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Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

businessinsider.com

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Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#21

Post by pixelfarmer »

moomoo11 wrote: post #20

I wouldn’t mind going to the office if everyone else was also in that same office. I honestly don’t like working remote with people all around the world. Different time zones, people are always out for various holidays, and it’s impossibly hard to coordinate anything significant unless you make sacrifices in your personal life. And everyone is then in that same boat and it sucks equally for everyone involved.

I will translate: People are mostly incapable of splitting work and do proper communication in environments with high(er) latency.

The idea of just throwing stuff "over the fence" so to speak is going to bite you in the rear end in such scenarios, but people pretend there is no difference to having everyone in the same office and then run into a hard wall because reality is saying "hello!"

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#22

Post by fdye »

The problem with RTO is a fundamental axiom, "If >1 person on a meeting needs zoom, everyone should stay home". Hear me out, that one person can be the CEO in the hamptons, Jenny who just had a kid and is easing back in after matleave, the sales prospect from another company, etc. All it takes is one and it makes everything a giant waste of time. Because for everyone in office, they had to commute, find a conference room, spend money on lunch (usually), then sit on a zoom call in the office. I've tried all the teleconference thingamagigies, cameras on whiteboards, all of it. If > 1 person has to be on zoom, then everyone might as well be at home individually on their laptops showing a powerpoint or using lucidchart(or similar) to whiteboard. Yes if everyone is at the office sharing a conference room, white boarding it out, that can be great. However, at any office of sufficient size that is a RARITY! My last company we had teams all over the world, so it was silly to sit in a special conference room and try to get zoom to show our whiteboard or whatever. End rant.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#23

Post by Ancalagon »

moomoo11 wrote: post #20

I wouldn’t mind going to the office if everyone else was also in that same office. I honestly don’t like working remote with people all around the world. Different time zones, people are always out for various holidays, and it’s impossibly hard to coordinate anything significant unless you make sacrifices in your personal life. And everyone is then in that same boat and it sucks equally for everyone involved.

This really hits the nail on the head for me. My last two companies "globalized" parts of the team to the UK and India. Now the only time that works for everyone is 6 am PST.

And now we are still on zoom calls, just at the office instead of at home.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#24

Post by esel2k »

fdye wrote: post #22

The problem with RTO is a fundamental axiom, "If >1 person on a meeting needs zoom, everyone should stay home". Hear me out, that one person can be the CEO in the hamptons, Jenny who just had a kid and is easing back in after matleave, the sales prospect from another company, etc. All it takes is one and it makes everything a giant waste of time. Because for everyone in office, they had to commute, find a conference…

I don’t completely agree that it is a waste. Yes that one person might be less involved but thats the price. The goal is to move forward, have an interactive session etc. so coming together once a month for example is great. And if someone can’t make it, then so be it.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#25

Post by unethical_ban »

viraptor wrote: post #13
nytesky wrote: post #11

I’m sorry I’m pretty pro WFH but AirBnB directly benefits from remote workers setting up seasonal offices from vacation destinations. Part of why their business dropped is they went from nearly seasonal residence rentals for digital nomads to mostly vacation bookings.

Have you got some references for that? The digital nomads seem like a small enough group to not matter in the grand scheme of things. I'd be extremely surprised if they impacted the Airbnb bottom line at all.

Different person here, I make no specific claims, but it seems obvious AirBNB is biased. Their model is helped by people with money being able to travel frequently. Of course they would say rooting workers with disposable income to one location is bad.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#26

Post by wetmore »

Eumenes wrote: post #6
carlmr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at US vacation times allowed for workers, you can't go away for the summer without working remotely.

Jeez, all those tourists I'm seeing are just remote working?

