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Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

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Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#151

Post by listenallyall »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

I’m a CTO at a small startup, not forcing RTO on anyone BUT the vibe I get in my peer group is that managers don’t know how to manage remote teams, don’t want to do real performance management, and they personally have some loneliness issues they solve by working from the office. I work from an office with my cofounder 1 day/week, and it has been great for my mental health to leave my living room. I think broadly spe…

> the vibe I get in my peer group

You acknowledge you are a cofounder of your company, therefore you and your cofounder named you as CTO (as opposed to an existing company where somebody was promoted or hired into the position by someone else). I'm just curious who your "peer group" is, the ones you believe "don't know how to manage remote teams" and have "loneliness issues" -- other self-proclaimed CTOs? Or a wider group of people? And what experience do you have that makes you so much of an expert? What are the long-term consequences of an engineering team that you assembled at a discount?

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#152

Post by kbrackson »

Because there are people who can self-drive and get themselves to work and become productive without having to be reminded/ridden.

Then there are people who need someone over them (and that's ok).

Most people think they are the self starting type. Most people are LYING or WRONG about their ability to self start & self manage. Most people simply are NOT more productive but think they are. The numbers state otherwise. I'm all for remote work for high performers and self starters but everyone places themselves in that category and it's only true for a small percentage.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#153

Post by maartn »

Microsoft did a very interesting research about this amongst 60k+ employees. Read it to find out why serendipity is a good thing and hardening already existing relationships is not good for the whole:

“Furthermore, the shift to firm-wide remote work caused employees to spend a greater share of their collaboration time with their stronger ties, which are better suited to information transfer, and a smaller share of their time with weak ties, which are more likely to provide access to new information.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#156

Post by JohnFen »

joyfylbanana wrote: post #66
irrational wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite for me. At home I start working when I wake up and often don't stop until the evening. When I go into the office I have to get ready and commute, and then at the office there are so many distractions - our campus has fantastic fitness facilities and I'll often spend a few hours each day over there. So, at home I probably work for 10 hours. When on campus I probably get 4 hours of work in, if that. Plus, I am…

It is always the employees telling these stories, but how managers are supposed to know if they are really working? When they are at the office the see it with their own eyes. Common counter argument to this is that the manager sucks because he/she can't measure the work otherwise. But from managers perspective it is much easier to force people to be on-site than fix his/her own problems.

> how managers are supposed to know if they are really working?

Because if they're not, they miss deadlines.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#157

Post by AdrianB1 »

thisarticle wrote: post #105
snozolli wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every element you mention as being part of an in-office experience has been completely absent from my career. Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance, I was always simply given a task and expected to complete it. Company culture doesn't even feel like a real thing outside of HR blurbs. Spontaneous collaboration was outweighed by interruptions and meddl…

> Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance That sounds awful, none of your senior or principal engineers offered/provided any mentorship?

Not every person works in a company organized this way, even IT people. In all my working years and all companies, I always had managers that were technically inferior to me (not bragging, most were not technical people at all, some had some basic tech skills). My only mentoring was for management skills, not guidance in any technical matter.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#158

Post by gemstones »

n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes.

I echo others here - I've not seen a meaningful, revenue-driving conversation happen in these in a decade of work. Do you have specific examples of valuable collaboration in one of these environments?

> Edit: full disclosure, I’m not an employer but I sympathize and spent a lot of time thinking about these things as a scrum master, trying to mitigate some of these problems in 2020.

What about being a scrum master would give insight into what hallway conversations are valuable from an engineering perspective, in an engineering org? Or did you find that process improvements came out of these conversations?

> I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces.

Why didn't cities have this problem before the rise of big employers that utilize dense downtown construction? Additionally, if neighborhood livability improves at the expense of downtown livability, why should I be overly concerned with how downtown livability is?

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#159

Post by arcturus17 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #70
ttul wrote: post #60

Employer here. We had a fancy brick and timber office. It was beautiful and centrally located. I let the lease expire in 2021 after everyone went remote for the pandemic. There has been no sign of any decay in productivity. It is true that hanging out in person develops a sense of human connection that feels good. But is that needed for effective work? I’m not so sure. Brainstorming and creative collaboration activit…

>Brainstorming and creative collaboration activities seem more effective when done in person Let me tell you, I hate these. And I will take vacation days to avoid going to them. And I also think they're not very productive no matter how many 'How To Run A Sprint' classes the organizers take.

I consider myself 100% a remote guy, but c'mon. Isn't it reasonable for people in an org to be in the same physical space a few times a year.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#160

Post by snozolli »

thisarticle wrote: post #105
snozolli wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every element you mention as being part of an in-office experience has been completely absent from my career. Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance, I was always simply given a task and expected to complete it. Company culture doesn't even feel like a real thing outside of HR blurbs. Spontaneous collaboration was outweighed by interruptions and meddl…

> Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance That sounds awful, none of your senior or principal engineers offered/provided any mentorship?

What senior or principal engineers?

I graduated college with significant, real-world programming skills. I immediately went to work writing software. The only thing my first manager contributed was showing me where to find documentation, and even then, books that I found on my own were far more valuable overall.

It was no different the first year from the tenth: here's what we want made, go make it. No mentorship, no training, just self-learning and resourcefulness.

I can't even imagine what mentorship software people could need, besides general career or investment advice.

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