I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.
Silicon Valley has high salaries and very long commute times. But how does this apply to medium sized cities with low commute times and lower salaries?
How much more productive will employees be if they don’t have a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?
How productive is it for workers who have to work from home in their bedroom?
I’ve noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus others lower on the totem pole who don’t.
Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even more than they already were, which is a problem especially in larger organizations.
And the odds of fortuitous interactions drops dramatically while the latency for some red tape processes increases as well, since you have to fight an email chain with people with more and more disparate work schedules (and less tacit knowledge transfer and trust-building).
I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan) and who either function well with very little guidance or who don’t but dislike the guidance.
But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.
(Still a huge fan of having the option of WFH, but there have been massive productivity losses in my workplace from strict WFH requirements... in part because we do a mix of fundamentally physical lab work, not just sitting in front of a computer.)
> I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan)
Who doesn't have open plan offices? There are about three people left in the tech industry these days who still have a private office.
> But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.
Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working remotely, except in rare cases where your team is in a bullpen and working full time on a specific project together. It's inferior for engineers because of distractions, and it's inferior for the company because of real estate costs.
Sorry just want to nitpick - this really has not a whole lot to do with MBAs or any degree specifically. I think it would be a little bit more beneficial to swap MBA with management. Many of the things you're discussing are true of engineering managers, researchers with PHDs, and accountants and not specifically one group of people with one degree - they don't run the whole world and have exclusive ownership of "all the bad decisions".
> How much more productive will employees be if they don’t have a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?
Yea, i'm very pro-WFH, but i've built my life around it. I own a house with an office. I can't imagine trying to WFH on a couch or some desk in my living room while my wife cooks/watches TV/etc.
With that said i still hope people see more chances to WFH, and can start buying/renting homes with this in mind. I have a three bedroom house, turned into 2 offices 1 bedroom, and it worked wonderfully for my wife and I during these WFH times. My wife fwiw was not a WFH person before Covid, but she is currently, and she has adapted quite easily with a dedicated office. One of her coworkers however lived in a tiny apartment with two children and no office. Her QOL was miserable.
I noticed that in my organization the senior folks stayed in the office but sent all the workers home to create the safety buffer. They continued to show up and network with each other.
I believe MBAs are going to love this new world order. The privilege to show your face in the office will become a sign that you've "arrived" and all your time before that will be working towards that privilege.
"who either function well with very little guidance"
That's the definition of a senior developer and senior employees.
For junior developers I've worked in pre-covid with juniors in wfh environments and success rates are lower. For everyone 1 developer who finds there way you have another who can't setup there environment. If someone held your hand in school or if you relied on working together I could see things falling apart quickly online. I feel like the new grads will have wfh school experience from this year will adapt well.
> I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.
Don't worry: It won't be the last time it happens. How many shops have I heard say they are "Just like Google" only to find out that what they mean by that is that they have beanbag chairs?
> But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it's a bad idea.
They'll learn that they need a higher caliber of employees to make it work. Incidentally, these employees are also now hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them.
I’m CTO in a software company but I don’t have a proper home office. I was using a small coworking space a 2 minute walk around the corner instead. During the pandemic i’m working in the kitchen for 4 hours before the kids get up and then in the afternoon when my wife takes the kids out. We were always partially wfh as a company anyways and tbh I get zero work done in the office when I go. I only go for morale and relationships (though I do need to take a 20 hour flight to get there). I couldn’t imagine this working in lab based companies but for a company like ours offices are bad or neutral for productivity but useful for mental health.
The move to remote work has made me both less productive and personally unhappy. I've mostly just been grateful that I still have a job and trying not to complain considering so many people have been laid off or have had to risk their health when going to work. But the idea of permanent long-term WFH is very unappealing.
While I mostly agree with you, one of the health institutions in Germany that I know of(and probably plenty others), only had laptops and VPN's available for middle and upper management. So while upper and middle management got to WFH, older folks and plenty of people with preexisting heart and lung conditions got to work in cramped 3-5 people offices.
I agree that a lot of people can't afford a full size home office. Nonetheless most of them will probably also only have a small cubicle or less at work.
My statement doesn't negate what you said, but do keep this perspective in mind also.
It sounds like a lot of the issues you are describing could be screened for. Making having an office at home a requirement to become a remote worker. Remote work only for certain levels of employees.
