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Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

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Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#351

Post by 542458 »

elzbardico wrote: post #333

Well, it is kind of funny when a millionaire tech bro tell me that remote work doesn't work to build some silly food delivery applications, when those silly applications run on top of an open source stack that was always heavily built on remote and async settings.

I don’t think that allegory works. That open source stack wasn’t built for the startup. Rather, the startup had a pick of hundreds of open source options and chose the one that worked best. Because there’s no collaboration or relationship between the startup and the OSS projects, of course there’s no need for them to communicate.

But I don’t think anybody would argue that a startup doesn’t need to communicate with it’s employees.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#352

Post by andy_ppp »

I am so tired of people in this community making vague and unbacked up feelings of how things are... In any other industry this sort of magical thinking would be called out as completely unscientific. You have the money to do actual studies and even hoards of startups to be able to test it. Release the raw numbers and do the study, don't just make things up based on your theory and a quote or an essay.

I'm willing to bet there are some startups who can do remote really well and others that fail at it, I doubt it's 100% proven that no startup ever can succeed with a large proportion of remote employees.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#353

Post by surgical_fire »

karthickshiva wrote: post #328
bediger4000 wrote: post #314

That seems like a dumb thing to say about an experience so many of us have. My productivity, health and state of mind were all better when I worked from home. Why is Altman lying to me?

I understand your frustration and disappointment with Altman's statement. However, it's important to remember that everyone's experience with working from home can vary greatly. While it may have been beneficial for you, it may not have been the same for others. It's also possible that Altman's statement was based on research or data that supports his claim. It's always good to keep an open mind and consider differen…

> Altman's statement was based on research or data that supports his claim

If it was based on research or data, they wouldn't hesitate to rub it on everyone's faces.

It's not. It's just feelings. The ruling class has abject fear of losing control over the peasantry. That the plebs have all of a sudden a benefit that was only available to the elites rubs them the wrong way.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#354

Post by rsynnott »

I mean, for reference this is the guy who thought Worldcoin was a good idea, so I’m not sure that people need pay _that_ much attention to his opinions on random stuff.

(I personally dislike remote work and won’t do it again now it’s no longer mandatory, but it seems to work for some people. Many companies have had permanent remote workers for years without the sky falling.)

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#355

Post by viraptor »

danielbln wrote: post #320

Keith Rabois, a general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, told The Logan Bartlett Show last week, adding that neither he nor his firm would invest in a venture based on it. Younger workers, he noted, “learn by osmosis” in a way that requires in-person interaction, and supervisors discover hidden talent by watching them. Uh huh right, discovering hidden talents, not micromanagement, no sir!

> Younger workers, he noted, “learn by osmosis” in a way that requires in-person interaction

Having spent a considerable number of hours in the last year explicitly doing work with / training junior staff... That's just silly.

Start open streams of your work. Give short presentations. Invite junior people when you do something interesting. It's really not a lot of effort and in-person is definitely not required.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#356

Post by bushbaba »

crypot wrote: post #343
onion2k wrote: post #325

The full quote is a bit narrower than the title implies; > "I think definitely one of the tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity,” he told attendees. "I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people c…

It is just part of the Silicon Valley lore. You know how all those successful start-ups were all started in big office complexes. It is just more creative that way. It has been obvious for a while now that the optimal workplace was designed in the 18th century.

It’s not just lore though. Harvard and others have done extensive research and found 100% remote is less effect for most organizations. Is office work the only solution here, no. Is some work cultures work better with remote, sure. However most companies benefit from in person work.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#357

Post by mycologos »

I think there's a mismatch between C-suite people, especially in startups, who believe that their company is a mission-driven force for effecting change in the world, something that workers can attach themselves to for meaning and purpose, and individual contributors who think the company is OK and maybe a little silly and are happy to help it along for remuneration, but aren't about to make it a load-bearing part of a spiritually fulfilling life. Most companies aren't that meaningful.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#358

Post by AHOHA »

matwood wrote: post #323
senttoschool wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your reference frame. You're thinking about it as an individual. But is your company's productivity better? Is your team's productivity better? That's ultimately what will come down to. It's fair to say that HN is overwhelmingly pro-remote work. This is because coding is uniquely "not bad" for remote work. And there are many coders on HN. But pretty much every other department is worse off with 100% remote…

Regardless of productivity (I think it's been shown to be better for WFH or at least equivalent), companies do not like WFH because it gives some power back to the worker. Culture and relationships can absolutely be built remotely, but it does require leadership to be deliberate. Another thing highlighted by WFH is just how bad leadership was/is.

Spot on, wfh is the practical answer that managers are useless for the most part, and most workers can actually work together and be productive without the circus that a lot of companies do as a “team building” activity. But wfh took some of the power play that companies used to do, and they want that back.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#359

Post by rndmnflnce »

Quality, speed and price is all that matters. How does remote work fill that out for your company's business? The age old, "you can only optimize for two of the three".

You can make anything optimally work over time, but is a fully optimized remote workflow better than a fully optimized in person workflow and at what cost in relative speed, quality and price? Depending on the people and the problems, some work is just naturally suited to in person. Making a generalization that remote work was a mistake is going a bit overboard.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#360

Post by tedivm »

tyingq wrote: post #341
jxf wrote: post #336

Asking a CEO for their opinion on remote work is like asking a feudal lord their opinion on democracy.

There's also quite a lot of these "remote work doesn't work" posts from C-level execs, board members, etc...that live far away from their company's headquarters. The dissonance is funny.

The people complaining that remote workers are taking on multiple jobs (without evidence) are the same people who act as CEO for multiple companies and serve on multiple boards.
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