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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

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Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#791

Post by verall »

neilv wrote: post #281

Two collegial conduct nits on this piece (one from company and/or team perspective, and one from fellow-human/colleague perspective): > It’s perfectly okay to pretend to comply to buy time while you line up a new gig somewhere else. The context of this was the writer receiving an ultimatum, and perhaps feeling that the employer was being abusive, so maybe it was OK then. But I'd hope people don't take that assertion…

Anybody can give their 2-weeks notice at any time, and a forcible relocation obviously increases the risk. A competent manager knows how to ask their employee what their plan is while giving them enough wiggle room to leave lines to be read between, and also would have been considering possible contingency plans even if the employee said "I 100% without a doubt would love to move to this new location and RTO".

I think the chance they are sinking their buddies is unlikely. It sounds like this is already some time in the rearview and it's not like they exposed any direct info by saying "I've heard from other engineers"

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#792

Post by gingerrr »

RandomLensman wrote: post #624
runako wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. This is an example of a local maximum. This form of communication is better for the person doing the walking, but worse when looked at through most other frames: - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed excep…

You describe what sounds like slow moving places. When rapid reactions are required then even just being able to hear commotion a few rows of seats away can be quite valuable. Doesn't mean people cannot write questions well, but sometimes forcing attention now matters.

What urgent outages are you having that can't be circulated with a quick "hey is ___ down for you" in a shared org channel? Also, you still have to get up and walk over to the hubbub to find out what's happening, then walk back before digging into the issue - in that time you could have just read the slack message and been fixing.

You're inventing solutions to a problem that actually worsen the issue.

edit: also, automated alerting solves literally all your problems here - and that should be an investment even if you're at a company with 100% RTO. Your first line of alert will still be digital in that case. If you're waiting to hear panicked seatmates to solve issues you're sure not worried about immediacy.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#793

Post by [deleted] »

Tainnor wrote: post #745
flashback2199 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I observed during the pandemic, I sincerely believe that the only reason remote work is worse than working in person is how little effort teams tend to put into making remote work equivalent to in person work. The biggest thing I saw throughout the entire pandemic on multiple teams was zero effort to create a culture of meet on camera for quick ad hoc, hey I have a quick question on this, ah cool thanks bye…

I feel the exact opposite. People should make an effort to make as much communication async as possible. Usually, I don't need a ton of 1:1 interaction, and if you really do feel there's something to discuss synchronously, you can schedule a meeting in advance. The situation where you're so completely blocked that you can't make progress on your own or switch to a different task (or where the house is on fire and som…

[deleted]

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#794

Post by t0mas88 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #34

If I start a company tomorrow, this is what I would want to do: 1. Hire within a general metropolitan area (2 hour commute max). 2. WFH for 28 days a month. 3. 2 days a month the entire org convenes in a ballroom or something and works together, have some progress reports, happy hours and hackathons. In this model, everyone’s remote most of the time. Yet everyone gets FaceTime with each other IrL. Seed ideas and brai…

This is roughly what we have now. Twice a month we organise a company wide update/demo session on Friday afternoon with drinks and food afterwards. Most work in the office that day and use the day for larger in-person meetings.

Some people come in a few days a week in other weeks as well. Some really only come in those two days. A small number of people nearly never come in (always dial in). It doesn't seam related to travel time, more to personal preference for being out of the house / in an office.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#795

Post by danaris »

The_Colonel wrote: post #769
danaris wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how may of those people slacked a lot in the office, and you just never knew because they were good at looking busy whenever anyone was nearby? And how many people were much more productive because other people didn't keep popping over their cubicle walls and interrupting them? "Easy communication" can be a double-edged sword, and Slack/Discord/email can be silenced for specified periods of time.

> And how may of those people slacked a lot in the office, and you just never knew because they were good at looking busy whenever anyone was nearby? Some of them sure, but I believe less so. In my opinion, most slacking is not a result of very intentional attempts, but more of an environment / opportunity enabling it. > And how many people were much more productive because other people didn't keep popping over their…

> > And how many people were much more productive because other people didn't keep popping over their cubicle walls and interrupting them?

> My intuition is that the trade-off is worth it.

Then my intuition is that you were one of the people popping over walls.

(You weren't? Well, your intuition is worth about as much as mine.)

(You were? Well, then you've got a vested interest in believing that that was better.)

