> Before COVID-19 sent one-third of the global workforce home, the Melbourne property surveyor that employs drone operator Nicholas Coomber called its 180-strong staff into the office every day at 9 a.m. to hand out assignments.
> Now that they work from home, the surveyors travel straight to the field as early as 7.30 a.m., enabling Coomber to pick up his children from daycare earlier than before the pandemic.
The example here seems like a particularly stupid (from the company POV, even) place to put an in-office mandate. Clearly much of the actual work was never happening in the office anyway.
Overall what the article describes seems pretty similar to what's happening in a lot of companies in the US (and globally, as the article notes), though with more unions involved than in the US. Bosses are much more likely to want 5 days in the office than employees, negotiation over how many days, etc. A lot of work certainly doesn't need 5 days a week in office.
> The example here seems like a particularly stupid (from the company POV, even) place to put an in-office mandate.
Doubly or triply so considering the travel times to their field sites, just look at the timeframe differences quoted for that office meeting vs when he leaves for the survey site otherwise. What an incredible gain in productivity!
If companies are going to force people to be in the office, then the government should mandate that commute time is included in office hours.
That means if you want me in the office, I will leave my house at 9AM, if you want me to be close to the office, then increase my pay and I will move closer.
I'm migrating to a mixed mode. And glad to be able to.
One of the nagging questions/worries I have about the increase in WFH is greener employees. I've entertained summer interns for the last 11 years at work. And I've tried to help some older but newer-to-programming peers.
I can take "experienced" contractors/helpers up to speed in one of the many domains I have to work in pretty quick. Share some code. Some chats/emails. Couple desktop shares, it's usually enough to bootstrap an ongoing remote conversation.
With younger/newer/greener people, I have found this to be nigh impossible though. I don't like the optics of "you need to get some experience before you can work from home" and it also begs the question "who's going to show up in office to do the mentoring." I do see this as a problem that's not getting addressed.
As a concrete example: getting an intern’s corporate proxy set up for a build system over video chat can be quite difficult. If they change the system proxy settings or change networks, the screen share goes out. You don’t face these day 0 mentoring issues in person.
Counterpoint: I work at a major tech company and I feel like our interns have been more productive since covid 19. It's forced them to establish a more diverse network of people to ask help from. Maybe it's harder for them, but they don't seemed handicapped by it at all.
The whole "juniors need easy help and struggle to get it themselves" seems like an artificially concocted narrative to me.
The last place I worked had full WFH and used Tuple (not affiliated) and it worked great for ramp-up and onboarding.
It basically lets you pair program where you and a remote person can control your computer (or theirs) more or less completely and seamlessly. There are competing products too, but that was the nicest I've used.
I tried it at my new job with a colleague in Brazil (I'm in US) and the performance was awful as it seemed to be routing it through the VPN for some reason.
My point is though, good pair programming software might be the solution. Zoom is inadequate in my professional opinion, though it's almost viable. Knowing how much better it could be it falls short.
Aside: I sometimes see stuff like "employees are 10% less productive from home." [0]
However that's somewhat misleading, the "productivity" does NOT mean physics-style efficiency of human effort to create value and fight entropy... No, it's based on what employers had to spend. So slaves that only produce a quarter as much per day are technically "more productive."
This matters because employers that require unnecessary time/fuel for commutes typically don't pay for it. Out of tradition and negotiating-power, those costs are usually shoved off onto employees and are not being tracked.
If commuting to the office was compensated, the "productivity" differences with work-from-home would be dramatically flipped.
Basing the decision on a 10% productivity change is insulting when you consider that the average commute is 11.5% of an 8 hour work day (2019 numbers, [1]).
If employers were in fact willing to swing major policy and spending decisions based on +/- 10% knowledge worker efficiency, offices would look very different.
Quite a few companies are somewhat reasonable and steering towards a hybrid model where people come in 1-3 days a week.
The unexplored outcome of hybrid is that there's no such thing as hybrid.
In a hybrid model, you come into the office and find people sitting in chairs with a headphone on. Because they're just as much in calls as they were at home. Because part of the meeting participants on any given day is not there.
Hence, this nice physical face-to-face meeting, a supposed benefit of returning to the office, does not materialize.
Well, perhaps you'll at least do some ad-hoc brainstorming with your colleague at the coffee machine. Sure, but you need to put the outcome of that in writing...for the people that are not there.
Hence, this mode of virtual working cannot be undone. You can't do a "little" virtual working. When you come into the office you largely continue to work as if from home. Perhaps without the sweatpants.
