661–670 of 913 posts
Its only bullshit if you want to work remote. I want to be in the office. Working remote is the most stressful thing I've ever done.
Working in office can be good. But the question is - are you getting paid 20% more for the RTO job compared to the remote? To compensate for the 20% more time wasted in useless transit (2 more hours per day)?
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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.
It is quite literally the subject of the article you are commenting on.
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IMO: skill issue. Communicating effectively on camera is a learnable skill, it's not one most people in tech have. But making sure people are trained to do a good job is a management challenge and it's incumbent upon management to make sure people are doing it. If, after two years, your team still has trouble having real conversations over a teleconferencing solution? That's a management failure. "Lunchroom conversat…
Just shifting from face to face to video conferencing won't cut it. You need to be efficient communicator in writing, which is harder to bullshit your through (or maybe requires different kind of bullshiting)
I would stress the video capability, though, because that's the thing that impacts how people feel in pretty substantial ways. I have a weekly 90-minute meeting every Friday where my product teams bring questions to both ask me and to kick around with a group, and so far the feedback has been excellent--and a direct reason cited is that I'm not just letting the meeting wander but I am leading it, I'm standing up while on camera and projecting excitement and a reason to be engaged. When compared with the interminable-drone meetings the rest of the week, it really drives the point home that you have to talk to people like you want them to listen to you, and that is much harder on a camera but it is a totally learnable skill.
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What was the #1 argument against WFH before COVID? It was fear of productivity drop, that the company simply can't function with WFH. Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. At this point, it shouldn't be called RTO, it should be called STO (Switch To Office), because WFH is the default existing state. And the companies that want to STO, they admit there's NO DATA to support this: http…
> Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. I don't think we have good data on that "worked fine" part. Personally I saw a significant degradation of our team performance during COVID remote. Some people slacked a lot (difficult to catch, though), many people worked hard (perhaps even harder than in office), but the bad communication reduced the overall team productivity a lot.
Now where's the data to change the status quo from WFH to the office? Amazon admits they have none. If the other companies forcing in-office had data they would be shouting it as much as they could, but when asked for data, it's just silence. Companies have had record profits and quarters with WFH, so clearly the financial data shows no issues with WFH.
Again where's the data? All we hear are anecdotes, that wasn't good enough to change the status quo before COVID, why should it be enough now to change the status quo away from WFH?
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RTO doesn’t really work if five people are back in the office.
Well, remote really works if five people are back at the office. That's a point for remote.
Nobody should be forced to anything, but that doesn’t mean that an arbitrary mix works.
> Every company that issued forced relocation ultimatums to their pre-pandemic remote workers will not only lose most (if not all) their top talent in the next year, but they will struggle to hire for at least the coming decade People have been saying that over here on HN too. It’s what they WANT to happen, but not at all what will happen. It’s a feel good narrative based on the fact that engineers want to believe th…
I'd love to be able to work remote as well, but I can still see some rational reasons why my employer wants us to stay in the office ...
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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 t…
Sorry, I was referring more to sense of entitlement vs what people actually have to do for their job. To me, coming into the office twice a week for the salary I get just isn’t that big of an ask.
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In office people don't care about just themselves being in an office, they want everyone in an office. Being in an office to take video conferences is pointless, they want that collective environment that they thrived in pre-pandemic.
> they want that collective environment that they thrived in pre-pandemic Is there an issue with this? The pro-remote people want the environment they thrive in and the pro-office people want the environment they thrive in.
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> Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. I don't think we have good data on that "worked fine" part. Personally I saw a significant degradation of our team performance during COVID remote. Some people slacked a lot (difficult to catch, though), many people worked hard (perhaps even harder than in office), but the bad communication reduced the overall team productivity a lot.
Where's the data? Before COVID, there were plenty of anecdotes from remote companies about how it helped their hiring and productivity, but that wasn't enough to convince the vast majority of companies to try WFH. They stubbornly said the status quo of in-office was enough and no further discussion was allowed. Now where's the data to change the status quo from WFH to the office? Amazon admits they have none. If the…
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/06/28/t...
"Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline."
Unpopular opinion but people under appreciate seeing the humanity of their coworkers especially in reducing conflict. It’s so easy especially for coders (and I imagine other knowledge workers) to get into flame wars debating things when you’re only typing things out. Video calls help a little but not everyone wants to turn on their cameras and it’s easy to eventually get used to seeing people as mere tiles in a scree…