Is that a perfect fix? No. But many remote friendly companies are already doing something like that. In 2020 people didnt really have a choice and many had kids at home. That is not a normal WFH situation for many.
SV isn't as unique as you think it is. A lot of the problems that plague the SF area plague LA, NYC, medium-sized cities and the metro areas surrounding them. I've even lived in small cities with less than 80k people that have similar problems.
People at my company work longer hours, have completely multiple very difficult high profile deadlines due to WFH. That your office is unproductive because you need a physical lab shouldn’t inform those who don’t, IMO!
I think an underrepresented problem with WFH is that even among senior engineers collaborating on a project, overall communication goes down and it results in less cohesion among the team. It results in a small, but quite noticeable amount of siloing within a project. I've also found I don't really know my coworkers as people much anymore because we don't have much of any off-topic discussions which leads to strained social dynamics.
>I’ve noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus others lower on the totem pole who don’t.
I know lots of 'lower totem pole' employees with a nicer WFH setup than many managers.
From what I've seen, there is a more significant reason higher ups like WFH. PG wrote an essay about the creators schedule versus the managers schedule. A managers schedule (the higher ups) spend their day flip flopping between meetings during each hour increment. Imagine having to walk/transport to a different building on/off campus for a new meeting a many times a day. It can take a lot of valuable time & potentially be exhausting. In WFH, you just click a new link to join a zoom meeting. Much more convenient.
The people doing the low level work such as coding tend to be younger. They are looking to make office connections and define their career path. Working out of an office allows for progression in both.
>Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even more than they already were, which is a problem especially in larger organizations.
The large organization I am consulting at right now had a larger than average number of employees (also higher level employees) quit over the lockdown which has given management the idea that WFH frays the social ties and makes it easier for people to consider leaving.
Who is actually calling for permanent, "close the office" WFH for everyone? Nobody I know. It seems like a strawman. I would argue it's just as unreasonable as forcing everyone to work in the office or quit, whether they like it or not. Different people work better in different environments, and ideally WFH would stay optional.
Well said. I like how you laid out both sides. For employees, this is a preference. I'm tired of the "best" narrative. Everything has trade-offs that are not calculated in.
fortuitous interactions - This is the big problem for me. Developing relationships and getting a pulse on the company and all the opportunities / challenges / "there be dragons" is nearly impossible working from home. The water cooler and grapevine have pretty much disappeared and any chance of getting ahead of arising issues / storms is now gone.
I like working from home because I don't have to pretend I'm working all day. Like most of my work is thinking I can do that anywhere so working from home means I can have a little walk, sit on the balcony and not have anal retentive managers looking over my shoulder demanding I look busy. Likewise when I'm waiting for work/someone to decide I can turn on Netflix and relax, most of my work I can do in 2 or 3 hours a day, its seldom I have enough to be fully engaged for a day.
Work from home is attractive because the alternative is so awful, I watch old movies from the 50's and everyone had an office sat back with their feet on the desk while thinking, also long commutes weren't a huge thing - everyone caught the bus, long lunches were a thing, granted hours were long then but things haven't improved. The modern workplace is a toxic environment, working from home is a little better but really its pretty awful to - no socialising, no energy etc.
The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal.
Without it, nothing has really changed.
Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. It makes sense for companies to protect employees and wait for the vaccine - especially now that it's so close.
In California the vaccine is still restricted, but hopefully we'll get wide availability by the end of April. I've see lots of people on Twitter get it with nebulous pre-existing conditions. I wonder how many people are just lying.
Agreed. My Silicon Valley tech company had me start working from home on March 6. The valley was VERY early on shutdowns. It seems silly and insane to go back to in-office in a very hurried manner when, for most people, this is working fine. Daily infections are many orders of magnitude higher today than they were in early March of last year when there were only, what, a couple hundred cases in the entire STATE?
I won't discount how hard remote work has been for many people, but the fact of the matter is, continuing to do it for a little while longer is far less risky from the company's perspective than pulling the trigger in the first place, 1 year ago. It's largely been a successful move.
As for lying to get the vaccine, yeah. I'd say that once the 65+ population had been eligible for awhile, and the state opened it up to a lot more people, whatever moral hesitancy towards lying that there might have been, has largely evaporated. I've heard plenty about strategies, what vendors don't check.
