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The damaging results of mandated return to office

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Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#141

Post by theshrike79 »

randallsquared wrote: post #4
simonw wrote: post #2

"Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated." My guess is that you're also more likely to lose your best performers - since they will have higher confidence in being able to find a remote-friendly job somewhere else.

There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously difficult it is to reliably measure developer quality, that may be a belief they can harbor long past when you'd expect evidence to have mounted against it.

There are actual high performers and there are people who can cosplay as high performers in the office because of their amazing people skills.

I think the RTO folks are in the latter group. If their work was measured objectively by results, they wouldn't be considered high performers.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#142

Post by ZephyrBlu »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #126
Kiro wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been lucky and haven't experienced a regular company that is not remote ready. I'm sure most tech companies are in a much better position then the ones where the only communication software is Skype. It's a serious uphill to convert such a company to a remote one.

Most IT and engineering (and probably other "IP based") companies are "remote ready" for the right person. It's not some vast change or investment they have to make, really. You use the laptop they give you and connect from a different place, and continue to go about your job more or less the same way as does everybody who works with you, since most places are perfectly used to remote meetings and have been for decad…

They’re talking about the company culture not being ready for remote and it’s completely correct.

Most companies attempt to have office culture and working style while working remotely, which absolutely sucks.

There are not a lot of companies (And employees) who have figured out how to do remote well.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#143

Post by briantakita »

WalterBright wrote: post #70
malfist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the cost of my labor different if I'm in the office or not. I produce the same work, I should be compensated the same

> Why is the cost of my labor different if I'm in the office or not. The Law of Supply & Demand.

Supply & Demand is a two way street...Perhaps the employers will adequately compensate for commute time.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#144

Post by smarmgoblin »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #41

There have been a lot of, at least to me, somewhat unsubstantiated criticisms that fully remote work is difficult for new graduates. I can only provide n=1 sample data, but back when I was working for a company that was fully remote, we brought on many junior engineers who lived across the United States and didn't have any problems onboarding them by keeping a continual slack team huddle running during office hours.…

At least in software engineering, this is a great opportunity to start understanding how to cooperate and work with a team in this field. There should be a little bit of friction involved in tapping someone on the shoulder, and if you can only code within arms reach of a senior engineer you won’t make it very long.

Sometimes I think the college mindset of “if my code doesn’t compile, the TA must have made a mistake giving it to me like this, I’ll ask him what’s wrong” persists into a first job. And there are jobs (and senior engineers) who encourage this pattern too, so it can be a while before anyone encounters a different atmosphere unfortunately.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#145

Post by stakhanov »

pmontra wrote: post #131

I worked for a mobile operator for 5 years starting in 2001. We had 20 months to bootstrap the company and get at least 3 million customers. There were no virtual operators back then. We had to have our network, our software, our everything. We were a big startup, about 3k people. I think that the only way to pull that off is working all together in an office. Too many things to do, people to talk with, known and unk…

This way of looking at remote work might be well-intentioned vis-a-vis remote work, but it's still essentially remote-hostile.

Specifically, I'm referring to the type of thinking where you think of remote work as capable of handling "business as usual" but maybe less productive than on-site and less capable of handling "crunchtime".

This type of thinking is what blows up hybrid remote/onsite companies. One day, somebody thinks it's a good idea to hire Bob remotely, while Frank, who has been with the firm for a while, has to stay on-site, to limit the scope of the "remote experiment". Now you've just given Frank a reason to be jealous of Bob, and, at the first possible opportunity, Frank is going to start putting out the message "Bob is just not pulling his weight. But what do you expect? He's remote."

A manager of a failing project with remote people is going to go: Wouldn't it be a great idea, to fly everybody in for a month, just to get through crunchtime? And now you're alienating your remote workforce, because the only thing worse than an on-site job that you sign up for, is a remote job that transforms into a "living out of hotels" job that you didn't sign up for.

