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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

#651

Post by sokoloff »

SantalBlush wrote: post #636
sokoloff wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You may be right, but there should be more concrete evidence than arbitrary percentages and "just work better" before I'll be convinced to make the enormous life changes for RTO. What is the value differential--in dollars--of these in-person conversations? All I'm seeing are vague speculations.

People and companies who want to associate in a certain way should be allowed to.

People and companies who want to associate in a different way should also be allowed to.

That lets some people and some companies choose RTO, others choose hybrid, and others choose remote-only.

I shouldn't be able to force my beliefs onto you, nor you onto me (we probably largely agree; I'm pro-remote overall); to the extent that there's an imbalance in supply and demand, there's a lot of room for prices to adjust the balance. If companies need to pay a premium for RTO, they can choose that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#652

Post by jedberg »

paulcole wrote: post #605
jedberg wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're throwing away the biggest advantage for the company allowing remote work -- hiring talent from anywhere. WFH has a lot of advantages for employees, but also for the employer. The main one being a diverse workforce. What I've seen work, which I think still hits your goals of occasional face time, is to have a quarterly offsite for the whole company. Everyone works remotely, but once a quarter you find a nice lo…

Remember that for a US-based startup, the "hiring talent from anywhere" is easier said than done. You've got to register your business in every state you have somebody working, get unemployment insurance and workers comp set up there, make sure you understand the local labor laws, etc., etc., etc. That's not even considering hiring outside the US. It's a total pain in the butt and may not be worth it for a small comp…

Oh I know. And I hate it. I run a remote company and have dealt with it.

I wish there was a company that existed to handle this for me. I just tell them I want to hire someone in state XXX and they set me up with whatever I need in that state. There are a bunch of companies that will get me 1/2 way (set up payroll but then tell me I'm on my own for insurance, for example).

But still, for the right person, it's worth the hassle. But this is also why some companies limit their remote work to certain states -- so they only have to do that stuff a few times.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#653

Post by garciasn »

lazide wrote: post #584
garciasn wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Valid is entirely up to the eye of the beholder. For them, they may be valid reasons even if you don’t like them. It’s all about pros/cons and either sides approach. One big one you didn’t list - it’s really hard to a manager to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester. Some (but not most!) employees may be burning out, or violating security or labor rules, or not followi…

Having ineffective management ("it’s really hard to a manager (sic) to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester") is a leadership problem that is easily fixed by hiring competent and experienced leaders who have worked with remote teams.

Incompetent leaders cannot manage people remotely and they generally do a poor job when in person, but it's masked by their ability to micromanage and type-A the problem away.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#654

Post by yawgmoth »

jrsj wrote: post #630
yawgmoth wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is a furry. Being a furry is pretty common and I bet even more people would be willing to engage with it if it weren't for comments like this.

ehhh...I think it only seems common because it's amplified by the internet. Still, it's weird, many are perverts, and I don't really think most people want business advice from someone who's basically announcing to the world that they jerk off to cartoon animals

You are misinformed. There's a lot more to furries than that. If you want to learn more, Mastodon has some good SFW instances that are very tech focused.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#655

Post by RandomLensman »

runako wrote: post #639
RandomLensman wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You describe what sounds like slow moving places. When rapid reactions are required then even just being able to hear commotion a few rows of seats away can be quite valuable. Doesn't mean people cannot write questions well, but sometimes forcing attention now matters.

I'm not saying people shouldn't go to the office. I'm just saying there are a number of downsides to encouraging walking over to someone's desk to ask a question as a primary mode of knowledge exchange. These downsides have been enumerated at length in The Discourse. On the other side of the ledge is mostly "qualitative" arguments lacking in specifics. The main thing is there are real trade-offs for the staff and org…

Do you think soldiers in battle should send well crafted emails instead of shouting or just acting on observations? Not sure things are just "qualitative"...

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#656

Post by The_Colonel »

JSavageOne wrote: post #520
thibran wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an engineer knows that they'll get a cut of the cost savings or profits of some project idea they have, then you can bet that many employees will take advantage of that to get valuable work done. I'm not so sure that this would work. The goal of your employer is to keep you working. If the workforce participates to much, you could run into the Tesla problem, a.k.a. your early employees become millionaires and st…

Did Tesla employees quit because they became millionaires, or because there was no further direct upside to their additional labor? I explicitly mentioned profit sharing because that is different from simply owning stock in your company. Owning stock / options, although better than nothing, is not a meaningful incentive for most as the value of it is generally so far removed from your individual labor unless your com…

> By profit sharing, I mean literally giving workers a cut of their direct contributions.

That to me sounds like a bad incentive in engineering. Everybody wants to work only on new features, things like code quality, maintenance, refactoring, infrastructure don't matter anymore.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#657

Post by giantrobot »

hypeit wrote: post #220
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 was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. The labor market has changed. Many people got to try WFH and fell in love with it. Not everyone, but a huge number that had never been exposed to it before. Now if a business wants to stay competitive they need to tap into that labor market. The vocal resistance to RTO is expected, we'll never go back to having such a large percentage o…

> The labor market has changed. Many people got to try WFH and fell in love with it.

It's not even necessarily falling in love with working at home but just working not in shitty office environments. For most people "the office" is some miserable building in an office park in the middle of a food/service desert. Employees that need to commute to that office don't get paid for the hours of their life wasted in traffic or any financial expenses related to their commute. People with kids have to pay even more money for some child care if they can't be home when their kids get off from school.

Working from home/wherever allows someone to save on those money and time costs. They can be home when their kids get off school. They can make a sandwich at 11:23AM because they're hungry. They can stop pouring dollars into a daily commute. Hell they can even live where they want instead of somewhere in commuting distance of a shitty office park.

Many of the WFH challenges are the same as working in an office, like inconsiderate entities disturbing you or placating middle managers by attending meetings. At least you can bear those challenges in comfortable clothes in a comfortable seat. You can then take a break and shit in a bathroom you don't share with dozens of other inconsiderate coworkers. WFH isn't perfect and people don't need to love it to at least prefer it over the dystopian hell of offices.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#658

Post by layer8 »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #641
krisleipus wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that there is no arrangement that works for everyone. Sure, those who just want a physical office space instead of their home will probably be ok collaborating remotely, but the others want to collaborate in person, and that requires everyone to be at the same place. Flexible conditions which make everyone happy is going to the office to spend large amount of time on video calls in cramped call booth - n…

I don't understand why this argument (which is a popular one) makes sense. It's symmetrical. RTO folks want their colleagues in the office. WFH folks don't want to not have to do this. It would be obviously absurd if I criticized WFH on the basis that its proponents are trying to force their preferences on others.

I think RTO folks tend to care more for everyone on the team to be in the office at least part of the time, whereas WFH folks tend to care less if their team colleagues are in the office or also WFH. So I don’t think it’s quite symmetrical. It’s better if the split is outside team boundaries, or between different companies.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#659

Post by robotburrito »

tayo42 wrote: post #82
lukefreiler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for myself (I mostly enjoy remote), but I've had team members who had 3 kids of varying ages, on a single income, and simply didn't have the space/opportunity to focus. They were VERY stressed out, and while they voiced a strong preference to work in an office (no longer an option for us), they ultimately choose to move out of our state (Cali) for much more affordable space to solve the problem. From my…

That doesn't make sense to me, what are they doing with their kids if they worked in an office, and why aren't they just doing that?

I think they are trying to say that in higher cost of living places you sometimes cannot afford to have a space large enough for your family and your work space. If they work at an office maybe their life partner takes care of their family during the day.
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