The pre-pandemic work arrangements were in what is called a meta-stable state.
"If the ball is only slightly pushed, it will settle back into its hollow, but a stronger push may start the ball rolling down the slope" [1]
They only looked normal because there just aren't many mechanisms for society to explore (at scale) nearby states that might be more adapted but require a lot of energy to reach.
We have now tunneled by force into a more stable state. Everybody knows that massive amounts of knowledge work can be done remotely. There are tradeoffs of-course, a new equilibrium must be reached, but it has nothing to do with the old one.
That is a good thing. Somehow we should be able to get to better states without going through existential risks.
I’ve been seeing companies that have tried to get people to commute to/from and “work” from their office (any number of days) starting to lose the good people - the ones you want to keep around.
I’ve kept in contact with a couple of them and they’re now 100% remote, one is working for a local company the other an international and they seem genuinely so much happier.
We have a completely flexible working arrangement. Pretty much 'do what you want'. We provide equipment for working from home and we also have offices stocked with food, etc.
If we changed that and demanded return to office I know for a fact that the most capable people would be the first to give notice and we would immediately be less profitable.
> starting to lose the good people - the ones you want to keep around.
Right, because telework is only beneficial for the good developers, because most outside of the top 20%/10%/5% won't be able to compete with low-cost international labor enabled by telework.
Telework is quite clearly a way to cut down on the middle class while enriching a small elite class of workers, and comments like this show those who think that they're in that class.
Another anecdote to throw in the bucket: they announced that we'll be returning to the office on July 10th, and also that we'll be pausing catered lunches on July 7th.
(I know that it's the peak of privilege to complain about not getting free food delivered to work, but this feels like all-stick, and literally no carrots.)
Meanwhile, those unflexible, union-backed jobs in Germany now come more often than not with 40% remote work included, and guaranteed by signed, collectively bargained agreements.
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 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?
And I could see people spending a whole lot of time "collaborating" too.
Maybe there needs to be a blog post 50 passive aggressive ways to get back at your employer for making you come back into the office.
Employees should start associating in-office required days with just talking about a four day work week (which is probably another anathema thing to management).
There was an article in Salon or Slate last year where they asked people what it would take to get them back in the office, and the universal answer was on-site free day care for their kids.
>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.
I left my previous employer when it was clear they were forcing everyone back to the office.
The CEO recently claimed on Twitter and LinkedIn, essentially that people working from home were lazy grifters who did nothing all day.
He’s the sort of manager who believes on the one hand that no-one does any work unless he personally is there to crack the whip, and on the other that it’s fine to pay less than market rate salaries because the company culture is so fantastic.
Also conveniently forgetting that the best years the company ever had financially was when everyone was remote.
Now work for a much smaller fully remote company who love the fact they’re no longer geographically limited for good employees.
> “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 sound pro-WFH but it's basically pro-WFO and has no data other than CEO "feelings" to back it up. It also doesn't even mention all of the companies that started fully remote and will stay that way. Count me among those who would never WFO again, for any reason.
From my point of view, he's right. Virtual meetings with more than 3 participants make back-and-forth discussions very hard. Interruptions aren't always negative - they're part of a natural conversation. In a situation where I'm talking, often an interruption will be to ask for clarification, or more information, and it'll come just as I start to move on to something else. The latency and awkwardness of video calls makes that hard to do. As a result, people talk more continuously and those little questions/requests for clarification don't ever get said.
Sure, there's people who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts. There's also people who feel it's their right to talk at everyone without stopping. Healthy conversation is a balancing act, and it's hard to get right in a group situation over video.
You can, of course, find ways round this. One on one calls, with shared screens, are often more productive if you're remote. Maybe large meetings are ultimately a bit pointless anyway?
Maybe it's my ADHD or cultural norms, but I read it as "finally, a conversation doesn't have to a boring turn-based event". Natural conversations are duplex
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.
I very much agree with your response, yet will also say that I’ve still observed plenty of interruptions on Zoom. It may just raise the difficulty barrier, which I don’t regard as bad.
This entire article is weak on the work-from-office advantages. While they claim that some companies have "run the numbers," unfortunately no factual data from this number running has made it into the article.
its polite to discuss the chit-chat.. its "not polite" to discuss the actual supervision as it is implemented. This is about supervision and metrics, manager roles and executive roles, as much as anything IMHO
CEO and leadership need peons genuflecting to feel powerful. My wife took a job that promised 2 days wfh. First week they switched it to 1 day because leadership thinks it's easier to build relationships in office. Total bait and switch. Was a year ago and she is still there and enjoys the job. I'm still furious about it but let it go. It's frustrating because plans involving the kids were made and then the job changes the playing field and all kid duties are mine 4 days a week instead of 3. Figure for most people that have to go back it's way worse.
