Our CEO just announced,
"You’ve probably heard that many businesses, including some of our competitors, are calling employees back to the office, significantly reducing or eliminating work-from-home options, and curtailing much of the flexibility they once allowed. Even the tech industry – among the first to send employees home in March 2020 – is calling staff back to the office. Some with perks, others with threats. Some of these companies are citing a loss of culture and others are seeing a drop in their profitability or revenue. It seems their solution to one, or all these problems, is to bring employees back under their roofs.
Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market. It’s been a draw for new hires and a benefit that our employees have enthusiastically embraced. And, since 2020, we’ve had our three highest revenue years, and we remain on track to grow further this year..."
>Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market
It will be interesting to see how the return to office/remote work debate will be settled by the competitive market. If remote work is such a big draw for top talent (and increases productivity), companies that offer remote flexibility will outperform companies that don’t, since they will attract better employees who are also more productive. If, on the other hand, remote work leads to a decrease in productivity (as return to office proponents claim), it may be the case that the better talent wooed by companies offering remote positions will be offset by the drop in productivity from remote work.
It may also be the case that remote flexibility simply isn’t that big of a draw, and companies with remote options won’t attract significantly better talent than companies without them.
I'm usually a little suspicious of articles that use the phrase "the evidence is clear" as a rhetorical device because evidence is rarely clear, especially when it comes to to things that have a human and social aspect.
Their argument is mostly based on a single study.
And then they just call out the biases of the CEOs pushing for back-to-office, but they don't acknowledge their own bias as someone who appears to run a consultancy that makes money off of exactly the thing they are arguing is the right approach.
The article might be poor, the author self-serving, and their views poorly sourced, but we don't have to rely on this one article to know that offices are terrible for productivity. Countless studies on the open floor plans and cube farms companies want to pull workers back to have shown that they are terrible for productivity, so you can take your pick from any of them. Many people here have experienced that for themselves.
Offices are good for forced socialization, collaboration, networking, and micromanaging, but not for productivity, flexibility, employee's health and comfort, and especially not for work that requires long periods of intense focus.
Right now I'm working fully remote, but probably will end up spending 4-5 working weeks annual total in the office. I fly in maybe once every other month for like 3-4 days.
When I go to the office, my productivity really drops. I am reminded why I hate working full time in the office. Still, it's worth it for team dinners and other "team building" activities. I joke that the thing we get out of going to the office is to socialize.
I like the setup, though. When I do go, I'm basically doing a working vacation. We whiteboard, work on things I wouldn't normally do, have fun, and usually get something accomplished once I settle in.
> When I go to the office, my productivity really drops.
Same for me. The first couple of times, I became really frustrated with spending a week in the office. It seemed to be a cycle of "Plug in laptop, read and respond to a couple of emails, unplug laptop, go to a meeting, bullshit for the first 10 minutes of the meeting, listen to other people talk for 40 minutes, bullshit for the last 10 minutes of the meeting, close laptop, stop by the cafeteria for coffee, bullshit over coffee for 10 minutes, go back to desk." Repeat 3x-4x a day for five days.
I "got over it" by finally accepting the fact that my week in the office is not going to be productive in my traditional sense. The cycle above is the work I am doing for that week.
> I joke that the thing we get out of going to the office is to socialize.
I understand the sentiment, but in-office socializing isn’t necessarily a bad thing or counterproductive. Sure, there are introverts who will insist on how much they despite in-office social norms and culture. There are also plenty of folks somewhere in between introvert and extrovert that appreciate the ability to spontaneously socialize in low pressure situations. That socializing can build rapport and overall happiness for folks. Remote work makes it challenging to do that without it feeling either very manufactured and typically self-selective for other extroverts; or a cheesy, clumsily organized “work event” that fails to attract much attention.
My company is still fully remote and one thing I’ve noticed is that individuals are more productive compared to the office, but teams are much less productive because everyone is just working on whatever they feel like instead of collaborating. It’s interesting to me that every individual seems to be more productive but our organization as a whole is clearly much less so.
And I hate these working vacations. One time I made an excuse and skipped out of it, and got a months work done in the week everyone was wasting time at the on-site. Nobody online to bug me, no meetings, just pure productivity.
> Instead of being a productivity wonderland, the office is more like a productivity black hole, where collaboration, socializing, mentoring, and on-the-job training thrive, but focused work gets sucked into oblivion. In fact, research shows that the office is detrimental to productivity.
