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The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

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Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#221

Post by surgical_fire »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #132

Yes, commercial real estate is hurting but that is only one component of the bigger picture. Everyone in the surrounding area finds it desperately hard to make ends meet. The restaurants and cafes, the minimarts, the cleaners, janitors, security, various stores: clothing, bookshops, bakeries etc. All these people lose their jobs and for the small independent Stores where the owners have poured in their savings they l…

Wouldn't opportunities arise to where people live instead?

Things would just not be as concentrated in the areas surrounding commercial buildings.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#222

Post by benterix »

mgh95 wrote: post #163
benterix wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of normal so I only pick up companies that offer remote only positions with no strings attached.

That's fine? It's a market. Work for whoever is offering mutually agreeable terms for as long as that remains the case.

Of course. That basically divides the market into 3 segments: (1) companies that fully enforce RTO, (2) those that partly enforce RTO ("hybrid"), and (3) those that give you a choice - full WFH or coming to the office when you wish.

Based on what I observe in my niche, (3) have an enormous advantage when it comes to both hiring and maintaining senior talent.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#223

Post by JSDevOps »

jbverschoor wrote: post #140
JSDevOps wrote: post #135

The whole “remote work kills productivity” argument is outdated. Studies and real-world examples show the opposite: many people are more productive at home without the daily commute and office distractions. Plus, companies have tools and strategies to keep teams connected and engaged, so the idea that culture just dissolves over time isn’t based on reality. Culture isn’t about being in the same room; it’s about value…

Really? A workplace with no proper desk, chair, lighting, multi screen setup, isolation from domestic distractions, crappy phone lines due to bad internet, the hurdle of contacting someone who used to sit next to you, and the impossibility of scribbling something on a whiteboard etc? Sure, remote work can be productive for certain work, and for certain people. But people underestimate the value of an office. Working…

> A workplace with no proper desk, chair, lighting, multi screen setup, isolation from domestic distractions, crappy phone lines due to bad internet

Do you live in the past?

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#224

Post by bryanlarsen »

klodolph wrote: post #10

I’ve heard this argument before and I don’t buy it. By that, I mean it may be true (that people want to prop up real estate prices), but I don’t think that this is enough of an explanation. If it were just about real estate, then Amazon would not be calling for 5 days a week return-to-office. I don’t think real estate interests are powerful enough to push Amazon around and I don’t think they’re entrenched enough in A…

Amazon RTO has a very simple explanation. If Amazon fired a bunch of people they'd lose access to bringing replacements in via H-1B, EB-1, et cetera.

If they chase them out via RTO, they can be replaced with H-1B's.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#225

Post by JohnBooty »

slg wrote: post #74
kitsune_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory, which is kind of informed by what I saw it play out in my company: The reason is a psychological one. Most leaders derive their power from in-person interactions. Remote and video calls severely impact that. Those leaders also love having an audience that needs to listen to them whenever they are in the room and the lack of that kind of feedback and adulation shellshocked a lot of them.

It feels a lot worse to deliver a lame joke at the start of an all hands meeting to a bunch of muted zoom windows with their cameras off. How much of the return to office is leaders wanting that polite chuckle from that captured audience back? I'm barely being facetious. "That polite chuckle" is really a stand in for all the soft power they wield in person that evaporates with WFH. They have lost a degree of control…

    "That polite chuckle" is really a stand in for all 
    the soft power they wield in person that evaporates 
    with WFH. They have lost a degree of control and power, 
    it is basic human nature to look for a way to claw 
    that back.
That's an interesting angle and I really mean "interesting" in the literal sense.

My hunch is that the corporate executive's thirst for power generally works a little differently than that, in ways I find it difficult to express.

Why do people want those executive jobs? Quite honestly I don't feel the primary appeal for them lies in the minutia of those in-person interactions -- the polite chuckles and such.

I do not think they typically care about Cubicle Slave #58332 enough to be gratified when they (either individually, or in aggregate) give up that polite chuckle for an unfunny joke. For them, that would be like caring about whether or not an insect laughed at their jokes -- and caring about your token genuflections, about your small personal humiliations, is still caring.

