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

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#571

Post by grogenaut » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #459

grogenaut wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah we didn't even have that one button integration until 2019 and it didn't work well and the mics were all broken. They started leaving usb jabra mics in the conference rooms to supplement the very expensive cisco setups. That's mainly fixed now.

Interesting on the hallway conversation thing. I have no idea how I'd handle that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#572

Post by jzb » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #373

strict9 wrote: post #26

>If I had to give only one bit of advice to anyone ever faced with an ultimatum from someone with power over them (be it an employer or abusive romantic partner), it would be: >Ultimately, never choose the one giving you an ultimatum. This is such great advice. When you are given an ultimatum it is very revealing. Pretend to comply as the author advises, then find something else. Your sense of self-worth is more valu…

Relationships, be they personal, business, or otherwise, include dealbreakers. When a dealbreaker arises, there are two ways to handle it: unilaterally end the relation, or present it to the other party. The latter is an ultimatum, there's no way around that. Whether or not the ultimatum is reasonable depends entirely on the specifics, especially in the workplace, employers have expectations which they need to have m…

The sentence you quoted didn't say an ultimatum is abuse, it said to reject an ultimatum if from "an employer or abusive romantic partner" with "power" over you.

As you say, an ultimatum isn't necessarily abusive. We all have things we want in life - and some of them are deal-breakers for a relationship. But if you read the sentence as written, I think it's solid advice - don't agree to something when someone is leveraging "power" over you if you can avoid it. That is abusive.

People who've been in abusive relationships can read the difference between a "this is make-or-break for the life I want, you need to make a choice" and "I'm abusing this situation to make you agree to something you don't want to do / is bad for you."

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#573

Post by Ferret7446 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

runako wrote: post #283

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…

> Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. This is an example of a local maximum. This form of communication is better for the person doing the walking, but worse when looked at through most other frames: - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed excep…

> - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted

Generally, only in terms of personal output. I find that the organization benefits overall. Of course, this is problematic when performance/compensation is tied strictly to personal output, but that is a separate discussion

> - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO that moment.

Which is why working at the office is important.

> - worse for the organization because knowledge shared this way is ephemeral & siloed by definition

Somewhat true, but this is completely unavoidable. I know of zero cases where all institutional knowledge is recorded and not siloed in humans. Of course there are degrees.

> - ineffective in large organizations, where teams often span offices

This is why teams exist, why hierarchical organizations exist throughout history, and proper separation of work is crucial.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#574

Post by plugin-baby » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

trescenzi wrote: post #534

scottLobster wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I guess the difference is that at my workplace there's a lot of tribal knowledge. Even when there is a design document it often hasn't been updated or requires nuance to interpret that's only really in one or two peoples' heads. Often the question/discussions is about engineering priorities, some discovery was made during coding that would alter the design, and half the time simply bringing up the topic with the…

So this is such a good example of why the office is actually a major liability. Being in person allows you to get away with creating a culture where documentation doesn't really exist and that tapping people on the shoulder is more efficient. Everyone will be better off if instead knowledge is shared efficiently. A good analogue is the culture of "the smoke break"(see the Friend's episode The One Where Rachel Smokes…

> Being in person allows you to get away with creating a culture where documentation doesn't really exist

Viewed a different way, it allows a team to spend less time documenting and more time on other things. Increased documentation could be seen as one of the costs of working remotely.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#575

Post by monknomo » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #501

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…

>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.

I don't know, the hotel+collab spaces is pretty good (from my perspective) when you come into the office once or twice a month and have a group of people you want to meet with and an agenda you want to accomplish.

For more mundane day-to-day work I don't care for it, but I think it can be a handy supplement to mostly remote work.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#576

Post by Phrodo_00 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

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.

It's a very good way to stop the person you're talking to from being productive too.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#577

Post by thinkharderdev » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

tgma wrote: post #116

Remote "work" is fine (with pros and cons). The problem is lots of people don't "work" remotely. Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns.

I mean, a lot of people don't "work" in the office either. You're either using some sort of concrete metrics to try and measure productivity or you're not. "Bob shows up to work every day" doesn't actually tell you much about whether Bob does anything useful while he's there. I don't think figuring out who is productive and who is not is substantially different for an in-office job vs remote job. One might even argue (I'm not sure I would, but it seems plausible at least) that it is harder to measure in office. You might be tempted to rely on things like "butt in seat time" (whether they are doing productive work or just browsing reddit) or who tells funny jokes at happy hour.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#578

Post by ndriscoll » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

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 didn't know when the Fed/government might stop lying about it, but inflation was immediately obvious to me, and should've been to anyone with assets and who tracked those assets' value. My net worth in Mint grew 38% from Feb 2020 - Feb 2021 (so from the high before the big dip in March 2020) during a time when everyone was talking about supply chain disruptions, delays, lockdowns, etc. My manager and I would regularly talk about how crazy it was that such a huge wealth transfer to the rich was happening in front of everyone.

I bought a house as soon as I could once the interest rate drops happened. Prices were going up by more than my net income each month. Given that I make several times median, I still don't know how there haven't been riots over it.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#579

Post by throwaway290 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #482

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 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.

It depends on my mood. Some days I say hi and then only keyboard noise. I probably look like a robot then. Other days may talk more. And second guessing is a thing, but feeling good after social interaction is also a thing...

But it's a small open office. Probably in a big open office it can be worse if many coworkers are distracting. I can see how I would hate that and it would hamper work.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#580

Post by mvdtnz » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #523

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 knowl…

A vanishingly small proportion of business owners or managers have any investment in commercial real estate beyond the office lease they're holding. Virtually none of them own their commercial premises.