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

291–300 of 348 posts

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#291

Post by deathanatos »

tylerag wrote: post #179
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An external keyboard and mouse is a necessity for any non-emergency work. 100% of laptop keyboards and trackpads suck for anything other than emergencies, and many suck for emergencies as well. This is inarguable fact.

I won't argue with you, but I will ask how many laptops have you tried?

I know the thread has drifted a bit here, but in the context of employment, I don't have the option to try different laptops. I've never worked at an employer that permitted BYOD for the laptop, and so you're stuck with what they issue, which is generally a single choice, as they don't want to put in the IT work to support more than that.

If that choice is a MBP … then you're stuck with not only an infamous keyboard, but also one that causes me (and many people I've worked with) RSI … it's that, or an external.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#292

Post by AwaAwa »

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.

Bootlickers/Fluff afficianados do best in RTO. The class that usually winds up in managerial/exec roles. Small wonder.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#293

Post by red-iron-pine »

packetlost wrote: post #285
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…

Idk, I'm firmly in the "hybrid works best" camp. Face-to-face collaboration has no alternative, sorry. In jobs where you have to actually engineer instead of build CRUD web-app #2,000,001, it's very hard to be effective without in-person communication. Most people are not great at the async types of comms that are necessary for that to scale to remote work.

hybrid works for some, but often means abandoning patterns that are required to make 100% remote work.

It's also a huge PITA since it requires people to live near their office -- can't move to rural Kentucky, still stuck in the burbs -- while simultaneously requiring them to maintain a at-home office AND work office.

Honestly if it's not 100% in person then make it 100% remote and learn to structure it that way. Otherwise it's the worst of both worlds.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#294

Post by sanderjd »

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…

I've been working solely remotely by choice for a little over a year now, and except for a couple weird months during a lurching back-to-office push in early 2022, I've been working remotely for nearly 3.5 years now. I've begun to really miss having an office to go to. I've increasingly been getting out of the house every day, but it's expensive to go to coffee shops, and I don't really like the feel of "coworking" offices where everyone is cloistered away working on something different.

It seems to me that the hybrid model of two or three days in office and two or three days at home is quickly gaining mindshare, and I've frankly become envious of that.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#295

Post by sanderjd »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #257
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).

> To each their own. That's exactly my point! I find it ridiculous that CEO's think they somehow have to create the same policy for everyone, as if giving people a choice was somehow a taboo. We've come a long way realizing self-organizing teams work better than micromanaged ones etc., I wonder how long it will take PHBs to understand that giving people a choice is not just good for them but it's overly beneficial to…

I agree, but there are very real costs to having teams (at different levels) doing different things. A team with 8 people in-office and 2 people WFH is pretty crappy. The in-office people end up feeling put-upon to have to go out of the way to include the WFH people in things, and the WFH people inevitably end up feeling left out of a lot of things, because they are. At the very lowest level, it works best to have a single team all working the same way. At some level up the hierarchy it becomes more ok to have a mix; if five teams are collaborating, it doesn't matter so much whether two of them are in-office and the other three are WFH focused.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#296

Post by sanderjd »

Etheryte wrote: post #288
Balero wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To each their own. They were giving another perspective, not forcing anyone to do anything.

They edited their comment after the fact to add this part, it was not there originally.

I have no idea whether that's true, but it is not necessary for the comment to say "to each their own" for the commenter to have just been expressing a personal preference. They weren't making an "argument".

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#297

Post by sanderjd »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #293
packetlost wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, I'm firmly in the "hybrid works best" camp. Face-to-face collaboration has no alternative, sorry. In jobs where you have to actually engineer instead of build CRUD web-app #2,000,001, it's very hard to be effective without in-person communication. Most people are not great at the async types of comms that are necessary for that to scale to remote work.

hybrid works for some, but often means abandoning patterns that are required to make 100% remote work. It's also a huge PITA since it requires people to live near their office -- can't move to rural Kentucky, still stuck in the burbs -- while simultaneously requiring them to maintain a at-home office AND work office. Honestly if it's not 100% in person then make it 100% remote and learn to structure it that way. Othe…

I disagree, hybrid is flexible. If you're doing work that benefits from in-person interaction, coordinate a time to be together in the office. If you're doing work that you'd rather be remote for, do that.

I do think the geographical agnosticism of 100% remote is an enormous advantage, but there is no correspondingly enormous advantage of 100% in-office. If you've already taken the hit to give up the advantages of 100% remote, you can at least keep the advantages of flexibility by going hybrid.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#298

Post by sanderjd »

tetromino_ wrote: post #270
Cymrukicks wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could keep your jobs and move to a lower cost of living area making us of more space?

Irrespective of lack of space, NYC is the only place in the US where I have enjoyed living.

Yeah people always miss this: Job availability is not the only reason people don't all move to rural Kentucky. People like living in expensive cities! That's why so many people live there!

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#299

Post by sanderjd »

apexalpha wrote: post #260
tetromino_ wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. Let me guess, you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house? I live in NYC. Residential floor space is very expensive here. My wife and I on two tech salaries can afford a fairly large place by the standards of our area, but it's definitely not large enough for 2 adults to comfortably wo…

From my perspective, it feels like this post is putting the cart before the horse. In stead of thinking: I'd like to go back to the office because our home is too small, why don't you think: I'd like to work from home so that I can afford a bigger house for less cost?

Because not everyone wants a big home or to live in the places where big homes are inexpensive.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#300

Post by sanderjd »

danaris wrote: post #281
tetromino_ wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. Let me guess, you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house? I live in NYC. Residential floor space is very expensive here. My wife and I on two tech salaries can afford a fairly large place by the standards of our area, but it's definitely not large enough for 2 adults to comfortably wo…

And one of the consequences of widespread remote work—as we're already seeing—is more people deciding they don't want to continue to live in a cramped, expensive city apartment. This doesn't mean everyone will—there are certainly other benefits to living in a city besides proximity to workplace. But it is likely that, given time (and probably some common-sense changes to housing policies), this will result in less pr…

> And one of the consequences of widespread remote work—as we're already seeing—is more people deciding they don't want to continue to live in a cramped, expensive city apartment.

Are we seeing that?

Certainly lots of people have left SF, but the pandemic / WFH did not reverse the general trend toward urbanism. The geographic flexibility has been in people picking different cities, not in people choosing to move to rural areas en masse.

Post reply on HN