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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?

#771

Post by RestlessMind »

giantg2 wrote: post #249
atsuzaki wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scored most (if not all) of my career-defining opportunities from hallway convos after a meeting, or chatting while waiting for coffee to brew, so YMMV.

This seems wild to me. It seems like the company and managers are doing something wrong if all your advancement is coming from random unofficial chats.

Tell me again how long have you been working? For as long as human society has existed, advancements came from in-person connections which were fostered by these random unofficial chats.

If you expect anything else, you might expect humans to not be like humans.

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

#772

Post by RestlessMind »

giantg2 wrote: post #312
The_Colonel wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how managers advance. Through good personal relationships across the organization, rapport, "alignment".

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

Beyond a certain level, career advancement happens only by doing work which is much more than just delivering technical projects. That level is typically attained in 4-6 years by a competent software engineer.

(Yes, I am aware of a few exceptions who attain "fellow" or equivalent levels, but they are the exceptions to my observation and such positions are anyway <1% of the technical workforce; not everyone can be a fellow).

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

#773

Post by RestlessMind »

lolinder wrote: post #332
listenallyall wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Sorry buddy but that's on you. You make valuable connections by being generous and helpful to others. Then at some point down the road when they need to hire someone, they remember, hey 'snozolli' was a great coworker, let me see if they're available.

What about remote work prevents "being generous and helpful to others"? Or, put differently, what about being in an office makes it easier to be generous and helpful? And before you reply: how sure are you that whatever you come up with applies to everyone and not just to you and people like you? Keep in mind that a lot of people in tech (myself included) are literally digital natives who learned to socialize on the…

> What about remote work prevents "being generous and helpful to others"?

When you spend multiple hours together with someone day after day, you develop a bond. That leads to being generous and helpful and this connection is sorely missing in a fully remote world.

> how sure are you that whatever you come up with applies to everyone and not just to you and people like you?

No setup will work for every single person. But for most of the humans, in-person interaction helps create better bonds. Here are some research papers[1][2]. Yes, there will be a few outliers who do not like meeting people IRL, but that ultra-small minority should not be dictating policies which go counter to human nature.

[1] https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1038/s41598-021-045... - "In‑person attendance was associated with greater synchronicity in autonomic nervous system activation at the group level, which resulted in more transformative experiences and contributed to stronger identity fusion."

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321... - "In both experiments, positive affect was higher after in-person support vs. texting."

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

#774

Post by _gmax0 »

pflanze wrote: post #418
_gmax0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to see a study done comparing the extent of happen-chance that occurs in-person vs digitally. Digital hallways exist in the form of private messages.

Do you have tips on how to approach coworkers about "odd" topics via private messages? The "hallway" principle as I understand it is that it is low-key, low-risk, you can immediately read the others' reactions, and you (usually) won't be blamed for odd thoughts, nor does the other side need to feel pressured to handle your question well.

Good question, I completely overlooked that aspect of online interaction.

I guess more real-time digital communication such as video or call (video taking priority given that it contains additional sensory information) could come close, but none of these are 'memory-less' as physical interaction.

I wonder if I myself have blown through professional relationships in this way...I like to think that the cultures I'm in aren't so risk averse towards the first impressions they make.

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

#775

Post by krabizzwainch »

op00to wrote: post #754
krabizzwainch wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started a new job during the pandemic (well, 2...). What sucks for me is that my boss has been like "Yeah, you can go back to the office." But both him and my direct coworker have said that they will never go back to the office. Pretty sure I will never physically meet them before I inevitably try to find some other job. And what is more isolating than being home alone? Well, working completely alone in an office b…

You could … ask your boss for an in person 1:1. I did. My boss lives halfway across the country. We made it work. I am a long time remote worker (12+ years)

We have weekly group meetings and no one ever really has anything to say, and I've tried steering the conversation to anything interesting or getting to know them and it goes nowhere. The boss is the first one to bail once hes bored of the conversation. There are bi-weekly group meetings with the director where its a forced conversation that he doesn't actually know how to lead ("alright everyone, find something to talk about").

Like, my whole issue could be entirely down to the job. I'm getting weird vibes from this place and these people (yelling in meetings about various things that aren't important at all).

I think what I'm finding out is that having great coworkers in my previous in person jobs either hid or overrode my new found hatred of system administration. If I liked what I did then maybe all of my comments would be different here.

I guess after 8 years of being a DBA/SysAdmin have taught me to stop applying for these jobs.

Edit: Like, I'm married. I have friends far away I see monthly and game with weekly. I'm not dying here. I just want the 8 hours of work to not be as lonely. My jobs won't get my best performance this way because I'm mentally so disconnected from what I'm doing since I'll never meet who I'm doing it for.

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

#777

Post by StopHammoTime »

TheCleric wrote: post #738
pxue wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. i'll give another example. I played WoW for a good 8 years everyday through high school and college, became great friends with some of the people I played the game with. When I finished school, I hung up my WoW character and said good bye to my friends in the game. Although I no longer keep in touch with any of them, those were some of the best 8 years of my life and I am truly fond of the memories I made playing…

I think the larger point is if you can walk away from a relationship after 8 years without an attempt to keep in touch, you're not friends.

+1. I have a group chat with my wow friends and we have been mostly connected (with some brief periods after Cataclysm where everyone stopped playing) for almost 15 years now. We’ve had in-person meetups and I have a solid conversation with them at least once a week on voice.

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

#778

Post by tyroh »

Cub3 wrote: post #450

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 pu…

For #1, 1:1 will help a lot but it will take time as you need to build the relationship enough for them to open up to you.

But I agree with #3. The problem is getting the seniors to RTO just for this express reason. Though having an always-on call for that day would help with adhoc questions from juniors.

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

#779

Post by yeahbuttiri »

lolinder wrote: post #486
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 you're the most honest pro-office person here. Everyone else is making justifications that dance around this idea that they need the office for the human connection. What you describe is very real and I understand that it hurts. I think what's happening is that we're in the shaking out phase where companies are deciding whether they'll be remote/hybrid/office. Each company will make that decision based on the…

We used to have diversity in work environments in the US and then allowed everything to become monopolized by a handful of big corps who demanded hyper normalization at the office.

I agree with what you said at the end though, but would add OP needs to do the work of building a life outside of their job. Doing so is “work” in a physical science, vanilla dictionary sense. What we do to play Society: The Game is a job and coworkers have lives that do not revolve around other coworkers. Adult life is going to suck for OP if they don’t build a social network or even just general social skills outside of the office space.

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