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

The workers have spoken: They're staying home

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 263 posts

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#101

Post by lucaspm98 »

mikestew wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #8

When someone says you must RTO to a place like San Francisco or Seattle just respond that you will require a 250% pay raise for real estate cost differences. Might help change zoning policy in those cities too if managers and executives see that the entire local economy is basically an elaborate machine to funnel money to property owners with extra steps like employment.

[flagged]

The poverty line for a family of 4 in San Francisco was $149k in 2023.

I live in a MCOL city with all the modern amenities and on $150k can be a comfortably upper-middle class sole income earner, buy the average house, and send 2 kids to private school if needed.

A 2-3x pay differential is a fairly accurate COL difference for a family moving to NY or SF, maybe even on the low end if comparing to a rural area.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#102

Post by Justsignedup »

throwaway387232 wrote: post #61
bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

I clicked in to this topic to make these exact same points, but you did a better job of it than I would have. My employer mandated a minimum number of days in-office per week and then implemented the flex desk system with all of the drawbacks that you outlined. In my company's case it's a little worse: There are, in fact, often no available open desks in my workgroup. Furthermore there's no enforcement or discipline…

Mixed bag for me. My office is pretty decent but we have a bigger office than we currently need.

My last job, at the office it was so loud (no dedicated conference rooms) that I was better off being at home, but unfortunately they also had zero respect for calendars, so getting in touch with people was... pretty much horrible no matter what way. In-office was less bad.

I had offices with desks so small and shitty I just wished for working from home at a normal desk. I once had a boss that saw my desk and started complaining to HR that it was too big, and if we can split this desk into 2 to save on office space.

TL;DR - works sucks. It sucks more when management can't get their shit together.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#103

Post by jmyeet »

aantix wrote: post #63
jmyeet wrote: post #18

For the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special. We believe we can act on our own behalf against our employer on equal footing. We start to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere. We are n…

Disagree. With savings comes extra cash. And extra cash can only sit on the sidelines for so long. Until company’s are lured once again in to making bigger, larger, scalable bets. You need engineers to explore new hypotheses, to drive growth, to explore these new possible markets. Greed always returns. Idle money, stagnant growth helps no one. You don’t scale a company with savings. You scale up by spending.

This is what I call Blind Faith in the Free Market.

First, there's no such thing as a "free" market. Any robust market requires strong regulation and thus a strong government. So for a labor market, you need things like workers rights for the entire thing to work, even for the companies.

Second, companies collude to dilute labor power. Years ago in tech it was the Steve Jobs anti-poaching collusion case [1]. Now, every company is in permanent layoff mode. Notice how pretty much every company decided to start doing that at about the same time? You ever wonder why?

Tech companies have basically adopted the Corporate America model of "up or out" culture. It's incredibly toxic. It even goes against Google's findings that the most important aspect to team productivity is psychological safety [2].

Lastly, it has long been observed that the tendency is for profits to decrease over time [3]. The only way to counter this is by cutting costs, raising prices or growing a market. The last one is incredibly difficult. The first two are incredibly easy, at least in the short term.

It is cheaper to constantly churn 5% of your employees if that suppresses the cost of the other 95%.

[1]: https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/silicon-valley-p...

[2]: https://archive.is/AFU9o

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#104

Post by crooked-v »

com2kid wrote: post #84
RiverCrochet wrote: post #7

It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.

The problem is your office is 20 miles from your workplace. 20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland). There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!

And the lack of housing is entirely self-inflicted by locals in most US cities. There's no shadowy conspiracy; people have just spent decades opposing even the most basic new construction.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#105

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #20

My problem is that I quite like working with other people. It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change . It’s vital. Most large companies think that as they are hiring “the best from around the world” that leaving them around the world is fine. Look leaving people on…

> My problem is that I quite like working with other people. It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change

I am a remote worker, and I quite like working with other people, too, which is why I do it. Walking and shouting don't really factor into it, but we do share plenty of jokes.

That is why I totally understand and agree with all of what you said, except for the part where you're shouting in a room, especially one in which others are trying to work, or worse, speak in an online meeting from their desk with shouting in the background. That seems pretty disruptive and inappropriate when you could just walk over, or better yet, send a message. To me, that behavior is tantamount to asserting that what you have to say is more important than everything everyone else is doing. If there's a fire, maybe it is.

To be sure, my coworkers and I are friends, but I have many more outside of work, and deeper friendships besides. Are you describing your conditions for amicably and effectively working with coworkers, or are you describing your conditions for making coworkers into your friends? Sometimes folks desire deeper work friendships as a substitute for friendships outside of work.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#106

Post by bluebit »

com2kid wrote: post #84
RiverCrochet wrote: post #7

It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.

The problem is your office is 20 miles from your workplace. 20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland). There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!

Cute that you think a person can just move house when they get a new job.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#107

Post by stanford_labrat »

ozim wrote: post #59
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget access to a fridge full of food that you picked, and a separate space to prepare it for lunch if you choose to do so.

My fav perk is having clean toilet and not shared with the people who don't understand why that brush is there on the side. Well maybe they know but they might also be super important managers who don't have time to be decent and not having time to wash hands because they have to make a dump and have 30 sec to get to the next meeting to shake hands firmly to assert dominance. :D

the number of bad bathroom hygiene at my current workplace makes me very glad to be living right across the street where i can go use the facilities whenever i please in the peace and quiet of my own bathroom.

underrated perk for sure!

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#108

Post by skywhopper »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #45
andrepd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drive There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.

I'm not picky about the solution and of course it's a complex issue. - If a safe, reliable bus or train went to and from close to my house to close to the office, I'd take it. Key is safe and reliable. - If the roads were designed with enough capacity and planning in mind such that groups of vehicles are not stuck driving 15 MPH on a 70 MPH speed limit stretch of highway for 30 minutes or longer every day, that'd be…

Unfortunately it’s not possible to build roads “with enough capacity” in major cities. Beyond a certain point, the geometry of space does not allow enough capacity to satisfy the needs, because growing the roads by enough to have capacity requires spreading things further apart, which means more traffic must go further, which means more cars on the road, and more lanes means more merging and lane-changing, which slows things down further.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#109

Post by mgkimsal »

LordKeren wrote: post #100
1970-01-01 wrote: post #66

It really is a 'you need to double my salary' kind of negotiation with your employer. When you're actually functional doing remote/home work, adding a commute to the job requirement is like adding vinegar to wine.

Even outside the salary negotiations, it’s astounding to me how many companies are calling for RTO just to have people go to the office and sit on zoom meetings — because the company has several offices. I’m actually ok with RTO, but I’m not going to do it when there are no actual upsides because it’s only some days and the team is spread across the globe.

Had a friend get forced in to RTO, then was 'let go' less than 6 months later because of 'decline in performance'. He wasn't getting as much done as when he was WFH. All felt very orchestrated to get rid of someone over 50, but.. hey. Yeah, driving 60 miles round trip in rush hour 4 days per week... yeah, you might lose some productivity from a knowledge worker that way. If they were productive before, why rock the boat?

"But everyone needs to collaborate!". In my friend's case, there was no one from his unit in this state - everyone he collaborated with were already 'remote' (mostly CA, and we're in NC, but I think there were some other folks in other states too).

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#110

Post by Bluescreenbuddy »

jmyeet wrote: post #18

For the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special. We believe we can act on our own behalf against our employer on equal footing. We start to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere. We are n…

>When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere.

I have all that but I work at a prop firm and they're VERY secretive and compliance would fire my ass if they found out

Post reply on HN