Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It • Hacker News Board

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#491

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #352

cableshaft wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?" Pretty much exactly this happened at my company. They started touting these new offices they got for a steal, but in the all-hands said "our company has never required…

If it’s not in writing, it ‘never happened’ - and even then, make sure you have a copy they can’t get at and know your odds of a successful prosecution under the law (and your ability and willingness to see it through). Because sometimes that will be required.

Prosecution for what? Business leaders (and employees) are allowed to change their course of action anytime.

I would keep it anyway for your records, due to it helping your claim for unemployment benefits by establishing constructive dismissal as opposed to termination for cause. But it might not work even then.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#492

Post by npsimons » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

throwaway9191aa wrote: post #296

scottLobster wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the office they are. lol what are they doing? Staring at the ceiling? What makes them always available in the office and not always available at home? How is this still a thing being discussed? Perhaps, at home, they are actually able to get some work done. Again, this is my office. I'm sure there are some offices where people legitimately aren't doing much of anything at home. Statistically, that just has to be…

> What makes them always available in the office and not always available at home?

I remember, way back in like 2012? 2015? Not sure when exactly, but we visited the office of a contractor we were working with, and they had a flatscreen on a stand in a public area with their lead developer on webcam, working from home. I don't know how everyone gets so utterly myopic that they forget you can just login to a videoconference (or IRC in the olden days) and just be available for these "quick chats" Bonus, if you need uninterrupted deep focus time, you can turn it off at your end.

And email, did we suddenly conveniently forget about that? LKML and countless other FLOSS mailing lists are proof positive that 100% remote can indeed build any scale of software.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#493

Post by garciasn » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

superq wrote: post #476

garciasn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's actually funny the way you worded that: [three reasons for RTO] "There's no reason for RTO. None." [perhaps another]

Yeah, I meant to say 'valid' reason, but it got dropped. It's been a day; my bad.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#494

Post by _cenw » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #420

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…

> So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. If that’s the standard then the commute time should be billed to the employer. That way they can weigh the full benefits of the productivity gain of in person communication, against the dramatic efficiency loss of 100 employees commuting to work. If employers want the productivity benefit of i…

"8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will" taken seriously

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#495

Post by throwaway290 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

harvey9 wrote: post #293

throwaway290 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've made a reasonable proposal. But the writer of the blog wasn't offered anything so reasonable and that's why they're mad.

Exactly right, the real title should be "my employer sucks and working conditions are not reasonable".

But no, the writer titled "return to office is bullshit and everyone knows it", which phrased like that is patently false.

Return to office can be a problem if some other conditions are true, like your office sucks, you are made to clock in clock out at inflexible hours, commute is inconvenient, etc. Why not talk about that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#496

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #471

sokoloff wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely companies (and individuals) who are making the decision that "the benefits of RTO emerge from/rely upon our entire workforce being mostly in the office". I don't personally hold that view, but I know people (including individual contributors) who do and, depending on why you think in-office work is good, it's an entirely reasonable view for some people and some companies to take.

> the environmental benefits of vegetarianism emerge from/rely upon our entire population being mostly meatless. I understand the argument, I still don't think it's valid. Companies are made up of heterogeneous individuals with not only different preferences on how to work, but different work styles, different flexibility needs, different energy cycles. One of my current teammates has Crohn's and is a fantastic progr…

Some believe the benefits of RTO are closer to the ability of an entire team to eat from the same crock of chili at a potluck.

There are discussions and topics that just work better in-person. If you think you have (or could arrange to have) 0% or 3% those types of conversations, you're fine to work fully remote. If you think you have 70% or 90% those types of conversations, you're logically going to want to RTO to whatever extent you're prioritizing company outcomes.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#497

Post by zoogeny » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

labria wrote: post #443

zoogeny wrote: post #301

> 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 mak…

I think you missed the point here. They were not talking about _making the choice_ to return to the office, but rather about _accepting the ultimatum_. There’s nothing wrong with deciding you want to work from the office, it’s the ultimatum part that’s important IMO.

What is the difference between "making a choice" and "accepting an ultimatum" in the case of an employee working at a company where an RTO policy is enacted?

The only point of a invective like the original article is to try to make people who are perfectly fine commuting into an office feel like they are traitors to some fictitious worker solidarity organization. Like some red-eyed Sauron entity with no motivation other than pure evil in their soul is threatening to steal the food from their babies mouths unless they comply. The blackness and whiteness of this moral viewpoint is extremely toxic.

If you have a strong preference to work from home and your employer springs an "ultimatum" on you then what you actually have is a choice. How you make that choice should be much more nuanced than "asshole exerting power" vs. "dehumanized submission". And if the balance of factors, whatever they may be, lead you to decide to go back to the office - don't let some ideological zealot turn that decision into some moral absolute.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#498

Post by npsimons » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

_cenw wrote: post #184

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…

I guess it depends how load-bearing you are for your organization/team. If I and everyone else worked in the office in 2 out of the last 3 jobs I had, I'd have an interruption at least every once an hour, and maybe a queue at times. And yes, I should stop working with people that barely know how to work Git or Bash or the package manager for the language they use (even those I don't even use; if I indulge a request f…

> People just don't seem to value my time over their convenience a lot of times.

A good tactic is to ask them about rubber duck debugging when they come to you with a problem. If they don't know what that is, have them Google it. If they still come back after that, hopefully they actually have a problem worth more than one person's attention. Otherwise, they should find another job.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#499

Post by Shaanie » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

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.

Doing studies on this is difficult for many reasons. However, I bet there's a lot of people who noticed a drop in productivity from certain colleagues after the switch to WFH. I personally noticed that the productivity of colleagues with young children dropped significantly, for example.

I really don't think it's a controversial statement that some people work better from home and some people work worse from home. In fact, I'd be extremely surprised if the opposite was true (everyone works better from home, or everyone works better in the office), I'd almost say that's impossible.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#500

Post by andersa » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

throwaway5959 wrote: post #307

r053bud wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just because some jobs can only be done in a specific place, does not mean that people whose job can be done from anywhere should be forced to do the same in solidarity or some nonsense like that.