I'm no in a huge hurry, so I'll wait. But that's just me.
> Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning.
I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful, that doesn't make the people less susceptible...
<rant>
Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor reprecussions.
</rant>
Right? This idea that just because we're at the levels we were over the summer means we can open everything up is just insane. We're so close to the end of this so why risk it. Why do schools need to open right before the end of the school year? Certainly don't think theme parks and movie theaters (which are serving food) should be open. Ah well, I got my first shot yesterday so soon I wont have to worry about everyone else.
For San Francisco anyways (where this article is more focused), vaccine distribution is moving at a fast pace: an estimated 39% of the eligible population has received atleast one shot. (https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-... )
The state of vaccine distribution/availability in California is pathetic. I'm a former thyroid cancer patient and since going through treatment a year and a half ago, I've become more susceptible to infections. Yet I'm not eligible for a vaccine since I don't have cancer currently.
> A survey late last year of 9,000 knowledge workers commissioned by workplace chat software company Slack found 20% want to work remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a mix of the two.
That's pretty much where I'm at. I like the idea of hopping into the office maybe once or twice a week to interact with my co-workers, but otherwise I'm extremely productive at home especially without having to endure the 1-2 hours commute.
I joined a company last last year and they moved to this hybrid model once they found there was practically no efficiency loss with respect to moving everyone to remote. But some people still missed going into the office so they re-opened their physical offices albeit at limited capacity.
Is the question phrased in a way that distinguishes between "working remotely as you have during COVID times" vs. "working remotely post-COVID"
I think it's important to distinguish that in the mind of the responder. At the very least, get people thinking in terms of "What would WFH be like if the kids were at school much of the day?" or "What would WFH be like if we could meet with friends at 17:30?" or whatever.
What we've experienced over the last year is far less social, and far more stressful than what WFH could be.
Personally, I'd like to WFH most of the time, with sprint & release planning sessions in person.
This is mostly how I feel as well. However, I wonder how well the hybrid office thing will work out in practice.
Specifically, if you’re in the 63% of people who want to “pop into the office sometimes,” and you come in on some random Tuesday.... is anyone else even there?
It seems like the probability of seeing the people you want to see by chance (when 83% are either always or usually remote) is very low.
So my guess is that for the hybrid thing to still have the social aspect of office work it probably needs to be paired with a policy like “we all come to work on Tuesdays.” But if you do that then the all-remote crowd isn’t getting what they want (they still need to live in travel range if they have to be in the office once a week).
So the alternative is to do something more like “we all come to the office for one week every quarter,” and in that case it’s more of a company retreat than normal work.
So as I said, I’m curious how things will unfold as life opens back up.
My best guess is we’ll end up converging on 2-4 different archetypical models which will become part of a company’s identity and recruiting pitch, and people will self select into the work style they prefer.
I'm afraid of "partial" WFH meaning that I have a schedule opposite others, and there are many people I simply never see.
I tend to be a fairly black-and-white thinker, so it's easier to envision 100% office or 100% WFH, and harder to get my head around a mixed arrangement. Particularly if that mixed arrangement means I don't have my 'own' desk and equipment in the office.
That said, even though I've done WFH in bits and pieces here and there, I've enjoyed WFH this past year a lot more than I thought I would. I'm thinking of my post-Covid schedule being in the office tues-thurs, so that I still have a consistent block of time where I'm going in "every day" for a few days, rather than every other day.
Been doing a few interviews recently and the narrative I’m hearing is different. Most companies want to go back to the office because of “company culture”, and are very happy I’m still in the Bay Area. Personally I miss going to the office and seeing my coworkers and friends in person. If WFH works for you that’s fine, but it’s not for everyone.
Is that surprising? There is little value in taking on the risk of infection (and resulting bad PR and work disruption) given that you can maintain your operations with remote workers ... especially given the fact that if you wait just a few more months, your staff will be vaccinated.
> Box Inc said its reopening is still scheduled for September.
That's probably the most reasonable timeline for tech workers. And even then, we'll probably see tepid support for that. Things aren't going to go back to normal in 2021.
Tech workers seem to agree: permanent work from office isn't what most of us want. Fair enough.
But here's a fun question: If you aren't permanently in the office, do you need a personal, permanent desk in the office? Because that is going to be the first cut that comes when we all "go back, some of the time". And half the people I pose this question to get upset about it.
