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Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

nytimes.com

81–90 of 116 posts

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#81
post #73
post #64

At this point this is just propaganda. The desperation phase? Yes, for employers. Watch this whole RTO thing collapse and corpos "changing their mind" once the herd gas been thinned and 2024, an elections year, rolls around. They have limited time to pull this off.

What does an election year have to do with it?

They need your vote. If you make it slightly more comfortable for the peasants you get more votes. Or if the situation is dire this oppons the door for the opposition.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#82

I just don't know how you get the Genie back in the bottle. Will employees come back in eventually probably if forced to enough. will smaller companies see how much of a benefit WFH is and use it as a hiring advantage I would imagine. I wonder if people forced to come back into the office are working a ton of free hours for the company. I can't really stay late because I have that commute now. And every time someone…

>And every time someone from management sent an email or tried to have a zoom I'd have a hard time not asking in the zoom why it wasn't an in person meeting?

I love this as malicious compliance in RTO workplaces. Brilliant.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#83
post #70
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found Zoom great for latency and communication. For some reason Google vid hangouts had us unintentionally interrupting each other more frequently - don't know if they've improved that now. I think it's one hidden reason Zoom got more popular so quickly over other vid conf offerings.

Latency is only one of the problems. Most of these services seem to handle audio in a way where they are picking one person as the speaker, and muting or ducking everyone else's audio. Practices like cooperative overlap are technologically inhibited.

Seems like a reasonable feature to more productive meetings in general? In-person meetings can degenerate to unproductive noise if people can't speak in turn. If you don't want the "talking stick" pattern there are other remote spaces where one can all meet online and have multiple conversations simultaneously.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#84
post #22

These articles are kinda funny to me since I don’t know anyone in my corner of the industry, in my corner of the world who has been fully wfh since 2021. And like, nobody is all that upset about it? We need to share hardware, we were borrowing lab equipment, passing prototypes and going in to have techs solder stuff, etc, might as well go in a few days a week. I’m not saying I don’t get why people like wfh, it’s just…

Is it that small of subset? Even outside of software, there's many many jobs remote works for. Accountants, lawyers, graphic designers..

Probably not THAT small, but not most workers, and I guess I feel that articles like these, reflecting the work that the authors themselves do, make it that WFH-capable jobs are the default. Office workers are normal, and taxi drivers aren’t. But that might be reading a bit much into it.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#85

> “You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,” said Mr. Medina, whose company, Outreach, is now in the office on a hybrid basis. “In a Zoom conversation, you have to let somebody finish their thought.” How is this not admitting that WFH is superior? If it puts a damper on people like this who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts, it's only a good thing. This article title may s…

Chelsea Troy has a great article describing this exact problem with meetings, and it applies to both remote & in-person meetings:

https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-su...

And then she describes the solution - assign a moderator to your meetings:

https://chelseatroy.com/2018/04/05/how-do-we-make-remote-mee...

Just like we all know that meetings are better with agendas, notes, and action items, having a moderator also important.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#86
It's curious how there seems to be few if any hard numbers on the work in the office side of the argument. What I've seen are anecdotes like, "We're more creative in person" or, without evidence: "Being near each other makes the work better." In google's case: ok, take a look at all those KPI's for teams that WFH vs in office: where is that?

On the WFH side, it's straightforward to calculate the commute hours saved, carbon footprint lowered, and minutes more spent with friends/family.

Now that many workers have enjoyed the WFH status quo, they feel that management is actively removing benefits.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#87
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Encourages less communication on team - Harder to join team for new members - Harder to learn field for novices - Lack of unit cohesion through informal interactions - Lack of access to equipment and tools necessary to complete job effectively - Lower social interaction - Risk of underworking - Risk of overworking - Unending distractions The list goes on... The interactions that take place when humans are next to o…

Funny, I've found that a hybrid scrum model works extremely well to address almost all items on your list, and works across the spectrum of personality types. M/W/F normal stand-ups and T/Th 1:1s with each team member or small group. The one thing it can't address (unending distractions) is a red herring. Either you've hired an employee that can manage their own time or you haven't. If they can't manage their time wh…

Good lord if you're using process to paper over interpersonal issues you're in some deep shit.

If you work on a team with no conflict you're lucky, and it won't last forever. That's when WFH shows its downsides.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#88

> “You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,” said Mr. Medina, whose company, Outreach, is now in the office on a hybrid basis. “In a Zoom conversation, you have to let somebody finish their thought.” How is this not admitting that WFH is superior? If it puts a damper on people like this who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts, it's only a good thing. This article title may s…

This spotlights the difference between managerial time, where things are accomplished in 30-minute meeting blocks, and developer / creative time, where things are accomplished in half-day blocks. Remote work is superior for the latter, office work for the former. So yes, meetings are far better in person. But coding is far better in solitude, and we have tools that let you pair-program for that 30% to 50% of the time you'd spend pair-programming.

There's a reason why nearly every single developer in modern office settings wears headphones. It's not for the synergy.

Re: Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase

#89

I just don't know how you get the Genie back in the bottle. Will employees come back in eventually probably if forced to enough. will smaller companies see how much of a benefit WFH is and use it as a hiring advantage I would imagine. I wonder if people forced to come back into the office are working a ton of free hours for the company. I can't really stay late because I have that commute now. And every time someone…

1944 was a bit premature for blog posts, but see https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184.txt#:~:te... (§5.11)
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