They took our offices away while we were gone and got us to return to cubicles. It’s some cynical bullshit. I hate my job now because of it.
Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
111–120 of 913 posts
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#112Video conf still sucks. It's literally the same as 10 years ago. Does anyone have a workplace where it is really seamless, high resolution, and just works? Or is using any of these new technologies? Maybe VR will help... But not being in-person for collaboration/morale is miles apart. I wonder if employees would personally cover the cost of a one week meetup once per month if their other option was move city and offi…
My issue with every piece of commercial software I’ve used is the lag. Slack, Google Meet, Zoom… All have noticeable delay which make conversation unnatural and painful.
I’ve been using FaceTime Audio to communicate with family on the other side of the world and it’s incredible. Zero latency and great audio quality. It’s an extremely underrated piece of tech. Not sure about FaceTime video as I’ve never used it, but I bet it’s equally impressive.
Amazing that no one else was able to solve this problem considering the demand for such software during the pandemic. Not my area of expertise, but I assume it must be quite difficult.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#113> definitely don’t accept any relocation assistance (since you’ll have to return it when you split) Is this true? I've never heard of conditional assistance like this.
If you accept relocation assistance and then don't relocate it, I'd expect the lawsuit to be open and shut.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#114> definitely don’t accept any relocation assistance (since you’ll have to return it when you split) Is this true? I've never heard of conditional assistance like this.
Can't speak for anywhere else, but it was clearly established at Amazon that any relocation assistance had to be returned (prorated) if I left before 1 year. I don't imagine that's terribly unusual, but many companies might not make it as obvious if they don't have the same high turnover rates as Amazon.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#115While employers can ultimately do whatever they want, people hired remote prior to covid should remain remote. I think its sad when remote hires are caught up in the return to office drag net. These individuals were typically hired due to a lack of a local skill pool so the employer hired remote to find the talent. Its simply counter productive to try and make them move local and will result in the same problem eventually and the employer will be forced to hire remote once again.
Having said all that, the author misses the point on tax incentives being the driver of this. I know of many situations where the employer could care less about tax incentives and the overall cost of the return to office mandate. If they cared about money, they would sell or tear down their corporate HQs like many have. For some, its about what the c-level believes will make them successful. You can argue they are right or wrong in their belief, I'm in the wait and see camp of what this looks like in five years to see what we learn by trying different things.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#116Remote "work" is fine (with pros and cons). The problem is lots of people don't "work" remotely.
Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#117I’ll know this “counter argument” isn’t bullshit when people finally admit they know full well a large portion of people abuse WFH. Until I see honesty on this, I am uninterested. No one ever admits: - I basically work 20-30 hours a week! - They have no idea when I’m actually working. - I was going to quit but I’m going to let them just keep paying me. - I have at least one side job and I won’t be able to do it if I…
Everyone was posting on twitter about all the "projects" and video games they were working on during the lock down, despite supposedly still having full-time remote jobs.
They also had time to move all across the country.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#118Video conf still sucks. It's literally the same as 10 years ago. Does anyone have a workplace where it is really seamless, high resolution, and just works? Or is using any of these new technologies? Maybe VR will help... But not being in-person for collaboration/morale is miles apart. I wonder if employees would personally cover the cost of a one week meetup once per month if their other option was move city and offi…
> Video conf still sucks Audio calls also still suck. Commercials in the 90s advertised "crystal clear audio quality" - they stopped talking about it but it never materialised.
Encoding is fine now. Microphones are bad though. Megacorps cheap out on providing some semi-decent headphones to the employees, that's why audio can be bad.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not only about before pandemic remote workers. Once people enjoyed the flexibility they aren't going back.
I enjoyed the flexibility of WFH but I still prefer working with local teams in the office. There are pros and cons to both, but it's silly to assume everyone has the same preference as you just because your preference is strongly held. This is my response to both your comment and TFA. There is less consensus on this topic than the very-vocal WFH crowd would have you believe. I know plenty of other talented engineers…
Sure, but RTO is about… forcing the preference for in person work on everyone.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#120If I start a company tomorrow, this is what I would want to do: 1. Hire within a general metropolitan area (2 hour commute max). 2. WFH for 28 days a month. 3. 2 days a month the entire org convenes in a ballroom or something and works together, have some progress reports, happy hours and hackathons. In this model, everyone’s remote most of the time. Yet everyone gets FaceTime with each other IrL. Seed ideas and brai…
Yeah, as soon as I see that 2 days a month thing, I'm not applying for the position. That's my only critique.
And no one would care. It's been an employers market for a year and will continue that way for the foreseeable future.