771–780 of 969 posts
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For some people, what they wear has an impact on their own performance. It's not necessarily about how others perceive them, and it's not necessarily logical. Some people work better with music, or with a window to look out... some people work better in fancier attire.
If only it was possible to dress up at home…
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> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office. This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM…
> cameras on 100% i hate the idea of camera on 100% of the time. I am not presentable when WFH. That's the point. I might also be on the toilet - which otherwise is dead time!
Just meetings with 100% camera-on, even, are awkward and draining in ways that meeting in person or just having a call are not. Having a camera on you is like having a person making hard eye contact without blinking or looking somewhere else, ever. It’s bizarre and it sucks.
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(4) In person teams outperform remote/hybrid teams. I'm surprised this was not mentioned as a possibility.
What's also not mentioned is that in multinational companies, especially since remote working became more widespread and attracting talent more difficult, teams are often made up of people from different locations anyway. So you won't have an in-person team, you'll just be joining Zoom (or in M$'s case, probably Teams) calls from the office rather than from home.
My wife works at a multinational which has also decided to push RTO. Her closest team member works in an office 200 miles away from her office (in a different country), the vast majority of the rest of team are located between 3000 and 6000 miles away, on a different continent.
A friend of mine at AMZN has the same issue, his team is literally scattered around the globe.
Threads like these are always one sided with people against RTO. What I would really like to see is arguments from the other side. Can someone steelman RTO. Preferably with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise.
I think it would be hard to argue that working all together in an office - like before covid - isn't more productive. In-person meetings are easier. Whiteboarding and brainstorming is way easier. Spontaneous conversations are easier. Helping junior people is easier. People actually pay attention in meetings. You get to know colleagues better. Have you ever had to "now click on the left... no, up a bit. No go back you…
Demanding an immediate impromptu meeting of indeterminate length does feel less rude in person, yes.
At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…
RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…
How is this not a net loss for them?
From their perspective, wouldn’t that just be moving money left to right, plus even more overhead?
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You’re not alone. I absolutely love going to office every day but also love the flexibility to occasionally wfh if needed. I just feel like when I enter the office and put on my “unreachable” focus mode on I’m in the zone and very productive. At home there’s endless distractions (my cats make sure to check in with me every time get too focused). Also I do like interacting with colleagues. I think I started liking goi…
It’s completely fine to prefer the office, that’s your choice and it works for you. The problem isn’t people going in, it’s when companies force everyone to go. Reading your post, it almost sounds like you want others dragged back just to fill the gap left in your own private life. That’s not a good reason to mandate office work for everyone.
I fully understand that this is a polarized personal preference issue. I don't think there's a way to make both work in the same company.
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From a source closely involved with this- Amazon tracks many productivity metrics of employees and was seeing very significant differences between in-person and remote people, which drove the decision. Source left since so I don’t know how much productivity has improved. Advice to new grads: get into the office 5 days a week for at least a few years.
Those numbers were so convincing they have been shared with employees... 0 (ZERO) times.
Its like getting refused during interview process. Sharing actually why makes no sense for hiring people, no gain and potentially a lot to lose.
I don't like the situation overall or RTO at all since it markedly increases quality of my personal life (which makes me a happier employee too but nobody really cares about that) but we need to be realistic with various people's motivations.
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When I solve problems, I need text, I need diagrams, I need demos (i.e. screen sharing). I don’t need faces, unless I’m interrogating somebody.
> I .. I .. I.. I.. I.. In all seriousness: you've outlined what you need. Perhaps you should reflect on what any collaborator needs.
At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…
I miss when before COVID firms were fine with flexing hours, now it seems they want to be draconian.
I was drastically more productive as a remote software engineer. I have severe insomnia and for some ungodly reason the later hours are my most productive. You wont get that productivity from me if I'm in an office a full 8 hours, I'm NOT working overtime.
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(4) In person teams outperform remote/hybrid teams. I'm surprised this was not mentioned as a possibility.
Its a possibility, but I've never come across data that supports either approach reliably outperforming the other. I've also never seen a company that actually tracked that well enough to make a decision like RTO based on their own data.
They can't all love commercial real estate that much right? Not all executives invests in office buildings.