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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

#311

Post by lokar »

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…

A lot of big companies had full remote by exception. They built up a modest amount of these (generally senior, often specialist) over the years. Forcing these people to an office is not return to pre-Covid.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#312

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, and obliterating competitors stuck in the old ways.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#313

Post by itsthecourier »

If you are in a top tier team, super competitive, with superb colleagues, share office is a pleasure and you should be super well compensated for the intensity of it (e.g. Rentech)

If your work is clerical, repetitive, stable, you may sacrifice some pay, work happily remotely and sacrifice serendipity and mentoring if you're starting your career

It's a tradeoff.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#315

Post by hintymad »

I personally enjoy RTO, but I don't buy the reason of RTO, as cited by many companies, being that employees would slack off when working from home. I mean, isn't the art of managing output is to set the right OKRs or KPIs or whatever measuring process? With the right measurement in place, simply punish the slacker and reward the effective people, and the company can focus on fostering a culture that supports WFH. If the management can't ensure productivity of remote workers, it says a lot about the incompetence of the management instead of the ineffectiveness of WFH.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#317

Post by gilbetron »

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.

I see the opposite problem, while there are people that work remotely that don't work, when I go into the office, it has become apparent to me that most people in office don't work nearly as much as remote people. There's tons of socializing, and snacking, and getting coffee, and going out for lunch, and commuting, and then on top of that, everyone works in giant open spaces with all kinds of distractions. Furthermore, if your company is multi-region, then "working in office" just means you are doing zooms in office because so many people are distributed.

If you like working in office, that's cool, I liked to do it when I was younger, but own the fact that it is a preference and not a superior position.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#318

Post by randomdata »

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…

Are you planning on hiring low quality applicants that need their hand held every step of the way? If not, I question why you've already planned #3 instead of letting team figure out what actually works for them. Offer a budget that can be used to help enhance the team dynamic, perhaps, but that's all you need to do. You have hired other people so you don't have to worry about such things; so that you can focus on the business.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#319

Post by cdchn »

reaperman wrote: post #182
andrewmutz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the company has no obligation to keep an employee working in a remote context that the company doesn't favor anymore. Some people who were hired in as permanent remote, now are being demanded to sell their homes and move to cities they’ve never been to before. Companies have no obligation to keep any USA-based employee working (other countries may have different laws), but some reasonable severance payouts would be…

Who is doing this precisely? I've heard a lot of people bemoan that they moved during the pandemic and now are being required to return to the office but I haven't heard of any instances where previously remote employees-- remote from BEFORE the pandemic-- are being required to move to central office locations.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#320

Post by loteck »

graublau wrote: post #223
bwestergard wrote: post #37

I'm a union software engineer at NPR, and we just won guaranteed remote work for three years (pending a ratification vote by the membership). Glad I don't have to worry about shifting fashions among executives on this subject. https://nitter.net/WeBuildNPR/status/1707916820928241801

Let's be real — NPR executives are more concerned maintaining their agitprop operation than employee productivity

That's not "being real," that's being insulting (regardless of whether you're right).
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