Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

soatok.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 913 posts

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#801

Post by vunderba »

hotnfresh wrote: post #127
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…

Chat’s my favorite. Leaves a record so you don’t have to take notes or immediately record whatever you talked about so you don’t forget. Screen sharing or pairing are better remote than in person. In person’s good for a subset of types of meetings that some folks may find themselves in a lot. Brainstorming, product ideation, that kind of thing. > In the office I just walk over to their desk. This is from the perspect…

This a 1000%. Electronic communication means instant "paper trail" for free. Talking face to face is by its very nature ephemeral, OP seems to have missed that point.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#802

Post by vunderba »

grumblingdev wrote: post #438
PsylentKnight wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. Ok, working standards and life in general have gotten better for people. Why is that a bad thing? > It's a nicer life working from home Again, why is people having a better life a bad thing?

My point is its a minor inconvenience compared to a lot the working environments people operate in.

You can make that point about literally anything. People in X situation have it worse than people in Y situation, therefore Y situation is actually fine. It's a deflection without any actual merit.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#803

Post by DiggyJohnson »

ncallaway wrote: post #752
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. For the record, you're talking to different people. You asked the question to me, and I responded. guhidalg is a different person in the conversation.

Whoops, my apologies. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#804

Post by mavelikara »

SSJPython wrote: post #30

I don't understand why there can't be compromise on this? If you want to go to the office, go. If you want to work from home, then work from home. Why is it that remote workers never insist on everyone working from home, but RTO people want every single person to RTO? Just leave it up to the individual worker.

> Why is it that remote workers never insist on everyone working from home

They do insist that all meetings have some video conferencing on. Also, to avoid side conversations, many of them ask that everyone in the meeting - even those sitting the same office - sign into the video conferencing software.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#805

Post by Kye »

j-a-a-p wrote: post #284

These kind of blogs do not help remote work argument, it is polarising the discussion. Especially when the advice is to sabotage the company while drawing your own plan. BTW, I completely understand remote workers and I have no issues with the remotes in my team. Take the argument of working in a cheaper state or country. These kind of perks that only IT people have, can easily turn into envy with the majority of the…

As someone not in a big money industry with lots of friends in tech (including the author of the post I submitted!), friends wanting to be treated right doesn't cause me any envy. I correctly recognize them as being in the same boat even if they get a slightly better view while the person who owns it shoots holes in the hull.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#806

Post by bookaway »

zoogeny wrote: post #767
revlolz wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> forced to capitulate There it is again. As if it isn't possible for people to just, you know, decide that it is fine and move on with their lives? Are they really "forced to capitulate"? I recall working in an office building for a small software company. Due to the growth, the company had people working in hallways. Soon after I joined the company moved offices so they could have more space. The new building was o…

>As if it isn't possible for people to just, you know, decide that it is fine and move on with their lives?

You seem to be insisting on a bad faith reading of the post despite people pointing out there is a good faith reading that doesn't make the author himself out to be the asshole. The HN guidelines, may I remind you, guides you to assume good faith when responding to what people write.

The post is specifically addressed to people who prefer remote to RTO, and who feel completely trapped because of the ultimatum. This is understood in the way he emphasizes how remote in these companies was in fact possible pre-pandemic, but ironically is no longer an option post-pandemic due to the ultimatum. You do realize the the people who prefer the office are already...at the office? hence there is no ultimatum directed at them at all? Hence no way for them to be dehumanized by an ultimatum that wasn't addressed to them in the first place?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#807

Post by yanderekko »

hemloc_io wrote: post #593
yanderekko wrote: post #171

I mean, yes it's bullshit to try to apply RTO policies on remote workers that were hired as remote workers. It's not even a "return" in that scenario, properly understood. And IANAL but I wonder if that could be considered a constructive dismissal that mandates severance rather than a "soft" one. That said, this article flirts with the often-made argument that RTO is some sort of way of boosting commercial property p…

I think a better argument could be made for tax incentives. Large employers, think Amazon in Seattle, often have special agreements with the city for taxes. Without the employees coming in and supporting local businesses there's a decline in tax revenue and local govt threaten to take them away. (As well as play less ball with the larger employer on other things like permitting etc.) For these large companies they wa…

I mean, if that were truly the case we'd see companies hovering around RTO numbers that just barely guaranteed these benefits - so far I haven't seen any stories to this effect, so it seems sorta hand-wavey to me?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#808

Post by Kye »

jrsj wrote: post #613

[flagged]

>> "it's going to be really difficult for a lot of people to take it seriously with all this."

Putting off people with an aversion to furry art is a great way to filter out the most tedious sort of people. Try to please everyone and you end up pleasing no one.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#809

Post by Zigurd »

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…

Debatable. For example, software mediated interaction can transcribe, store, and share the results of conversations with little or no effort on the part of their participants.

You could of course wire up your workplace to do the same thing. But that would be creepy and intrusive.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#810

Post by fullshark »

paulcole wrote: post #786
fullshark wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is they require their co-workers to do something they don't want to do. It's not a purely individualized desire.

Agreed. As long as we’re also clear that this applies to anyone who wants to work at a fully remote company. And as long as we’re clear that there’s nothing wrong with this.

I don't follow, fully remote employees don't care how their coworkers are working by and large so your point is lost on me.
Post reply on HN