It's funny how not one sentence mentioned corporate real estate, which I think is a far bigger driver of the push to in-person work than "you can't interrupt people on Zoom" or whatever inane reason these corporate types think justifies the huge (and patently unnecessary) expenditure in employee time and energy commuting represents.
> “You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,”
With a large pay increase and a promotion to “guy who remembers stuff so nobody else has to”, I would gladly come into the office and not feel like it was rude to be constantly interrupted.
But as it is, my job is “finish the work you asked me to do”, and constant interruption is quite rude, in-person or otherwise.
I took a significant pay increase on a new job with the understanding that the role would be hybrid, two days a week. That was agreed upon above everything else.
Our whole team agreed to do the two days so we could have our project meetings in the lab and do our scrums in person. We also acknowledged that the days are shorter because of commuting time and productivity will not be as strong because of the office environment.
Hell, we spend half our time shooting the shit, eating lunch, and talking about non-work stuff. But we're happy to see real people. So far I'm not unhappy with the setup.
It's the complete opposite when you’re in person. It’s so much more rude as your demanding their immediate attention at a time that suits you. Remote you can manage your notifications and methods of contact which is so much healthier.
I might entertain giving up remote if these clowns at the helm decided to get rid of crowded open office plans. I can’t stand open office plans and get anxiety thinking about being forced back into them. It’s one of the reasons I worked on getting a remote position even before the pandemic. I think I’ll leave the tech industry if it comes down to that being the only option.
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.
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 like, a small subset of workers this applies to who have purely computer jobs, and many of the articles about it seem to imply “everyone” is working from home, never mind carpenters or cooks.
Seems like these companies are banking on a recession to impact the job market and reduce labour bargaining power, thereby freeing them to change the WFH situation without significant attrition.
It'll be interesting to see who ends up being right.
I saw a video that indicated that the attrition from RTO is desirable for some CEOs. If revenues are falling, its better to have staff leave than it is to announce layoffs. RTO gives them a shield and they can paint the WFH crowd as lazy and not a culture fit.
If there is one thing everyone should know, it is that board members, CxOs and VCs are all just regular humans. They think exactly like you. Which means, they are as dumb as you.
"They would much rather focus on their own returns than on the continued well-being of the company."
Apply this line to your job, your career, your family. This is life in modern America.
Another article about forced RTO that fails to mention that executives are afraid of losing their tax incentives / welfare payments by not delivering x number of bodies to the location that gave them incentives to be there
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.
There are so many downsides to WFH, and even the upsides encourage the opposite behaviors you want in a team, so this is in no way surprising. The larger permanent WFH experiment failed.
That said, not every role, in every situation, needs in person interaction. It’s even reasonable to argue not every day needs in person interaction.
> There are so many downsides to WFH, and even the upsides encourage the opposite behaviors you want in a team, so this is in no way surprising.
This blanket statement is not compelling on its own. In theory or in practice, it would need to be demonstrated that any of these soft assertions are true.
gwill|2 years ago
nologic01|2 years ago
"If the ball is only slightly pushed, it will settle back into its hollow, but a stronger push may start the ball rolling down the slope" [1]
They only looked normal because there just aren't many mechanisms for society to explore (at scale) nearby states that might be more adapted but require a lot of energy to reach.
We have now tunneled by force into a more stable state. Everybody knows that massive amounts of knowledge work can be done remotely. There are tradeoffs of-course, a new equilibrium must be reached, but it has nothing to do with the old one.
That is a good thing. Somehow we should be able to get to better states without going through existential risks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability
nness|2 years ago
smcleod|2 years ago
I’ve kept in contact with a couple of them and they’re now 100% remote, one is working for a local company the other an international and they seem genuinely so much happier.
helij|2 years ago
If we changed that and demanded return to office I know for a fact that the most capable people would be the first to give notice and we would immediately be less profitable.
throw10920|2 years ago
Right, because telework is only beneficial for the good developers, because most outside of the top 20%/10%/5% won't be able to compete with low-cost international labor enabled by telework.
Telework is quite clearly a way to cut down on the middle class while enriching a small elite class of workers, and comments like this show those who think that they're in that class.
pavel_lishin|2 years ago
(I know that it's the peak of privilege to complain about not getting free food delivered to work, but this feels like all-stick, and literally no carrots.)
hef19898|2 years ago
tennisflyi|2 years ago
czbond|2 years ago
sharemywin|2 years ago
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 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?