For the record, I'm not anti-office. I enjoy the socializing, lunch walks, etc. And in our increasingly touchless home-based society, it's not that bad of a deal to get out of the house for 2 or 3 days a week. Finally, we should empathize with juniors. In my experience, remote mentoring is a piss poor substitute for the real thing.
That's an exaggeration. You can actually walk to a person, knock, and get facetime in the office. Instead of zoom-time which is arguably worse.
The issue of which-3-days is real though.
A bigger issue is the asymmetry in the system - new people get a net benefit from facetime and mentoring. Experienced employees get net loss. It's distraction, unproductive time for your own projects, unrecognized at review time.
And since experienced employees have more clout, mentoring can become a negligible part of the new employees experience. Even at companies that claim to have made a system of mentoring, stories abound of failures ('mentors' that ignore questions or requests for meeting)
Hybrid is not reasonable. Hybrid means having to maintain a home office and also remain within commuting distance. It is the worst of both worlds. Even the people who choose to work every day in office are complaining: they can’t find a desk now. It’s been a hilarious shitshow that I get to watch remotely.
> Because part of the meeting participants on any given day is not there.
That's not the only possible "hybrid" model though. The one where multiple large companies (or company-like divisions) are time-sharing the same facility, so that for any workday it's either 100% of the group present or 0% of the group present.
I'm not saying it'll prove practical or popular, but it does avoid the "there's always somebody missing from the meeting" issue.
> In my experience, remote mentoring is a piss poor substitute for the real thing.
This is very true. Probably the biggest contributor to my career were the first two internships I have had. I can't imagine having them done virtually over Slack and Zoom and still having the same impact and connection, it would be devoid of an essential sense of belonging and inspiration.
> Hence, this nice physical face-to-face meeting, a supposed benefit of returning to the office, does not materialize.
It does in my experience. 1 on 1s and small meetings often do have all of the attendees present, especially when in-office days are designated. Some meetings do have people attending virtually, but a good conference room setup with large screens and good interfaces for conferencing make it more comfortable than being stuck in front of your computer. Regardless, you are in the room with many people face-to-face, and you can discuss things with them after the meeting and build relationships.
I see your point, because sometimes I have to find a room in the office just to have a 1:1 virtually, which arguably is more of a hassle than just taking the call at home. But I do find that hybrid works well overall in my experience, and the interpersonal benefits are large even though not everyone is in the office at the same time.
One line I can't square with mandatory returns to office is that the same orgs and agencies requiring employees in office are also waving big flags about going green and fighting climate change.
Has anyone seen a justification for the disconnect?
Climate change is a luxury belief that people wave to get federal funding or social points. Living a true low-emissions lifestyle (not one where you consume exactly as much as you did before except EVs instead of gas cars) is a serious handicap in the modern economy.
Easy. It is all about making your life poorer. The wealthy will continue to drive and fly but you and me will have to walk from the sleeping pod to the working pod. You don't see the WEF walking to Davos do you?
> One line I can't square with mandatory returns to office is that the same orgs and agencies requiring employees in office are also waving big flags about going green and fighting climate change. Has anyone seen a justification for the disconnect?
The type of argument
> It's hypocritical that they [group A] are the ones doing [some thing] but at the same time also being the ones [group B] doing [another thing]
with groups A and B being independent of each other often irks me. Who says they are actually the same people? What is this line of thought called, that must be a named fallacy of some kind.
Not directly commenting on the topic here, but headlines of the form "X fight for the right to Y" seem to presuppose that there is such a moral right, and they are fighting just to bring it into legal recognition. When the question really starts with whether such a moral right exists or not, whether Y should be a legal right.
The problem with presuppositions is that they are preserved under negation. Whether you say you are for or against right Y, it seems that you presuppose that right Y exists in some capacity. But that's not what people who are "against" would want to assume, as they are probably denying it.
Another way to say is "They don't already have that right?". Can't they already get/negotiate work-from-home jobs voluntarily with other equally free people?
I'm not arguing against you, but you're giving the technical, logical explanation to a purposely a-technical and a-logical claim. The vast majority of people (not the ones who think like you or me) simply call the use of force against other people in order to get what they want (the social order they want, etc) "rights", whatever the moral implications (or even practical consequences).
I’ve worked at home my whole career. First by necessity and then by choice. If I happened to live in the same city as my job, I’d be happy to come in one or two days a week. But I’d never accept having to come into the office every day. I hate driving in traffic and I don’t get much done in the office.
Working remote has let me live and travel wherever I want. I’m planning a three to six month working vacation to Asia / Australia for near the end of the year. I currently live in a cheap cost of living location, with extremely low taxes, near family, and work in a high salary location. Best of all worlds.
what the resistance to WFH makes explicit is that when companies hire workers they don't really conceive of it as buying their labour, they conceive of it as taking control of them for eight hours and dictating how they have to behave.