So what is the appeal for them? Well, money and status, occasionally with some loyalty and/or core belief in the company added to the mix.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#226

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

sensanaty wrote: post #205
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a nonsense argument. If you're sitting in an office twiddling your thumbs for 4 hours a day you're not defrauding your employer. If you're at home working a second job (or mowing your lawn) for 4 hours a day then you're committing fraud and violating your contract with your employer. Fundamentally it's a legal issue about fraud. If you want remote work then you need a very different kind of employment contra…

> If you're sitting in an office twiddling your thumbs for 4 hours a day you're not defrauding your employer. So you just want to lord over the minions, even if they're not actually doing anything for half the day? You don't actually care about productivity, you just care that you can exert your power over them and have them rot in a cubicle doing nothing, even if they were doing equal amounts of work in both situati…

They bought your time, and you signed that contract.

Complaining that they're not properly using the time they bought is like claiming you can joyride your neighbor's expensive sports car because he's not using it most of the time anyways.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#227

Post by JeremyNT »

fire_lake wrote: post #2

Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured fo…

> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured for most work).

Right, I think there's pretty clearly a combination of factors at play and it's difficult to untangle them (adding one factor you didn't mention, soft layoffs).

I'm incredibly skeptical of any attempt to quantify "productivity" with this granularity, and this is especially true as technological advances over the last couple of years like LLMs are providing some substantial time savings for many tasks people do.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#228

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

munksbeer wrote: post #212
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a nonsense argument. If you're sitting in an office twiddling your thumbs for 4 hours a day you're not defrauding your employer. If you're at home working a second job (or mowing your lawn) for 4 hours a day then you're committing fraud and violating your contract with your employer. Fundamentally it's a legal issue about fraud. If you want remote work then you need a very different kind of employment contra…

> If you want remote work then you need a very different kind of employment contract. (One that specifies concrete deliverables, not time owed.) We're a remote heavy company and we don't have that type of contract, and it all works really well. So no, you don't need it.

You don't actually "need" legal contracts and other boring ugly things, as long as everybody plays nice.

We are now past that point where everyone plays nice working remotely.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#229

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

sensanaty wrote: post #202
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no conspiracy theory here. Most people will work 4 hour work days when working remotely. (And if they're working an 8 hour work day it's because they're working two remote jobs at the same time.) "No loss of productivity" is a flat out lie.

> And if they're working an 8 hour work day it's because they're working two remote jobs at the same time. I'd love to see actual stats on this, because I hear it a lot on HN (pretty much exclusively from the pro-office side) but I can't imagine there's that many people doing this. Even if there was, why is this a problem? Presumably they're getting work done in those 4 hours that is satisfactory to the business, so…

> Who cares?

Your manager, because your employment contract is about time spent, not works delivered.

Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#230

Post by surgical_fire »

jbverschoor wrote: post #140
JSDevOps wrote: post #135

The whole “remote work kills productivity” argument is outdated. Studies and real-world examples show the opposite: many people are more productive at home without the daily commute and office distractions. Plus, companies have tools and strategies to keep teams connected and engaged, so the idea that culture just dissolves over time isn’t based on reality. Culture isn’t about being in the same room; it’s about value…

Really? A workplace with no proper desk, chair, lighting, multi screen setup, isolation from domestic distractions, crappy phone lines due to bad internet, the hurdle of contacting someone who used to sit next to you, and the impossibility of scribbling something on a whiteboard etc? Sure, remote work can be productive for certain work, and for certain people. But people underestimate the value of an office. Working…

> Really? A workplace with no proper desk, chair, lighting, multi screen setup, isolation from domestic distractions, crappy phone lines due to bad internet, the hurdle of contacting someone who used to sit next to you, and the impossibility of scribbling something on a whiteboard etc?

1. The desk, chair, lighting and multi-screen setup I have at home is vastly superior to any I had in any company I worked for in the past, including FAANG.

2. Know what is worse than domestic distractions? Office distractions. People around you constantly talking in those noisy, nightmarish open offices. At home I can tell my wife I need to focus, shut the door to the home office room, and be productive. During the 15 years I worked from the office I had to wear fucking headphones with loud music to drown out the incessant office noise.

3. Not sure what you are going on about bad internet. Where the fuck do you live that internet connection is unreliable these days?

4. The beauty of asynchronous communication these days. I don't even like slack very much, but it is so much better than in-person communication, that even in the odd occasion when I am at the office I prefer to use it rather than speaking in person.

5. Ah, whiteboards. Funny you mention that, there are numerous excellent collaborative tools for that sort of thing nowadays. They end up being clearer since my writing and drawing skills are shit, and they are also asynchronous, which makes it so much nicer.

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