Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back.
It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision.
People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgrade” imposed by others, unless it’s something they’ve decided on their own and on purpose.
I wish we stopped with the "companies should do this/should do that". Existing big companies are too comfortable and lazy for the remote work revolution.
Remote work is a radical change in culture and work organization. It will take new companies with new workflows and organizational ideas to make it work well. We're not there yet. Managers don't understand yet how to do it, they need to read a lot of documentation (Gitlab's is a good start) to start grasping it.
But it will happen and the companies/startups that crack remote work will be at great advantage. Employee satisfaction is just a small part. There are other, bigger advantages: access to a bigger talent pool, talent retention, saving money, etc
And then, after that comes a revolution in cities. Walkable, safe and cheap places with good internet have a lot to gain (e.g. Portugal, Thailand). Unsafe or expensive cities have a lot to loose (e.g. San Francisco).
"Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated."
My guess is that you're also more likely to lose your best performers - since they will have higher confidence in being able to find a remote-friendly job somewhere else.
There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously difficult it is to reliably measure developer quality, that may be a belief they can harbor long past when you'd expect evidence to have mounted against it.
"Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. Imagine that — nearly half!"
Does this mean that 58% of companies that mandated a return underestimated attrition? And 71% are doing fine with recruitment?
I haven't read the underlying report since it is behind a wall. Having said that, when companies make predictions, they rarely predict a specific number. It is likely that a significant amount of companies saw attrition that was within the expected range. Having said that, they certainly should also report the number that saw less then expected. There is really no way to make sense of just the number presented.
I used to just leave my work laptop back in the office locker, coz apparently we can't work from home anymore so no 'emergency/important' work after 5PM lol.
I am grateful for a remote job. Sometimes being at home for too long I get stir crazy and if I plan my day well I can schedule in time for breaks and walks and feel better. If I had a 45+ minute commute each way again I'd be stir crazy in traffic. No thanks.
The hardest part for me is balancing slack and video conferences. Slack can be useful but it's hard to have more nuanced conversations and make complex decisions. Those really need conversation to make them effective.
A friend recently mentioned that they are on a forced return to office 3 days a week and they spend most of their day on calls with people in other cities and countries. If I had a job I was mildly disinterested in and was forced to commute for no reason, that would nudge me to quietly apply for other jobs. Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon).
If someone wants to be in an office, then accommodate them. Then for everyone else shift the office space budget to the travel budget. Done.
"Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon)."
But on the other hand it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands. Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Amazon. But on one hand you have a lot of self-proclaimed car-haters pretending that nobody needs a car, but then wanting to take away the street capacity that makes carlessness possible by enabling delivery.
The real first advantage in a long time that small companies and startups have over big FAANG players and similar is 100% remote. The edge on hiring is real and by putting remote-OK in your job description you get a much better swath of employees willing to get paid less to avoid the commuting nightmare and live anywhere.
Companies who mandate return to the office should pay employees for the additional commute time at their hourly rate. If this becomes too expensive then productivity gains from being in the office are apparently not worth it.
I once worked some place where my manager loved to tell this allegedly true story (happened before my tour) as a hilarious joke to onboard new devs on how to fill the timesheet:
There was this IC who was working on cross departmental stuff. Things like pipelines, UI component libraries, build tools, etc. He would frequently go on walks to think, either during the work day and return to the office or to go back home and work some more. At this amazing place, we had extensive timesheets to fill in (with 15 min granularity, was great). That guy used to count his walks as work time on specific projects (15–30 min walks.) The joke is that management came down hard in him because you can’t get paid to walk as you’re paid to be writing code. Thinking about code for the company isn’t a paid activity unless it happens in the office. What a sucker this guy was, asking to be paid for taking a walk harharhar!
My colleagues then added (after the manager left the room) that as a result the guy in question took much longer “walks” to think things through in an empty conference room every day instead. Nobody saw the stupidity in that and he left shortly after this new policy was enforced.
This was the single most toxic worst company I’ve ever worked at.
My point is that employers still think that butt not in seat = not working, and since I’m paying you I can make you suffer and I own you for that duration. My job sucks and I can’t work remote so why should I allow you, puny peasant, to have it better than me when you didn’t “work” or “deserve” it?
I agree with you 100%, they should, but companies would look at you like you're demanding an absolutely bonkers amount of money. (They'd much rather the employees come back for free! And they'll complain about the higher than expected attrition the whole way…)
Logistically, how does this work? Do employees need to install trackers on their phones to catalog hours?
