful these hallway conversations I keep hearing about could provide me anything else that I would want, and I'm definitely not willing to give up my freedom and flexibility just to find out.

It's not really yours to give up, is my point. You're not looking at this from the employer's perspective, and it's making it hard for you to understand that what you want is only part of the equation.

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

#702

Post by ajb »

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 think this is a transitional phase. If remote work takes over, there will be a rise of co working spaces for mates to work in together. Young people will use them to find friends and partners, and young parents will use them to share babysitting shifts with other young parents.

That will actually be better for social life, because people won't need to lose touch when they change jobs.

People were stuck at home by the pandemic, not by remote work.

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

#703

Post by Volundr »

jltsiren wrote: post #693
Volundr wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People on the average don't do that. This is part of the idea I'm contesting. Remember, "65" has an office they can go to, their problem is no one else wants to. Unless you are asserting that you are a better judge of what is good for 65's co-workers then they themselves are, presumably "on average" they have found sufficient social interaction to satisfy themselves outside of the office. And if you are asserting t…

Again, communism would work if everyone behaved like a good communist. They don't, because the default is acting in the interests of yourself and people near you rather than in the interests of the wider society. If you insist on communism, the whole society suffers, because most people take the default choice and do what's good for them. If social isolation during work is the default, people will have fewer friends,…

There is a certain irony to stating "Fundamentally, everything based on the idea that people should make different choices is doomed to fail." in an argument that everyone choosing WFH should either make different choices or be forced to.

> If social isolation during work is the default, people will have fewer friends, because making friends takes more effort.

I disagree. If these people were making friends by just being at work, they wouldn't be feeling so lonely right now. They would already have plenty of social connections that would not just evaporate because your not in the office anymore. Even those just entering the workforce should have these friends from school. Instead constantly being around people at work makes people "feel" less lonely, hiding the fact that they haven't actually made a deeper connection. Shoving people back in the office will just hide it again, it won't fix the problem. It'll just decrease the quality of life of everyone who happier right now. On the other hand leaving things as they are and instead supporting those feeling isolated in finding other outlets lets the majority of people keep doing what's working for them, and the rest are likely have motivation to fix the problem.

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

#704

Post by 0xB31B1B »

thebigfilter wrote: post #664
0xB31B1B wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees in the bay and NYC have more opportunities and thus more negotiating leverage. It doesn’t mean they’re better at the work. Hiring in competitive locales does mean more brain space dedicated to “how do I retain this employee” and less brain space dedicated to “how can I make my customers happy and grow my business” which is a losing trade. The winning play is pay top of market rates to labor in low cost loca…

It’s a very effective playbook, but it’s taking the easy path. More interesting and challenging is building a high perf company that has a better relationship with it’s labor. A cutthroat model will always work, but I think humans are intelligent enough to build high performing groups that succeed while taking care of others. Even the mafia took care of family, in their own perverse way (If you off Tony for talking t…

This is exactly wrong. The people you want to take care of are the top 25% of your team. When you let someone go, it’s often because someone in the top 25% is complaining that they do not trust the low performer and the low performer increases the workload of the high performer. When you have a team of high performers, new high performing candidates recognize that and see that as a huge plus for recruitment. No great candidate wants to join a team with people they see as less good than they are.

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

#705

Post by 0xB31B1B »

phil21 wrote: post #348
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.

> Right? Funny how C-level employees never think they’ll get outsourced. Plenty C level people know this is the eventual outcome. They just also know that the runway is likely to extend beyond their working career because they control most business decisions for the foreseeable future. They still operate on a relationship basis with ownership/capital while managing the company on a Netflix performance model for every…

This is correct. Work like a dog and like you have a target on your back, because you do, and you’ll be safe for as long as possible, maybe even until retirement.

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

#706

Post by terminatornet »

falcor84 wrote: post #699
terminatornet wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executives are indeed stupid people > Workers with full schedule flexibility report 29% higher productivity and 53% greater ability to focus than workers with no ability to shift their schedule, according to a just-announced report from Future Forum. But do bosses trust employees to be productive when working out of the office? > Microsoft released a new study, where it found that 85% of leaders say that the “shift t…

There is a bit of a leap of faith between "Workers with full schedule flexibility report 29% higher productivity" to "workers are more productive". Everything else being equal, I would trust the managers more than the employees' self-assessment.

> Microsoft released a new study, where it found that 85% of leaders say that the “shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.” More concretely, 49% of managers of hybrid workers “struggle to trust their employees to do their best work.”

nothing about this figure from managers says employees are more or less productive, just that managers having a feeling workers are less productive, they can't trust them etc.

sounds like the managers are just projecting their feelings onto employees.

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

#707

Post by bobleeswagger »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #35
bobleeswagger wrote: post #16

> there’s not much in-office dynamic like maybe there was 20 years ago Yeah, because folks like you insist that office culture has nothing to do with productivity. I wonder if you've ever worked somewhere productive. > dragging us back into the office Dragging? Are we slaves now?

Obviously we’re not slaves. But if your employer says everyone is required to return to the office on some date, it’s not like you have a lot of options for saying no other than not showing up to see what happens or finding alternative employment.

How is this different from any other office culture of participation? Align or leave is not a new thing. You do realize employees negotiated WFH and remote work with their employers _prior_ to 2019 without issues, right? I'm not sure why the bar had to be lowered from the point, to be frank.

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

#708

Post by earthling8118 »

i_r7al wrote: post #679
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...

same to your argument, why is it my problem that you live far away from work, that you need to hassle and lose hours of your day commuting? live right next to work. It's not our problem that it's a hassle to you. Same if you have kids .. etc. It's not our problem. It's comfortable for YOU to work remotely but it's more comfortable to ME to work from office. Comfort here is always subjective to the choice you prefer.

So we should all go through the hassle of relocating closer to work each time we switch jobs just because it makes it more comfortable for office minded people? You can try to swing the argument the other way but there's no getting around that the opposite side of yours doesn't involve other people doing extra things for other people's comfort-- requiring the office adds extra things to EVERYONE while allowing remote allows savings for the people who care to.

I don't want to relocate myself to be next to some office. I work on a computer specifically because I can do it from wherever feels right to me.

You're right that it isn't your problem that it's a hassle for me: because that mindset is making it MY problem when I don't want it to be. That argument is an incredibly selfish one.

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

#709

Post by 0xB31B1B »

Gigachad wrote: post #584
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…

Yeah I really doubt many people here would be happy about being grilled constantly about their output. I'd rather work in a high trust environment, but this requires actually having trust which is pretty hard remote.

Our solution here to quickly manage out the folks who don’t build trust. Using a simple “yes/maybe/no” framework and have maybe converge with no in a month, you quickly get to a team with high trust.

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

#710

Post by earthling8118 »

Gigachad wrote: post #461
herghost wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I'm happily married, children, dog, several distinct groups of friends, great job at a great company, lovely house in a nice village, etc, etc, etc. I worked from home for about 4 years as a freelancer and found it incredibly isolating (but lucrative, so endured it) but finally had enough and get a permanent job back in an office. This was 5 weeks before what would be the first of sever…

You have to go back to the office. All my friends and coworkers who have tried it haven’t gone back to remote work. People weren’t meant to sit alone all day.

So how does the office solve that exactly? I worked in an office in the before times. It was me sitting alone all day. Sure I was surrounded by other people technically but I was working on my own stuff and didn't interact. There was more annoyance than anything: constant chatter, super bright fluorescent overhead lighting, sickness spreading, etc
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