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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
481–490 of 913 posts
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#482This 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…
Been remote for 15 years, recently started full time job, love going to office. No strict work hours but I come anyway, nice to chat with colleagues (and much more productive than those tedious calls or text chats). Also I was already making myself leave home at least daily for physical activity, so if I'm out why not travel to the office? There's a nice coffeeshop near there. Also the chair is comfy enough, desk is…
You probably like people and are comfortable with whatever you excelled at. And you probably don't have an inner voice comically second-guessing everything you are about to say, causing you to act timid and awkward around others.
Qualities missing from most people at the office.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#483This is not about remote versus non-remote. It's about worker power versus owner power. A unique set of circumstance temporarily shifted power in favor of workers and we should not willingly cede what little ground we have taken.
Of course our employers love unpaid commutes - commutes that we actually pay for ourselves! What a racket.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was always a risk at every company due to re-orgs, buyouts, or the whim of executives. Are employees right to be angry? Yeah. Do companies have the right to demand it? Yeah. Severance, etc. is always nice. In some cases it may even be required by contract or law, but that is rare. It seems like the knives are coming out now, and we’ll see who is left standing.
Companies have a right to fuck their employees over in all sorts of ways. "It's not literally illegal for them to do this to you" is the absolute weakest defence that can be made for any behaviour.
FYI, I wasn’t defending. I was noting market dynamics and likely counter-forces.
How you decide to position yourself (and plan), and how they decide to position themselves (and plan) is of course up to each participant.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
If management can tell which way gets more work done, then they don't have to rely on workers being honest about it. If they can't tell the difference, seems to me they should let people have nicer lives.
White collar work is not very measurable.
Fine. If you don't have evidence either way, might as well go with option two.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#486This 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.
> The market will settle it in the end like "The market" is some rational, logical all-knowing, all-wise higher force. "The market" is a bunch of rich assholes that act in their own self interests. They don't give a sh-t about you and they definitely don't give a sh-t about me.
You and I are also part of the market. We get to influence it with our decision about who to work for.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it would be a great business opportunity to offer paid actors who would go into a business, walk around, maybe give a few of them clipboards, have them have water cooler conversations, maybe write some technical looking stuff on whiteboards, and generally move around looking busy.
This would simulate the thrill and "buzz" of managing a busy office for these executives to cosplay without having to drag unwilling employees back.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. The standard advice is stay in the house at least five years. These people accepted permanent remote roles at companies that have been remote-friendly for only two years. The track record's not there; you can't reasonably assume that policy would continue indefinitely. It mi…
Why would anyone find it acceptable for a company to hire a remote employee but later change the contract? That's a massive pay cut. It's weird how companies expect loyalty but cannot even keep their word from what they claimed during hiring.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#489There 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…
> an assembly line Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real. I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home bu…
>>>> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
That's been part of workplace culture even when most people were in-office. The "office" and "factory" people had noticeably different working conditions. Moreover, the remote workers were largely invisible -- if we dealt with them at all, it was through their boss, or some kind of ticketing system.
Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
#490Video 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…
Really? Video conferencing seems dramatically better to me than 10 years ago. Zoom is pretty great and various tools for screen sharing are much more prevalent now. And the one thing I really missed about working in an office (being able to whiteboard something) is mostly solved now with an iPad + Apple Pencil.