Their point is that tourists can only do that for 1 or 2 weeks, not for the entire summer.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#27

Post by fdye »

esel2k wrote: post #24
fdye wrote: post #22

The problem with RTO is a fundamental axiom, "If >1 person on a meeting needs zoom, everyone should stay home". Hear me out, that one person can be the CEO in the hamptons, Jenny who just had a kid and is easing back in after matleave, the sales prospect from another company, etc. All it takes is one and it makes everything a giant waste of time. Because for everyone in office, they had to commute, find a conference…

I don’t completely agree that it is a waste. Yes that one person might be less involved but thats the price. The goal is to move forward, have an interactive session etc. so coming together once a month for example is great. And if someone can’t make it, then so be it.

I'll try to give sort of another analogy. With everyone at home on an individual laptop there is essentially one channel of communication. A single audio and video channel showing the presentation, or someones face talking, or whatever. The entire group is focusing all attention and communication in the same place, sure some may be zoning out, but its consistent. Now take the example of a room of six people, a whiteboard, and two remote. We essentially have two or more communications channel for those in the room together, and a single channel for everyone on zoom. Sure they can see a birds eye of people sitting in chairs around a table, maybe the camera focuses to varying crap degrees on who's talking. The whiteboard may be a camera focused on it, or one of those magic board thingies (again just use lucidchart or something over zoom, its better). There are cross-conversations, or mannerisms, conversations are likely muffled or speaking over each other, its generally very poor for those not in the room.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing, I agree if you can get everyone in a room then cool, its likely better. However, in terms of RTO, if you are a large F500 company you should look at your employees day-to-day and calendars. If the bulk of them are zoom meetings with people in other locations (different buildings, floors, etc) where it is unlikely they will be able to all get in the same physical location, then the axiom holds and you should just let them take it from home.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#28

Post by dghlsakjg »

moomoo11 wrote: post #20

I wouldn’t mind going to the office if everyone else was also in that same office. I honestly don’t like working remote with people all around the world. Different time zones, people are always out for various holidays, and it’s impossibly hard to coordinate anything significant unless you make sacrifices in your personal life. And everyone is then in that same boat and it sucks equally for everyone involved.

There's a massive difference between globally distributed and locally distributed.

My team is in 4 adjacent timezones (East Coast to Pacific, our home office operates on Central), and it works fine. When I worked in a company that had a Pakistani dev team it was awful (for a variety of reasons, but time zone was a huge one).

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#29

Post by hn_version_0023 »

mmvora wrote: post #8

I've had days where I come to the office, go on a bunch of zoom meetings, and leave. At that point why force in-person attendance??

I'm sure you know the answer to your question is "because they can".

All the current layoffs and rollback of WFH are directly related to power gained by employees during the COVID emergency. These useless stuffed shirts want to return to the good ol' days, when they barked and we jumped. No more.

The jig is up fellas. The banks are broke, the workers are pissed, and this attempt at rolling back worker power will fail.

Re: Airbnb CEO: CEOs calling workers back to the office 'going away to the Hamptons’

#30

Post by moomoo11 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #28
moomoo11 wrote: post #20

I wouldn’t mind going to the office if everyone else was also in that same office. I honestly don’t like working remote with people all around the world. Different time zones, people are always out for various holidays, and it’s impossibly hard to coordinate anything significant unless you make sacrifices in your personal life. And everyone is then in that same boat and it sucks equally for everyone involved.

There's a massive difference between globally distributed and locally distributed. My team is in 4 adjacent timezones (East Coast to Pacific, our home office operates on Central), and it works fine. When I worked in a company that had a Pakistani dev team it was awful (for a variety of reasons, but time zone was a huge one).

These are fine, but it definitely favors west coast people (I'm on west coast) when most people are on west coast.

My east coast colleagues are sometimes pulled into things that go until 6pm their time. Most west coasters start their day around 9am which is east coast lunch, so those folks are usually "fully available" for maybe a 2 hour window. Again, maybe this is fine if a team is just a support team or does something not that meaningful overall. If you're pushing the envelope building new products, ideating, or figuring things out AKA you need a lot of collaboration, you will suffer in personal life in the current model.

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