My own prediction is that teams are going to book sets of desks together the same way we book meeting rooms. They're shared and you'd better have a reservation.
But "your" desk with your photo of the spouse and kids, your knick-knacks, your notebooks and "your" monitor? I doubt you'll ever have that again.
I fear that while COVID lockdowns have proven that we can wfh just fine, the trauma of experiencing wfh during a pandemic has poisoned the well and the popular meme (at least in the US) is not all about socializing and “culture”.
Working from in the pandemic is simply not the same as doing so voluntarily with a good setup and proper social circle. Hell, even remote first companies get together in person periodically. The framing of WFH as all or nothing forever is toxic and not true.
I personally want flexibility. There is little point for me to spend days in the office running from one conf room to another in 30 min increments, often taking up space that could be used for 5-6 people just by myself because I’m coordinating with another office a lot. On days like that my home standing desk is fine and more efficient. When we need to brainstorm and whiteboard, sure office is fine.
Comments here seem to be missing the point. "Reopening" just means allowing people to come back to the office if they want to, but the cat is out of the bag and there is never going to be a practical way to force everyone to come back to the office. The biggest upshot of the pandemic for me personally is I was able to go work for a Silicon Valley company, except I live in Texas. And I'm not moving. I made it clear to anyone who ever tried to hire me that relocation is not an option. These companies took advantage to open up their nets to the entire country if not the world. They can't make their actual remote workers move, so there is no fair way to force the people who live nearby to come back. If some people get to work from home, you have to give everyone the option or they're going to revolt.
If they want to put an office near me, I'm glad to show up every now and again. But I'm sure as shit not moving to San Francisco.
Companies have to weigh the tradeoffs between whatever benefit you get from people being physically together when they're working versus the benefit you get from being able to hire anyone and not just people who either live within X miles or who are under 25 with no house and no family and will gladly move across the country for you without you needing to pay them seven figures for it.
I know of a couple SV startups that went from <100 employees to a couple hundred during the pandemic. Which means that these companies are now essentially distributed across the country and the employees have mostly never met each other in person. I can’t imagine these companies forcing their new workforce to move to SV so they are almost forced to be fully remote going forward.
As an aside, I kind of really like working in central time for a company operating in pacific time. Works well for my sleep schedule and gives me a couple hours of pure productivity in the morning before the rest of the company “wakes up.”
As much as I love remote work, part of me wonders how much of this is a temporary effect. Yes, we can take a functional in-person organization and transition it to remote. But now as time marches on and that organization needs to change and grow and learn, will that be as effective remote as it is in-person?
Companies that require employees to work from home, should pay them extra compensation for use of their property as their office. Probably they should be paying a comparable market rate to what would be the cost of renting an office space for that employee on the market.
I get that many employees find it very cool that they can WFH and just that fact makes them happy, but they forgetting that this way companies exploit them.
You are essentially sacrificing part of your home for the company you work for and you don't ask to be compensated for that?
Almost everyone I know has been working 20-30% more than usual in the last year, are available basically at any/all times (and weekends), and getting the same salary. Plus, we're paying for the electricity of our work laptops now, and fridge, microwave oven, etc. Plus, no more paying for expensive company trips and meetings in expensive hotels. The fact that you can hire basically anyone, anywhere, means more competition and more pressure on the employee to work more and expect less from the employer.
I would never work in an office again. The one good thing about covid is that it definitely transitioned us away from and industrial revolution model to the Information Age.
I'd be happy to work in a hub-coworking-office close to home. A joint kitchen area so I can socialize with people, and a small sound-proofed room for everyone to work on their own stuff. No point in everyone travelling to the same large building to work.
How do they expect us to have 8 hours of back to back Zoom meetings in an office on top of getting actual work done? There's no way people are doing that on top of commuting.
I'm really curious to see how this plays out, especially for larger Bay Area companies.
Every worker has their own preference about where they work best. If you don't allow remote work, how do you weigh the risk of losing good employees who don't want to return to the office? If you go remote-first, what about employees who really value the office? If you try to do a mix, how do you do it well? And there are other effects to think about, like on costs, company culture, and productivity.
As time passes after COVID is no longer a large risk
(which isn't guaranteed), I think we'll see tolerance for remote work decay at large companies. As fewer other companies offer flexibility for remote, the office will return across the board as the default.