Not saying it wouldn’t be ideal to have that segment of the day paid for, but I’m just trying to get my head around how the tightwad money folk deal with such a nebulous target.
Someone asked that in my company. Answer was: you signed the contract in the past, before the covid, and you were coming to the office, and the commute time was included in the compensation. So there will be no increases.
I guess you could use this card when applying for new job.
But honestly, I would rather stay home and earn lesser than agree to coming to the office for additional hourly pay, covering commute time.
Careful with this kind of demand. It’s possible that companies may pay the office workers their increased rate simply by reducing pay to remote workers.
There have been a lot of, at least to me, somewhat unsubstantiated criticisms that fully remote work is difficult for new graduates. I can only provide n=1 sample data, but back when I was working for a company that was fully remote, we brought on many junior engineers who lived across the United States and didn't have any problems onboarding them by keeping a continual slack team huddle running during office hours.
In a lot of ways, it was actually better for them because they could have a multi monitor set up and be looking at one of our shared screens while taking notes on the other one instead of a bunch of people crammed up against one laptop screen in an office.
At least in software engineering, this is a great opportunity to start understanding how to cooperate and work with a team in this field. There should be a little bit of friction involved in tapping someone on the shoulder, and if you can only code within arms reach of a senior engineer you won’t make it very long.
Sometimes I think the college mindset of “if my code doesn’t compile, the TA must have made a mistake giving it to me like this, I’ll ask him what’s wrong” persists into a first job. And there are jobs (and senior engineers) who encourage this pattern too, so it can be a while before anyone encounters a different atmosphere unfortunately.
Head hunters and recruiters are very cognisant of this. Jobs are not advertised anymore as "outstanding compensation", "unlimited PTOs" or "great career perspective" but by "REMOTE". And like it used to be a lie that the compensation would be outstanding, it's often a lie that the position is truly remote. Then it's explained that for this remote position, you need to come 4 days per week in the office, and has a big benefit of one day from home - but not Friday nor Monday of course. Sneaky sneaky
What's worse to me is the return to the "hybrid" office we keep getting threatened with. (My company has not actually done a RTO … yet. I don't know if we ever will.)
Now instead of a lousy 4' desk in an open office plan … I also get a desk that isn't mine? I'm supposed to … what, lug a keyboard¹ & mouse & laptop in? It seems like literally nobody has imagined what it might be like for a SWE to actually attempt to do work in the machinations that get proposed. (And in my case, luckily, never seem to materialize.)
¹between the insistence on MBPs, and my RSI, an external keyboard is a requirement, not a nicety
An external keyboard and mouse is a necessity for any non-emergency work. 100% of laptop keyboards and trackpads suck for anything other than emergencies, and many suck for emergencies as well.
Having worked in two companies practicing hybrid office with no nominative desks but two very different ways of doing it, I can say that it can be great. Or a nightmare.
In the first one they just converted regular nominative desks to free ones. Every desk had different screens with different cable standards, no ergo stand for the screens, some had shared keyboards, each had different chairs, some had drawers, some had accessible outlets, other were hidden behind the desk... You had to come with your stuff from home. And the cleaning was done once a week.
The second one, every desk is the same. The same two screens on ergo stands. A USB-C dock with network connected to the screens. Easily accessible on the desk to plug USB devices. Same chairs at each desk. Each employee has a big personal locker to put stuff like keyboard, headset, coffee mug... Cleaning done every evening so when you arrive in the morning everything is perfectly clean.
You can see which is which.
The second is by far the best place I worked at in my 10+ years career. Depending on what is your main topic of the day, you just pick the next near the people with whom you'll work. Don't want to be bothered with your coworkers most of the day? Just go near another team. And you can also meet new people this way. You can even change desk during the day if need to change context. Just unplug your laptop.
I know people prefer having their own desk with pictures, goodies and other junk. And I thought I was one of them. Until I tried free office the right way.
Great, I can hear about sports and eat shitty complimentary pizza while eavesdropping on some 20 ur old intern get bullied by his superior for driving an old car/having bad facial hair.
Corporate environments bring out the worst in people. I don’t believe 70% of workers are looking to be lazy by wfh. We want to sift thru the toxic bullshit so we can actually do our FUCKING work.
> 20 ur old intern get bullied by his superior for driving an old car/having bad facial hair.
It seems that, for whatever reason, covid has increased the intolerance of shitty behaviour like this. Possibly because remote working meant people could choose to have less contact with toxic co-workers, and so upon return to the office it was far more obviously toxic than before covid when it may have been somewhat normalised.