My experience corroborates this. My team is spread across 4 or 5 cities, 2 countries, 2 continents, and 6h difference. I know none in the office, and yet I still have trouble getting work done because people can’t respect others and speak loudly.
I shouldn’t need to wear headphones 8h a day just so I can have some silence when I can work remotely at a library, or in my apartment.
I shouldn’t need to wear a sweater or warm clothing in the middle of the summer because people need to have the AC as low as they do.
Let’s not forget the need to scramble to find a meeting room because the teams are as fragmented as they are.
It’s absolutely insane.
All of these get worse because of forced RTO.
when attendance was sparser, I enjoyed it a lot more.
I recently started a new job and went from working hybrid to fully remote. The department I worked in was spread across two different locations with most of the team working from the one I wasn't at. There was a huge push by management to force people back into the office more and more; I'd often end up sitting there alone all day while people from sales had calls and meetings on speaker at max volume along with an expensive, stressful commute on a packed train either side.
This was one of the things that pushed me to finally look somewhere else (there were lots of other issues) and there's no way someone could get me to go back to pointlessly working in an office, spending hours per day and thousands per year commuting unpaid just so they can exercise further control while ironically reducing productivity significantly.
I really don't want to work for someone who reluctantly "allows" me to be in my home. Or someone who views it as a generous perk that might get taken away during tough times.
So, I think people who want in-office work should embrace it and advertise it loud and clear. This makes it easier for me to move on and find the other companies who see value in me building out a home office fine-tuned for my own productivity at little-to-no additional cost to the company.
This is what they want. They are being brazen about it to make people unhappy enough to quit and go to those companies. Another easy round of layoffs for our wonderfully forward thinking CEOs.
Me and my friend think that some companies are doing this as a way to lay people off without laying people off. If that's the case, it's a severe miscalculation as the employees most likely to leave are in theory, the best ones. They believe in themselves and that they can get another (remote) job very easily.
I think it’s pretty clear that rto is a way to get people to quit, but I’m not so sure about the first to leave theory. The best employees in my org are the ones who are most committed to the product. They’re not super likely to leave just because they’re so personally invested in what we’re doing. The average employees are still able to get offers, they’re the ones that tend to leave.
I don't plan to ever return. It pains me to think how much of my youth was wasted commuting, being tired / less than 100%, and overall just wrecking my health for preconceptions around "how work is done".
Is there a real reason to need folks in the office for most tech work?
I can understand timezones being an issue with remote work, but at that point just don't hire in lots of disparate timezones. Still, I work with folks that wake up when I get off work, so I don't get it.
Communication is the key, and it doesn't magically get better by going to an office. All you get is a false sense of control.
The problem is that the physical layout of most offices do not support an environment in which knowledge workers (especially in tech/professional services) kan thrive. Open office spaces are killing for focussed work so what you'll need is a choice. When you need to focus, retreat to a small room without distractions, if you need mentoring, go to a somewhat bigger room with a white board, if you want to collaborate, use the traditional open office adjacent to the coffee machine. The reason is that in some point in time companies and realtors decide that an open office space is the most efficient way to use square meters (or feet in freedom units.) and as such optimizes revenue.
If offices were more optimized returning to an office for a few days a week can actually improve productivity. That said, it very much depends on the role if 100 % WFH, hybrid or full office work makes sense. IMHO is that informal relations (the "coffee machine chat") provides a certain advantage in _some_ roles. This aspect (providing some nuance..) seems to be missing from most discussions.
It will be really good for the world if the current crop of companies, their execs, their upper/middle management fail. Poor practices installed in by these people need to go.
I'm so grateful to be a freelancer when I read stuff like this. Upwork has plenty to complain about but at least they don't dictate where I can live and work.
I for one am glad in some ways about this. My company is remote first and this means we won't have to compete for new hires as aggressively now that the big companies are shooting themselves in the foot. They wanna compete for the same talent as us? they'll need to offer 20-40k over our offers.
With all the available space in office buildings, why not convert the open spaces back into individual offices? Before the enthusiasm for open plan offices, engineers had their own offices where they could close the door and concentrate on their work.
That would definitely be a lot nicer but it still leaves the issue of spending thousands per year financially as well as hours of your life commuting to do something you could do just as well if not better from home anyway. People who work shifts already are at work far too long but then they have to tack on another 2-3 hours travelling which they're not even compensated for.
