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Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

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Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#71

Post by npteljes »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #67
npteljes wrote: post #59

I firmly believe that management doesn't, or shouldn't mind this. I think a successful company is not necessarily built on top talent, but rather on people whose behavior can be managed - and on managers that are similarly competent. Similar to how on a building site, extraordinary bricklayers are not necessary, only a specific kind of adequacy is. The other thing is that people who have something extraordinary also…

This is an interesting perspective. I almost agree, in that many or most companies out there will be more or less fine with mid-tier talent. Not every company or product requires the best talent out there. But I still think there will be downstream effects to driving out strong performers, and time will be the judge there.

>many or most companies out there will be more or less fine with mid-tier talent.

Indeed. As my years go by, I value reliability more than talent, possibilities, records. For example when playing games, I always leave a good buffer so that the card delivers the 60 fps in the most complex scenes too. I value that more than beautiful, but sometimes choppy performance.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#72

Post by anal_reactor »

mlrtime wrote: post #70
anal_reactor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a junior. First I worked at a small company that was oriented towards remote work. At the beginning I would show up in the office, but the company had a policy "instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue I'll get back to later?", which made me furious because I'm a naturally talkative person. So I spent two years working remotely. Not gonna lie,…

"instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue" Right because context switches are very expensive, and you are just one person. If everyone did what you did, the other end would be busy talking and not doing. Instead, file your bug/report and give some indication of criticality. I understand why you don't like this approach but think of it from the othe…

> I understand why you don't like this approach but think of it from the other side's perspective.

I did and my opinion remains unchanged.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#73

Post by hiq »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #68
kdmytro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, but they buy a pass to a gym that is closer to home, which does not help building relationships within the company.

When I worked at a company with a gym, people would finesse their workout into their working day, so they weren't spending additional time in their day working out. That's the perk imo, the time savings and convenience, not saving on a gym membership.

Part of the perk is also avoiding the question "is it worth it for me?". There's way less friction when something is free, even when compared with a somewhat negligible price.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#74

Post by vundercind »

anal_reactor wrote: post #47
noufalibrahim wrote: post #16

Since there are a lot of founders here, I'm curious about what your positions are whether you have any guides/references to creating a good environment. My own experience has been that with junior talent, they don't gel with the team and don't have anything in common with the rest of the employees outside of the project they're working on.

I'm a junior. First I worked at a small company that was oriented towards remote work. At the beginning I would show up in the office, but the company had a policy "instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue I'll get back to later?", which made me furious because I'm a naturally talkative person. So I spent two years working remotely. Not gonna lie,…

> which made me furious because I'm a naturally talkative person.

Huh. Every “I’ll just come over” or “can we hop on a quick call?” for something I’m 90% sure can be sorted out within 20 messages makes me want to go take a walk instead. Writing’s great because I can refer back to it. If it’s in a channel with the rest of the team, it keeps them up to speed on what’s happening. Unless we really need to screen share or something (it happens!) turning a few messages into a call or an at-desk conversation drives me nuts.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#75

Post by thegreatbeanz »

Disclosure: In October 2021 after 10 years working at Apple I left to join Microsoft, so I’m not totally unbiased.

I love the sentiment this article is expressing, and anecdotally the thesis holds in my experience: senior engineers have lots of opportunity, so they can (and will) leave if they disagree with office policies.

That said, the article is not good journalism. Its own cited data doesn’t actually represent the conclusion it draws.

SpaceX took an extremely draconian return-to-office policy and they suffered for it, but they also suffered for Musk being insane, so I’m not sure the causation is 100% there.

Apple actually took the next most draconian policy (required 3 days in the office per week from every employee), and in fact Apple’s enforcement of the policy has been extremely draconian. An acquaintance of mine got in trouble for hopping on a plane to visit their dying parent and not filling out the HR form to use their allowed “two weeks per year” of remote working. One of my former departments at Apple has management checking badge in and out times to enforce the policy. That’s insane!

