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The damaging results of mandated return to office

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Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#151

Post by theshrike79 »

threads2 wrote: post #89
ge96 wrote: post #62

I have to return to office since I left my previous remote one, been remote for 3 years. Silver lining (cope) for me is losing weight and slowing down passage of time. Also interacting with people IRL is nice, seeing physical people. I don't get out much other than going to the bars once in a while. But it sucks... Losing an hour a day for driving and I gotta get up earlier to get ready/drive. And I'll be working in…

> slowing down passage of time My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older. Thanks for mentioning this in the context of working from home. I feel a little better now. Maybe I should get an office job too.

> My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older.

The theory behind this is that your brain "compresses" memories. Identical days are just stored as "and here I spent 5 days working". And if your weekends are mostly similar, then it's just "And then I spent 12 weeks doing routine shit".

For kids time seems to move slower because everything they experience is new and can't be "compressed".

As an adult you can emulate this by doing things you haven't done before, getting new experiences.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#152

Post by raverbashing »

smaudet wrote: post #75
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a lot of remote work over the decades. It starts out well, because you know your coworkers well. But, over time, those relationships fade, and people come and go at work. You lose the connection with them, and they with you. It's hardly all roses.

This is what is meant by the "big corps haven't cracked it". More progressive corps embraced online socializing earlier, and honestly that's all I need. To be sure something is lost socially by not being in person, but the workplace is not social-drinks club, or if it is that's where your productivity went. You still build connections with people you only meet online, older folk might have more trouble with that, whi…

This. Keeping a connection takes some effort

And yes this might mean going to the office once in a while or to a company event etc

Not an unsurmountable problem but it's not negligible neither (as much as it is slowly growing)

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#153

Post by plaguepilled »

smarmgoblin wrote: post #144
throwaway675309 wrote: post #41

There have been a lot of, at least to me, somewhat unsubstantiated criticisms that fully remote work is difficult for new graduates. I can only provide n=1 sample data, but back when I was working for a company that was fully remote, we brought on many junior engineers who lived across the United States and didn't have any problems onboarding them by keeping a continual slack team huddle running during office hours.…

At least in software engineering, this is a great opportunity to start understanding how to cooperate and work with a team in this field. There should be a little bit of friction involved in tapping someone on the shoulder, and if you can only code within arms reach of a senior engineer you won’t make it very long. Sometimes I think the college mindset of “if my code doesn’t compile, the TA must have made a mistake g…

Taking accountability for your solution does not require a physical presence. This is not relevant.

Edit: I worded that a bit poorly. The point I wanted to convey was that the physical location isn't what determines accountability.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#154

Post by tilne »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
CtrlAltDelete51 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a source for any of that? Speaking personally, everyone I’ve spoken to on the matter (myself included) have zero desire to return to a traditional office.

I guess I’m one who likes the office. Not every day. But frequently. And I think I could build a culture with in-office time that would out-compete a remote-only competitor, domestic only or offshore hybrid.

What part of this culture would make it more competitive than any remote-only equivalent? And how would you build it?

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#155

Post by seanhunter »

randallsquared wrote: post #4
simonw wrote: post #2

"Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated." My guess is that you're also more likely to lose your best performers - since they will have higher confidence in being able to find a remote-friendly job somewhere else.

There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously difficult it is to reliably measure developer quality, that may be a belief they can harbor long past when you'd expect evidence to have mounted against it.

There's a number of kind of obvious reasons for that belief.

Firstly the people who are mandating RTO want to think of themselves as high performers. They want RTO so "high performers want RTO" is obvious to them.

Secondly a lot of non-doing managers want to be able to justify their existance. To do that they need people in the office to distract by walking around and having conversations etc. They can't do this when people are just WFH doing deep work.

Thirdly, if they know a manager wants RTO, then people who want to suck up to that manager will say they want RTO and will come in to the office to actively suck up to the manager. The manager will see these sycophants as high performers because they are spending their time fluffing the ego of the aformentioned manager.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#156

Post by thegrumpyenby »

lynx23 wrote: post #74
CtrlAltDelete51 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a source for any of that? Speaking personally, everyone I’ve spoken to on the matter (myself included) have zero desire to return to a traditional office.

How many people do you know? When WFH was mandated, I hated it. When the mandate was finally kicked, I loved going back to the office, and have spent almost every workday at the office, despite having the possibility to do 40% WFH if I wanted. No, I don't want that, thank you. Not a coder, working as admin. I like people, that is why I work in an office. And personal experience is definitely that working together wit…

[flagged]

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#157

Post by flakeoil »

NKosmatos wrote: post #103

Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision. People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgra…

We will most likely see that jobs that cannot be done by working from home will see an increase in salary and WFH jobs will see a decrease.

I'm thinking about jobs like nurses, electricians, factory workers, teachers etc.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#158

Post by saiya-jin »

seydor wrote: post #124
Uehreka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…what? Sorry to harsh the vibe, but that second paragraph reads like something out of 2014 when people were first reading REMOTE. At this point remote work is nothing new, and while many large companies don’t like it, many large companies are going along with it (and developing the culture, documentation, etc.) because it works well as a way to attract talent. And some startup founders are trying to go “full Musk” an…

> At this point remote work is nothing new I disagree. As long as i still see traffic in cities, it means remote work is still a tiny minority

Somebody has to serve you at restaurant, stack shelves at store and about gazillion other jobs that are done physically at location, or they are not done at all. Such claims are so desperately out of touch with reality its a bit sad. There will always be traffic in the cities.

Or do you want police or ambulances or surgeons to also work remotely?

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#159

Post by saiya-jin »

seanhunter wrote: post #155
randallsquared wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously difficult it is to reliably measure developer quality, that may be a belief they can harbor long past when you'd expect evidence to have mounted against it.

There's a number of kind of obvious reasons for that belief. Firstly the people who are mandating RTO want to think of themselves as high performers. They want RTO so "high performers want RTO" is obvious to them. Secondly a lot of non-doing managers want to be able to justify their existance. To do that they need people in the office to distract by walking around and having conversations etc. They can't do this when…

Not every job is Office space, in fact I've never experienced one in my 20 years of coding in 3 countries. You find bits and pieces if you look hard enough in some places, but that's it.

Behavior you describe would never get my any promotion anywhere I worked. Maybe I was just lucky, who knows.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#160

Post by vikramkr »

saiya-jin wrote: post #158
seydor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point remote work is nothing new I disagree. As long as i still see traffic in cities, it means remote work is still a tiny minority

Somebody has to serve you at restaurant, stack shelves at store and about gazillion other jobs that are done physically at location, or they are not done at all. Such claims are so desperately out of touch with reality its a bit sad. There will always be traffic in the cities. Or do you want police or ambulances or surgeons to also work remotely?

Your tone sounds like you're criticizing the parent comment but the content of your reply is pretty strongly supporting/backing up the parent comments assertion so I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're trying to disagree or agree lol
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