Working from home is powering productivity • Hacker News Board

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#221

Post by berniedurfee » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:36 AM UTC

EasyMark wrote: post #207

jnordwick wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to need some data to prove this. I keep seeing this claim, but have not seen anything more than conjecture. There are just too many factors for this, and you would have to believe that a company is willing to throw away money for this to happen.

There are tons of articles out there about mayors/council members/ etc pressuring execs to get butts in office seats for the past few years. I don’t know if that counts as data to you or not, but they are relatively easy to find in a google search.

It’s the other way round many times. Companies get fat tax breaks to move into a particular town or city.

Those tax breaks are explicitly contingent on butts being physically in seats to add to the economy and tax revenue of that municipality.

Too few butts in seats triggers penalties or revoking of the tax breaks altogether.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#222

Post by yard2010 » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:42 AM UTC

master_crab wrote: post #128

l33tbro wrote: post #27

I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter. How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are st…

Bingo! (Mostly, the AI stuff is a bit overblown) This is already happening by large margins. Companies hiring contractors in India or Brazil to do the work that a full time employee used to do. If WFH can be done in Arizona, it can be done just as easily in Colombia for half the price.

It's like saying you don't need a big ship to cross the ocean. If you have something that floats you can just get on it.

Ofc, it's true, you might get to the same destination. But the journey would be so different you can hardly call it the same thing.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#223

Post by harshaw » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:43 AM UTC

mvanbaak wrote: post #131

notyourwork wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ding ding ding … this is the most overlooked aspect of the RTO/WFH dynamic.

This might be the nr 1 reason. The hidden layoff round is also high on that list if you ask me. They call everyone back to the office, the people that dont want/cant will not adhere, and thus be fired without the companies having to pay severance.

As an amazonian, this has come up during the five day RTO discussion. As a manager, I can't imagine a more obvious way to destroy the service that I help run and then really risk losing customer trust.

I we are all cogs at some point but I really have trouble being this cynical.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#224

Post by harshaw » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:45 AM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #97

kvmet wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")

This is the case for the city of Boston. The city derives the vast majority of its budget from commercial property taxes, it's why residential property taxes are so low in the city. Use to work for a company that was literally told by the city that if they don't have X amount of people in the building they will lose their tax incentives they got for having the company there. The company slowly mandated hybrid then RT…

What company?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#225

Post by ziofill » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

I have to WFH 100% of the time because my company’s HQ is three time zones away. I think I would be more productive if I could go to the office once or twice a week and have face to face interactions with my colleagues rather than always only slack/videocalls… On the other hand, if I were working at the office every day I would yearn for some WFH days. The best is in a balance of the two, with the flexibility to decide when to do each.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#226

Post by tightbookkeeper » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #34

nmstoker wrote: post #16

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far fro…

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

This argument has never made sense. Commercial real estate exists to optimize the real cost (labor). There is no temptation to put it above the needs of labor.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#227

Post by The_Colonel » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

appendix-rock wrote: post #193

jagged-chisel wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already threw away the money by purchasing real estate and falling for the sunk cost fallacy. Or they’re on the hook for a lease for the next five years and it will cost more to break the lease. Companies waste money all the time. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they did or would waste oodles of money on purchasing or leasing their offices.

That’s not evidence. It’s as baseless as the other side’s arguments. You’ve just heard it on HN enough times and are parroting it. I assure you that there’s not a person on this website that hasn’t read essentially your exact comment 100 times. OP is saying that one nerd’s reckoning doesn’t constitute evidence.

Exactly. The home office debate is a great example of motivated reasoning - many people really like the personal benefits of home office which makes them look for things which confirm their view (with the bar for "evidence" being very low).

The more passion you have, the more ridiculous form it takes. In normal debates, intelligent people usually admit that there are various trade-offs, and there are different POVs which might favor one trade-off over another. But in the home office debate, pro-HO seems to take a position that RTO cannot have any true, valid benefit, there's no real trade-off to be made, and therefore it can be explained only by ulterior motives or some conspiracy - usually hyper-controlling managers or this real estate conspiracy.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#228

Post by tightbookkeeper » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:52 AM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #8

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #6

> is highly dependent on how well it’s managed. That's the kicker, right there. I am kind of in despair, at the quality of tech managers; especially "first line" managers, these days.

I see an absolutely shocking number of managers promoted from the IC ranks, who not only have no preparation for management, but no experience at any other company.

The alternative of professional managers who never did anything didn’t work out so well either, especially in engineering.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#229

Post by rawgabbit » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:54 AM UTC

itohihiyt wrote: post #154

I currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH. Reasons I prefer going into the office: - when work is done, I leave, and it's done. - not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work. - easier interaction with colleagues. I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home…

Tell me where this dream job is and I will apply. For over 20 years I commuted to the office. Some days I stayed late in the office and pulled 12 hour workdays. Most of my time was stolen by coworkers and managers who constantly interrupted or insisted I attend a meeting about some issue I knew nothing about. When I left the office after only putting in 8 hours, I would end up working 2+ hours at home to catch up for the work I couldn’t do on the office. Now with WFH, when people try to interrupt me on Slack, I tell them to send me a meeting invite.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#230

Post by tightbookkeeper » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 3:57 AM UTC

roland35 wrote: post #110

Number one benefit to companies to allow WFH: they can pay me a senior level pay for staff level seniority, and I still come out ahead living in the Midwest versus moving to SF or NYC.

This is a good way to negotiate the value of your personal wfh arrangement.

But from the company R&D perspective, saving is kind of a loser argument. Cash is cheap. In pg terms we are trying to make the album that sells a million copies, not optimize the margins on nightly gigs.