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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

#521

Post by m4rtink »

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…

Many remote only companies like Collabora work kinda like that - I think they hire over a larger area and meet less often, but otherwise its the same.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#522

Post by sneak »

> That’s what I did. Just don’t start selling your family home or looking at real estate listings, and definitely don’t accept any relocation assistance (since you’ll have to return it when you split).

If it's less than what it costs to sue you, you won't even have to do that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#523

Post by npsimons »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #430
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.

> 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.

> "The market" is a bunch of rich assholes that act in their own self interests.

For instance, demanding that people commute to the RE they've invested in before their investments fall through the floor in valuation.

Lot of naysayers here claiming illegitimate "bias" when people point out their increased productivity when working from home (just the lack of interruptions and forced writing down of institutional knowledge are worth it), but will they admit there is plenty of bias from corporate officers owning real estate in the downtowns where offices are, or just managers at all levels feeling power to micromanage and lord over people slipping through their fingers?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#524

Post by ryanwaggoner »

ryandrake wrote: post #487
3seashells wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unwilli…

Better yet, just do it as discounted coworking space. Win / win.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#525

Post by bjourne »

> By early 2021, I was considered to not only be a top performer, but also a critical expert for the cryptography organization. My time ended up split across three different teams, and I was still knocking my projects out of the park. But more importantly, junior employees felt comfortable approaching me with questions and our most distinguished engineers sought my insight on security and cryptography topics.

Beside this humble brag is the realization that the author is atypical. That is, their experience with remote work and return-to-office experiences may be very different from that of the typical American tech worker.

If everyone knows that return-to-office is bullshit why is there no data? If remote work is a great idea then why did so few companies adopt it after being forced to implement it during the pandemic? Virtually every company with offices in one form or another required their employees to show up at the office regularly (including my place of work). I don't have any data, but I'm assuming that most of these companies must have seen some productivity decrease or something or else they would have closed their expensive offices for good and let everyone work from home.

At the very least the pandemic was not enough to demonstrate the "obvious" benefits of work from home over work from office.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#526

Post by thinkharderdev »

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

What does this have to do with anything? Obviously there are jobs where WFH is not possible. Nobody is disputing that. Should we all be required to wear uniforms to work because some jobs require that? Some jobs require you to be clean shaven, should that requirement be universal as well? Or what about working night shifts? Doesn't seem fair that nurses have to work overnight shifts while pampered office worker get to work regular daytime schedules does it?

And for the record I have worked restaurant, retail and construction jobs in the past.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#528

Post by downrightmike »

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…

It is missed on purpose because leadership wants it to be missed and they get visibly upset if you ask them. Such thin skins for people cracking a whip.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#529

Post by sneak »

scottLobster wrote: post #76
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #11

There 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…

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…

> 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.

Nope! All this does is break the concentration of the person you're interrupting. This is precisely the "bullshit" viewpoint called out in the headline.

I commonly find these sorts of views espoused by people who can't type very fast. For most people who aren't Really Good With Computers, it's much easier for them to speak to someone than it is to type to someone.

I make all of my staff that don't know how to touch type learn to type their first week. It's essential.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#530

Post by hotnfresh »

snotrockets wrote: post #432
Spooky23 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fast food employees are professionals as well (have you ever worked a fast food job? It's hard, and requires practice to excel at)

“Professional” has a meaning in the context of employment that’s not just “good at a thing that is not easy”.
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