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

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#731

Post by npsimons » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:03 PM UTC

flashback2199 wrote: post #185

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed the flexibility of WFH but I still prefer working with local teams in the office. There are pros and cons to both, but it's silly to assume everyone has the same preference as you just because your preference is strongly held. This is my response to both your comment and TFA. There is less consensus on this topic than the very-vocal WFH crowd would have you believe. I know plenty of other talented engineers…

From what I observed during the pandemic, I sincerely believe that the only reason remote work is worse than working in person is how little effort teams tend to put into making remote work equivalent to in person work. The biggest thing I saw throughout the entire pandemic on multiple teams was zero effort to create a culture of meet on camera for quick ad hoc, hey I have a quick question on this, ah cool thanks bye…

I strongly feel a large number of people complaining about "lack of collaboration" have a dark pattern of not documenting things.

Sure, you don't need to write everything down - but how many times could someone have simply RTFM if people were more in the habit of documenting institutional knowledge among other things? Even just defaulting to email discussions would help keep track of things much better.

And yeah, when I'm working with other people, I make a point to hang out in a BigBlueButton or other similar instance, with a note with my phone number there, as well as putting in my email signature line my phone and a note that I'm available for videconference.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#732

Post by ncallaway » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:05 PM UTC

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #693

ncallaway wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hypothetically, would you still feel this way of it turned out that everyone being in the office (remember this is a magical hypothetical) has a significant and demonstrable improvement in productivity? This is more of a level-setting question than any sort of disagreement.

> Hypothetically, would you still feel this way of it turned out that everyone being in the office (remember this is a magical hypothetical) has a significant and demonstrable improvement in productivity?

Yes, in a particular scenario.

If it improved productivity so much that it exceeds the work required to commute to the office, and the employer is willing to pay for that commute (both in cost and employee time), then sure. If the productivity gain is so large that if offsets the cost/time of the commute, and the employer is willing to pay for that time, then I think RTO makes sense.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#733

Post by ncallaway » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:06 PM UTC

throwaway5959 wrote: post #627

ncallaway wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never said that employees shouldn’t have preferences (I explicitly stated otherwise in another comment) and shouldn’t have a say in the matter. I was just saying that ultimately the CEO makes the call on RTO (at least that’s what it seems to be at megacorps), whether it’s the right or wrong one isn’t my call.

> I was just saying that ultimately the CEO makes the call on RTO (at least that’s what it seems to be at megacorps), whether it’s the right or wrong one isn’t my call.

This is the part I was disagreeing with. The CEO does not make that call. The CEO and labor negotiation over that call.

If you view it as just the CEO's decision, you've ceded a tremendous amount of power.

But, actually, it's a shared decision between the CEO and the entire body of workers. If the body of workers all reject the CEO's decision, then...that decision will get reversed.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#734

Post by lazide » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

abustamam wrote: post #705

lazide wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the general policy is updated to ‘remote is forever’, save a copy - that’s part of your contract too! If it gets changed in a way that causes you injury, guess what - you can be and should be compensated. If you can prove these things, then it should even be relatively easy to do so. Contract law is not just things that say ‘contract’ on them. It is about agreements between parties. Also, talk to a lawyer so they…

When people say "talk to a lawyer" how does one go about finding a lawyer? Like in this case, would it be an employment lawyer, a contract lawyer? And what sorts of rates could we expect? Obviously it varies depending on the contract, but I always see people advise that people talk to a lawyer when doing XYZ which makes sense, but I never understood the exact process for this.

Very good question. If you ask your friends, a good reference can help. Most people don’t have any attorneys on retainer, let alone know if they’re good or not though.

Usually what I’ve done is brute force. Every State has a State bar that usually has listings. Google Maps searches for ‘employment attorney near me’ or ‘civil law attorney near me’ also usually gives a lot of matches.

I dump it all into a spreadsheet, and then go down the list taking notes and calling each one. Attorneys should give a free consult (anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour).

Try to learn as much as you can about the applicable law and the situation; and ask questions. Not just what is legal/not-legal, but their history in getting actual results for clients and what the courts will actually take seriously or not.

Don’t pick anyone right away. Call at least 3, preferably 10 in each speciality.

If you like them and they like you, they’ll either take you on contingency or ask you to give them a retainer (funds to be put into a trust they can bill against). Either way there will be some paperwork they’ll have you sign before they’re ’your attorney’.

Additionally, some things to look out for -

1) anyone that makes you pay up front for a consultation is bad news. Run away.

2) anyone that promises a result is bad news. Run away.

3) Anyone who takes a case without asking specific questions and arguing with you sometimes is bad news. Run away.

4) anyone who tells you something that seems wrong (and you can’t verify independently, even after you ask for a reference) is probably bad news. Run away if you even suspect it.

Employment law is its own speciality.

Contract law is generally a subset of civil law. Civil law is a huge umbrella, from ‘my neighbors tree dropped a branch on my house’ to ‘the mega corp. in my county has been poisoning the water for decades and I got cancer’. You’ll run across attorneys who handle many different areas, ask them what they do and what their style is.

I hope this helps!

