Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

I think it's clear some people prefer working remotely (and the online hacker news crowd leans heavily that way). It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.

I think it's inevitable that the culture of a company mirrors the values of it's leaders.

Companies with leaders that value in person communication, place a high premium on random collaboration will prefer their teams to be in office, and hire people based on this. This could involve companies with large amounts of more junior people that need training or experience (and whose leaders feel that training is easier done in person).

Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work.

This means you'll see a decline in hybrid teams. Teams want to be made up of people who share values, and this is something that will polarize teams. Companies that prioritize growing talent will prefer to be in person, companies that prefer to hire for specific roles with clear expectations will be OK being remote.

This polarization will be painful and shouldn't happen quickly. I see many companies putting their finger on the scale when hiring, preferring in office roles (and selecting people that want or can't get remote roles). Over time, natural attrition will mean less and less remote workers, and that eventual makes it easier to push others out.

I don't think this is a good or bad thing, but it does mean that if you want to be fully remote, you need to remain very competitive in terms of skills. You're competing against a wider talent pool. I do expect 3 days a week (Tues/Wed/Thurs) to become standard for many companies, and that broadens the "recruiting" radius for in office companies. 1 hour commute 5 days a week is the same time commitment as 1.5 hours commute 3 days a week.

- Executives work in a way that genuinely does probably reward or even require in person interaction. A lot of their job is "intangible" human connection-building stuff with other executives, shareholders, investors, manufacturers, etc. And because of the way executives are selected, a lot of these people haven't worked a "normal" job in decades or sometimes ever. They mistakenly think everyone else's work is, or should be, more like theirs is.

- Ego shit: from executive down to middle management a significant amount of the "reward" of the job is prestige, in the form of authority and control over other workers. Seeing "their" workers all lined up in the office is a visceral experience of this prestige and they don't want to give it up.

- Some significant fraction of middle management is genuinely not necessary or beneficial, but is essentially skimmed off the productivity of the lower workers and presented upwards as managerial competence. And especially, this isn't evenly distributed: maybe all managers do it a little, inadvertently or through bureaucratic structure, but some managers are almost exclusively this. Their actual career is at stake because it makes clear who is doing the work, and prevents them from intercepting it to take credit.

And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.