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Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

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Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#201

Post by dsyrk »

leesalminen wrote: post #105
stragio wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like you ruin planet earth, really, try to put more trust in people. Oh and if you didn't yet, watch Black Mirror.

Exactly. Why employ people you don’t trust? It sounds very tiring. I certainly don’t have time for it running a successful, fast-growing company. I’ve employed people before who eroded my trust in them. I either fired them or nudged them to find a new job, depending on the severity of the thing they did to make me not trust them.

You must be fairly young and idealistic. It’s really hard to know people well enough to be able to trust them. Especially in this new WFH environment are you going to know your employees after a few skype calls? I’ve been in tech for over 25 years now and a manager for last 15, the level of deceit one comes across is mind blowing. In one case we had an employee we all liked and thought well of, did decent work, extremely friendly, and we caught him trying to copy all the company’s code to a USB drive attached to his workstation under his desk. People are crazy you never know what they will do.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#202

Post by irrational »

mlang23 wrote: post #24

I cant wait until I can go back to the office 100%. WFH, while convenient, is something I never wanted. I didnt want it 20 years ago when I started to work, and I dont want it full time today either, even with the covid experience. Human interaction is not tradable, and online conferencing sucks even more then a real meeting.

We need some way to support both preferences. I’ve also been working professionally for more than 20 years and I absolutely hate working in an office. This past year working from home has done more to improve my mental health than I could possibly imagine. Just the thought of having to work in an office again makes me sick. But I can also understand that there are people like you. I don’t really understand why you feel that way, but I don’t really need to as long as accommodations are made for both people like me and people like you.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#203

Post by amerkhalid »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #150
Raed667 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling with the idea of hybrid WFH. It still means that I need to live near the office. Instead of a cheaper, quieter place far away from cities. Besides making middle-management happy, I'm not sure what is the benefit of having one required day per week at the office.

I find in person meetings more effective. I’d rather meet once a week or 2 and get all the big meetings done then go away to code, than have Zoom meetings every single day. I predict that in all the full time WFH companies, some small group will start having in person meets once every X. Or some other startup will innovate past an incumbent by having a hybrid model. Then hybrid will be the next “new” thing.

Zoom meetings have made me appreciate in-person meetings so much. It seems phrases like these, "Can you hear me?", "Sorry I was on mute", "You are breaking up", "Sorry can you repeat that", "Sorry my internet connection is bad today", take up way too much time. Then people speaking over each other and you cannot understand anyone at all.

I think once a week in-person meetings and rest of week heads down WFH would be a great idea. Or we can do everything in async communication like emails.

And no, not Slack. It is even more distracting and should ideally be used only during scheduled meeting in place of Zoom or for emergency situations.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#204

Post by erik_seaberg »

ghaff wrote: post #148
RandallBrown wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a hybrid model where the office is essentially a private coworking space could work pretty well. The company would be run like they're fully remote but there would be an easy place for people to meet up when necessary.

>The company would be run like they're fully remote You sort of have to if some people are in-office and some aren't. For example, and I know a lot of folks don't want to hear this, but it's a good practice that everyone does video calls from their own desk. I also hear of companies looking at reconfigurations of their spaces to be more collaboration-oriented, e.g. more space to conference rooms and enclaves with a l…

I’m not comfortable meeting at my desk unless literally all my neighbors are supposed to be participating (not concentrating on something else). My office has some phone booths that were so popular (pre-pandemic) that it's been hard to find an empty one.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#205

Post by FpUser »

xvector wrote: post #3

Can’t imagine not having at least partial WFH after this pandemic. If my office doesn’t let me WFH, I will also be leaving. A good portion of my team is similarly minded, but management is insistent on disallowing WFH. I can’t wait to see their faces when the company bleeds massive swaths of engineering talent. It’s about damn time that companies realized that they ought to treat their employees like the adults that…

Never mind that. In some companies HR mandates meetings on various social and workplace issues where they essentially being told what they should think. This blatant disregard for freedom of thought makes me think of nothing short of "politinformation" meetings in good old USSR. Teambuilding outings especially when forced and on weekends fall into the same category.