P.S. most states and countries put their laws online. There is still usually case laws which modify it, and gotchas, etc. but you can figure out 95% of it if you find them and do your own research. Leginfo.ca.gov is the California One. When you’re talking to attorneys, feel free to ask them for applicable cases and/or codes to start looking at.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#735

Post by bit_logic » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #706

bit_logic wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Talking to lots of middle and upper management, the primary complaints I hear are hard to measure - poorer communication, less alignment, less innovation, etc. None of this reduces the number of tasks being done, but reduces the utility of those tasks. Measuring directly is hard, but ultimately you'd expect it result in lower growth - which many companies are seeing (but it's hard to disentangle this from the macro s…

These are also hard to measure:

* Employee happiness

* Less sick employees since they don't spread their germs in an office

* Much lower attrition and retention of institutional knowledge

* Lower rent costs or possibly zero rent costs for office (actually this one is very easy to measure)

* Able to hire from outside local metro area

None of these was enough to move companies even an inch towards WFH pre-COVID. And yet now vague issues due to lack of water cooler conversations is enough to shift everything back to in-office?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#736

Post by DiggyJohnson » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

guhidalg wrote: post #727

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, would you still feel this way of it turned out that everyone being in the office (remember this is a magical hypothetical) has a significant and demonstrable improvement in productivity? This is more of a level-setting question than any sort of disagreement.

Unask this question. Every industry, every company, every team, and every project is different. What works in some places and times doesn't work in others. You have to decide for yourself and your team/company if RTO is what is best, and don't take other's lived experience as your own.

> Unask this question.

I don't understand this response and it come off as incredibly rude.

What I'm asking is whether it ever makes sense for a firm to do something against the preferences of employees if it demonstrably increases productivity.

> You have to decide for yourself and your team/company if RTO is what is best, and don't take other's lived experience as your own.

I genuinely think you might be responding to the wrong comment or something. Where did I "take other's lived experience as your own"? Am I misinterpreting your response?

I've already said in this thread that I'm open to both arrangements. I'm not a zealot on either side of this conversation, and it bothers me that you're assuming I am. There's pros and cons to both. You put forward a scenario that for whatever reason inspired me to present a hypothetical situation because I was curious what your response would be.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#737

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

xpe wrote: post #411

KoolKat23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change and so should companies. It's also not unreasonable for people to expect more from their job than a simple transaction. Before COVID, most places operated without tools such as Microsoft Teams and an assumption that remote work is untested and unproven to work in their setting. This is now not the case, and people are rightly questioning why a return is necessary. They've proven they can make it work and…

> It's also not unreasonable for people to expect more from their job than a simple transaction. This. Finding the balance is challenging. - It is often unhealthy to expect too much from work. - most software/hardware tech employers ask employees to be more than contractors and to care more than just a paycheck - at the same time we see corporate decisions that are largely shortsighted, and sometimes even self-defeat…

> It is often unhealthy to expect too much from work.

There is a famous prayer where one asks to be strong enough to change the things one can, humble enough to not requiring the changes you can't, and wise enough to know the difference. I don't remember it literally, but should be easy to find.

Anyway, work from home just got promoted from something you can change into something you can. As it happened, the healthy thing changed from not expecting it into demanding it (if you want).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#738

Post by npsimons » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

grumblingdev wrote: post #31

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…

> an assembly line Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real. I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home bu…

> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.

And farmers working hard manual labor from before sunrise to sundown, in heat and UV exposure would look upon factory workers as spoilt. So what? Are you against progress? You aren't one of those "I had it hard, so these damn kids should too!" boomers are you?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#739

Post by 15457345234 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #694

garciasn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You give them entirely too much credit. They were told by others (primarily Wall Street) that they are to do this. It provides them with three things: 1. Real estate holding investment increases. 2. Control. 3. Silent layoffs. There's no reason for RTO. None. They're doing it to save money and regain control of their workforce.

Let's not forget 4. Politicians You have several from major cities (NYC, SF, etc.) saying on the record that they are going to speak to CEO's and push for RTO so that downtowns, local businesses, and neighborhoods can go back to "normal."

Yeah, and what I find funny is people acting like that's a stupid thing for them to be saying.

Not everybody works or can work in an office. Not everybody can work in tech. Cities are symbiotic, they offer employment to both knowledge workers and non-knowledge workers.

Sorry but you can't just write off the needs of that 50% of the population that aren't techcels. Yes, you will come back to cities, yes, you will re-create thriving downtowns, yes, you will do your bit.

Service sector workers will not tolerate being turned into gigbots and stuffed into ghost kitchens so the PMC elite can pretend they don't exist.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#740

Post by revlolz » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

zoogeny wrote: post #549

clemailacct1 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, on the other hand, feels bitter. It seems to be coming from a place of hate. Does it bother you that someone may actually hate something?

It does bother me when that hate is directed at anyone who might make the decision to return to the office when faced with a RTO policy from their employer. The author is plainly saying such people are dehumanizing themselves. I would hate to see that kind of contempt for others spread, especially for a compromise that a large majority of people will probably make. I'm not a saint myself, but I would prefer if popula…

I did not infer any contempt from the author towards everyday people who are forced to capitulate. The author empathized with the hardest hit victims in this target: h1b workers. Those who cannot simply 'play chicken' without risking deportation. There was no contempt or hate in these words or I feel like the sentiment would have been 'they are getting what they deserve... '

I agree completely with this author about the dehumanizing nature of these rto mandates. They completely forbid and outlaw natural human development/growth without risk to your career. Did anything in your life change? Well, I guess you need to start looking for a new career even though you've demonstrated over x years that you can accomplish your work remote.

It's so obvious the majority of these mandates are for dehumanizing purposes to force people to quit, gain tax incentives, impress power upon subordinates, or benefit commercial real estate holders. Hate and contempt towards the selfish leaders here is totally warranted. Disdain towards fickle middle managers lacking backbone would also be understandable in my opinion.