Microsoft’s policy has been the most liberal of the three (which isn’t shown in the data). I left Apple in 2021 in the face of being forced back to the office for a fully-remote role at Microsoft on a team that transitioned from fully in the office in 2018 to fully dispersed in 2021. Articles like this (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/microsoft-rto....) don’t properly capture Microsoft’s official return to work policy. Microsoft effectively left decisions about returning to the office up to managers and teams, and the corporate leadership incentivized managers to be more liberal by allowing teams to grow more if they hired more remote workers. At one point my team was told that 50% of all new hires were required to be fully remote.

The drama day of Microsoft’s policy taking effect which was cited in some articles was really a nothingburger. All you had to do was check the HR website to make sure it properly reflected if you were remote, in-office, or hybrid.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#76

Post by ryathal »

mlrtime wrote: post #70
anal_reactor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a junior. First I worked at a small company that was oriented towards remote work. At the beginning I would show up in the office, but the company had a policy "instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue I'll get back to later?", which made me furious because I'm a naturally talkative person. So I spent two years working remotely. Not gonna lie,…

"instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue" Right because context switches are very expensive, and you are just one person. If everyone did what you did, the other end would be busy talking and not doing. Instead, file your bug/report and give some indication of criticality. I understand why you don't like this approach but think of it from the othe…

A minor delay in progress for someone else to be unblocked is generally a win.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#77

Post by [deleted] »

tail_exchange wrote: post #13

I'm not seeing this at my workplace. People are doing what they are told, and they are returning to the office. Maybe because losing a job is risky right now, given the current job market. edit: don't get me wrong, I don't want RTO. I'm just saying that I'm personally not seeing people quit over it.

[deleted]

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#78

Post by dole »

calderwoodra wrote: post #33
tail_exchange wrote: post #13

I'm not seeing this at my workplace. People are doing what they are told, and they are returning to the office. Maybe because losing a job is risky right now, given the current job market. edit: don't get me wrong, I don't want RTO. I'm just saying that I'm personally not seeing people quit over it.

There's no risk for senior engineers. Senior engineers have all the power in the current job market. Either you're seeing mid-level or lower RTO or there's another reason.

Senior engineers are the new mid-level, or you graduate to management. Maybe YOUNG "senior engineers" seem to have the power, the Sr. Engineers pushing 50 and 60 need to prove their worth against younger and cheaper work, domestic or offshore/remote.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#79

Post by atmavatar »

ryathal wrote: post #76
mlrtime wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"instead of talking to me, can you write a message on public Slack channel, or even better, make a github issue" Right because context switches are very expensive, and you are just one person. If everyone did what you did, the other end would be busy talking and not doing. Instead, file your bug/report and give some indication of criticality. I understand why you don't like this approach but think of it from the othe…

A minor delay in progress for someone else to be unblocked is generally a win.

That depends on a lot of factors:

* How minor is the delay?

  The more senior the person being asked, the more likely they're working on something complex enough such that the delay incurred by an interruption is non-trivial.
* Is the person asking actually blocked?

  Often times, people get into a mode where they will interrupt others to ask questions they could have answered themselves with a little additional research.
* How important is the blocked task relative to the delayed task?

  More often, the person asking the question is more junior, making it likely they're working on more trivial tasks.  The person being asked, often more senior, is more likely to be working on more valuable tasks.  It's possible even a slight delay in the latter's task is a greater cost to the business than leaving the former person's task blocked.
As an extreme example: you don't want an intern interrupting someone trying to resolve a downtime event just so the intern can get unblocked on a throwaway project.

Re: Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds

#80

Post by greenthrow »

tucnak wrote: post #53
greenthrow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no. The only people who care about the company are the execs who own enough stock to care and green newbies who haven't been burned yet by companies who do not care about them at all.

So cynical! I'm trembling.

Don't be childish. It's just the truth.
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