I am very lucky that I was employed only in one company before going on my own and never had to deal with the crap like that personally but I saw it happen to other people.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#206

Post by d110af5ccf »

ghaff wrote: post #192
d110af5ccf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... the extremely rare spark of whiteboard innovation is not worth ... Crazy idea - install a whiteboard at home and point a 4k camera at it. The broke college student version of this involves a pen, paper, and the camera on your cellphone; it works quite well.

Whiteboard area in a conference room has some challenges to recreate. That said, we've found collaborative editing replaces a lot of sloppy handwriting and people capturing with smartphones and recreating after the meeting. To say nothing of the fact, that wealthy SV companies complaining that they have to structure their entire companies arounf in-person because virtual whiteboards are a really hard problem should b…

I didn't mean to claim 100% equivalence, just to point out how trivial it is to replace the core functionality if that's really what the issue is. Personally I think that collaborative editing tools are a strict improvement in all areas except for free form diagrams.

> virtual whiteboards

Even a fully virtual equivalent is fairly trivial. Just buy a damn drawing tablet already! Being good enough to do commercial artwork on, they're all but guaranteed to far exceed the needs of any software developer.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#207

Post by durovo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #4

By “quitting” they mostly mean getting new jobs or career changes. Not necessarily refusing to work in an office. The headline is misleading. It’s also still a relatively small number in absolute terms: > In April, the share of U.S. workers leaving jobs was 2.7%, according to the Labor Department, a jump from 1.6% a year earlier to the highest level since at least 2000. The higher turnover is expected in a booming ec…

What people miss in these discussions about going full remote is that the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever. Many companies are surely going to embrace full-remote once they have built up the right processes and infra.

When that happens, it is not going to matter whether you live in California or Mexico or Brazil. It is much easier to replace an employee who is working remotely, the burden of looking for employees in the locality of your office is gone. Wages will stop growing. While WFH is very convenient, the strong market is giving developers a false impression that they won't become replaceable cogs in the future.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#208

Post by irrational »

marcinzm wrote: post #39
brabel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. Just don't be surprised if you're the only one at the office when you get there, though. You might need to find human interaction outside work.

Being the only one talking to the VPs and CEO in the office during lunch is probably going to be a great career boost. So don't be surprised when the people who go into the office get the nice promotions and you don't. Interestingly my whole team is very much in favor of being in the office a few days a week.

Where do you work that the C-level people eat in the same place as the office workers?

I’ve worked at a Fortune 500 company for 20 years and I’ve never so much as seen a C-level person, even though we all work on the same campus. They have separate parking garages, separate buildings, separate fitness facilities, separate eating facilities, etc.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#209

Post by lmm »

disrael wrote: post #151
pavel_lishin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of meetings are much easier to have in person. Socializing, as other people pointed out, is also much easier in person.

Just how close are you trying to be with your co-workers? My parents don't live in the same state with me but we talk weekly on the phone and meet once in a while in person. If you need hourly contact with your co-workers I hope it's more about doing the job then socializing. If it is about doing the job and your job is software development then are alternatives to endless meetings.

Humans were not made to spend 40+ hours/week not socializing.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#210

Post by crummy »

tolbish wrote: post #193
b3morales wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine! (I've said this in another similar thread recently:) The push here (to the extent that it's organized) should not be "abolish offices, everyone is remote". It should be "trust people to choose the environment where they work best". If you like the office, then you should be able to choose a company that has an office for you to work in. I personally work remotely and find it suits me. But I wouldn't mind…

The problem is that the "I like the office and everyone else should too because it legitimizes and popularizes my choices" crowd will never say that out loud so you don't know which arguments are in earnest.

Well, probably a lot of "I like the office" implies "... because I like being around my coworkers" and that obviously falls apart if you're the only one.
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