I like my coworkers professionally and enjoy building stuff together, but hate contacting with them otherwise, like team-events, lunches, smalltalk near the coffee machine. Remote work has been such a blessing.
Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
51–60 of 194 posts
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#52Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
Incompetent engineers need to share work hours, otherwise they will get stuck and not get much done if nobody has overlapping times to help them. Not all engineers are high caliber.
If needing help at some point in time means being incompetent, I think that describes everyone I've ever worked with, including some really high caliber folk. Even a simple rubber duck conversation can beat useful thing now and then.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#53Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone.
When I'm doing UI work, it's far more efficient to have a real-time session with a designer rather than multiple rounds of email/Figma comments.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#54This will evolve. I think 100% remote is great for some people (small children, busy schedules, health issues) but many people would also benefit from being with their teams.
The change I'd like to see is some sort of geographically centric pod office where it's not mandatory, but a team lead could say, "We need two days at Pod X to run through A, B, C initiatives."
No one is required to arbitrarily attend a physical office, but rather very task and team specific meetings.
I think many people that are against that arbitrary return would be open to task/team scheduled gatherings.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand the point of a news article where not even a poll is used. Just saying "they've heard anecdotes" does nothing but reinforce existing biases that everyone here will have. Hard data will at least convince some people who have biases but trust scientific processes to change their opinions.
> Just saying "they've heard anecdotes" That's what a journalist does. They go out and listen to people and they tell you what they're hearing and provide context to it. You want a scientist - that's a different thing. Both are useful in practice.
I think the issue being taken is that it’s not even clear their data is coming directly from the workers in question as opposed to “I heard anecdotes” ie 3rd party stories.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#56Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone. When I'm doing UI work, it's far more efficient to have a real-time session with a designer rather than multiple rounds of email/Figma comments.
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Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#57I actually like talking to people in person and having those chats at their desk or coffee machine. However even I wasn’t ready for the noisy environment at a cubicle. Over the course of the pandemic I forgot how tough they make it to focus and now would much rather work from home!
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#58I'm still genuinely uncertain why companies are so desperate to get staff into the office. 'Business people' like HR, sales, marketing LOVE being together in person; Engineers somewhat less so. Given that companies tend to be run by 'business people' then yeah I think I just answered my own question.
I observed at my current company that the worse the manager the more they wanted people to be in the office. If you're a bad manager that no one tells anything to due to lack of trust and who doesn't tell the team anything then working remotely is basically a giant mess. In the office a manager can more easily spy and micromanage people while organic cross-team communication can work around the manager's lack of communication.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#59Of course this is happening. I’m coming up on year 10 of working remotely, and year 2 of completely async. The only forced-commute job I ever had was for 6 months right out of college. I’ve been preaching remote work for almost the entire time I’ve been doing it. I thought it would catch on much sooner, but it’s here now. I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no…
Maybe this works as an IC that has no collaborative aspect to their day-to-day but as an IC leader async adds material pauses and latency into projects. If everybody is ok with everything taking longer at the start and end of projects then cool (the middle implementation phase is less impacted) but taking a day to answer a question that could have taken minutes is not a bonus.
I’m a CTO and startup founder. We ship faster and more often than any team I’ve worked on or observed (multiple times per week). I think your assumption are bad.
Re: Workers quitting over return-to-office policies
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully “the next pandemic” will not be like this one at all. Because how “the experts” handled this one was shamefully wrong. At virtually every decision point these “experts” did the exact wrong thing. From years of school closures to two years of forced masks to intentionally frightening the daylights out of people. They did everything wrong. History will not look fondly at what was done. I hope to god we never…
How else would an someone, expert or not, respond to an contagious airborne virus other than masks and closing schools/offices??
They would update their opinions when they received new facts. They would also make a bigger effort to acquire new facts.