I’m wondering if some residential buildings will start incorporating luxury co-working office areas where remote workers can stroll into and work amongst other people who WFH in the same building. Kind of like a WeWork. A place for people to find a desk and hang out for a change of scenery, and perhaps meet some locals. It seems like this would almost be necessary for remote workers who don’t have fancy homes but just have a simple studio or 1 bedroom apartment that gets very boring after a while.
This would probably kill off whatever co-working space businesses are left out there.
I have to return to office since I left my previous remote one, been remote for 3 years.
Silver lining (cope) for me is losing weight and slowing down passage of time.
Also interacting with people IRL is nice, seeing physical people. I don't get out much other than going to the bars once in a while.
But it sucks... Losing an hour a day for driving and I gotta get up earlier to get ready/drive. And I'll be working in a cubicle... Oh well got my cans for tunes.
My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older. Thanks for mentioning this in the context of working from home. I feel a little better now.
We'll get a lot more hybrid offices: some people in the office, others at home. This is far from ideal, but it's what we'll get. Managers will get to keep some of their precious oversight—err, excuse me, serendipitous collaboration—but workers with any leverage will stay home if they want. Over time, we'll hit an equilibrium that is less WFH than today, but more than in 2019.
> A late-stage SaaS startup decided to embrace this wave of change. They worked with me to introduce flexible work policies, and the result was almost immediate - they noticed a sharp decrease in employee turnover and an uptick in job applications. Their story echoes the collective message from all three reports: companies must adapt to flexible work policies or risk being swept away.
I'd love to see current hiring stats on committed work from home or flexible companies. There are more places that allow WFH than ever, but as some companies are forcing a return to the office, I bet the remaining WFH companies could exploit the fact that the majority of people don't want to do that. At least some people are willing to switch jobs over it, and so WFH companies should get an influx of talented applicants.
I wonder what the real-world stats for different professions
are as to employees preferring work from home vs at the office.
I do know many workers who do not want to work at home.
The office was a break from the screaming kids and / or
no AC / or have a home that is just not practical as an office /
or just prefer a clean break between what is work / office
and what is home.
Plus, a lot of people behave differently when they are dressed
up professionally for work.
Again, the distinction between home and work is valuable for some.
We have somewhere between 100 - 300 years of experience having people
working at the office. We know a lot about how that works / or doesn't.
Working from home full time at scale is not yet studied to the extent
we can draw real conclusions from it.
A couple of years is far too short.
So it is an experiment.
Personally, I prefer to work from home, but I am not so sure
I will be able to long term.
My prediction is that working from the office will become increasingly
common over time with some professions going back to the office short
term and other longer term.
And some companies will prefer fully remote.
I am not sure what the breakdown will be in 50 years.
Mostly I do remote work from a coworking facility. This is liberating for me in much the same way as work from home, but has none of the downsides you mention. The article keeps returning to the term "flexibility" which occurs 22 times. It seems the experiments underway are more varied and complex than a simple work from home test run that breaks sharply away from hundreds of years of experience.
Companies that expect people to work in an office will not compensate for commute time. Once employees gained the time which would have been spent on the commute to do other things including work & personal matters, it becomes difficult to justify sacrificing that time every day to improve "company culture".
I recently changed jobs and had the choice between a senior IC role at a FAANG and an engineering director position at an open-source company that is fully remote. While working in fully remote culture would be intellectually interesting, I opted for the FAANG and enjoying going back to the (incredibly cushy) office, after 3 years of WFH that I found isolating and depressing, even though I am an introvert and possibly even on the spectrum.
Perhaps I would be singing a different tune if I didn't live in London with its obscenely overpriced chicken coops of houses and had a spacious home office, but somehow I doubt it.
I can tell you that the comfort of your home is a huge factor. I would not dismiss it. I think that it accounts for a lot of the difference between European attitudes to WFH and American.
My best WFH situation was a beach house where I had a dedicated room for work, a large back garden and could take 3 walks a day down the beach between calls.
Just moved to London some months ago... nobody told me that the housing situation was so bad to the point to even push us introverts back into the offices XD (couple days a week personally).
[+] [-] NKosmatos|2 years ago|reply
It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision.
People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgrade” imposed by others, unless it’s something they’ve decided on their own and on purpose.
[+] [-] diego_moita|2 years ago|reply
Remote work is a radical change in culture and work organization. It will take new companies with new workflows and organizational ideas to make it work well. We're not there yet. Managers don't understand yet how to do it, they need to read a lot of documentation (Gitlab's is a good start) to start grasping it.