My employer has a 40% WFH tolerance policy and asked us (team leads) to relay the information and control office presence.
As team lead, I decided to relay this message differently. I instructed my team to do as they wish and come when they want, and to do so with three things in mind:
1. If they are not coming to the office because something is inadequate, they let me know and I will do my best to fix it.
2. Those who are younger than 35 should consider the long-term effects of staying at home and not interacting with peers on their professional career.
They trusted me on item 1 and asked for a few things to change. Almost everything was in relation with hardware (better monitors, proper docking stations, good keyboards and mice, and in two cases, new laptops), one asked to clean the toilets more frequently and make some air freshener available, another asked for a water heating option to make tea and make some tea available (it was indeed unfair with the coffee drinkers who have a state-of-the-art coffee machine), they asked for a larger trash bin and a third lamp in the open space (team of 6). That's all I can remember.
Regarding item 2, I don't know how they processed it but all I can say is that the team's WFH ratio is 24% for the last three months.
Overall, I think it is all about creating a working environment people actually enjoy coming to. When I hear about employees who feel conflicted or reluctant to come to the office, I am genuinely convinced it is because one of the following:
1) They are in conflict with a colleague or their manager is an ass.ole.
2) Someone is making their life at the office unnecessarily painful or more difficult than it should (and it is most likely something related to a hardware purchase or shared commons).
3) There is a tangible constraint on coming to the office that makes their life difficult above a certain threshold (e.g., cost of transportation too elevated, medical/health/healthcare condition or issue at stake, etc.).
4) It's a wrong hire, and she/he should be laid off.
As a team lead, if I see someone being reluctant to come to the office, I see it as my duty to identify which of the above is at cause and to do my best to resolve it.
Companies that are not WFH flexible will be less competitive. They will be less competitive in the job market, and operational costs (office space, middle management, wasted BS meetings etc.) will be higher compared with WFH companies.
The article comes across strangely indignant. I wonder if the author is personally this passionate about remote work, or if it's click-bait for the plurality of netizens that seem to be that passionate.
Even if the article is entirely accurate, I see no sense in admonishing others for "insane" business practices. Other people making stupid business decisions should be viewed as an opportunity.
[+] [-] PTOB|2 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market. It’s been a draw for new hires and a benefit that our employees have enthusiastically embraced. And, since 2020, we’ve had our three highest revenue years, and we remain on track to grow further this year..."
[+] [-] MontyCarloHall|2 years ago|reply
It will be interesting to see how the return to office/remote work debate will be settled by the competitive market. If remote work is such a big draw for top talent (and increases productivity), companies that offer remote flexibility will outperform companies that don’t, since they will attract better employees who are also more productive. If, on the other hand, remote work leads to a decrease in productivity (as return to office proponents claim), it may be the case that the better talent wooed by companies offering remote positions will be offset by the drop in productivity from remote work.
It may also be the case that remote flexibility simply isn’t that big of a draw, and companies with remote options won’t attract significantly better talent than companies without them.
[+] [-] slickrick216|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CoastalCoder|2 years ago|reply
Can you say who they are? Even if they're not currently hiring, it's something worth remembering.
[+] [-] nly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyrophane|2 years ago|reply
Their argument is mostly based on a single study.
And then they just call out the biases of the CEOs pushing for back-to-office, but they don't acknowledge their own bias as someone who appears to run a consultancy that makes money off of exactly the thing they are arguing is the right approach.
[+] [-] autoexec|2 years ago|reply
Offices are good for forced socialization, collaboration, networking, and micromanaging, but not for productivity, flexibility, employee's health and comfort, and especially not for work that requires long periods of intense focus.
[+] [-] mcbuilder|2 years ago|reply
When I go to the office, my productivity really drops. I am reminded why I hate working full time in the office. Still, it's worth it for team dinners and other "team building" activities. I joke that the thing we get out of going to the office is to socialize.
I like the setup, though. When I do go, I'm basically doing a working vacation. We whiteboard, work on things I wouldn't normally do, have fun, and usually get something accomplished once I settle in.
