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Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

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Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#191

Post by starky »

lolinder wrote: post #33
TexanFeller wrote: post #16

I have ADHD and am autistic so loud open floor plan offices are a challenge. I'm in the category of people most likely to benefit from remote. Honestly it's been a much bigger challenge trying to collaborate and connect with coworkers in the new world than trying to cope with an office. People often don't perceive you as an actual human if you've only ever been a video square to them. And quick collaboration just doe…

I hate to be the guy who says "you're holding it wrong", but complaints like this usually indicate that a company is trying to manage their remote work the same way they did in the office, with no adjustments. Some specifics: > People often don't perceive you as an actual human if you've only ever been a video square to them. My remote company does regular on-sites and off-sites, which for me strikes a perfect balanc…

>I think the root of it is that going remote revealed just how much time senior engineers spend mentoring juniors by requiring that that time be scheduled.

This is the big thing I've noticed in general with WFH, I miss those interactions where the junior members of the team ask me a quick question because I happen to be in their area. Those questions never get asked now beacuse they have to make the effort to send a message over chat and there is an extra mental barrier about asking something potentially stupid over text. So many people are more comfortable interrupting me when sitting on a call than they are sending the chat message.

I've also seen it with a new team that the company recently spun up that does work related to my team. The manager wanted to leave the new hires to somewhat figure it out on their own and just be available to provide guidance if they ask for it. Their onboarding and getting up to speed has been super slow because of it.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#192

Post by starky »

al_borland wrote: post #84
jonahhorowitz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said this in other places, but as a _manager_ it's much nicer to work in the office, in person. That gets more true the higher up the management chain you go. Managers spend most of their time in meetings. Meetings suck over video chat. This is the entire reason CEOs (and pretty much everyone between them and line employees) would rather everyone come back to work. It makes their workday more pleasant.

The idea of in-person meetings only works if there is one office where everyone is at. I was forced to move to another state (pre-pandemic). The people on my team were in offices, but 5 different offices. So I moved to another state to be in an office, so I could sit on the phone all day, every day. There is no sense to that. It’s no exaggeration that the forced move cost me tens of thousands of dollars… and for what…

>Meetings should either be 100% in-person, or 0% in person. Anything in between is a bad experience.

Agreed, even one person joining remotely completely changes the meeting. The remote person is slightly out of sync with everyone, can't participate in any whiteboarding sessions, and you lose the connection because they are a face (or icon) on the screen and they are looking at a wide angle feed of the entire room.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#193

Post by LtWorf »

Aloisius wrote: post #171
junto wrote: post #64

I question the competency of any CEO that enforces people return to the office on a whim. We have crossed the rubicon on remote work. The shift has been well and truly paradigmed. To choose to restrict your candidate pool to a small geographical location, pay relocation, pay higher salaries, have a lower employee NPS, have higher company carbon emissions, whilst your competitors have a much larger non-geographically…

I'm rather amazed at the short-sightedness of the highly paid engineers here who don't see the dangers of full remote actually being adopted. If a company is no longer limited to just hiring people physically nearby, then you're competing for jobs against a whole lot of people who'd accept much lower salaries.

Companies already do that anyway. But they still need to hire people in the same timezone more or less.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#195

Post by cookie_monsta »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #190
cookie_monsta wrote: post #69

My boss (middle management) is very staunchly opposed to more than 1 day per week of WFH. She spends about 90% of her time on video calls, so I was always confused by that until she was telling me that when she does WFH she's always distracted by other things which doesn't happen in the office. Maybe a lot of the WFH opposition is really just managers projecting their own work ethic onto others?

> She spends about 90% of her time on video calls Doing what? And I ask this not as someone who is a junior, or even mid-level, far above it. But this legitimately seems like "make-work." UBI would go a long way to resolving a large class of these problems. The absurdity of driving into an office, to get on video calls is not a new absurdity or problem, but we already proved its pointless. And yet people stick to it.…

Remember how excited we were at the start of the pandemic? "Now we get to find out which of those meetings could have been an email" the joke went.

But now it turns out that almost every email exchange degrades into "let's get everybody together and have a quick video chat about this"

Ha ha.

I don't think UBI would help the situation as much as people being bold enough to make decisions on their own without a bunch of useless "consultation"

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#196

Post by Aloisius »

LtWorf wrote: post #193
Aloisius wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather amazed at the short-sightedness of the highly paid engineers here who don't see the dangers of full remote actually being adopted. If a company is no longer limited to just hiring people physically nearby, then you're competing for jobs against a whole lot of people who'd accept much lower salaries.

Companies already do that anyway. But they still need to hire people in the same timezone more or less.

Some companies do, but most don't as they have trouble managing remote workers. Forcing companies to become good at it eliminates what few barriers keep them from follow suit.

Timezones are a barrier, but 650 million people live within three timezones of the SF Bay Area.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#197

Post by [deleted] »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #189
benatkin wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their team should probably spend more time in the office during the new hire's first few weeks too Would this be mandatory? If so, a team member might be inclined to sabotage a new hire.

If someone's intentionally keeping their own team understaffed just to avoid a couple of weeks of coming into the office 3 days a week instead of 2 days a week, I think you have bigger problems than the specific situation.

[deleted]

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#198

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #75
atleastoptimal wrote: post #18

I agree that there is a real difference between being at work vs working from home. You build a connection to the workplace. Your brain shifts into "work mode" by default. People talk to each other, culture develops, etc. These are obviously all good things. The problem is, most jobs people do have an element of mindlessness and aren't cutting edge, innovating spaces. Most white-collar jobs people work in are satelli…

> Your brain shifts into "work mode" by default. I never found this to be the case in office. However I would agree with you on the shift out. 30 mins into the gym or drive home and I was able to stop thinking about work. Whereas now it's often 8-9pm at home before I go "whoa, I should dim these blue lights and do something with my life"

If you really want this to change, have kids.

Note: this is bad advice.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#199

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

throwiforgtnlzy wrote: post #129

FYI: Meta is de-facto insisting on RTO and not offering a remote option for new employees. This trend has nothing to do with productivity and is all about the egos of control-freak managers "maintaining control" over employees in a way that wastes employees' time and money and harms the company's reputation.

Meta has always, always always sucked at remote. The culture just doesn't support it. I worked from an office many timezones away from my team for a long time and it was incredibly difficult to be productive.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#200

Post by SebFender »

charlie0 wrote: post #15

Hybrid work is the worst of both worlds. Can't move out of a HCOL and now you have to co-ordinate with your co-workers to reap any "benefits" of being in-office. What would be really cool is reconceptualizing hybrid work as quarterly retreats, where the company provides housing and other amenities for 1 to 2 weeks every quarter. This gives everyone time to bond and work on harder problems. I get this wouldn't work as…

Any minute I'm out of offices is great for me. They've now become this lost soul area with unassigned desks, ridiculous spaces and security measures.
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