I think the lasting change will be an increase in flexibility, though, like allowing WFH N days/week and more frequent exemptions for some employees to work fully remote. A few companies will recommit 100% to the office and a few will allow greater remote work, but the majority of employees at medium/large companies will again spend the majority of their time at the office.
My biggest question is WRT to the tax subsidies that were given to companies like Twitter in SF, as well as Google (likely all over, but was thinking about the NYC building)
So - they were given subsidies to build/occupy there such that the claim was that it would stimulate and heighten the surround area and businesses...
So if Twitter is 100% WFH option, then why give them massive subsidies when their well paid employee population is no longer present on-site?
My company’s campus very large, and the RTW plan involves a slow, phased rollout.
My assumption is that one important driver has been the company’s legal team. Imagine the potential workers comp claims if there are covid flareups directly traceable to your jobsite.
[+] [-] Robotbeat|5 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley has high salaries and very long commute times. But how does this apply to medium sized cities with low commute times and lower salaries?
How much more productive will employees be if they don’t have a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?
How productive is it for workers who have to work from home in their bedroom?
I’ve noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus others lower on the totem pole who don’t.
Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even more than they already were, which is a problem especially in larger organizations.
And the odds of fortuitous interactions drops dramatically while the latency for some red tape processes increases as well, since you have to fight an email chain with people with more and more disparate work schedules (and less tacit knowledge transfer and trust-building).
I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan) and who either function well with very little guidance or who don’t but dislike the guidance.
But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.
(Still a huge fan of having the option of WFH, but there have been massive productivity losses in my workplace from strict WFH requirements... in part because we do a mix of fundamentally physical lab work, not just sitting in front of a computer.)
[+] [-] mullingitover|5 years ago|reply
Who doesn't have open plan offices? There are about three people left in the tech industry these days who still have a private office.
> But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.
Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working remotely, except in rare cases where your team is in a bullpen and working full time on a specific project together. It's inferior for engineers because of distractions, and it's inferior for the company because of real estate costs.
[+] [-] ericmay|5 years ago|reply
Sorry just want to nitpick - this really has not a whole lot to do with MBAs or any degree specifically. I think it would be a little bit more beneficial to swap MBA with management. Many of the things you're discussing are true of engineering managers, researchers with PHDs, and accountants and not specifically one group of people with one degree - they don't run the whole world and have exclusive ownership of "all the bad decisions".
[+] [-] adkadskhj|5 years ago|reply
Yea, i'm very pro-WFH, but i've built my life around it. I own a house with an office. I can't imagine trying to WFH on a couch or some desk in my living room while my wife cooks/watches TV/etc.
With that said i still hope people see more chances to WFH, and can start buying/renting homes with this in mind. I have a three bedroom house, turned into 2 offices 1 bedroom, and it worked wonderfully for my wife and I during these WFH times. My wife fwiw was not a WFH person before Covid, but she is currently, and she has adapted quite easily with a dedicated office. One of her coworkers however lived in a tiny apartment with two children and no office. Her QOL was miserable.
[+] [-] cheschire|5 years ago|reply
I believe MBAs are going to love this new world order. The privilege to show your face in the office will become a sign that you've "arrived" and all your time before that will be working towards that privilege.
Any office will be the new corner office.
[+] [-] ipaddr|5 years ago|reply
That's the definition of a senior developer and senior employees.
For junior developers I've worked in pre-covid with juniors in wfh environments and success rates are lower. For everyone 1 developer who finds there way you have another who can't setup there environment. If someone held your hand in school or if you relied on working together I could see things falling apart quickly online. I feel like the new grads will have wfh school experience from this year will adapt well.
[+] [-] 908B64B197|5 years ago|reply
Don't worry: It won't be the last time it happens. How many shops have I heard say they are "Just like Google" only to find out that what they mean by that is that they have beanbag chairs?
> But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it's a bad idea.
They'll learn that they need a higher caliber of employees to make it work. Incidentally, these employees are also now hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them.
[+] [-] rorykoehler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beforeolives|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjzzleep|5 years ago|reply
I agree that a lot of people can't afford a full size home office. Nonetheless most of them will probably also only have a small cubicle or less at work.