[+] [-] vidanay|2 years ago|reply
Same for me. The first couple of times, I became really frustrated with spending a week in the office. It seemed to be a cycle of "Plug in laptop, read and respond to a couple of emails, unplug laptop, go to a meeting, bullshit for the first 10 minutes of the meeting, listen to other people talk for 40 minutes, bullshit for the last 10 minutes of the meeting, close laptop, stop by the cafeteria for coffee, bullshit over coffee for 10 minutes, go back to desk." Repeat 3x-4x a day for five days.
I "got over it" by finally accepting the fact that my week in the office is not going to be productive in my traditional sense. The cycle above is the work I am doing for that week.
[+] [-] brayhite|2 years ago|reply
I understand the sentiment, but in-office socializing isn’t necessarily a bad thing or counterproductive. Sure, there are introverts who will insist on how much they despite in-office social norms and culture. There are also plenty of folks somewhere in between introvert and extrovert that appreciate the ability to spontaneously socialize in low pressure situations. That socializing can build rapport and overall happiness for folks. Remote work makes it challenging to do that without it feeling either very manufactured and typically self-selective for other extroverts; or a cheesy, clumsily organized “work event” that fails to attract much attention.
[+] [-] HDThoreaun|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwawaaarrgh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PartiallyTyped|2 years ago|reply
My experience corroborates this. My team is spread across 4 or 5 cities, 2 countries, 2 continents, and 6h difference. I know none in the office, and yet I still have trouble getting work done because people can’t respect others and speak loudly.
I shouldn’t need to wear headphones 8h a day just so I can have some silence when I can work remotely at a library, or in my apartment.
I shouldn’t need to wear a sweater or warm clothing in the middle of the summer because people need to have the AC as low as they do.
Let’s not forget the need to scramble to find a meeting room because the teams are as fragmented as they are.
It’s absolutely insane.
All of these get worse because of forced RTO.
when attendance was sparser, I enjoyed it a lot more.
[+] [-] peoplearepeople|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0oncake|2 years ago|reply
This was one of the things that pushed me to finally look somewhere else (there were lots of other issues) and there's no way someone could get me to go back to pointlessly working in an office, spending hours per day and thousands per year commuting unpaid just so they can exercise further control while ironically reducing productivity significantly.
[+] [-] nperez|2 years ago|reply
So, I think people who want in-office work should embrace it and advertise it loud and clear. This makes it easier for me to move on and find the other companies who see value in me building out a home office fine-tuned for my own productivity at little-to-no additional cost to the company.
[+] [-] hattar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacemadness|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Apreche|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HDThoreaun|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clpm4j|2 years ago|reply
2023: "Our valuation went down and customers aren't spending as much, let's do layoffs and bring everyone back into the office."
Clearly the same idiots are still in the C-suite.
[+] [-] diob|2 years ago|reply
Is there a real reason to need folks in the office for most tech work?
I can understand timezones being an issue with remote work, but at that point just don't hire in lots of disparate timezones. Still, I work with folks that wake up when I get off work, so I don't get it.
Communication is the key, and it doesn't magically get better by going to an office. All you get is a false sense of control.
[+] [-] m0oncake|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicholasbraker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_zeros|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_jesus_villa|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sacnoradhq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cultofmetatron|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GianFabien|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0oncake|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokya|2 years ago|reply
As team lead, I decided to relay this message differently. I instructed my team to do as they wish and come when they want, and to do so with three things in mind:
They trusted me on item 1 and asked for a few things to change. Almost everything was in relation with hardware (better monitors, proper docking stations, good keyboards and mice, and in two cases, new laptops), one asked to clean the toilets more frequently and make some air freshener available, another asked for a water heating option to make tea and make some tea available (it was indeed unfair with the coffee drinkers who have a state-of-the-art coffee machine), they asked for a larger trash bin and a third lamp in the open space (team of 6). That's all I can remember.Regarding item 2, I don't know how they processed it but all I can say is that the team's WFH ratio is 24% for the last three months.
Overall, I think it is all about creating a working environment people actually enjoy coming to. When I hear about employees who feel conflicted or reluctant to come to the office, I am genuinely convinced it is because one of the following:
As a team lead, if I see someone being reluctant to come to the office, I see it as my duty to identify which of the above is at cause and to do my best to resolve it.[+] [-] sgdread|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deterministic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ochronus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonpeacock|2 years ago|reply
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-damaging...
from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448
[+] [-] bloppe|2 years ago|reply
Even if the article is entirely accurate, I see no sense in admonishing others for "insane" business practices. Other people making stupid business decisions should be viewed as an opportunity.