261–270 of 301 posts
Here's the thing: The reasoning behind the work from office mandate does not concern me; nor I will attempt to rationalize it. I will not return to office, and I will organize with colleagues to make sure our interests are protected. See you in the strike.
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> 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.
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What is "cliché" is to offer up "McKinsey is this shady organization we all hate!" as some sort of evidence that they could conspire to organize this sort of thing. Getting back to the original thesis of the article, the author is stating that people making the decision on RTO (the "elites", another nebulous scary term...) are doing so because commercial real estate is so critical to their decision making process. If…
The claim was that "the world is not this coordinated", not that McKinsey specifically is orchestrating it all by themselves. And my response to that claim was that it doesn't even have to be "coordinated". Do you disagree? I'm talking about the most rudimentary social dynamics we can observe and take part in daily. We can "conspire with" total strangers even, ad hoc, if we both realize our interests are otherwise en…
Case example: The weird YouTube parents who likely never spent time with other parents and got into child abuse scandals.
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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…
And because the other person is also replying async, you have to wait. So you get the same fan-out problem as microservices.
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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…
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…
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.
But, I also know non-leader individual contributors who firmly believe that in person is better for collaboration, design, and problem solving. Yes, they prefer to be at home, but they believe they need to be in person to do their best work. So, I wouldn't be surprised if many managers believe this too. I disagree with this personally, but I recognize that different things work for different people.
I also believe there are some CEOs who don't own any real estate investments, but feel some responsibility to uphold certain economic values that they believe will help prevent a massive recession that may impact their business down the line.
In other words, I believe there are several factors that are influencing different people to believe in-person is right for their business.
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> 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…
Ah yes, async.. in theory it's good. It lets you context-switch. Unlike a computer, context switching for humans isn't nanoseconds. And because the other person is also replying async, you have to wait. So you get the same fan-out problem as microservices.
In a regular scenario I have multiple things ongoing that I have to wait beyond communication. I need to wait for code reviews. I have to wait until some changes are deployed until I can perform something. Truth is that a whole damn lot of what I do is async anyway. Instead of moaning about it, I decided to embrace it.
Maybe I am lucky that I work in a remote friendly environment, where people also work asynchronously.
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> 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…
The office, is probably 20% of your home. That's a substantial amount of money depending where you live.
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Why would the interests of those companies be aligned with those of their landlords in the first place?
Because the leadership who makes decisions, or even just has the potential to voice their opinions and have them weighted, own real-estate. Better yet, those leaders maybe also love exerting control over their employees and find this more enjoyable in an office environment. Companies ARE NOT a democracy. In my mind, there's a huge overlap between being high company leadership and also being a self-serving narcissist.…