My statement doesn't negate what you said, but do keep this perspective in mind also.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|5 years ago|reply
Is that a perfect fix? No. But many remote friendly companies are already doing something like that. In 2020 people didnt really have a choice and many had kids at home. That is not a normal WFH situation for many.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taurath|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] packetlost|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Goosee|5 years ago|reply
I know lots of 'lower totem pole' employees with a nicer WFH setup than many managers.
From what I've seen, there is a more significant reason higher ups like WFH. PG wrote an essay about the creators schedule versus the managers schedule. A managers schedule (the higher ups) spend their day flip flopping between meetings during each hour increment. Imagine having to walk/transport to a different building on/off campus for a new meeting a many times a day. It can take a lot of valuable time & potentially be exhausting. In WFH, you just click a new link to join a zoom meeting. Much more convenient.
The people doing the low level work such as coding tend to be younger. They are looking to make office connections and define their career path. Working out of an office allows for progression in both.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|5 years ago|reply
The large organization I am consulting at right now had a larger than average number of employees (also higher level employees) quit over the lockdown which has given management the idea that WFH frays the social ties and makes it easier for people to consider leaving.
[+] [-] ryandrake|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarf21|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasondigitized|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vl|5 years ago|reply
At the end of the day markets are efficient. Some will make mistakes and loose, some will do the right thing and prosper.
[+] [-] chadcmulligan|5 years ago|reply
Work from home is attractive because the alternative is so awful, I watch old movies from the 50's and everyone had an office sat back with their feet on the desk while thinking, also long commutes weren't a huge thing - everyone caught the bus, long lunches were a thing, granted hours were long then but things haven't improved. The modern workplace is a toxic environment, working from home is a little better but really its pretty awful to - no socialising, no energy etc.
[+] [-] gonehome|5 years ago|reply
The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal.
Without it, nothing has really changed.
Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. It makes sense for companies to protect employees and wait for the vaccine - especially now that it's so close.
In California the vaccine is still restricted, but hopefully we'll get wide availability by the end of April. I've see lots of people on Twitter get it with nebulous pre-existing conditions. I wonder how many people are just lying.
[+] [-] rconti|5 years ago|reply
I won't discount how hard remote work has been for many people, but the fact of the matter is, continuing to do it for a little while longer is far less risky from the company's perspective than pulling the trigger in the first place, 1 year ago. It's largely been a successful move.
As for lying to get the vaccine, yeah. I'd say that once the 65+ population had been eligible for awhile, and the state opened it up to a lot more people, whatever moral hesitancy towards lying that there might have been, has largely evaporated. I've heard plenty about strategies, what vendors don't check.
I'm no in a huge hurry, so I'll wait. But that's just me.
[+] [-] brutal_chaos_|5 years ago|reply
I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful, that doesn't make the people less susceptible...
<rant> Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor reprecussions. </rant>
[+] [-] dawnerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sg47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colmvp|5 years ago|reply
That's pretty much where I'm at. I like the idea of hopping into the office maybe once or twice a week to interact with my co-workers, but otherwise I'm extremely productive at home especially without having to endure the 1-2 hours commute.
I joined a company last last year and they moved to this hybrid model once they found there was practically no efficiency loss with respect to moving everyone to remote. But some people still missed going into the office so they re-opened their physical offices albeit at limited capacity.
[+] [-] scj|5 years ago|reply
Is the question phrased in a way that distinguishes between "working remotely as you have during COVID times" vs. "working remotely post-COVID"
I think it's important to distinguish that in the mind of the responder. At the very least, get people thinking in terms of "What would WFH be like if the kids were at school much of the day?" or "What would WFH be like if we could meet with friends at 17:30?" or whatever.
What we've experienced over the last year is far less social, and far more stressful than what WFH could be.
Personally, I'd like to WFH most of the time, with sprint & release planning sessions in person.
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
Specifically, if you’re in the 63% of people who want to “pop into the office sometimes,” and you come in on some random Tuesday.... is anyone else even there?
It seems like the probability of seeing the people you want to see by chance (when 83% are either always or usually remote) is very low.
So my guess is that for the hybrid thing to still have the social aspect of office work it probably needs to be paired with a policy like “we all come to work on Tuesdays.” But if you do that then the all-remote crowd isn’t getting what they want (they still need to live in travel range if they have to be in the office once a week).
So the alternative is to do something more like “we all come to the office for one week every quarter,” and in that case it’s more of a company retreat than normal work.
