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80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

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Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#501

Post by [deleted] »

closeparen wrote: post #496
evantbyrne wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get what they pay for. Companies that offer remote jobs will be able to pick from and retain a wider gamut of talent. I suspect a lot of this RTO is related to the tech market just generally being down. Once things heat back up, recruiters will be knocking down doors to get people to interview for remote gigs just like before. It may take some time to get to that point though, because there are a number of facto…

My contention is they won’t be able to sustain it, because either the wages will be uncompetitive or remote workers will pay off their houses and no longer need to work (as much).

[deleted]

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#502

Post by atleastoptimal »

Sai_ wrote: post #200
atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

You're missing the fact that work/job _is_ life changing for someone who needs it to put food on the table. Just because no one is inventing anti-cancer medication every other week doesn't mean that person's internal world is not improved by having a job.

> food on the table

That point has nothing to do with WFH. If you get paid you can afford food, regardless of where you work. In fact WFH is better because you can save up to 2 hours a day not commuting and instead can spend it on cooking, grocery shopping, food prep, gardening, or any other food on the table related task.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#503

Post by atleastoptimal »

n4r9 wrote: post #409
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee It's not a straw-man, I've seen behavior in the past year that I've never seen in my entire career things as absurd as someone working 7 other jobs while pretending to work for us. Frankly it isn't worth the risk or waste of time or money anymore. Thankfully just by saying you need to be in the office a few days a week will weed out 90% of timewasters. >employers who ha…

> someone working 7 other jobs while pretending to work for us... Thankfully just by saying you need to be in the office a few days a week will weed out 90% of timewasters Either they're not producing enough output to warrant their salary - in which case you have good grounds to fire them regardless - or they're perfectly productive - in which case why does it matter? The biggest issue many managers have is that they…

Many employers feel very insecure when their employees don't spend the majority of their waking hours fixated on their job.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#504

Post by [deleted] »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #461
closeparen wrote: post #153

I have a new conspiracy theory on RTO in Big Tech. Much has been said about commercial real estate. But I think getting highly capable people to work hard for you is a difficult problem & something tech executives put a lot of thought into. If you don't pay people enough, someone else will. But if you pay them too much, they'll become financially independent. Mid six figures is an objectively life-changing amount of…

This is too “brilliant villain”. Too many chain links of logic to actually implement and make work. I suspect it’s the far more evil banality of “we paid for this office space and it’s pretty awkward to explain to the board why we have this red line item for a ‘10 year lease - office space’ and nobody is in there, so let’s just force 100s of people to come back in against all common sense and metrics that show this i…

[deleted]

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#505

Post by closeparen »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #461
closeparen wrote: post #153

I have a new conspiracy theory on RTO in Big Tech. Much has been said about commercial real estate. But I think getting highly capable people to work hard for you is a difficult problem & something tech executives put a lot of thought into. If you don't pay people enough, someone else will. But if you pay them too much, they'll become financially independent. Mid six figures is an objectively life-changing amount of…

This is too “brilliant villain”. Too many chain links of logic to actually implement and make work. I suspect it’s the far more evil banality of “we paid for this office space and it’s pretty awkward to explain to the board why we have this red line item for a ‘10 year lease - office space’ and nobody is in there, so let’s just force 100s of people to come back in against all common sense and metrics that show this i…

That’s surely a factor for remote work in particular, but we must also ask why engineering orgs that embrace globally distributed sites & happily span SF, SEA, and NYC allow for so few seats in places like Chicago, the Triangle, or the Sun Belt. It’s cheaper & the collaboration setup is no different!

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#506

Post by bassclari »

GMoromisato wrote: post #202
atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

Complete tangent: I wonder if it's uniquely American to believe that people can/should only be passionate about jobs that are world-changing. Or maybe it's just very common in the tech-world and HN. I'm absolutely guilty of this. I'm a software engineer, and I feel proud of having worked on products that millions of people use. Steve Jobs's challenge to "put a dent in the universe" is axiomatic for many of us. Yet I…

We are just more full of shit in America. Being passionate and changing the world is Silicon valley kabuki theater that lasts just long enough to cash out the stock options you have.

There is also an entire generation that has been trained to pretend what they happen to do for a living is exactly what they are passionate about in life. To say otherwise with the slightest doubt would be to feel like the biggest failure.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#507

Post by xp84 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #269
throw__away7391 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I start work around 6:00 AM and frequently am still at it at 8:00 PM. I've always been a top performer, but I still worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll get laid off. I still prefer this arrangement to going to the office.

>I still worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll get laid off that's the neat part; you get laid off anyway. Layoffs are rarely actually about keeping the most productive people on board. If they want your wing of work to be marked as a redundancy, there's not much you can do from a purely productive standpoint.

And supposedly, layoffs aren’t legally allowed to be performance or merit-based! You’re supposed to lay off only for eliminating a position. When projects are shut down, that’s a natural one, but when it’s a X% cut of all engineering staff, for instance, it’s meant to be almost random, on paper at least. Of course in real life nobody would lay off the absolute most genius 10x developer, but nobody’s supposed to be laid off because they’re slackers. If they’re slackers that should be a separate issue and a PIP.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#508

Post by bshacklett »

mcv wrote: post #480
dboreham wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussions that should be 1:1 become 1:N, wasting the time of (N-1) people.

Discussions, yes, but discussions aren't for the standup meeting. Those are for informally updating everybody on what you're working on and whether you're stuck on anything. They lead to 1 on 1 meetings to solve those issues.

That’s the problem. Most teams don’t have stand-ups. They have gigantic status meetings on a daily basis, which is rarely valuable.

Give me a meeting every day to get people to talk about blockers, but it should be 15-30 seconds per person at most, and it should be scheduled outside of productive hours (easier said than done).

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#509

Post by captainbland »

ascotan wrote: post #378
wonderwonder wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open offices are terrible. Management knows they are as well because Sr. leadership almost always have their own offices. The peons sit in the pit. Until the CEO is sitting next to everyone else they are all speaking lies when preaching the benefits of an open office. The only benefit is that its cheaper and they can keep an eye on you.

it's a millennial thing. they grew up working on laptops and their dream office is to make the workplace look like starbucks. Open seating, no cubicles, a barista. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the old office place standard of 'cubes'. Managers hire out to consultants that hype this type of office layout because it will supposedly attract a talent. To be fair, cubes weren't any better. I remember having a guy slerping…

Speaking as a millennial: open offices were there when we got there! If we did anything it was to keep hybrid/WFH arrangements where we could.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#510

Post by footy »

Ms-J wrote: post #495

I've noticed that CEO's who forced people back to the office really regretted it after the senior engineer's and related all quit. They offered to make it remote again but by that time all of their talent left so at least two companies I know of. There is no amount of money that would get the best and most talented to go work in an office. Productivity suffers immensely in an office as opposed to working from home.

This happened at my old job. I left because of RTO (after trying to come to a reasonable agreement with my manager). Between the day I put in my two weeks' notice and my actual last day, there were at least seven farewell emails from other devs. The company was about 500 people, so that's >1% attrition in two weeks.

The CEO spoke to me for the first time ever trying to get me to stay, offered me a gigantic raise, etc. Leaving was the best thing I've done for my career.

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