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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

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Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#191

Post by Racing0461 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #34

If 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…

Why pay sf/nyc salaries when you can hire utah/atlanta sde's and have them work in the same timezone +- 3 hrs and speak english?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#192

Post by scottLobster »

hotnfresh wrote: post #127
scottLobster wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. Perhaps if everyone working from home were constantly available to screen-share/video chat it wouldn't be as bad, but my experience with WFH is people get distracted by kids/pets/etc and half the time I wait h…

Chat’s my favorite. Leaves a record so you don’t have to take notes or immediately record whatever you talked about so you don’t forget. Screen sharing or pairing are better remote than in person. In person’s good for a subset of types of meetings that some folks may find themselves in a lot. Brainstorming, product ideation, that kind of thing. > In the office I just walk over to their desk. This is from the perspect…

You seem to have missed my point that all of those options require someone to actually be at their workstation and available. With WFH, half the time people aren't. In the office they are.

If WFH is going to be the future, then there should be uptime requirements with associated penalties so that someone is as available as they would be in the office. Software development is a team sport, you don't get to walk off the field whenever you feel like it just because you're home.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#193

Post by jurassicfoxy »

Fyrezerk wrote: post #55
mysterydip wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it stressful? I haven't seen this take before so I'm really curious about this perspective.

I know several friends who prefer to be in the office because they need some amount of time away from their young kids. It's the equivalent of "them" time where they get an escape from child care for a few hours.

I actually felt that way as well (and I have dogs, not kids). I felt like 2 days a week in the office was like a mini-vacation from home. Other than the commute (which negated most of the benefit) getting out of the house felt like socializing.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#194

Post by enraged_camel »

scottLobster wrote: post #76
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #11

There are so many “habits” left over from industrial work. On an assembly line everyone needed to be in sync but this generally isn’t true for most office work. You need to be present at the factory to do the work, hasn’t been true for office work for awhile now. Yet we still operate synchronously. Everyone commutes through traffic/crowded public transport and risk catching the latest novel virus, to arrive at work a…

Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. Perhaps if everyone working from home were constantly available to screen-share/video chat it wouldn't be as bad, but my experience with WFH is people get distracted by kids/pets/etc and half the time I wait h…

>> Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication.

Says who? And for whom?

I personally dislike being subject to disruptions on the whims of others. If they need something, they can ping me on Slack and I’ll respond when I feel like. If it’s truly urgent, they can call me over Slack (and I’ll answer if I feel like).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#195

Post by mperham »

paxys wrote: post #131
ramraj07 wrote: post #34

If 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…

If you are building a remote-first company why would you restrict your talent pool to a single metropolitan area?

Reasons: language, culture, legal, accounting, taxes...

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#196

Post by cogman10 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #149
Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

> Today, as some companies are changing their remote work policies to be return-to-office, there seems to be a lot of resentment about this, and I don't really understand why.

Remote work availability and pay were often much lower. Further, if you were in my company, you had HR and C-Levels saying "Remote work is here to stay and will never go away" early on and often. It wasn't until about a year in that they started changing their tune and gaslighting us with "we never said remote work was here to stay, where did you get such a silly idea?"

I resent being lied to. Had they been more careful and put this out more as a "Hey, this is only temporary" I'd be far less disappointed. That's not how they rolled and they didn't even have the guts to simply admit "Hey, we just made a mistake here, remote work isn't working for us"

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#197

Post by mc32 »

bacza2 wrote: post #110
mc32 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some or many people are just as productive working from home, but also many are not and are more productive in an office environment. There need to be better more reliable ways of measuring this and affording those who are able to be productive while remote the option. Those who aren’t as productive WFH don’t get the choice.

Why it always need to be only about productivity and not what is better for people? I get that company need to make money but surly productivity is not dropping 50% and company makes significantly less

If one company were to hire all the slackers and the other all the busy beavers, one will be more likely to succeed vs the other.

Unless being a slacker becomes a protected class companies will hire the productive people, given a choice.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#198

Post by fullshark »

tgma wrote: post #116

Remote "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.

What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? A lot of employers don't want just that, they want a control of the employee's time. Remote means they might not respond to that urgent request immediately like they need to in a face to face conversation.

I believe that is the main thing that is so disturbing to these employers that lament remote work, not that productivity is affected.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#199

Post by toomuchtodo »

andrewmutz wrote: post #149
Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

> and the company has no obligation to keep an employee working in a remote context that the company doesn't favor anymore.

Unless laws change to require them to [1], workers organize to require it be provided [2], or you've had the working arrangement codified in your offer letter or other contractual documentation so that requiring you to come into an office is constructive dismissal [3]. This whole "employers can do whatever they want" era can't come to an end quick enough.

[1] https://globalnews.lockton.com/new-remote-working-legislatio...

[2] https://prismreports.org/2020/04/23/suddenly-working-remotel...

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/let-them-fire-you-remote-worker-urg...

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#200

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

prosqlinjector wrote: post #117
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #53

I’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.

“I’m growing my YouTube channel”

“My fitness routine for Instagram is “like” a full time job”

“My side-hustle brings in 8k a month”

Totally common, and not said done by people with in office jobs.

I let a guy go at the start of covid for leaving his office workstation on while he mined ETH. He got a full remote job, “worked” 12-20 hours a week and went really hard on buying GPUs for his home mining rigs.

The thing is, this wasn’t uncommon. I let another guy go for not making it to 40 hours ever. Insisting that he was just as productive at 30-32 hours a week. Which doesn’t even remotely make sense.

I love that some people have WFH, but I hate the liars that paint the argument in a completely faultless way.

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