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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

#301

Post by zoogeny »

> Conversely, if you let these assholes exert their power over you, you dehumanize yourself in submission.

I normally like strong opinions even when I disagree with them. It is usually refreshing to hear people share their true feelings in an unfiltered way.

This, on the other hand, feels bitter. It seems to be coming from a place of hate.

By all means, stand up for yourself and your ideals. Sometimes you have to make difficult choices to maintain your own integrity. But, conversely, deciding to make the choice to return to an office is not "dehumanize yourself in submission".

Many people, perhaps most, will just go back to the office because they aren't convinced that they are locked in a life-long struggle to free themselves from some imaginary battle between the oppressors and the oppressed. They will realize that a job is an offering made to them, the conditions of which may change from time to time. Some will actually relish the idea of hanging around the office with likeminded coworkers.

This is a cancer of our times: to see every single thing that happens as one side being an asshole exerting power and the other side being dehumanized into submission.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#302

Post by JofArnold »

There's so much to unpack here.

Firstly, I think it's ok that some companies are 100% remote, some are 100% office, some are mixed; potential employees choose based on their wants and needs. Personally I like mixed. I'd never do 100% remote or office again for sure.

Second, I think this "choose the company who isn't giving you the ultimatum" makes sense only when there's a choice. For a long time developers have had a huge amount of leverage as the market was so they the ones making the ultimatums. I can see that not being the case in the near future.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#303

Post by codingdave »

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…

I think the resentment comes from the assumption of: "We should just return to the status quo before..."

If you look back at the history of work experiences, there were several old "status quos" that we no longer accept. We don't accept, manual labor for 60 or 80 hours a week. We don't accept an expectation of staying at one employer for your entire career and then retiring on a pension. But society evolves. Assuming that something as disruptive as COVID should just be put aside without evolving how we operate in our world is exactly where the resentment comes from.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#304

Post by garciasn »

macksd wrote: post #269
cogman10 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 starte…

That's because they are actually struggling to admit deeper problems with the company culture and processes that they don't know how to solve, and so they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things.

You give them entirely too much credit. They were told by others (primarily Wall Street) that they are to do this. It provides them with three things:

1. Real estate holding investment increases.

2. Control.

3. Silent layoffs.

There's no reason for RTO. None. They're doing it to save money and regain control of their workforce.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#306

Post by asah »

gonehome wrote: post #72

This is a classic HN post that will get a lot of positive attention here playing into the HN cognitive bias zeitgeist, but I think is mostly bullshit. The market will settle it in the end, but at least for startups being colocated is a competitive advantage.

remote-first means hiring the best-fit people for your company at the time and them working precisely when they're ready to be productive, zero commute, zero overhead.

good luck competing with that.

source: 25 years and 8+ companies working remotely.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#307

Post by throwaway5959 »

r053bud wrote: post #80
andersa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to work in an office. The issue is trying to force everyone to work in an office.

But then these office lovers have no one fun to talk to!

No, they’ll have people willing to commute 30 minutes a day to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to talk to. Ask service workers what their commute is like and how many days they have to be “in the office” for.

Edit: found the people that have never worked retail or restaurant

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#308

Post by ballenf »

jerf wrote: post #161
tayo42 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why audio quality is so bad on every device. Phone calls are hit or miss whether it'll be clear or not. This happens alot with places like call centers, the whole point of its existence is to be on the phone communicating with voice and the quality is to the point where it's hard to understand.

AIUI, one of the worst cases of interoperability legacy I've ever seen. If even one thing in the pipeline is compatible with POTS ("plain old telephone service", i.e., land lines in all their 3KHz glory), the whole call degrades, and since the whole call is going to be degraded anyhow, almost everything written to handle voice calling just drops straight to the POTS lowest common denominator. Which in a digital world…

To be fair to POTS, it at least made up for frequency response with near zero latency. What you describe is worst of both worlds -- latency of commodity packet switching plus bandwidth of POTS.

Personally, I'd always choose zero latency over audio fidelity in a two-way communication medium.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#309

Post by addicted »

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.

I mean, this is a ridiculous argument supporting remote work because it works so much stronger the other way.

You literally had companies change centuries worth of corporate work for overnight to switch everyone to remote work.

If anything the people who want full time return to office have a much stronger argument that companies have suddenly changed everything on them, as opposed to the people who are complaining that now that things are normal companies are reverting the changes they made for a once in a lifetime pandemic.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#310

Post by Crusoe123 »

scottLobster wrote: post #192
hotnfresh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I think you're the one who missed the point. Yes they are at their workstation, but they don't want to be available for constant interruption. To turn your story around. You don't get to interrupt my work whenever you feel like it just because we're at the office.

Maybe when we walk off the field and we're home, we can focus in peace on our work and be more productive?

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