
Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021 - danso
https://twitter.com/Sulliview/status/1275074784351543298
======
Loughla
Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions
into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who
have positions that cannot be performed remotely.

So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope.

It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely
astonishing.

~~~
waltherg
I've heard two C-level guys with two separate German SMEs say that the only
part of their workforce that hadn't handled remote work well was middle
management.

The people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply getting stuff done.
Senior management / C-level types were content seeing sales figures and
general output from afar.

Middle management struggled because they had a hard time judging work
estimates for tasks and whether people had their butts in seats etc.

Just an anecdote but thought that was intriguing.

~~~
delusional
One of the execs of the bank I work at made a public statement that they
actually saw the productive output of the IT organization shoot up during the
WFH weeks here in Denmark.

But of course middle management didn't agree so now we are back in the office.

~~~
WalterBright
> the productive output of the IT organization shoot up during the WFH weeks

Should be careful about projecting that to the long term. During WW2, to
increase production, the workweek was increased to 50 hours. Production went
up substantially. But after 2 or 3 months, productivity dropped back below the
40 hour week. With subsequent experimentation, they found they could get
sustained production increases by alternating between 40 and 50 hour weeks.

It's premature to declare victory for WFH. There can be long term deleterious
effects:

1\. the excitement and newness of WFH wears off, and the boredom and
loneliness of it sets in

2\. one loses connection with one's colleagues

3\. one loses the serendipity of chance encounters and lunches with colleagues

4\. you don't know your boss and he doesn't know you

We'll see.

~~~
Loughla
The issue is, all of your 4 points can be overcome with just one intervention
- communication.

WFH relies on communication, in multiple modes, more times a day than working
in an office. Failure to do that will lead to issues.

~~~
WalterBright
Out of sight, out of mind.

------
jkaptur
Ask HN: do you make any distinction between "working from home" and "working
from home during a pandemic"? I see a lot of people arguing that WFH is the
new normal, citing long reopening timelines, their own preferences, increased
productivity, Twitter's policy change, etc.

But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their WFH
policies, and they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty credible arguments
that the policies were being abused (WFH employees not getting on VPN for days
at a time, for example).

I wonder if what we've seen since March isn't really "working from home", it's
"working from home during a pandemic", and there just _isn 't anything else to
do_ (with the critical exceptions of housework and child, elder, and sick-
person care).

The current situation has actually been good/neutral for my personal
productivity, since I'm more able to easily chat with my colleagues across the
country... but why _exactly_ is that easier now? Are they more available
because they're working from home, or because they're __stuck __at home?

~~~
kanox
Personally I can't wait for this to come back to normal: being inside an
office for 9 hours every day helps me be productive and focus.

~~~
Foivos
I guess it depends on your WFH situation. If you live in a big enough house to
have a dedicated office room, probably it is better to WFH. If you live in a
studio, where you do everything in a single room, then it is better to go to
the office to change the scene a bit.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
idk. I basically have my office in my bedroom right now and I find it to be
fine. I guess what helps is I already had 2 large monitors and a second hand
high end office chair so I find this setup just as good as my one in the
office just without the standing desk. I guess what helps is I live with 5
other adults so I don't feel like I am missing any kind of social element that
I would have got at work.

------
elicash
Here's a photo of the newsroom so you can get a sense of the degree to which
they work in proximity:

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18pubed/18pubed-
superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp)

~~~
jmalicki
So unlike a modern tech company, they sit farther apart and at least have
barriers between their desks?

~~~
gruez
agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier
make?

~~~
Rebelgecko
In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel
distance of any particles that one exhales

~~~
ardy42
> In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel
> distance of any particles that one exhales

Maybe a little bit, but I'd think you'd want barriers that are _at least_
head-height if you wanted to to that.

------
momokoko
Get ready for a wave of outsourcing of everything from tech to bpo like the US
labor market has never seen in the coming 6 months.

Once employers go through the initial pain of setting up remote work, the more
than 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) cost savings will be irresistible. If
you are not in government, healthcare, or other industry that does not have
legal requirements to maintain a US presence and you work in an office, I
would be saving every penny and working on a career change ASAP.

