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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

#451

Post by theonlybutlet »

xpe wrote: post #411
KoolKat23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change and so should companies. It's also not unreasonable for people to expect more from their job than a simple transaction. Before COVID, most places operated without tools such as Microsoft Teams and an assumption that remote work is untested and unproven to work in their setting. This is now not the case, and people are rightly questioning why a return is necessary. They've proven they can make it work and…

> It's also not unreasonable for people to expect more from their job than a simple transaction. This. Finding the balance is challenging. - It is often unhealthy to expect too much from work. - most software/hardware tech employers ask employees to be more than contractors and to care more than just a paycheck - at the same time we see corporate decisions that are largely shortsighted, and sometimes even self-defeat…

That's a great point, misaligned incentives. And I'd add to that misaligned goals.

The engineer who wants to deliver their project in return for their salary, in contrast to the sociable c-suite exec, who wants to cosplay the work environment of yesteryear.

This applies to the wider corporate world and not even just the tech industry but I understand it's relevance as this is HN.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#452

Post by giantrobot »

EFreethought wrote: post #342
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…

> remote work isn't working for us It is working out. I looked at a few financial statements for a few companies pushing RTO (Amazon and a couple of Wall Street firms). Granted, it wasn't comprehensive or scientific, but: They all made more money in 2022 than in 2019 (the last year before COVID). So I really do not see what the problem is.

> So I really do not see what the problem is.

WFH gave those damn individual contributors some agency and prevented dead weight middle management from Lumberghing. Pretty soon they start thinking they're people and having some work/life balance.

Private equity that owns companies also owns stakes in commercial real estate. If companies start breaking leases or renting less office space those private equity firms will lose money. The worst thing in the world is your economic betters losing money. How else will that money trickle down in warm little showers of gold?

A better acronym for RTO would be KYP: Know Your Place.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#453

Post by derefr »

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…

Companies which were okay with having some remote employees before COVID, are now — for no rational reason whatsoever other than following a seeming business-management zeitgeist — not okay with having any remote employees.

Isn't "companies going crazy and forcing good employees into situations where they'll quit, when they could just as well... not do that", something to push back against?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#454

Post by thibran »

JSavageOne wrote: post #361

Companies seem to be under the delusion that return-to-office mandates will increase productivity, and I think this is absolute nonsense. Return-to-office mandates will demoralize your workers and make them seek greener pastures. Workers will become less happy and loyal, and top talent will leave for employers that provide greater flexibility. Executives that mandate return-to-office are crippling their workforces in…

> If an engineer knows that they'll get a cut of the cost savings or profits of some project idea they have, then you can bet that many employees will take advantage of that to get valuable work done.

I'm not so sure that this would work. The goal of your employer is to keep you working.

If the workforce participates to much, you could run into the Tesla problem, a.k.a. your early employees become millionaires and stop working (in case of Tesla because of company stocks).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#455

Post by mc32 »

falcolas wrote: post #445
mc32 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately only people's immediate managers have insight into this either from managing them or from their co-workers. People eventually will let you know who isn't pulling their weight (obviously people will forgive others if they know they have a temporary issue in their life --but not if its unwarranted).

Simply saying "people will know" is a deflection that doesn't really help this point. If you (royal you - anybody who wants to make this claim) really want to claim that many people are measurably more productive at the office, we'll need studies to counter those done which show WFH is more productive than working from the office.

I think you misunderstand me.

I think some people _are_ more productive WFH. But also there are lots of people who become quite unproductive WFH. Direct managers can often tell.

I don't know of a study that says one way or another, but from experience those two kinds of people exist (among other kids of people).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#456

Post by kortex »

kaibee wrote: post #163
dinkblam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Audio calls also still suck. Commercials in the 90s advertised "crystal clear audio quality" - they stopped talking about it but it never materialised. So this is a funny one because its definitely solvable but it's kind of a classic principal agent problem. There's a number of things that are going into 'clear audio quality'. 1. Receiver's audio output quality - This is rarely if ever the problem. People usually u…

I dabble in live audio. There's a huge amount that still could be done in the audio input space. Mic quality could be greatly increased for not much money, but most manufacturers stuff the cheapest component then can find into any headset You do see high quality mics and signal conditioning on the higher end systems, usually north of $250. And even then, it feels like that's a knock-on of paying for more headphone quality.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#457

Post by 3seashells »

snotrockets wrote: post #419
EFreethought wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remote work isn't working for us It is working out. I looked at a few financial statements for a few companies pushing RTO (Amazon and a couple of Wall Street firms). Granted, it wasn't comprehensive or scientific, but: They all made more money in 2022 than in 2019 (the last year before COVID). So I really do not see what the problem is.

Managers can't look out of the office and feel powerful by watching the people they control.

This is what I do not get. Just give them some un-skilled people as placeholders, so there social anxiety doesn't fire. Sit the janitors into the open office or the team building guys.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#458

Post by bit_logic »

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…

What was the #1 argument against WFH before COVID? It was fear of productivity drop, that the company simply can't function with WFH. Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. At this point, it shouldn't be called RTO, it should be called STO (Switch To Office), because WFH is the default existing state. And the companies that want to STO, they admit there's NO DATA to support this:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...

https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...

The hypocrisy is obvious, they were all so against WFH before COVID, demanding data that it would work. Now it's working fine for three years, and yet they switch to office with no data, a simple "gut feeling" argument. It's indeed bullshit.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#459

Post by ryandrake »

grogenaut wrote: post #231
jacobr1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed both environments. Having an in-person, highly engaged, collaborative environment is fantastic. Having a remote first, well-considered remote team is great. But having a mostly in-person, and some-people remote setup, where the remote folks are left out of the hallway conversations sucks. Having an "in-person" setup, where your team is distributed between building locations and remote sites, and you can'…

I was in a remote office from the main one before and about 30% of the time people would forget to dial in, and another 20% of the time the AV setup would be broken. They ironically got that all fixed during the pandemic, and it's great now. At the minimum the default is you will be on VC now and so it makes it much better for everyone, and everyone has the hardware all figured out. We had a large onsite last week an…

It definitely takes discipline and a little culture change. I work for a company where teams are spread across many offices, so the company culture is: there's a video conference for every meeting. Period. End of story. When you walk into the conference room, you press one button and the VC starts. Everybody does this, and it's engrained. So, thanks to this discipline, remote workers are never left out.

Same goes for the "hallway conversations." You just got to get out of that company-habit where major decisions and information transfers happen in this ad hoc way. It takes discipline (often on leadership's part) to properly document and communicate. Again, where I work, we would never consider "Oh, I talked to Director Xyz in the hallway and he said our focus is on the Foo project rather than the Bar project now" to be any kind of official guidance. Totally unacceptable.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#460

Post by great_psy »

DustinBrett wrote: post #447

The idea of being as productive at home is also bullshit. It's too bad that to keep WFH we have to fight for it like it's the best option. A balance is needed but as a society we can't have nice things.

Honestly I don’t think we are less productive at home, but being away from the distractions of the office shows you how unproductive you were to start with.

At home I know if I actually focus, I can finish my tasks in less time, and I can enjoy the rest of the day/week.

I’m the office, I am incentivized to drag out work to fill the 8 hours because I need to be in the office that much anyway.

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