Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

soatok.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 913 posts

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#461

Post by make3 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #149
Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

before, people weren't sure if it could be done, and if the productivity would be similar.

It's now been shown that it's possible and that productivity is very similar. So that's why companies forcing the return to work are resented, and why they don't even pretend to have numbers to back their decision. https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#462

Post by spacemadness »

olah_1 wrote: post #120
ckbishop wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as soon as I see that 2 days a month thing, I'm not applying for the position. That's my only critique.

And no one would care. It's been an employers market for a year and will continue that way for the foreseeable future.

Wouldn’t they though? We’ll see how this attitude shapes up in a year I guess.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#463

Post by drewcoo »

macksd wrote: post #269
cogman10 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, as some companies are changing their remote work policies to be return-to-office, there seems to be a lot of resentment about this, and I don't really understand why. Remote work availability and pay were often much lower. Further, if you were in my company, you had HR and C-Levels saying "Remote work is here to stay and will never go away" early on and often. It wasn't until about a year in that they starte…

That's because they are actually struggling to admit deeper problems with the company culture and processes that they don't know how to solve, and so they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things.

> they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things

It doesn't need to fix things. It just needs to appear they're "doing something."

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#464

Post by derefr »

EFreethought wrote: post #342
cogman10 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, as some companies are changing their remote work policies to be return-to-office, there seems to be a lot of resentment about this, and I don't really understand why. Remote work availability and pay were often much lower. Further, if you were in my company, you had HR and C-Levels saying "Remote work is here to stay and will never go away" early on and often. It wasn't until about a year in that they starte…

> remote work isn't working for us It is working out. I looked at a few financial statements for a few companies pushing RTO (Amazon and a couple of Wall Street firms). Granted, it wasn't comprehensive or scientific, but: They all made more money in 2022 than in 2019 (the last year before COVID). So I really do not see what the problem is.

Why are you comparing 2022 to 2019? Shouldn't you just look at YoY growth over 2021 — i.e. compare a year of full WFH to a year of RTO?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#465

Post by throwaway290 »

variants wrote: post #50
throwaway290 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been remote for 15 years, recently started full time job, love going to office. No strict work hours but I come anyway, nice to chat with colleagues (and much more productive than those tedious calls or text chats). Also I was already making myself leave home at least daily for physical activity, so if I'm out why not travel to the office? There's a nice coffeeshop near there. Also the chair is comfy enough, desk is…

As someone who works hands on so I have to work at the office I really wish more people fight to stay home, the commute was so much nicer with people working remote plus the office was much nicer to work in without all the noise and distractions

If you use public transport it works better (more cost efficient to run = more frequent) when more people use it, so my commute would not get better if people stayed home.

But I agree on the last part, I prefer it when certain coworkers WFH. TBH some days I strategically choose my office hours so I overlap with them less.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#466

Post by ajmurmann »

snotrockets wrote: post #419
EFreethought wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remote work isn't working for us It is working out. I looked at a few financial statements for a few companies pushing RTO (Amazon and a couple of Wall Street firms). Granted, it wasn't comprehensive or scientific, but: They all made more money in 2022 than in 2019 (the last year before COVID). So I really do not see what the problem is.

Managers can't look out of the office and feel powerful by watching the people they control.

Here are a few things that aren't working out from a management perspective:

Social bonding is much harder, but important for reliable collaboration, especially when there are disagreements. I also believe that conversations are more likely to derail when they aren't in person. I've also been part of so many lunch conversations in the office that resulted in someone being able to help out someone on a different team with an issue they had solved themselves previously, learn about activities on another team that were relevant to them etc. There are ways to achieve similar things in a remote setup, but it's hard, especially to deploy across large companies with thousands of people. For the record, I've worked fully in person, hybrid and remote and think hybrid is by far the hardest to make work.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#467

Post by charles_f »

> I woke up every day excited and motivated

What would I give to get that feeling...

> Ultimately, never choose the one giving you an ultimatum.

This is very good advice. Related, never trust a retention offer. The leverage you have to influence the change that it represents vanishes the moment you accept it

> don’t accept any relocation assistance

The number of people I've seen getting in trouble because they burnt a signing bonus before the minimum retention period, or forgot about the lawyer fees for their immigration paperwork and switched jobs too early. It's fine taking any of these as long as you accept that you're selling out for a couple of years... But read your contracts

> This outflow of money does hurt the local economies of said cities, including the ones that big tech companies are headquartered in. In some cases, this pain has jeopardized a lot of the tax incentives that said companies enjoy.

This is an explanation, others also related to financial incentives, some related to trust (a lot of managers don't trust that people are working when they can't directly see their screens).

I think there is also an argument to be made that wfh is not for everyone and everything, and that collaboration can work better in person. It's harder to build a team when most of your relationships are built in meetings. Seeing people once in a while is good to build trust, and I can get why some companies can take the position that this is a must have in their employment conditions.

Not that I would be interested to work for such a company though.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#468

Post by grumblingdev »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #211
grumblingdev wrote: post #20

Video conf still sucks. It's literally the same as 10 years ago. Does anyone have a workplace where it is really seamless, high resolution, and just works? Or is using any of these new technologies? Maybe VR will help... But not being in-person for collaboration/morale is miles apart. I wonder if employees would personally cover the cost of a one week meetup once per month if their other option was move city and offi…

> But not being in-person for collaboration/morale is miles apart. I do agree that collaboration is much more productive when remote. Nearly all of my exciting office "collaborations" end up feeling great then they're happening, but in retrospect, almost always fizzle out after a small window of time. I like onsites for the energy and socialization, but even then I always find most of the work happens back in the hot…

Exact same experience. Socialization is great but work is a solitary pursuit in an isolated space free from distractions.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#469

Post by standardUser »

andrewmutz wrote: post #149
Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

"We should just return to the status quo before COVID..."

Says the ownership class.

When we are given a rare and unique opportunity to shift our labor culture in the favor of those who provide labor, we would be beyond stupid not to seize that opportunity for everything it's worth.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#470

Post by macrael »

I've been fully remote for 6 years. I know people who's primary criteria for their next job is that it be in person. I think remote work is here to stay and there are so many people who are discovering that remote work is their preference thanks to the pandemic, but I don't think in person work is going to die, there are also lots of people that prefer that. I know that I made a lot of my first friends in SF at work and that would have been impossible if I had worked remote then. How that plays out at companies remains to be seen. I can imagine big companies divvying up workers by team. Some remote teams some in person teams. Smaller companies will likely need to make a more total choice.

Acting like there are no benefits to in person work is silly. One of the first things we did as a company going remote was to say that if anyone is on zoom in a meeting then everyone in the meeting needs to be on zoom even if many were physically in the same place. I don't think anyone would ever choose to sit in a conference room with 5 other people all on zoom together.

Everything is tradeoffs. Remote work just got a huge profile boost which is going to give a lot of people the opportunity to live life differently from how they did before. Now the pendulum is swinging back but it'll never get as far as it did before.

Post reply on HN