So as I said, I’m curious how things will unfold as life opens back up.
My best guess is we’ll end up converging on 2-4 different archetypical models which will become part of a company’s identity and recruiting pitch, and people will self select into the work style they prefer.
[+] [-] rconti|5 years ago|reply
I tend to be a fairly black-and-white thinker, so it's easier to envision 100% office or 100% WFH, and harder to get my head around a mixed arrangement. Particularly if that mixed arrangement means I don't have my 'own' desk and equipment in the office.
That said, even though I've done WFH in bits and pieces here and there, I've enjoyed WFH this past year a lot more than I thought I would. I'm thinking of my post-Covid schedule being in the office tues-thurs, so that I still have a consistent block of time where I'm going in "every day" for a few days, rather than every other day.
[+] [-] dominotw|5 years ago|reply
how did they measure this?
[+] [-] throwaway1777|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macspoofing|5 years ago|reply
> Box Inc said its reopening is still scheduled for September.
That's probably the most reasonable timeline for tech workers. And even then, we'll probably see tepid support for that. Things aren't going to go back to normal in 2021.
[+] [-] mabbo|5 years ago|reply
But here's a fun question: If you aren't permanently in the office, do you need a personal, permanent desk in the office? Because that is going to be the first cut that comes when we all "go back, some of the time". And half the people I pose this question to get upset about it.
My own prediction is that teams are going to book sets of desks together the same way we book meeting rooms. They're shared and you'd better have a reservation.
But "your" desk with your photo of the spouse and kids, your knick-knacks, your notebooks and "your" monitor? I doubt you'll ever have that again.
[+] [-] sologoub|5 years ago|reply
Working from in the pandemic is simply not the same as doing so voluntarily with a good setup and proper social circle. Hell, even remote first companies get together in person periodically. The framing of WFH as all or nothing forever is toxic and not true.
I personally want flexibility. There is little point for me to spend days in the office running from one conf room to another in 30 min increments, often taking up space that could be used for 5-6 people just by myself because I’m coordinating with another office a lot. On days like that my home standing desk is fine and more efficient. When we need to brainstorm and whiteboard, sure office is fine.
[+] [-] nonameiguess|5 years ago|reply
If they want to put an office near me, I'm glad to show up every now and again. But I'm sure as shit not moving to San Francisco.
Companies have to weigh the tradeoffs between whatever benefit you get from people being physically together when they're working versus the benefit you get from being able to hire anyone and not just people who either live within X miles or who are under 25 with no house and no family and will gladly move across the country for you without you needing to pay them seven figures for it.
[+] [-] ABeeSea|5 years ago|reply
As an aside, I kind of really like working in central time for a company operating in pacific time. Works well for my sleep schedule and gives me a couple hours of pure productivity in the morning before the rest of the company “wakes up.”
[+] [-] blacktriangle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varispeed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] low_tech_love|5 years ago|reply
Why the hell would they open up again?
[+] [-] solosoyokaze|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikanj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwitaway1235|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdlyga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbuzbee|5 years ago|reply
Every worker has their own preference about where they work best. If you don't allow remote work, how do you weigh the risk of losing good employees who don't want to return to the office? If you go remote-first, what about employees who really value the office? If you try to do a mix, how do you do it well? And there are other effects to think about, like on costs, company culture, and productivity.
As time passes after COVID is no longer a large risk (which isn't guaranteed), I think we'll see tolerance for remote work decay at large companies. As fewer other companies offer flexibility for remote, the office will return across the board as the default.
I think the lasting change will be an increase in flexibility, though, like allowing WFH N days/week and more frequent exemptions for some employees to work fully remote. A few companies will recommit 100% to the office and a few will allow greater remote work, but the majority of employees at medium/large companies will again spend the majority of their time at the office.
[+] [-] samstave|5 years ago|reply
So - they were given subsidies to build/occupy there such that the claim was that it would stimulate and heighten the surround area and businesses...
So if Twitter is 100% WFH option, then why give them massive subsidies when their well paid employee population is no longer present on-site?
However, they may have already expired?
https://time.com/14335/twitter-tax-break-san-francisco/
[+] [-] aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA|5 years ago|reply
My assumption is that one important driver has been the company’s legal team. Imagine the potential workers comp claims if there are covid flareups directly traceable to your jobsite.