31–40 of 111 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the job. There a lot of downtime as a programmer.
You mean for sleep? Yeah, I suppose. But I never had a job programming where there wasn't something valuable to spend my time on
Corollary: If you didn't leave when ordered back to the office, you're not top tech talent.
I'm not seeing this at my workplace. People are doing what they are told, and they are returning to the office. Maybe because losing a job is risky right now, given the current job market. edit: don't get me wrong, I don't want RTO. I'm just saying that I'm personally not seeing people quit over it.
Either you're seeing mid-level or lower RTO or there's another reason.
Genuine "top talent" is the people that care about the company; they aren't leaving.
Since there are a lot of founders here, I'm curious about what your positions are whether you have any guides/references to creating a good environment. My own experience has been that with junior talent, they don't gel with the team and don't have anything in common with the rest of the employees outside of the project they're working on.
If I were building a remote company I would hire people out of chats. I would rather hire someone off of IRC than off of LinkedIn, because I know the people on IRC can communicate (and argue!) via text. This may mean Discord now. That's my strongest opinion.
Following that is managerial. I have had places that did not have 1:1s with your direct manager, just bi-weekly or daily 15 minute standups with everyone. That is a good way to sabotage your company. Employees have nowhere to air problems besides in front of the whole group, so problems don't get mentioned until they are breaking (e.g. I have been working on other stuff for 2 months waiting for this guy to deliver something, but I need it now).
Being good enough to know what needs to be done, and being able to hire good talent and then trust them to get that stuff done. I have seen non-technical founders being run around by a D-tier CTO. You need good people to get good people as well. That place had a very difficult time landing talent.
Finally, pay well. I think the standard early startup pay range (180k + 1%) will not get you the technical talent you need. Maybe I am overestimating the technical challenges many companies face, but I would not build a business off of $180k engineers. I would rather pay double that (while being selective about talent) and get something (better) built with fewer people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m kind of curious why people are under the impression that people don’t do this in the office too. I’ve known people to do full time online masters degrees during office hours. I’ve played a heck of a lot of video games in office. Certainly read a lot of books at the office. Offices are not some magical “go find work” hypnotic environments.
I can do nothing from anywhere: Hundreds of hours of KSP, hundreds of hours of factorio. The former in an office, the latter from home. If anything, in an office there's always an excuse not to work. And if you accidentally enter the zone and get something done, soon you are interrupted by inanities.
Apple is very RTO heavy because they’re an old school hardware company. Hardware work is easy to demand in office work because: (1) apple secrecy and prevention of leaks and (2) access to lab equipment. #2 likely holds true for spaceX as well.
Adding Microsoft to the mix is weird as nobody I know there actually RTOs.
I think people need to actually specifically measure which roles (senior? engineering?) in tech we are discussing RTO about here. I agree that for most software engineering it backfired. But if you’re an apple hardware engineer, there aren’t many places in town that’ll pay you as much so you’ll accept whatever horrible RTO hand you’re dealt. Companies apply these rules to everyone which is very, very stupid IMO.
I think the most interesting part about this being on the inside is the rationale behind RTO. It’s always the same citing culture, collaboration, or other fuzzy things. It is never quantitative. Are you telling me that the people making these decisions are doing so without data? I think that’s unlikely, it’s just that the data isn’t in their favor and execs are smart enough than to let remote versus not remote become yet another bargaining chip for an employee, let alone senior ones.
TLDR, I think senior vs not senior in tech is likely too much of a generalization. But the people with the actual data aren’t speaking up probably because discussing the results don’t benefit them.