My [very big] company just mandated return to office 3 days a week. My employment contract, signed a little after covid stipulates fully remote so I am exempt. I am also very far from an office. Its really the people that have been working here a long time that are taking the hit. All of these loyal people are going to have to start paying for after school care again, tolls, gas, lunch, etc. with no raise to compensate them. This is after already getting hammered by inflation. I genuinely feel bad for them.
80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
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Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Complete tangent: I wonder if it's uniquely American to believe that people can/should only be passionate about jobs that are world-changing. Or maybe it's just very common in the tech-world and HN. I'm absolutely guilty of this. I'm a software engineer, and I feel proud of having worked on products that millions of people use. Steve Jobs's challenge to "put a dent in the universe" is axiomatic for many of us. Yet I…
I find it very difficult to find meaning in a large portion of the jobs available today. Most workers are just another cog in the wheel. The system is so large that one cannot directly appreciate the effects of their work, or even know whether they are positive at all. This contrasts with say, a subsistance farmer who produces food for their family and lives in a small community where every product of their labor has…
At some point you have to just like your job. No amount of "you are changing the world" feeling is going to keep you motivated for a job you hate.
I get joy from figuring out how to solve a tricky UX issue, or from finally discovering the root cause of a difficult bug.
The work itself can be fulfilling, regardless of any potential deeper meaning.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, you found simple solution for very complicated dynamic and you actually believe you solved this problem? I don't care about offices with doors. Sure, they're better, but still it doesn't solve my issues - I care about commute - time and money, especially time. I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't want to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x
I think this is a great comment. > I care about commute - time and money, especially time. I'm assuming you have done the whole draw a circle around where you live that represents your maximum willingness to commute and then apply for jobs in that circle thing? It was very popular in silicon valley during the dot com boom. When the commute circle comes up empty though, what do you do? Not snark, 100% serious. Hired a…
> When comes up empty though, what do you do?
As for anything, we settle.
Now, the physical circle example feels weird to me as we're talking about remote work. Sure no one is guaranteed to find a good remote work opportunity when looking for a job, but there is enough of choice for someone who was successfully employed for a while to find a decent remote position with reasonable trade-offs. It's at least a lot easier than finding employment at 200m of one's home.
> Consider firefighters
I'm not sure how relevant it is to our field, where very few people still have to physically move to a common place to do their job. Data center maintainers still have to go to the server racks to actually plug/unplug machines, but for most other roles we kinda see the reverse, where people can react to a crisis way faster from home than when having to go to an office in the middle of the night.
> this is a rare opportunity to suggest/demand they revert some of the things that made working in the office so awful
What's lost on me is this tireless search for a middle ground, when we have better options all-around. To get back to your firefighters example, there was a time they had contracts for specific buildings and wouldn't extinguish fires on places out of contract. Should we try to find a middle ground to bring back these contract systems in some way, removing some of the most awful parts ? Or are we ok to move on to a completely different system that better benefits the city as a whole ?
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#234I have a new conspiracy theory on RTO in Big Tech. Much has been said about commercial real estate. But I think getting highly capable people to work hard for you is a difficult problem & something tech executives put a lot of thought into. If you don't pay people enough, someone else will. But if you pay them too much, they'll become financially independent. Mid six figures is an objectively life-changing amount of…
Yep. Hence the economic alarms about salaries being “too high”: remote work enables geo-arbitrage, which removes a significant portion of employer leverage. If employees could buy their way out of the system, then, by definition, capital is leaving power and money on the table. And it absolutely loathes that.
They get what they pay for. Companies that offer remote jobs will be able to pick from and retain a wider gamut of talent. I suspect a lot of this RTO is related to the tech market just generally being down. Once things heat back up, recruiters will be knocking down doors to get people to interview for remote gigs just like before. It may take some time to get to that point though, because there are a number of factors at play currently that could prolong the depression in tech.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are supervised vs unsupervised is completely naïve
That only makes sense if the employees in question don't produce anything measurable
What’s the difference between producing something measurable that gets scrapped before ever hitting prod regardless of the several months spent working on it and not producing anything measurable at all? Unfortunately, these are the thoughts I’m left with, especially now that my current job is deprecating the years of effort some other guys spent building the last system.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#236I was recently offered a long-term contract job that was double anything I would expect my salary to be. Why? Because the company instituted a policy of not hiring new remote employees. So the workaround to get the help they need is to hire contractors that aren't beholden to silly employee policies.
Double what you expect your salary should be is to be expected for contracting from healthcare and other expenses alone. Never mind the instability premium.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that but those that stay are the “yes” men/women who are either bootlickers or accept that they aren’t valued much and thus will put in minimal genuine effort and just comply with stupid directives to the letter. In the end you just don’t get that diversity of thought through disagreement/evolution/personal ownership that you otherwise get when people feel comfortable enough to genuinely show up and be missi…
I would bet lots of those who stay are the visa slaves who aren't as comfortable with the threat of unemployment as domestic workers would be.
At Twitter, all the visa folks left, only domestic workers stuck around. I know it’s a common argument, but unfortunately not as true.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no one orchestrating this. I think there are thousands of people orchestrating this, independently.
That's kinda what an emerging phenomena is.
My point is that it's still the result of human action, it's purposeful and intentional.
It's just not conspiracy.
It's not emergent out of nowhere. It's emergent out of shitty people being in positions of power and influence.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#239>> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies’ decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back. The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to use…
I'm not quite seeing your point. Are you saying the article's usage is inconsistent with the meaning of sunk cost? In some cases companies have multi-year leases for office space that is drastically underutilized due to WFH. Does that not count as a sunk cost in your opinion? It's true rent is paid on an ongoing prorated basis but to quote from Investopedia, "Sunk costs also cover certain expenses that are committed…
My point is that if the companies are locked into their office leases then that is a sunk cost, and companies requiring employees to return to the office in order to justify that expense is an example of decision making under a sunk-cost fallacy.
I don't know why the author doesn't point that out in the article, hence my pedantic tone which some have noted.
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
#240I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…
> Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep work"
What is a bigger hindrance to this to me is an open office plan. Being distracted by watching everyone walk around, no one respecting my headphones being on, walking over to me for a "quick question" that disrupts my flow and ends up being 60 minutes of work which I get no credit for but they do. At least over slack I can not respond to messages, though the ping is still disruptive.
What helps create deep work is a fucking door which I can communicate to people that I am in the zone and do not bother me unless you really need me.
The truth is that people are just justifying their previous decisions. They made open offices because it is "cheaper" (short term, but arguable long term) and have to come up with a reason that it is "better" other than cost. The same shit happens with WFH because they are still paying for office space. This is crazy since silicon valley was known for crazy perks like laundry and free food and all that but still wouldn't give you an office with a door. But now all that is going away as all their stocks are still going up. The reason those companies got big in the first place is that they realized that there were diminishing returns on financial compensation and that giving other perks actually boosted performance, created loyalty, and keeps people happy. So why stop doing something that is working? (gotta get those stock prices up somehow, right? And a quarterly level, not long term)