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

911–920 of 921 posts

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

#911

Post by raylennon »

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…

I'd say the living situation at home makes a big difference. You may have a good living situation and good social interactions with family at home. The camp that likes the physical office may be a lot more isolated if they had to work from home. It's also the same reason a lot of folks like going to coffeeshops and other public places to feel less isolated while working.

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

#912

Post by FrontierPsych »

arcturus17 wrote: post #159
wildrhythms wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Brainstorming and creative collaboration activities seem more effective when done in person Let me tell you, I hate these. And I will take vacation days to avoid going to them. And I also think they're not very productive no matter how many 'How To Run A Sprint' classes the organizers take.

I consider myself 100% a remote guy, but c'mon. Isn't it reasonable for people in an org to be in the same physical space a few times a year.

Personally I don't see any difference at all in being in the same building vs on online zoom/video meeting.

I find it very strange that being in a room with someone is somehow different than being on a video call.

You can see the peoples' faces...what are you going to do in person? Touch peoples' naughty bits? Fart so everyone can enjoy? I don't get it. You are there to exchange ideas. Being face-to-face in person allows you to see the person's face and non-verbals. But you get that in a video conference.

I don't understand.

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

#913

Post by FrontierPsych »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

I’m a CTO at a small startup, not forcing RTO on anyone BUT the vibe I get in my peer group is that managers don’t know how to manage remote teams, don’t want to do real performance management, and they personally have some loneliness issues they solve by working from the office. I work from an office with my cofounder 1 day/week, and it has been great for my mental health to leave my living room. I think broadly spe…

"culture/family etc"

That's really just a veneer for "transactional and performance based"

Whenever I hear a company say that they are like a family, I run. In a family, you don't lay off family members. As a matter-of-fact, if it is a family run business, and there's a business downturn, they will lay off all workers and leave their actual family members working.

In reality, saying it is "family" is just a machiavellian ploy to pretend a business actually cares about the employees, in order to make them loyal to the company, without the loyalty going the other way. I've read so many stories about how owners were always talking about the company being "family" but when push came to shove, they shoved the employee out the door. But like so many companies, all the ones that are shedding employees, they never seem to fire the C-suite, somehow.

As far as culture goes, all companies want to create a culture that is maximal efficiency for the company. That's all the culture is in a corporate world. It's transactional. No company is going to have a culture of 5 hour picnic lunches every day, followed by an hour foot massage for everyone so that only 2 hours of work get done a day. That would be silly. ALL business cultures exist to maximize shareholder investments. To the extent that cultures are different is just a different way of trying to maximize employee output. Nothing is wrong with it, but it actually is transactional. To the extent people talk about "culture" that is really just trying to polish the turd.

I agree with everythinig else you wrote.

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

#914

Post by davidguetta »

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…

The point is choice. Most compagny should allow both remote and not remote

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

#915

Post by Adraghast »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #760
Adraghast wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not some solvable, technocratic equation, it’s a conflict between labor and management. I don’t look at it from my employers’ perspectives because I don’t care about their outcomes.

Then why should they care about your outcomes? You’ve got to do better if you expect to retain employment long term, and certainly if you expect to retain the privilege of working remotely.

Because if they don't I won't sell them my labor.

I've retained employment for nearly two decades, and have retained the "privilege" of working remotely for nearly half of that. I'm not concerned.

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

#916

Post by urthor »

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…

Mob programming, aka the juniors sit and watch the senior do the thing, 2x1 hour per week is the solution.

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

#917

Post by maigret »

pc86 wrote: post #167
DougN7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With three out of three different employees so far, all slowly did less and less work the longer they worked from home. I’m 90% sure one of them had an additional job, and another one admitted it when he quit. I don’t like to micromanage so give developers a lot of freedom. Few people have as much long-term integrity as we like to pretend we all have.

If they aren't getting stuff done, that's its own conversation. Whether they have a second (or third, or fourth) job is irrelevant.

It’s not irrelevant and could be a conflict of interest if you work for competitors. Where I live I’m pretty sure you can’t have multiple jobs without informing all employers. Also you can’t claim more than a normal day job of hours, so both jobs have to be part time and can’t add on to more than one full time.

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

#918

Post by h0p3 »

moremetadata wrote: post #375
guhidalg wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow where do you work that management has their shit together that well?

Norwich Union (Aviva) the insurance company have a system called The Wall iirc (been over decade). Its a free for all for asking questions, sending messages, making unofficial FYI notes, its an attempt to document those conversations that would have otherwise taken place between individuals. Everyone from the top down has read/write access. Main objective to document those conversations, so nothing gets missed, like…

That's a good idea.

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

#919

Post by burhanrashid52 »

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…

Similar happening to me as well. I thought remote work will bring me freedom of time and place but spending 2 years at home without any interaction with outside people made me a negative and depressed person for a few months.

But I somehow found the balance by going to a co-working space, going to the gym and playing any physical sport.

PS: I live with 6 people but it still happened to me.

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

#920

Post by 1290cc »

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…

You're completely right to feel this way.

Reading about your struggles made me reflect on my twenties in tech and what a day to day looked like. Most mornings would start on a tube commuting into central london, getting to see how people dress, was anyone attractive on my route? what music should I listen to on the way? Then getting into the office, I worked with with engineer that was a developer at roscosmos and escaped the soviet union. We would walk the streets of london and discuss what problems we were going to solve that day and have a morning espresso while doing it. The city was always buzzing with traders and office workers. Work was tough but I had a lunch outside to look forward to with my team. If it was thursday or friday most of us would head to a pub for a late boozy lunch or end up at bricklane for a curry and the night just went on and on.

Amazing time and when I compare that to the last few years of remote work it cant even come close to the interactions and experiences I gained during that time. My day to day has been wakeup, grab a coffee, walk into my office and start responding to emails. I then try to squeeze in time to walk my dog and then get back to continue more meetings and zoom calls. Once the day ends I'm pretty exhausted and try to get outside to ride my bike or go to the gym. I physically interact with less than 2 people a day. My wife and the barista at the local coffee shop.

I completely empathize with how you're feeling!

Post reply on HN