But it will happen and the companies/startups that crack remote work will be at great advantage. Employee satisfaction is just a small part. There are other, bigger advantages: access to a bigger talent pool, talent retention, saving money, etc
And then, after that comes a revolution in cities. Walkable, safe and cheap places with good internet have a lot to gain (e.g. Portugal, Thailand). Unsafe or expensive cities have a lot to loose (e.g. San Francisco).
[+] [-] simonw|2 years ago|reply
My guess is that you're also more likely to lose your best performers - since they will have higher confidence in being able to find a remote-friendly job somewhere else.
[+] [-] randallsquared|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] destroy-2A|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeconst|2 years ago|reply
Does this mean that 58% of companies that mandated a return underestimated attrition? And 71% are doing fine with recruitment?
[+] [-] gizmo686|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ec109685|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wernercd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghiculescu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarthNebo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] di456|2 years ago|reply
The hardest part for me is balancing slack and video conferences. Slack can be useful but it's hard to have more nuanced conversations and make complex decisions. Those really need conversation to make them effective.
A friend recently mentioned that they are on a forced return to office 3 days a week and they spend most of their day on calls with people in other cities and countries. If I had a job I was mildly disinterested in and was forced to commute for no reason, that would nudge me to quietly apply for other jobs. Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon).
If someone wants to be in an office, then accommodate them. Then for everyone else shift the office space budget to the travel budget. Done.
[+] [-] ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago|reply
But on the other hand it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands. Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Amazon. But on one hand you have a lot of self-proclaimed car-haters pretending that nobody needs a car, but then wanting to take away the street capacity that makes carlessness possible by enabling delivery.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreday|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jupp0r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ornornor|2 years ago|reply
There was this IC who was working on cross departmental stuff. Things like pipelines, UI component libraries, build tools, etc. He would frequently go on walks to think, either during the work day and return to the office or to go back home and work some more. At this amazing place, we had extensive timesheets to fill in (with 15 min granularity, was great). That guy used to count his walks as work time on specific projects (15–30 min walks.) The joke is that management came down hard in him because you can’t get paid to walk as you’re paid to be writing code. Thinking about code for the company isn’t a paid activity unless it happens in the office. What a sucker this guy was, asking to be paid for taking a walk harharhar!
My colleagues then added (after the manager left the room) that as a result the guy in question took much longer “walks” to think things through in an empty conference room every day instead. Nobody saw the stupidity in that and he left shortly after this new policy was enforced.
This was the single most toxic worst company I’ve ever worked at.
My point is that employers still think that butt not in seat = not working, and since I’m paying you I can make you suffer and I own you for that duration. My job sucks and I can’t work remote so why should I allow you, puny peasant, to have it better than me when you didn’t “work” or “deserve” it?
[+] [-] deathanatos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
Not saying it wouldn’t be ideal to have that segment of the day paid for, but I’m just trying to get my head around how the tightwad money folk deal with such a nebulous target.
[+] [-] enigma20|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abduhl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway675309|2 years ago|reply
In a lot of ways, it was actually better for them because they could have a multi monitor set up and be looking at one of our shared screens while taking notes on the other one instead of a bunch of people crammed up against one laptop screen in an office.
[+] [-] smarmgoblin|2 years ago|reply
Sometimes I think the college mindset of “if my code doesn’t compile, the TA must have made a mistake giving it to me like this, I’ll ask him what’s wrong” persists into a first job. And there are jobs (and senior engineers) who encourage this pattern too, so it can be a while before anyone encounters a different atmosphere unfortunately.
[+] [-] WinstonSmith84|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deathanatos|2 years ago|reply
Now instead of a lousy 4' desk in an open office plan … I also get a desk that isn't mine? I'm supposed to … what, lug a keyboard¹ & mouse & laptop in? It seems like literally nobody has imagined what it might be like for a SWE to actually attempt to do work in the machinations that get proposed. (And in my case, luckily, never seem to materialize.)
¹between the insistence on MBPs, and my RSI, an external keyboard is a requirement, not a nicety
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|2 years ago|reply
This is inarguable fact.
[+] [-] wiether|2 years ago|reply
In the first one they just converted regular nominative desks to free ones. Every desk had different screens with different cable standards, no ergo stand for the screens, some had shared keyboards, each had different chairs, some had drawers, some had accessible outlets, other were hidden behind the desk... You had to come with your stuff from home. And the cleaning was done once a week.