That's the real reason why WFH faces so much resistance. When people are done with their work they can just play with their kid or do what they want, and it becomes obvious how much, using Foucault's analogy, of a prison aimed to discipline the office is.
I also think it shows how insufficient some management is. They coast on "butt in seats" and call it management. Being forced to actually monitor and assess work is a chore they previously skipped. Likewise ensuring that staff are properly utilized is another chore often skipped and them being remote forces you to acknowledge and confront this reality.
That's not the reason. Very few people who can work from home can be "done with their work".
As far as I can tell the real reasons are some combination of:
* Working physically next to people generally is more efficient. Of course there are some people like Knuth who need to be undisturbed for 6 hours, but for most people the ease of communicating in the real world is a big time saver. It really is.
* The benefit of face to face meetings is bigger the more meetings you have and the more talking to people your job involves. Guess how many meetings the people making these decisions have...
* You're less likely to spend time doing house chores and whatever. I generally do a solid day's work when WFH but even I sometimes just mow the lawn or whatever. If I was at work I would probably just read HN on my phone instead but I obviously hide that better. So this isn't a good reason IMO but it is a reason.
* Companies don't like paying for fancy offices that nobody is using.
* It isn't the company that pays for the time and cost of your commute, so to them that is not a downside.
I wouldn't ever work for a company that didn't let me WFH again. The lack of commute is just too good.
But I do understand the real reasons why high up managers don't like it.
One overlooked cause of the return to office trend is local tax breaks.
Big companies negotiate large tax breaks from city and state governments in exchange for bringing a certain number of jobs to the area. But big companies haven't been delivering the jobs to the area that they promised because employees have been allowed to work remotely. So now they are at risk of huge tax bills.
I think framing it as a right is misleading. Working from home is simply a contract perk like compensation subject to contract negotiation.
It makes sense that workers would want it, just like they would want a 200% higher salary. Individuals with leverage or those in unions can negotiate for it and employers can come to agreements or not.
It could be a right. Couple centuries ago, factory workers had to work seven days a week, for a total of seventy hours a week. It is not far fetched that working from home could become a right, like getting some rest came to be.
Unrelated to the WFH dilemma, how is Australia generally for IT and tech workers?
I've gotten two invitations to emigrate in the past and although I naively refused, as time goes on I am strongly inclined to at least take the offers into account.
WFH policies should be between the employer and employee and not be set by the government. If an employer wants everyone in the office 5 days a week and is willing to pay enough to get such employees, the government should not interfere.
People down there, let's say, do not exactly live to work. You can say that's how it ought to be, and you might well be right, but that's how it's always been. YMMV.
The optimist in me hopes this sort of thing will increase class consciousness. Another example going around is billionaire Starwood Capital CEO Barry Sternlicht saying a "nice little recession" will bring people back to the office [1]. Raising interest rates, saddling people with various forms of debt (student, medical, housing) and increasing unemployment are all part of the same strategy to suppress wages and disempower labor.
Unions and the importance of labor were largely accepted a century ago. Compare Marx's Labor Theory of Value [2] to this quote from Abraham Lincoln [3]:
> Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
What we've seen in recent times is the capital-owning class just coming out and saying the quiet part out loud. Crushing working from home is just another way of extracting even more surplus value from labor.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would literally melt you into bio-matter if there was an uptick in profits. They would starve you and put you out on the street if there was an uptick in profits. I hope more people realize this. Stop defending billionaires.
[+] [-] majormajor|2 years ago|reply
> Now that they work from home, the surveyors travel straight to the field as early as 7.30 a.m., enabling Coomber to pick up his children from daycare earlier than before the pandemic.
The example here seems like a particularly stupid (from the company POV, even) place to put an in-office mandate. Clearly much of the actual work was never happening in the office anyway.
Overall what the article describes seems pretty similar to what's happening in a lot of companies in the US (and globally, as the article notes), though with more unions involved than in the US. Bosses are much more likely to want 5 days in the office than employees, negotiation over how many days, etc. A lot of work certainly doesn't need 5 days a week in office.
[+] [-] Varqu|2 years ago|reply
This way, we could actually improve the housing situation across the country, because otherwise, it all concentrates in the biggest cities.
[+] [-] Arrath|2 years ago|reply
Doubly or triply so considering the travel times to their field sites, just look at the timeframe differences quoted for that office meeting vs when he leaves for the survey site otherwise. What an incredible gain in productivity!
