841–850 of 913 posts
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Sounds like it’s time for a folder.
Or to check if that original all-hands teams call was recorded.
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I think it's assumed that it's within reason and in situations where the ultimatum has the purpose of pushing you into a situation you would prefer not to be in. The WoW example is an example of dysfunctional behavior and the HR example is a routine process and not unexpected from the recipient nor is the cost of filling it in extreme. Your examples don't apply and it should be obvious why.
Absolutely. Hence "never choose the one giving you an ultimatum" is weird advice.
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Generally[0] your contract references a living policy document covering the softer areas. I see changes to these documents as similar to the change in T's & C's for any service I use; your continued use of the service denotes acceptance of the new terms. You're welcome to leave at any time. Not sure what you can litigate against. 0: anecdotal from the past 15 years
If they actually put in writing ‘Remote is forever’, then later try to fire you for refusing to return to the office - what judge in the world is going to rule in their favor? If course, they rarely actually say that. But some folks have definitely been dumb enough to do so. The issue with contract law is that most folks never put things in writing, so it’s a pain to litigate many claims, which makes it uneconomic to…
There is one element ( elephant ) of remote working that I don't see being much discussed. If the job can be done remotely and async - it potentially can be done from anywhere. Potentially this means you are competing globally for that job. And I suspect for most of the people on these boards there are lots of places which have both the talent and much lower costs. So in a completely free market you might find that c…
its discussed literally every time a remote work/rto post comes up on this site. And then the usual responses about how international offshoring has been tried before various times and it mostly doesnt work for XYZ reasons etc etc
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Companies have a right to fuck their employees over in all sorts of ways. "It's not literally illegal for them to do this to you" is the absolute weakest defence that can be made for any behaviour.
FYI, I wasn’t defending. I was noting market dynamics and likely counter-forces. How you decide to position yourself (and plan), and how they decide to position themselves (and plan) is of course up to each participant.
“Market Dynamics” is discussed as if it is a physics problem.
Markets are social creations - they are a human way to effectively allocate resources.
They are also constantly being manipulated and shaped to better achieve certain outcomes over others.
When these outcomes are bent to serve the benefits of the few, or to serve the benefits of a principle that isn’t human wellness, its is a pointless market.
The rules against oligopolies, monopolies, fraud and manipulation are to ensure the social purpose of the market is achieved.
By extension - a market that by nature forces RTO, when WFH is superior to the majority of humans, is a market that needs to be fixed.
A negligible % of firms include commute time as a part of your salary. WFH means that you can save nearly an hour every day, doing any number of things that add economic value to humanity.
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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…
I worked as a volunteer in an online team before the COVID years. I was FAR better at ensuring a team was cohesive online, than I was in person. You can make out whats going on based on how people talk, you can have one on ones, and diagnose issues.
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It's absolutely silly for the RTO people to force their preferences on everyone. The fact that RTO folks only consider it a win if everyone comes back, rather than trying to build out flexibile working conditions that make everyone happy, is the real problem. People who want an office to work in are just as valid as people who want to work from home. It's the people who want to force RTO on everyone that are real ass…
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…
It reduces commute time. - This saves environmental and energy costs
- It increases worker productivity because now they commute time is recovered
- Commute time was not accounted for in contracts, and was a cost of doing business. It is no longer the case.
A common complaint is that Coordination costs have increased. However Data is missing for this. Further, Coordination activities are achievable online. Competitive firms will adapt and thrive. Bad firms will and should die.
Other benefits: - Less money is spent on rent, Especially in high rent locations. This means that more money is available for R&D, or to give to shareholders
- Rent Money is now distributed across geographies - and will favor regions with lower costs of living. This spreads talent and wealth broadly, increasing chances for entrepreneurship and new businesses to flourish in those locations
WFH was considered infeasible, but COVID provided hard evidence not only was it feasible, it was feasible at scale.
The data has been updated, so our position has changed. Expanding the economic pie makes us all better off. WFH is probably one of the more interesting economic revolutions we will see in the developed world.
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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…
> 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…
I've come to view this as a personality type, the eager salesman (or less charitably, the habitual bullshitter). They will say whatever serves their needs at the moment, and never carries any long-term weight. When they say "we never said that", they actually mean it -- because what they remember were their unspoken motivations, not the words they spoke to achieve it. You can probably find them in the hierarchy of most organizations, as they're good with words and readily commit to changing strategies. They must be, because they need to have a new strategy ready for when the old one inevitably fails. Admitting to mistakes is not part of their personality, the most you will get (if anything) is that their idea was sound but the problem was in the execution or in unforeseen (by them) circumstances.
Learn to recognize the type. If their goals align with yours, they can be useful idiots, but always have a counter-strategy for when the winds inevitably turn.
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And how may of those people slacked a lot in the office, and you just never knew because they were good at looking busy whenever anyone was nearby? And how many people were much more productive because other people didn't keep popping over their cubicle walls and interrupting them? "Easy communication" can be a double-edged sword, and Slack/Discord/email can be silenced for specified periods of time.
> And how may of those people slacked a lot in the office, and you just never knew because they were good at looking busy whenever anyone was nearby? Some of them sure, but I believe less so. In my opinion, most slacking is not a result of very intentional attempts, but more of an environment / opportunity enabling it. > And how many people were much more productive because other people didn't keep popping over their…
That's great until you are forced to come in on "anchor days" and there are no free meeting rooms left.
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But you don't just have their online status. You can still talk to people even if you're not in the same room. You can ask them questions about what they've tried and see if they're making any substantive progress from day to day. When they say the problem is difficult in the daily you can ask followup questions to see if they've really thought about the problem hard. If on day 4 all they can say is "it's difficult"…
Well, basically you then need to chase them as a dev manager. And not just one person, but most of the team, because you can't really get the information passively. I bet the devs love that. In practice this doesn't really happen and the dev manager is quite blind to what's happening. And it's not just the dev manager, but generally all team members get this information passively when co-located. It's much easier to…
What you are describing, following them around to observe what they are doing, sounds a lot more like "chasing them" than asking a couple of follow-up questions in the standup.