11–20 of 66 posts
Why can’t “employees like it” ever count for anything?
And if you give companies exactly what they want, then they'll eventually want talented people to work for them for free.
So the two groups meet in the middle usually - depending on how competitive the job market it.
When are remote workers going to start blaming themselves? Clearly, companies big and small are recalling their workers back to their office. Clearly, they have data showing that their productivity metrics have declined. Tech management are usually very data-driven compared to other industries. So if they're recalling workers, then they must see something.
The simplest explanation is that remote/hybrid culture is less productive on some metric - whether it's total company output or less creativity or whatever it is. So while an individual remote worker might perceive himself or herself as being more productive, they often do not think at the level of the total company output.
And no, management isn't going to come out and explicitly say that their WFH workers are lazier and less productive. That's just bad PR. But you can infer what management is seeing from their actions.
They'd never come out and say "We are recalling our workers because we have data showing they're less productive while working from home.".
Saying something like that would cause a lot of bad PR. Piss off your workers even more. The media, pro-WFH people, HN will pan the company for saying something like that. There's no winning for the company to take this risk. It's best to say something generic like "culture".
The biggest loss from homeworking is the learning element for newer or more junior staff. Many of the learn the job by watching, listening or being shown in person. You can still do it remotely but it's way more difficult. The benefits of bouncing ideas off one another is also gone, that can affect creativity. Talking to each other, arguin, breaking down ideas or processes, drawing quick diagrams or knocking up a pro…
>I don't think a blanket return to work is what's needed, a more targeted appropriate one might be though, identify who's presence is required and pay them commensurately to be in the office. Working from home gets you less but you get the flexibility.
And how exactly do you do this? What if the person who's presence is required in the office depends on people who don't need to be in the office? What now? And how is it fair to everyone that some people can WFH but others can't?
Paul, Do you commute to an office every day, sit at a desk in a 4 person shared cubicle, have monthly "performance reviews" by someone unqualified to manage your subject area, have to deal with 3 children's weekly scheduled school-caused sickness, own an old car and only 1 so it is out of service when it needs repair? I worked from home for years ... scratch that, I "lived at work" while at home for years. If you bel…
Also, who doesn't bring their own coffee from home vs. drinking the three-day-old moldy diarrhea at the office?
Like all generalisations, this one is wrong. What companies need to do is work out a hybrid approach or prove to their employees that it is necessary to come to the office. If you are working on a prototype robotics project you do need to be in the office, but if you are writing microservices you do not need to come to the office to watch the chest thumping antics of your CEO or sales people. I don't write better cod…
I work at a company who his hybrid and has remote. Every remote engineer is damn near impossible to work with, a forget anything happening on Mondays or Fridays.
“Oh sorry, the contractor is here” “Sorry, the lawn guy” “I will be afk, doing this thing I totally would never leave work to do, but it is so important now because I am at home”.
People simply can’t separate home life with work life, and the job becomes a hobby.
In person is better for collaboration, for social interaction, and for a sense of a company on a mission. Some of the jobs I had were fantastic experiences and that was because of the people. And not just your direct team, but you also get to know lots of people outside your team. You learn from them, you have fun with them. It’s well known that many people meet their partner at work - or they used to anyway.
But remote is what people … especially developers … want. And remote is what makes sense, what’s the point of traveling 2 hours a day to sit at a desk and do what you would do at home?
On the other hand, some people do exploit remote working…. they work less, the slack off, or even have two jobs or freelance clients. This is well documented.
There’s no right answer.
Working remotely for the smaller companies and startups was much faster faced and productive. Part of it is due to company size and not remote vs. non-remote. We met regularly (once a month or so) to set direction, we executed at 2x - 3x the speed than at a larger company.
The FAANG company never embraced remote work fully. 2 years after I started remote, HR still messes up counting local holidays. Newly hired remote workers were promised they could travel for 2 weeks per year to meet face to face with their team. In my experience, it did not happen. Travel was severely restricted and new team members were not allowed to travel.
Now, leaders are complaining that remote worker productivity is lower than hybrid workers because of face to face interactions after they sabotaged remote workers and failed to deliver on the exact promises that would have solved this problem.
This sly behavior is unacceptable.
Software developers can work from home most of the time and meet in person for meaningful interactions (i.e. not just work in office instead of at home) periodically and when needed.