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#796

Post by t0mas88 »

Scoring6931 wrote: post #563
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, I also did not understand the post about H1B workers. Ostensibly a primary reason for the existence of the visa category in their first place is to fulfill the need for foreign talent that needs to be PRESENT in the US.

It is about being present in the office. As opposed to working from home, as in a house in the US.

But if the work can be done fully remote, why does the person need a visum to be in the US? Why not work remote from abroad without visa requirements and probably with lower cost of living?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#797

Post by jbjorge »

mysterydip wrote: post #28
mattlondon wrote: post #10

Its only bullshit if you want to work remote. I want to be in the office. Working remote is the most stressful thing I've ever done.

What makes it stressful? I haven't seen this take before so I'm really curious about this perspective.

In my case, extrovert living alone. No collab and no meetings with coworkers due to which tasks I was assigned. Just droning on, writing code, with no one to take a break with. I'm still recovering mentally after 2 years of work-from-home during covid - pure mental torture for my personality type.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#798

Post by Hermitian909 »

bit_logic wrote: post #735
Hermitian909 wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to lots of middle and upper management, the primary complaints I hear are hard to measure - poorer communication, less alignment, less innovation, etc. None of this reduces the number of tasks being done, but reduces the utility of those tasks. Measuring directly is hard, but ultimately you'd expect it result in lower growth - which many companies are seeing (but it's hard to disentangle this from the macro s…

These are also hard to measure: * Employee happiness * Less sick employees since they don't spread their germs in an office * Much lower attrition and retention of institutional knowledge * Lower rent costs or possibly zero rent costs for office (actually this one is very easy to measure) * Able to hire from outside local metro area None of these was enough to move companies even an inch towards WFH pre-COVID. And ye…

Pre-pandemic, why would you risk testing out an unknown style of work and management that almost no one had experience with?

Now there's a significant portion of the labor market that expects WFH, companies need to produce a policy on WFH/RTO instead of treating it as a non-decision.

Data gives no clear insight into which is better, which makes this a judgment call, and everyone with >5 yoe has enough experience in both modes that they feel qualified to make that judgment. Many think requiring some in-office time is superior. You can try and dismiss those opinions as "vague issues due to lack of water cooler conversations" but that's not going to actually convince anyone with the power to effect these decisions - even if you're right! You need answers to concerns like "virtual communication is too low bandwidth to build alignment on strategic shifts that are necessary for the company to grow to profitability" (quote to me from a director at a company with >1,000 employees).

My argument is basically: if you could have addressed those concerns, it would've happened during the pandemic. Manifestly, those concerns were not addressed in a satisfactory way. Therefore the only real resolution now is to wait 5-10 years to see if RTO/WFH is a meaningful differentiator for companies.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#799

Post by RandomLensman »

gingerrr wrote: post #792
RandomLensman wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You describe what sounds like slow moving places. When rapid reactions are required then even just being able to hear commotion a few rows of seats away can be quite valuable. Doesn't mean people cannot write questions well, but sometimes forcing attention now matters.

What urgent outages are you having that can't be circulated with a quick "hey is ___ down for you" in a shared org channel? Also, you still have to get up and walk over to the hubbub to find out what's happening, then walk back before digging into the issue - in that time you could have just read the slack message and been fixing. You're inventing solutions to a problem that actually worsen the issue. edit: also, aut…

It would be nice to know every failure mode or possible reason for intervention in advance, but not always the case.

I find it interesting that there is this strong belief that how people organize and work together in certain businesses is generally done wrong. How would you know? A lot of critical interactions might not be tech-tech, but tech-business, for example.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#800

Post by bjourne »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #671
bjourne wrote: post #525

> By early 2021, I was considered to not only be a top performer, but also a critical expert for the cryptography organization. My time ended up split across three different teams, and I was still knocking my projects out of the park. But more importantly, junior employees felt comfortable approaching me with questions and our most distinguished engineers sought my insight on security and cryptography topics. Beside…

> If everyone knows that return-to-office is bullshit why is there no data? If remote work is a great idea then why did so few companies adopt it after being forced to implement it during the pandemic? Virtually every company with offices in one form or another required their employees to show up at the office regularly (including my place of work). I don't have any data, but I'm assuming that most of these companies…

Yeah, I'm assuming there was some evidence or else every company wouldn't have reached the same conclusion. My hunch is that a lot of people who claim to work from home are not actually working at all. Employers are bullshitting about the reasons for return to office and employees are bullshitting about their desire to "work" remotely...
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