The inevitable outcome is that the company blows itself up, either from the bottom-up, because you've allowed a caste system to happen, and the castes are at war with each other, or from the top-down, because some high-level manager goes "well, if on-site is more productive, why not increase the productivity of the whole company by mandating everybody to be on-site?"

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#146

Post by benjismith »

CtrlAltDelete51 wrote: post #32
alistairSH wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except almost all white-collar offices (in the US at least) went remote during the first 2-3 years of COVID. Most did so successfully. Yet, many now want to return to traditional office work with little evidence that’s a better way to work.

You have a source for any of that? Speaking personally, everyone I’ve spoken to on the matter (myself included) have zero desire to return to a traditional office.

I'm a software engineer, and I think the fully remote-work culture can often be less personally fulfilling.

I enjoy going to an office, having a change of scenery, interacting with people (both close friends and casual acquaintances), brainstorming ideas with a small group around a whiteboard, getting lunch with colleagues, etc, etc...

Sure, the "writing code" part of the job is easier when there are fewer distractions. And a crowded open office can be an annoying source of distractions.

And I definitely enjoy having lunch more often with my family, or hanging out with the dogs, or sitting out on my deck under the trees while I read my morning email.

But working in an office was nice too, and I miss it.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#147

Post by NKosmatos »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #127
NKosmatos wrote: post #103

Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision. People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgra…

Needing to eat and have a roof over your head is a fairly strong reason. The number of people who need to work already vastly outnumbers the number of WFH positions.

Exactly, that's what the big "bad" companies use to force us to do things we don't want, our need for food, housing and a normal life.

We're discussing about the majority of people and not for the HN "elite" that have the privilege/luxury of earning hundreds of thousands, thus affording to be picky with their next work positions.

I'm working fully remote the last few years and I'm troubled on what is going to happen when the hybrid or RTO call arrives. I'm not in a position to be very picky and for sure I'll try to find another remote job, but as you correctly state: num of people seeking WFH > num of WFH positions

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#148

Post by adhesive_wombat »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #126
Kiro wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been lucky and haven't experienced a regular company that is not remote ready. I'm sure most tech companies are in a much better position then the ones where the only communication software is Skype. It's a serious uphill to convert such a company to a remote one.

Most IT and engineering (and probably other "IP based") companies are "remote ready" for the right person. It's not some vast change or investment they have to make, really. You use the laptop they give you and connect from a different place, and continue to go about your job more or less the same way as does everybody who works with you, since most places are perfectly used to remote meetings and have been for decad…

"Most engineering" is a broad brush, some engineering still uses tools other than software at least occasionally.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#150

Post by theshrike79 »

ornornor wrote: post #101
jupp0r wrote: post #57

Companies who mandate return to the office should pay employees for the additional commute time at their hourly rate. If this becomes too expensive then productivity gains from being in the office are apparently not worth it.

I once worked some place where my manager loved to tell this allegedly true story (happened before my tour) as a hilarious joke to onboard new devs on how to fill the timesheet: There was this IC who was working on cross departmental stuff. Things like pipelines, UI component libraries, build tools, etc. He would frequently go on walks to think, either during the work day and return to the office or to go back home a…

> employers still think that butt not in seat = not working

This is a huge red flag for companies. Currently I can just go for a 15-30 minute walk with my dog if I get stuck and still count it as work time.

If I'm at the office I can go grab some snacks and go sit on the break area sofas and watch some crap on my phone - still working.

It's actually been scientifically proven that a change of environment brings more creativity and makes problem-solving easier.

---

At a company I worked years ago we had "work reatreats" where we booked a conference room from a random hotel or office for a day. Breakfast and afternoon tea was catered.

Everyone had to pick a few tasks they thought they could finish during the day, we turned off all communication devices and started working roughly on a Pomodoro system monitored by one person. No talking allowed unless we were on a break, where we all got up and left the room for a while.

Pretty much everyone was finished with all their tasks before our lunch break. We did this multiple times.

It's amazing how much work you can get done when you're in a novel environment with the knowledge that you will have zero distractions for the next 8 hours. Nobody can just pop in for a "quick question" or ping you on any communication tool.

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