[+] [-] malux85|2 years ago|reply
That means if you want me in the office, I will leave my house at 9AM, if you want me to be close to the office, then increase my pay and I will move closer.
[+] [-] coldtea|2 years ago|reply
The same is true for most office jobs. It might appear to happen in the office, but that's because computers and desks are in the office.
[+] [-] jacobwilliamroy|2 years ago|reply
Also I hate being at home. Nothing good ever happens there.
[+] [-] paul7986|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travisgriggs|2 years ago|reply
One of the nagging questions/worries I have about the increase in WFH is greener employees. I've entertained summer interns for the last 11 years at work. And I've tried to help some older but newer-to-programming peers.
I can take "experienced" contractors/helpers up to speed in one of the many domains I have to work in pretty quick. Share some code. Some chats/emails. Couple desktop shares, it's usually enough to bootstrap an ongoing remote conversation.
With younger/newer/greener people, I have found this to be nigh impossible though. I don't like the optics of "you need to get some experience before you can work from home" and it also begs the question "who's going to show up in office to do the mentoring." I do see this as a problem that's not getting addressed.
[+] [-] foooorsyth|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fortylove|2 years ago|reply
The whole "juniors need easy help and struggle to get it themselves" seems like an artificially concocted narrative to me.
Edit: fixed a word
[+] [-] Vicinity9635|2 years ago|reply
It basically lets you pair program where you and a remote person can control your computer (or theirs) more or less completely and seamlessly. There are competing products too, but that was the nicest I've used.
I tried it at my new job with a colleague in Brazil (I'm in US) and the performance was awful as it seemed to be routing it through the VPN for some reason.
My point is though, good pair programming software might be the solution. Zoom is inadequate in my professional opinion, though it's almost viable. Knowing how much better it could be it falls short.
[+] [-] localplume|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Terr_|2 years ago|reply
However that's somewhat misleading, the "productivity" does NOT mean physics-style efficiency of human effort to create value and fight entropy... No, it's based on what employers had to spend. So slaves that only produce a quarter as much per day are technically "more productive."
This matters because employers that require unnecessary time/fuel for commutes typically don't pay for it. Out of tradition and negotiating-power, those costs are usually shoved off onto employees and are not being tracked.
If commuting to the office was compensated, the "productivity" differences with work-from-home would be dramatically flipped.
[0] Example: https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productiv...
[+] [-] Cerium|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...
[+] [-] closeparen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slashdev|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahwolf|2 years ago|reply
The unexplored outcome of hybrid is that there's no such thing as hybrid.
In a hybrid model, you come into the office and find people sitting in chairs with a headphone on. Because they're just as much in calls as they were at home. Because part of the meeting participants on any given day is not there.
Hence, this nice physical face-to-face meeting, a supposed benefit of returning to the office, does not materialize.
Well, perhaps you'll at least do some ad-hoc brainstorming with your colleague at the coffee machine. Sure, but you need to put the outcome of that in writing...for the people that are not there.
Hence, this mode of virtual working cannot be undone. You can't do a "little" virtual working. When you come into the office you largely continue to work as if from home. Perhaps without the sweatpants.
For the record, I'm not anti-office. I enjoy the socializing, lunch walks, etc. And in our increasingly touchless home-based society, it's not that bad of a deal to get out of the house for 2 or 3 days a week. Finally, we should empathize with juniors. In my experience, remote mentoring is a piss poor substitute for the real thing.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|2 years ago|reply
The issue of which-3-days is real though.
A bigger issue is the asymmetry in the system - new people get a net benefit from facetime and mentoring. Experienced employees get net loss. It's distraction, unproductive time for your own projects, unrecognized at review time.
And since experienced employees have more clout, mentoring can become a negligible part of the new employees experience. Even at companies that claim to have made a system of mentoring, stories abound of failures ('mentors' that ignore questions or requests for meeting)
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terr_|2 years ago|reply
That's not the only possible "hybrid" model though. The one where multiple large companies (or company-like divisions) are time-sharing the same facility, so that for any workday it's either 100% of the group present or 0% of the group present.
I'm not saying it'll prove practical or popular, but it does avoid the "there's always somebody missing from the meeting" issue.
[+] [-] therein|2 years ago|reply
This is very true. Probably the biggest contributor to my career were the first two internships I have had. I can't imagine having them done virtually over Slack and Zoom and still having the same impact and connection, it would be devoid of an essential sense of belonging and inspiration.
