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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

#501

Post by cool_dude85 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #372
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…

It’s not that simple - it’s a stupid control thing. When you have these top down mandates with measurements, now you’re introducing new surveillance and metrics that are both disruptive and counter-productive. I’m not a remote zealot - I probably average two days a week, sometimes half days. I live a 20 minute walk/5 minute drive from work in a central business district. I’m a senior leader with hundreds of employees…

>Personally, I’d prefer smaller offices with hotel space and generously equipped collaboration space.

Doesn't everyone, you know, hate this kind of stuff? I know I do.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#502

Post by Tainnor »

sdfghswe wrote: post #247
CPLX wrote: post #46

I think Poe's Law applies here. I can't tell if this is satire of a prickly programmer with zero social skills or understanding of business context or an actual person. OK you want to work remote. Great, do that. Literally, it's great for you. Some people might not want that, some people might want to run companies where that doesn't happen. Don't work at those places. But then you get to gems like this: "If I had to…

Are you suggesting that they might not have social skills and send creepy text messages to female colleagues because they're a furry?

There was nothing in GP's post that indicated they thought this (and for me personally, that doesn't even compute, as I see no connection).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#503

Post by aaroninsf »

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…

Counterpoint: why would we EVER return to a born-crappy status quo?

No secret that the answer is: to privilege the anxious social needs of those uncomfortable working remotely. And those whose career is on the hook for over-investment in trophy real estate.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#504

Post by icedchai »

mceachen wrote: post #365
icedchai wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like it de-materialized. Unless there was a physical line problem, regular old phone calls over copper lines ("POTS") worked well. They were circuit switched, not packet switched. You essentially had a dedicated path provisioned, end to end. Today, POTS is all but gone. Almost nobody has a real landline. Most phone calls are transported over IP. I converted my landline to VOIP almost a decade ago. It's fine.

I feel like people are misremembering POTS voice quality--it's roughly equivalent to AM radio. POTS truncates to 300–3,300 Hz and downsamples to 8kHz (if it goes through a digital switch, which it has for 50+ years) The improvement with "HD Voice" on 4G cellular networks 10+ years ago was stark and welcome.

You are right, but at least the quality was reliably poor! Today, you'll spend several minutes ask someone to fix their microphone. Eventually they realize it's not even connected to their computer.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#505

Post by uhhhhhhh »

cj wrote: post #425
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…

> "Hey, this is only temporary" I'd be far less disappointed Ironically, during peak covid lockdowns, "this is only temporary" may have actually been seen as reckless and irresponsible. "There's a pandemic! We need to be remote for the foreseeable future, not just temporarily!1!1" (etc...) During peak covid, a lot of people made decisions that they reneged or reversed later. I'll get downvoted if I empathize with the…

I remember a vocal group predicting the economic bubbles would burst while pointing to them growing for a while. The only real disagreement was on when not if.

While no one has a crystal ball it was known pre pandemic that bubbles were there and unsustainable and not far from being at bursting levels.

I know many in my circle were talking about when the dominoes would fall and which ones would topple which others in 2020-2022 as the pandemic raged on. The inevitable outcome of the social supports on top of the economic bubbles happening and then both likely ending at similar times was predictable in anyone thinking in longer terms than the next quarter and next fiscal year.

Meanwhile CEOs took advantage of conditions to go on insane M&A deals, hiring sprees and personal project schemes with little framework for any of that succeeding long term, and burning tons of cash with stock buybacks to keep up with the expected growth targets.

Once the 'Bubble' everyone saw about to burst met the realities of the pandemic and costs rippled through supply chains no one should have been surprised. Unfortunately the tech segment is way too much follow the leader/money right now and once the few big names start moving it happens regardless of it being good or bad.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#506

Post by cdchn »

reaperman wrote: post #406
cdchn wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon[0], for one. But they're not the only ones -- it does happen occasionally, mostly when a company makes a blanket policy "no more remote work, everyone back to the office!" (which makes less sense for those employees who were never at any point in an office to begin with). The author of the linked article for this HN post wrote: > I had been hired in 2019 for the cryptography team at a large tech company. I was…

So if we want to presume that the original linked article's author works for Amazon, we got 1: Amazon.

Who else?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#509

Post by the_gastropod »

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…

> Software development is a team sport, you don't get to walk off the field whenever you feel like it just because you're home.

Some of the most widely used software in the world (e.g. Linux) was developed without any such developer “uptime” requirements, with developers scattered around the planet, working on what they wanted, when they wanted.

This is obviously a very different thing than running a for-profit business. But there are countless examples of companies embracing the necessities of remote work to great success: GitHub, Automattic, Kinsta, Namecheap, Basecamp, GitLab, YNAB, Zapier, etc.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#510

Post by ncallaway »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #357
ncallaway wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see how that’s inherently about putting the preferences of the 5 people *above* the preferences of the rest of the office, yes?

People are allowed to have different preferences and lifestyles than the majority. I’m not a CEO so it’s not my place to decide what a company does or doesn’t do.

Right, I think it’s fine for people to have differences and differing preferences.

My point is that if 5/100 people want to work in the office and 95/100 don’t, that’s fine.

If 5/100 want to work in an office with 100 people, and force the others to return against their wishes that’s * not* fine.

They can have their preference, but it seems wrong to me for their preference to override the preference of others.

> I’m not a CEO so it’s not my place to decide what a company does or doesn’t do.

Funny, because I’m the owner of my company, but I don’t think employees should defer their decision making to a CEO.

An employee can have an opinion, and even demand their preference. CEOs can’t actually make a unilateral decision on this. Labor absolutely gets a say. If the CEO says “RTO or you’re fired”, and 95/100 people say “okay, bye”, then that company won’t RTO.

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