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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

#161

Post by n4r9 »

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…

Having the tech to allow a few employees to work remotely is one thing. Having an organisational and operational structure to allow everyone to work remotely is another thing entirely. You have to transform a lot of things like:

* On-boarding - new employees are no longer able to suss out the company by chatting to people they bump into. They need well-defined ways to meet other teams and to learn how to communicate and collaborate within the company.

* Socialising - there needs to be a regular opportunity (not mandatory) to meet up in person, even if there's no office.

* Communication - this is a biggie. The company can't just install Teams/Slack/Skype everywhere and expect collaboration to continue as before. Instant messaging apps are terrible for building asynchronous communication habits, since they incentivise quickfire messages. The company needs to publish guidelines on how to give status updates and ask for support, and potentially make communication skills be part of employee evaluation (if not already).

* Evaluation - remote work gives senior management a bad feeling because they don't feel like they know what's going on in the company. The root cause of this is that they're not actually evaluating employee output, but rather something else (e.g. how the employee contributes to meetings or responds to in-person questions). This kind of works in the office since those things correlate somewhat with employee quality. But remote work forces managers to think about how to objectively measure employee productivity solely on their work output... and some of them either resent the extra effort or just aren't imaginative enough.

None of this is to say that remote work isnt worth it. It absolutely is. But let's not pretend that it's a small jump from what most companies currently do.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#162

Post by ensocode »

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…

True. Maybe it is even the other way around. A farmer lives on his farm. He works there, he raises his family there, grows his food there, lives there, has his friends around there. For my perspective it is more back to the roots than progressive. If you can work from the place were you live then this is more natural than commuting into the office block every day. Technology here gave us a opportunity to live a more natural live. It tastes so good because it is a very natural human desire. Technology fixed that for us. So why would we give that up?

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#163

Post by caskstrength »

RestlessMind wrote: post #49
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.

> with little evidence that’s a better way to work. You are assuming that decision makers are dumb. I disagree with that. My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing.

> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing.

I agree. They are seeing the data that their skills of busy-bodies bouncing between meetings and impromptu conversations at other employees desks don't translate well to remote work and they understand that their nice 3mil$ house in the valley will cost much less in couple of years if everyone embraces full remote, so they are doing their best to preserve the status quo.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#164

Post by zem »

flakeoil wrote: post #157
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…

We will most likely see that jobs that cannot be done by working from home will see an increase in salary and WFH jobs will see a decrease. I'm thinking about jobs like nurses, electricians, factory workers, teachers etc.

I really hope so! though historically this has not been the case due to the whole "unskilled/low skilled jobs" framing

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#165

Post by saiya-jin »

theshrike79 wrote: post #151
threads2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> slowing down passage of time My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older. Thanks for mentioning this in the context of working from home. I feel a little better now. Maybe I should get an office job too.

> My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older. The theory behind this is that your brain "compresses" memories. Identical days are just stored as "and here I spent 5 days working". And if your weekends are mostly similar, then it's just "And then I spent 12 weeks doing routine shit". For kids time seems to move slower because everything they experience is new and can't be "co…

This is why backpacking around some crazy 3rd world countries is so intense, 2 weeks feel like few months, and 3 months felt like several lifetimes. It was so surreal when I first experienced it, after ie 2 months in India the memory of life back at home was a distant memory of a dream since every single day was an endless stream of completely new experiences and encounters.

Do yourself a favor, anytime you have vacation try to do and see something different, new, every day. Even now with small kids, when we try this our vacations feel much longer than they actually are. But prepare to be more exhausted, although I call it 'good exhaustion'.

I call it prolongation of life mentally, the best we have for now (apart from physical aspect of living healthier obviously).

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#166

Post by apexalpha »

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…

For me, the suggestion of going back to work in an office 5 days a week is as ludicrous as the suggestion we go back to a 6 day workweek.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#167

Post by randomdata »

seydor wrote: post #124
Uehreka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…what? Sorry to harsh the vibe, but that second paragraph reads like something out of 2014 when people were first reading REMOTE. At this point remote work is nothing new, and while many large companies don’t like it, many large companies are going along with it (and developing the culture, documentation, etc.) because it works well as a way to attract talent. And some startup founders are trying to go “full Musk” an…

> At this point remote work is nothing new I disagree. As long as i still see traffic in cities, it means remote work is still a tiny minority

It is relatively uncommon, but nothing new.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#168

Post by destroy-2A »

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.

Don't underestimate the overconfidence of your worst performers.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#169

Post by hosh »

Kiro wrote: post #111
Uehreka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…what? Sorry to harsh the vibe, but that second paragraph reads like something out of 2014 when people were first reading REMOTE. At this point remote work is nothing new, and while many large companies don’t like it, many large companies are going along with it (and developing the culture, documentation, etc.) because it works well as a way to attract talent. And some startup founders are trying to go “full Musk” an…

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.

You have to work it even within tech companies.

I have been working remote for years before the pandemic made it mainstream. In one of the companies I worked for, I was not the first remote worker. The first person in the company pioneered the tech, practices, and culture to make it work as a hybrid. After I came in, bit by bit, the engineering team went remote. So when the pandemic hit, the company had already had a mode of work that more or less helped out the rest of the company.

These things were not free. The pioneer had to really put himself out there to implement the remote best practices. By the time I got there, most of that was in place.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#170

Post by hosh »

n4r9 wrote: post #161
throwawaylinux wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having the tech to allow a few employees to work remotely is one thing. Having an organisational and operational structure to allow everyone to work remotely is another thing entirely . You have to transform a lot of things like: * On-boarding - new employees are no longer able to suss out the company by chatting to people they bump into. They need well-defined ways to meet other teams and to learn how to communicate…

To add to that about Slack — speaking is a distinct skill from writing, engaging in different part of the brain. The skills you use for speaking in person does not automatically translates to writing, let alone the various social nuances that comes with text based communication.

The skills you might have picked up to be someone effective while in person doesn’t mean you will be effective working through Slack. Zoom is not a perfect substitute — much of the non-verbal communication that happens in person is no longer there; plus, if you’re not using the Zoom chat as the backchannel, you miss out on effective use of Zoom.

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