[+] [-] hoytie|2 years ago|reply
It does in my experience. 1 on 1s and small meetings often do have all of the attendees present, especially when in-office days are designated. Some meetings do have people attending virtually, but a good conference room setup with large screens and good interfaces for conferencing make it more comfortable than being stuck in front of your computer. Regardless, you are in the room with many people face-to-face, and you can discuss things with them after the meeting and build relationships.
I see your point, because sometimes I have to find a room in the office just to have a 1:1 virtually, which arguably is more of a hassle than just taking the call at home. But I do find that hybrid works well overall in my experience, and the interpersonal benefits are large even though not everyone is in the office at the same time.
[+] [-] shmerl|2 years ago|reply
With the penalty of wasted time on commuting.
[+] [-] leetcrew|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j-bos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delecti|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quacked|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Am4TIfIsER0ppos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barbazoo|2 years ago|reply
The type of argument
> It's hypocritical that they [group A] are the ones doing [some thing] but at the same time also being the ones [group B] doing [another thing]
with groups A and B being independent of each other often irks me. Who says they are actually the same people? What is this line of thought called, that must be a named fallacy of some kind.
[+] [-] cubefox|2 years ago|reply
The problem with presuppositions is that they are preserved under negation. Whether you say you are for or against right Y, it seems that you presuppose that right Y exists in some capacity. But that's not what people who are "against" would want to assume, as they are probably denying it.
[+] [-] justnotworthit|2 years ago|reply
I'm not arguing against you, but you're giving the technical, logical explanation to a purposely a-technical and a-logical claim. The vast majority of people (not the ones who think like you or me) simply call the use of force against other people in order to get what they want (the social order they want, etc) "rights", whatever the moral implications (or even practical consequences).
[+] [-] beebmam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slashdev|2 years ago|reply
Working remote has let me live and travel wherever I want. I’m planning a three to six month working vacation to Asia / Australia for near the end of the year. I currently live in a cheap cost of living location, with extremely low taxes, near family, and work in a high salary location. Best of all worlds.
[+] [-] Barrin92|2 years ago|reply
That's the real reason why WFH faces so much resistance. When people are done with their work they can just play with their kid or do what they want, and it becomes obvious how much, using Foucault's analogy, of a prison aimed to discipline the office is.
[+] [-] unshavedyak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|2 years ago|reply
As far as I can tell the real reasons are some combination of:
* Working physically next to people generally is more efficient. Of course there are some people like Knuth who need to be undisturbed for 6 hours, but for most people the ease of communicating in the real world is a big time saver. It really is.
* The benefit of face to face meetings is bigger the more meetings you have and the more talking to people your job involves. Guess how many meetings the people making these decisions have...
* You're less likely to spend time doing house chores and whatever. I generally do a solid day's work when WFH but even I sometimes just mow the lawn or whatever. If I was at work I would probably just read HN on my phone instead but I obviously hide that better. So this isn't a good reason IMO but it is a reason.
* Companies don't like paying for fancy offices that nobody is using.
* It isn't the company that pays for the time and cost of your commute, so to them that is not a downside.
I wouldn't ever work for a company that didn't let me WFH again. The lack of commute is just too good.
But I do understand the real reasons why high up managers don't like it.
[+] [-] l33t233372|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhuru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsweeney21|2 years ago|reply
Big companies negotiate large tax breaks from city and state governments in exchange for bringing a certain number of jobs to the area. But big companies haven't been delivering the jobs to the area that they promised because employees have been allowed to work remotely. So now they are at risk of huge tax bills.
[+] [-] hkon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|2 years ago|reply
It makes sense that workers would want it, just like they would want a 200% higher salary. Individuals with leverage or those in unions can negotiate for it and employers can come to agreements or not.
[+] [-] manuelabeledo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brachika|2 years ago|reply
I've gotten two invitations to emigrate in the past and although I naively refused, as time goes on I am strongly inclined to at least take the offers into account.
[+] [-] Bostonian|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] AlbertCory|2 years ago|reply
People down there, let's say, do not exactly live to work. You can say that's how it ought to be, and you might well be right, but that's how it's always been. YMMV.
[+] [-] jmyeet|2 years ago|reply
Unions and the importance of labor were largely accepted a century ago. Compare Marx's Labor Theory of Value [2] to this quote from Abraham Lincoln [3]:
> Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
What we've seen in recent times is the capital-owning class just coming out and saying the quiet part out loud. Crushing working from home is just another way of extracting even more surplus value from labor.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would literally melt you into bio-matter if there was an uptick in profits. They would starve you and put you out on the street if there was an uptick in profits. I hope more people realize this. Stop defending billionaires.
[1]: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/bi...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
[3]: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-messa...
[+] [-] vpastore|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] trainthanksu|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zuckerborg0101|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]