The second one, every desk is the same. The same two screens on ergo stands. A USB-C dock with network connected to the screens. Easily accessible on the desk to plug USB devices. Same chairs at each desk. Each employee has a big personal locker to put stuff like keyboard, headset, coffee mug... Cleaning done every evening so when you arrive in the morning everything is perfectly clean.
You can see which is which.
The second is by far the best place I worked at in my 10+ years career. Depending on what is your main topic of the day, you just pick the next near the people with whom you'll work. Don't want to be bothered with your coworkers most of the day? Just go near another team. And you can also meet new people this way. You can even change desk during the day if need to change context. Just unplug your laptop.
I know people prefer having their own desk with pictures, goodies and other junk. And I thought I was one of them. Until I tried free office the right way.
[+] [-] suprjami|2 years ago|reply
Then again if your employer doesn't even have monitors at hotdesks then maybe it's time to look for greener pastures.
[+] [-] pipeline_peak|2 years ago|reply
Corporate environments bring out the worst in people. I don’t believe 70% of workers are looking to be lazy by wfh. We want to sift thru the toxic bullshit so we can actually do our FUCKING work.
Yes I’m bitter
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|2 years ago|reply
It seems that, for whatever reason, covid has increased the intolerance of shitty behaviour like this. Possibly because remote working meant people could choose to have less contact with toxic co-workers, and so upon return to the office it was far more obviously toxic than before covid when it may have been somewhat normalised.
This is how it should be. Penalise the fouls.
[+] [-] xwdv|2 years ago|reply
This would probably kill off whatever co-working space businesses are left out there.
[+] [-] ge96|2 years ago|reply
Silver lining (cope) for me is losing weight and slowing down passage of time.
Also interacting with people IRL is nice, seeing physical people. I don't get out much other than going to the bars once in a while.
But it sucks... Losing an hour a day for driving and I gotta get up earlier to get ready/drive. And I'll be working in a cubicle... Oh well got my cans for tunes.
[+] [-] threads2|2 years ago|reply
My days/months have been flying by and I thought I was just because I'm getting older. Thanks for mentioning this in the context of working from home. I feel a little better now.
Maybe I should get an office job too.
[+] [-] nologic01|2 years ago|reply
Paid for via reduced quality of life of the contracting masses and higher environmental impact.
[+] [-] wildrhythms|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 23B1|2 years ago|reply
(Also a really nice, clean website redesign.)
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
> A late-stage SaaS startup decided to embrace this wave of change. They worked with me to introduce flexible work policies, and the result was almost immediate - they noticed a sharp decrease in employee turnover and an uptick in job applications. Their story echoes the collective message from all three reports: companies must adapt to flexible work policies or risk being swept away.
I'd love to see current hiring stats on committed work from home or flexible companies. There are more places that allow WFH than ever, but as some companies are forcing a return to the office, I bet the remaining WFH companies could exploit the fact that the majority of people don't want to do that. At least some people are willing to switch jobs over it, and so WFH companies should get an influx of talented applicants.
[+] [-] bluefirebrand|2 years ago|reply
It's not ideal, but it's also almost no different than the teleconferencing with satellite offices that we had previously anyways.
Just instead of calling other offices overseas or whatever, you're calling people at their homes or their own chosen offices.
[+] [-] bigbillheck|2 years ago|reply
Only if we're not willing to fight for more.
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|2 years ago|reply
I wonder what the real-world stats for different professions are as to employees preferring work from home vs at the office.
I do know many workers who do not want to work at home. The office was a break from the screaming kids and / or no AC / or have a home that is just not practical as an office / or just prefer a clean break between what is work / office and what is home.
Plus, a lot of people behave differently when they are dressed up professionally for work. Again, the distinction between home and work is valuable for some.
We have somewhere between 100 - 300 years of experience having people working at the office. We know a lot about how that works / or doesn't.
Working from home full time at scale is not yet studied to the extent we can draw real conclusions from it.
A couple of years is far too short. So it is an experiment.
Personally, I prefer to work from home, but I am not so sure I will be able to long term.
My prediction is that working from the office will become increasingly common over time with some professions going back to the office short term and other longer term.
And some companies will prefer fully remote.
I am not sure what the breakdown will be in 50 years.
[+] [-] m0llusk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briantakita|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmajid|2 years ago|reply
Perhaps I would be singing a different tune if I didn't live in London with its obscenely overpriced chicken coops of houses and had a spacious home office, but somehow I doubt it.
[+] [-] dougmwne|2 years ago|reply
My best WFH situation was a beach house where I had a dedicated room for work, a large back garden and could take 3 walks a day down the beach between calls.
[+] [-] m_rpn|2 years ago|reply