80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans • Hacker News Board

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#171

Post by 0xblinq » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

deaddodo wrote: post #141

lamontcg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity. The decades of evidence that open office plans are utter shit for productivity already proved that the emperor wears no clothes and they have no idea what makes for better produc…

Open offices are the literal reason (after commuting/traffic) that I no longer want to go into the office. My work doesn't require a ton of person:person engagement and it's much easier for me to just zone out in my own headspace to do it. When I was required in the office, I would just wear headphones to avoid distractions, but I would have to deal with 2-3hrs of driving/day on top of it. This meant that my employer…

The headphones thing reminds me of a big events ticketing company I worked for that, when people complained about noise, distractions, etc they came up with the amazing solution of using your health and wellness budget to buy noise cancelling headphones.

Most full of bullshit company I’ve ever worked for.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#172

Post by smeej » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

whack wrote: post #157

> Their plan was put on pause through the end of the year as Covid-19 cases ticked up once again throughout the U.S., so EY leaders used that time to ask employees about their reluctance to come into the office. Common threads stood out to Frank Giampietro, EY’s chief wellbeing officer for the Americas: Employees weren’t sure what to do about pet care or child care. > In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022…

I came here looking for this exact comment.

That offer would feel more like an insult to me than an incentive.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#173

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #143

atleastoptimal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also naïve to assume that the work people do when supervised is always valuable and not optimizing for the appearance of work, rather than work itself.

Would those people be working significantly more without supervision? I find it hard to believe.

I don’t think that’s their point.

The kind of person who isn’t going to work when not stared at all day by a manager is also probably the kind of person who is going to try to LOOK busy at the office without actually having to do a lot of REAL work. Surfing the web, playing games, chatting with their friends, whatever they can get away with when someone’s not watching. Or maybe doing their real tasks really slow.

They’re just not a hard worker.

Where is an employee who tends to do a good job is going to try to do it whether they’re in the office or not (assuming that’s possible for their position). They don’t really need to be monitored at home or at work. They would do basically the same either way.

So all you’re left with is you need to check real productivity instead of the appearance of productivity. THAT’S what matters, not where the employee is physically located during the day.

Some people are exceptions and will work significantly better in one environment or the other. But if you have an employee who took remote work to mean “watch TV and occasionally jiggle my mouse“ i’m willing to bet they weren’t a good employee in the first place.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#174

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #91

water9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are supervised vs unsupervised is completely naïve

Most office workers really aren't supervised unless you count a manager glancing across the open-plan office to see how many butts are in seats.

Which is also where you get pointless busywork. Doing things on your computer to pretend to look productive because if you were to just sit and think or take a five minute break a micromanager would yell at you or nosy teammate would rat you out as “unproductive“.

Even if you’re thinking through a heart problem or just finished something mentally draining from complexity.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#175

Post by Freedom2 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #14

>> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies’ decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back. The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to use…

What does the younger generation remark have to do with anything? Do you think the younger generation not know what sunk cost is?

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#176

Post by placesalt » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:22 AM UTC

justrealist wrote: post #24

ahi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions via 1-1 asides. If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible. And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts.

At some point say 'ooh, is someone making popcorn?', then leave, make popcorn, and come back and share.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#177

Post by dudul » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:27 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39

I had lunch, not too long ago, with a senior executive of a silicon valley tech company that was moaning about how much of a pain it was to get people to come into the office and how it felt like things would never return to the way they were. And I told them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their employees to return to the office happily. When they asked what this magic bullet was I said, "Go back to offices,…

I would not care one bit about your office buddy.

Working from home I can take my kids to school in the morning, sometimes even pick them up, have lunch with my wife, always be home for dinner, live in a very nice low cost area, and I even get to start work much earlier than I would if commuting.

Your idea would solve nothing.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#178

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:27 AM UTC

jaculabilis wrote: post #163

adamkf wrote: post #26

Here's the quote from the [actual whitepaper]( https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_... ) from Envoy that this article references: > 80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making. Envoy's not exactly an unbiased source here, since they sell software to collect this data.

So what this really says is that 80% of executives would have used a different approach if they had data about the subject. Which... is pretty lackluster? If you don't change your strategy in response to new data, you're bad at your job.

It says they would change their approach. It does not say they would change their position.

So while some may have been more open to letting employees work from home, others may have just decided they would’ve used different arguments against it instead now that they know the ones that used didn’t hold up (as widely forecast).

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#179

Post by justrealist » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:30 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #145

justrealist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The indignity of getting excluded from free cake is not an economic calculus. Lots of people could go to the grocery store and buy themselves a sheet cake. They don't.

But you're assuming that one likes cake/pizza/whatever cheap mediocre food product that's been mentioned. If I was that manager, I'd raise your cake/pizza/whatever with a freshly grilled filet and baked potato with a nice glass of wine. Remind them just what possibilities they are missing for being in the office like peasants! After all, isn't that the point of having direct reports being in the office while you're a…

To be clear, I've worked remotely for a decade. It's worth it on balance, but there's no need to try to sugarcoat missing office food. It's lame!

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#180

Post by dudul » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #147

Most (tech) jobs involve huge amounts of co-ordination and creativity. This is waaaay easier in person, so having all the people needed in the same location makes a huge difference. But the "same location" is almost an inverse square law. Same room - great. Really strong. Same floor . pretty good. Same building. Well that's starting to hurt. Different building, different town, different time zone. At the different ti…

Where do you get that coordination and creativity require in person time?

I would argue that most creative activities are better done alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And I coordinate just fine with tools available online.