Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The damaging results of mandated return to office

entrepreneur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 348 posts

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#221

Post by Lewton »

nottorp wrote: post #195
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…

> and you like the taste Orthogonal to the productivity argument, have there been any studies trying to find the motivation for people preferring/hating WFH? My guess is you tend to prefer it if you have a social circle that's not your co workers and hate it if you don't.

I prefer going to the office, not because of the social aspect, but because I strongly prefer separating my work from my personal life

I really enjoyed back when working from the office was optional and I was the only one showing up!

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#222

Post by cpursley »

bbkane wrote: post #203
querez wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own. I find that WFH makes me incredibly unproductive, I'm glad I'm able to return to to the office. I think there are a lot of factors that affect this (e.g. I have a family with small children at home, and my commute is <15 minutes by bike).

Yes, I'm in a similar situation- small kid at home, easy walking commute to a nice office with friendly coworkers, a gym, and free lunch

I’m hard core work from home but that actually sounds awesome now that we have a toddler.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#223

Post by throwawaylinux »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #148
throwawaylinux wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most IT and engineering (and probably other "IP based") companies are "remote ready" for the right person. It's not some vast change or investment they have to make, really. You use the laptop they give you and connect from a different place, and continue to go about your job more or less the same way as does everybody who works with you, since most places are perfectly used to remote meetings and have been for decad…

"Most engineering" is a broad brush, some engineering still uses tools other than software at least occasionally.

Lots does. I work for a company that among other things makes leading edge ASICs. The tools and probes and things required to test and handle wafers and the chips that come back from packaging can't be sent to peoples' houses. Some people have to work various manual steps in that process at times. It's surprisingly hands-on, especially in early stages of characterization and yield and performance tuning.

The vast, vast majority of person-hours required to go from drawing board to bits of silicon running in customer's computer can be done entirely without physical presence though.

I know mechanical and structural engineers and it's much the same for them.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#224

Post by sokoloff »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #216
n4r9 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smaller, older, single-site operations maybe This accounts for around half of US employees and most US businesses. In the UK and other countries, it's even more. > all electronic onboarding anyway That's not true, you'll almost always be having in-person chats throughout your on-boarding if you're in the office. And anyway, the tech really isn't the issue here. As a new recruit in the office, you're usually sitting…

> This accounts for around half of US employees and most US businesses. In the UK and other countries, it's even more. Right. Far from the "few and far between" narrative here, isn't it? > That's not true, I'm talking about HR onboarding. Signatures, payroll, boilerplate regulatory compliance training etc. > you'll almost always be having in-person chats throughout your on-boarding if you're in the office. Nope, not…

When most people use “on-boarding”, they don’t mean just the legal/HR/benefits paperwork, but rather the effective integration into the fabric of the company. The original post to which you replied even specified that as including “learn how to communicate and collaborate within the company”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503709

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#225

Post by tom_ »

thegrumpyenby wrote: post #156
lynx23 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I assume the point, not that it's being put very well, is that the bar for events that render one unavailable, possibly for some unpredictable period, is now lower. Things that previously might not even have registered can now take people away from their metaphorical desk, and there's no scope for simply searching the office until you find them. The average development project is a team effort, and as such, as a developer you are paid for short-notice ad-hoc availability for collaboration or questioning as well as for producing pre-planned individual work items that you mark done on Jira.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#226

Post by zuminator »

querez wrote: post #196
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…

To each their own. I find that WFH makes me incredibly unproductive, I'm glad I'm able to return to to the office. I think there are a lot of factors that affect this (e.g. I have a family with small children at home, and my commute is <15 minutes by bike).

I think that's a small but significant part of the issue for businesses.

There are some workers who are more productive at WFH, some who are equally productive in either setting (but prefer WFH for personal reasons), and some who are less productive at WFH. Ideally everybody should just do what they're best at. If you're productive at home, work from home. If you're most productive at work, go into the office. Everybody's happy.

So where's the problem? It's that among the group that is most productive at the office, some of them still prefer to work at home where they fall prey to distractions and their output suffers. And rather than just coach those people appropriately, management finds it easier to just try and make everyone come in.

Which points to an even larger problem. That some managers are struggling with how to do their jobs in the WFH environment. And rather than acknowledge that they are the source of their own troubles, it's easier to pretend that the business is unmanageable remotely and everybody needs to come in.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#227

Post by okeuro49 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #132
DarthNebo wrote: post #43

I used to just leave my work laptop back in the office locker, coz apparently we can't work from home anymore so no 'emergency/important' work after 5PM lol.

This is the kicker for me. Work can’t be done productively from home? Fine then. My laptop goes in my backpack at 5pm when I get into my car, and it stays there until I pull it out at the office at 9am tomorrow.

Unless you're being paid to be on-call, if you're WFH, you should still close the lid on your laptop at 5pm and open it at 9am.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#228

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

ddevault wrote: post #209
ac2u wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did the person you’re replying to imply they didn’t have solidarity or wanted office work imposed on everyone? The parent poster simply said “Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back.” And the reply was essentially “to each their own but my WFH experience was different “ and you’re ready to jump down their throat with accusations of lack of solidarity.

It's just such a pointless distraction. Don't make it about you? It reminds me of men who hear that women get paid less and start complaining about their own salary. "Hey, we have this problem." "To each their own but it doesn't affect me!" Why waste your breath to say this?

Everyone is entitled to their personal preferences. You're attacking this guy for having a different preference than you, and you're filling in the blanks to make them seem hostile when they only expressed their personal preference. I dislike your rhetoric here as much as those of the forced return to the office crowd and for the exact same reason.

e: rewording

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#229

Post by seydor »

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?

At what times is traffic peaking? What are people doing then?

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#230

Post by throwawaylinux »

sokoloff wrote: post #224
throwawaylinux wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This accounts for around half of US employees and most US businesses. In the UK and other countries, it's even more. Right. Far from the "few and far between" narrative here, isn't it? > That's not true, I'm talking about HR onboarding. Signatures, payroll, boilerplate regulatory compliance training etc. > you'll almost always be having in-person chats throughout your on-boarding if you're in the office. Nope, not…

When most people use “on-boarding”, they don’t mean just the legal/HR/benefits paperwork, but rather the effective integration into the fabric of the company. The original post to which you replied even specified that as including “learn how to communicate and collaborate within the company”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503709

And there's nothing that's particularly prohibitive about doing that remotely. You can't just call a bunch of dot points like "on boarding" refuting what I wrote. Sure it's what you might read in your CEO's email or whatever, but that doesn't make it true.
Post reply on HN