And I could see people spending a whole lot of time "collaborating" too.
Maybe there needs to be a blog post 50 passive aggressive ways to get back at your employer for making you come back into the office.
dv_dt|2 years ago
ralphc|2 years ago
soupfordummies|2 years ago
I love this as malicious compliance in RTO workplaces. Brilliant.
082349872349872|2 years ago
bannedbybros|2 years ago
[deleted]
mattkevan|2 years ago
The CEO recently claimed on Twitter and LinkedIn, essentially that people working from home were lazy grifters who did nothing all day.
He’s the sort of manager who believes on the one hand that no-one does any work unless he personally is there to crack the whip, and on the other that it’s fine to pay less than market rate salaries because the company culture is so fantastic.
Also conveniently forgetting that the best years the company ever had financially was when everyone was remote.
Now work for a much smaller fully remote company who love the fact they’re no longer geographically limited for good employees.
bluefishinit|2 years ago
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 sound pro-WFH but it's basically pro-WFO and has no data other than CEO "feelings" to back it up. It also doesn't even mention all of the companies that started fully remote and will stay that way. Count me among those who would never WFO again, for any reason.
leoedin|2 years ago
Sure, there's people who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts. There's also people who feel it's their right to talk at everyone without stopping. Healthy conversation is a balancing act, and it's hard to get right in a group situation over video.
You can, of course, find ways round this. One on one calls, with shared screens, are often more productive if you're remote. Maybe large meetings are ultimately a bit pointless anyway?
nness|2 years ago
sharondolovsky|2 years ago
mustacheemperor|2 years ago
jasonpeacock|2 years ago
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.
slowmovintarget|2 years ago
There's a reason why nearly every single developer in modern office settings wears headphones. It's not for the synergy.
ineedasername|2 years ago
JamesLeonis|2 years ago
I should make a sign I can tap for all the CEO feelings instead of data. For now I'm content adding to my comment chain [0].
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384366
turtlebits|2 years ago
In person also allows for async conversations during demos/presentations and is much easier to read the room for the speaker.
johnea|2 years ago
asnyder|2 years ago
Really, couldn't close on something more substantial to the business?
cmiles74|2 years ago
mistrial9|2 years ago
HappySweeney|2 years ago
wonderwonder|2 years ago
ssklash|2 years ago
Kon-Peki|2 years ago
With a large pay increase and a promotion to “guy who remembers stuff so nobody else has to”, I would gladly come into the office and not feel like it was rude to be constantly interrupted.
But as it is, my job is “finish the work you asked me to do”, and constant interruption is quite rude, in-person or otherwise.
joezydeco|2 years ago
Our whole team agreed to do the two days so we could have our project meetings in the lab and do our scrums in person. We also acknowledged that the days are shorter because of commuting time and productivity will not be as strong because of the office environment.
Hell, we spend half our time shooting the shit, eating lunch, and talking about non-work stuff. But we're happy to see real people. So far I'm not unhappy with the setup.
smcleod|2 years ago
spacemadness|2 years ago
djoldman|2 years ago
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.
uxp100|2 years ago
I’m not saying I don’t get why people like wfh, it’s just like, a small subset of workers this applies to who have purely computer jobs, and many of the articles about it seem to imply “everyone” is working from home, never mind carpenters or cooks.
seabrookmx|2 years ago
BaseballPhysics|2 years ago
It'll be interesting to see who ends up being right.
twobitshifter|2 years ago
nine_zeros|2 years ago
"They would much rather focus on their own returns than on the continued well-being of the company."
Apply this line to your job, your career, your family. This is life in modern America.
thebigwinning|2 years ago
squalo|2 years ago
minerva23|2 years ago
Tell me your company doesn't use headsets without telling me.
Seriously, if their major complaint is half-duplex audio, just make sure everyone is using headsets so everyone can speak and listen at the same time.
x86x87|2 years ago
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.
doitLP|2 years ago
eloisant|2 years ago
Simulacra|2 years ago
Zetice|2 years ago
That said, not every role, in every situation, needs in person interaction. It’s even reasonable to argue not every day needs in person interaction.
esarbe|2 years ago
- no commute
- being at home with the people you love and miss
- not getting distracted by office drama
- simplified work/life integration
As a company we're using WFH as a selling point for engineers - they love it.
Supermancho|2 years ago
This blanket statement is not compelling on its own. In theory or in practice, it would need to be demonstrated that any of these soft assertions are true.