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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#601

Post by Izkata »

TuringNYC wrote: post #456
cruano wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you pretending like flexibility is something you cannot give freely ? That's like saying all junior-level employees MUST carry a book on top of their heads all the time, and only C-Level executives get to skip that. If you give someone flexibility, you are not taking anything away from other people, so not giving it is only an unnecessary punishment for junior level employees.

>> Why are you pretending like flexibility is something you cannot give freely ? Many of these things are about rite of passage, and people who have gone thru the rites want others to not skip. It can also be about a power-dynamic, where flexibility isnt given because imposed inflexibility is a power lever.

It can turn into that, but on the flipside it's normal to get more privileges over time, either as a reward (raises, time off) or once you've shown you won't abuse it (WFH/flexibility).

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#602

Post by closeparen »

peatmoss wrote: post #201
AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on humans only to put them in an environment where it’s impossible to concentrate. I reckon at some point someone will figure out that the physical environment can be modified to make knowledge workers more productive, and start walloping their competition. I am on a distributed team with no in-person interaction, and I love commuting even though I don’t see anyone…

Knowledge workers are nominally expensive but compared to real estate? The company’s actual liquid cash outlay to a highly-paid knowledge worker barely covers the mortgage payment on a mediocre house an hour away. Tech workers are rich in many things, but not square feet. The company renting palatial amounts of class A space on their behalf could be tantamount to doubling wages, and I bet most people would take the wages.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#603

Post by [deleted] »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #510
kzrdude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating out is a net positive for me. I get better, more varied food and feel better if a professional does the cooking. It's not worth saving money on what I eat - it's so important for health.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to make healthy, tasty food. Personally, if I made enough, I'd eat out all the time too.

[deleted]

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#604

Post by ebiester »

linuxftw wrote: post #262
ebiester wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle management will only be replaced by AI if fewer employees can do the same job. How many people do you think a VP-Eng or CTO can manage and still do the rest of the job?

Middle management's job seems like the easiest to replace by AI. They don't create any products directly, they only take orders from above and distribute them to below. They take feedback from below, possibly communicate it up, most likely communicate it laterally to another team, etc. So, I think we'll see 5 middle managers replaced by 1 or 2 middle managers + AI. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

It's like anything else - the closer you get to the problem, the more work you see that happens.

Directors are often the group that is doing all the work nobody else is assigned. This goes from scheduling off-sites to preparing for audits to determining who handles unscheduled work that doesn't neatly fit into any one team. Directors are responsible for coaching engineering managers and are the backstop for problems outside the skill level of the eng manager.

They also handle project management because in smaller organizations, those positions have already been condensed.

Now, I think there's an alternative. You could hire an executive assistant that offloads some of what directors do. You could have a project manager or two handle all the projects across the portfolio for medium sized orgs - you're likely looking at 1.5 project managers for a director salary. (I think there is a place for AI there, but I actually think we have a better algorithm with Monte Carlo simulation.) You could have non-directors doing 85% of what a director does today, but you're still hiring high-skill people.

But if AI could replace a director then so could an EM. An EM can write a weekly status better than an AI and if a VP-Eng could rely on that, directors would have been replaced long ago.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#605

Post by BluePen7 »

izzydata wrote: post #327
rqtwteye wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

If they previously worked in some expensive city like San Fransisco and had in writing that their work from home arrangement was permanent they could move to a forest somewhere with negligible housing costs and still come out ahead. Although most people don't work in San Francisco with inflated salaries so I'd still rather not make this the norm.

It's worse than that, I didn't just gain space and scenery. I went up an entire socioeconomic class.

Previously I was priced out of the housing market, renting a small basement suite.

Now I own a large detached home, and thanks to the rental suite, spending less each month than I did before.

And this is all before you consider the equity myself and my tenant have paid down, or even any home appreciation. It's effectively doubled my TC since I moved.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#606

Post by LambdaComplex »

whateverman23 wrote: post #554
bko wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you pretending this analyst is the same or even should have the same affordances as the CEO? You might be shocked to find out the CEO even gets paid more! Most people come up through the ranks and you can bet the CEO was one time an analyst with a demanding boss. After decades of work he made it to boss. You see this everywhere where you move up the ranks and things get better. That's the apprentice deal for…

> I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have higher demands than junior employees. Lmao. I'm no where near C-Suite but I've also never worked as hard as I did as an intern/junior engineer. Moving up often means working less hard. > I don't really see any other way around it apart from a dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same regardless of capabilities This post is about WFH, not treati…

Yeah, Elon Musk is currently CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, owner/CTO of Twitter, and owner of The Boring Company. It is incredibly hard to believe that the C-Suite works hard when someone is able to multitask like that. Tesla is even a public company--the shareholders could have him removed if he was doing a bad job!

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#607

Post by esafak »

rqtwteye wrote: post #295
Roark66 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got tha…

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

People are foregoing pay to WFH but not that much. Relax people are not dumb.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#608

Post by barbazoo »

dom96 wrote: post #522
gspencley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Not only is it unpaid, it actually costs the employee money. In the worst case you need a car + the insurance, fuel and maintenance costs associated. In the best case you still need to pay for public transportation. > Nor do people…

That's all fair, though there is one clear advantage that commuting has (via certain modes of transport) and that is exercise. I say this as someone that loves working from home, but before I did so I would get thousands of steps in every day running towards the tube in London and around all the platforms. Dunno, maybe the positive health benefits of the steps are outweighed by how polluted the air in London (and lik…

> But getting less steps in every day due to WFH is a real problem.

It is! The solution is to walk more and everyone gets to decide how, we're all grown ups.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#609

Post by progman32 »

bitbckt wrote: post #550
peatmoss wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on humans only to put them in an environment where it’s impossible to concentrate. I reckon at some point someone will figure out that the physical environment can be modified to make knowledge workers more productive, and start walloping their competition. I am on a distributed team with no in-person interaction, and I love commuting even though I don’t see anyone…

Sun used to assign offices to two people. I personally don't mind sharing office space with less than about four coworkers. In a small(!), shared office there is enough social pressure to keep concentration periods quiet, or agree on shared music choices, &c. and still maintain the advantages of having what amounts to a team meeting space for collaboration in the same footprint.

Heh. If there's anything worse than an open office in my mind, it's being locked in a small room with someone else. At least the pervasive need to self monitor due to constant surveillance is somewhat diffuse in an open office. In a small room, nothing can escape attention.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#610

Post by amf12 »

joncrocks wrote: post #167
amf12 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting.. laundry/grocery service would be trivial for a lot of employers, and a huge benefit for employees. Why hasn't anyone offered it yet?

Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

The point isn't the $ value of the money but the time saved. That's why perks like free food are valued over their cost.
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