Shitty management/lack of processes.
That's it.
And I think it's understandable. Management is hard.
Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
41–50 of 921 posts
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#42People need social connections with their peers to work together successfully. It's much easier to build these connections in the office than virtually. Seeing each other a couple times per quarter for an extended period could also work, but it's easier--if you already have an office space--to bring people together in the office once or twice a week.
You can do this through any video conferencing platform. Or do we need to smell our coworkers for teamwork to work?
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like a reason why an employee would go to the office. But not really something employer would care about - they don't care about employees social lifes in other contexts.
I disagree, that's exactly why an employer would want that. Team cohesion is important.
You can't have team cohesion and outsource so better learn to scale early.
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just get rid of the office space and use the money saved to get people together twice per quarter for an extended period? I bet in almost every case it would be a significant cost savings for the employer. Unless, of course, there is some other reasoning than what you state in your comment, like for example, middle management feeling irrelevant or sunk cost fallacy on office space?
It's very hard to get people to travel for days at a time. Especially those with children.
This is true.
Companies can make this more appealing by holding the meetings in nice parts of the world -- note, nice doesn't have to be outrageously expensive -- putting people up in nice hotels with suitable space for spouses and kids, and by making the week before vacation for half the group and the week after for the other half, with the option to stay in the same hotel at the company's expense.
This won't work for everyone, or every company, but it's a much nicer carrot than usual.
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#45People need social connections with their peers to work together successfully. It's much easier to build these connections in the office than virtually. Seeing each other a couple times per quarter for an extended period could also work, but it's easier--if you already have an office space--to bring people together in the office once or twice a week.
Five years in office. Five years fully remote with a team of dozens of fully remote engineers. I find the latter, in my experience, to be strictly superior in all ways including working together successfully despite being remote. I think we overrate the need to build in-person social rapports. Just be a professional. I think there’s a concept where often work colleagues become friends and we misidentify that as being…
To whit, open source projects have been run for decades over nothing but email mailing lists. People participating in these projects feel a strong social connection.
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#46People need social connections with their peers to work together successfully. It's much easier to build these connections in the office than virtually. Seeing each other a couple times per quarter for an extended period could also work, but it's easier--if you already have an office space--to bring people together in the office once or twice a week.
More important role of those connections is that they promote inertness in the employees so they will remain employees even when they are disadvantaged because social component will hold them back from moving on.
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#47Some problems are solved faster by multiple people getting together in front of a whiteboard and drawing. For those kinds of problems it’s useful to have people in the same room until we have AR solutions that can fill that need. Also for some people, not leaving their home caused significant issues in their performance. People aren’t solitary creatures, so for some - the office fills that role. For others, home offi…
Ha the good old tale of people gathering around the whiteboard to solve hard problem. IME, it's usually 30/60 minutes during which the Architect listens to himself, draws some nice boxes and arrows, overlooks all the edge cases and nuances and then everyone goes back to their open space desk. And the next day you realize that the solution doesn't work and you start a Jira comment thread.
Are you in my office?
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just get rid of the office space and use the money saved to get people together twice per quarter for an extended period? I bet in almost every case it would be a significant cost savings for the employer. Unless, of course, there is some other reasoning than what you state in your comment, like for example, middle management feeling irrelevant or sunk cost fallacy on office space?
It's very hard to get people to travel for days at a time. Especially those with children.
Couldn't one say the same about getting people to come to an office 250 days per year?
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#49It’s usually the executive class of employees making these decisions, and they want to convey business as usual to the board and others that they report to. They also work differently than almost everyone else. They usually have meeting all day and the topics and decisions being made benefit greatly from the in person dynamics. They also get a lot done by just dropping by other peoples desks and quickly having an impromptu conversation.
They’re pretty removed from the way you work as a non-executive and don’t really care that you can accomplish your job just as easily remotely. In their mind, it’s not best for the company.
They’ve also lived the mandatory WFH days and the whole decision making processes slowed down or they just put a lot of things on hold because it couldn’t fully or appropriately be decided without difficult meeting logistics. These are things you’re unlikely to be aware of as a non-executive.
Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very hard to get people to travel for days at a time. Especially those with children.
Couldn’t the employer just hire people close together if they feel like that is an issue and still not have an office space?
When I owned a business, that’s what I did. Everyone worked remotely, except for me and a couple of people. I had a small coworking space simply because working out of my shoebox sized apartment was not fun. I hired everyone from the local area & occasionally had a meeting in the coworking space.