~~~
jedberg
Time zones are still a thing. No matter how remote someone is, if they're more
than a few times zones away it becomes problematic. More than nine timezones
across the company is nearly impossible to do well.

So if we're talking about a US company, if you want anyone on the west coast,
hiring continental Europeans will be tough, unless one of those groups is
willing to work outside normal hours.

Also, taxes can be hard. I'm sure as remote working gets more popular,
services will pop up to help with this and maybe laws will change, but right
now, it's really hard to hire someone outside the US, and it's fairly complex
to hire someone _inside_ the US in state that you aren't already in.

The most likely outcome of remote work is a lowering of salaries in the big
cities and a raising of salaries in more rural areas, as salaries tend towards
the national median.

~~~
marvin
Also: Culture barriers, language barriers. Even if the cheaper market speaks
decent English, there will be a greater communications overhead.

Also, skill compatibility. Maybe your labor pool is bigger, but so is the
employer pool of everyone with world-class skills in whatever domain you're
operating in.

~~~
supergeek133
I wish things like this mattered. I've worked for more than one company where
the bulk of development happens in India.

Even though we would have a 2-3 hour window in the morning US time where
meetings happen, there is lack of business context, and language/skillset
barriers, the cost savings is just too much to overcome.

~~~
hobs
Had a similar discussion with a tech company that was outsourcing to fairly
competent developers that I figured were sandbagging because the defect rate
was so high that it didnt make sense.

I talked to the director who was in charge of this and brought to light the
impact on the customer base.

The response? We were paying devs on the order of 10% of what we would pay in
the united states, and if they padded it to 3x it still would save us an
insane amount of money.

There's nothing wrong with outsourcing per-se, but its lovely when the actual
"we dont care about the customer's result" comes out of someone's mouth.

------
code4tee
This seems to be the norm for many companies. Everyone is throwing in the
towel on 2020 so far as the office goes with the goal to take a fresh look for
2021 at the end of this year. Many will likely never go back to the setup they
had before.

If you’re in the market for commercial office space you can probably get some
killer deals moving forward.

------
TACIXAT
I really hate how this is being dragged out in month sized increments. My
partner and I went to Austin for a month and a half and now are back in the
Bay Area to hear the next decision on her office reopening. 2021 is 6 months
away. That's not enough to move somewhere else that would make the pain of
moving worth it.

~~~
ryanSrich
I say this with all seriousness, and I understand some people don't have this
luxury, but if you do, please quit.

These companies will continue to punish their employees if they are allowed to
do so. The only way to create change is through leverage.

This goes for anyone facing this decision. If you have the ability to quit,
you should absolutely do it. Take a year off, find another company that
doesn't support archaic business practices, start your own business.

You owe it to the people that don't have that option. The people that are
forced into commuting. The people that are forced into depression because they
have to continue to pay their massive rents in absurdly expensive cities. The
people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled into
gross office politics that pit employees against each other.

We must force these companies to change their bad behavior.

~~~
adjkant
The things you describe are far from the charged language you're using, and
also much of your description may not apply at all to the post you responded
to.

How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global
pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed? This approach is a
very logical decision and honestly complaining this loudly about that step is
incredibly privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs and pay cuts. Oh
no! Your company has kept paying you, you're working remote for a job you were
hired for in person, but you can't get a guarantee of when you'll be back in
the office because of a pandemic? The horror!

That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the boot" approach
at all, but many companies have quite nice policies in regards to how COVID-19
is being handled.

Your issue appears to be with non-remote work in general, but you also make it
seem like high COL cities are the only option. If someone is not able to be
mentally stable working in the bay or Seattle or NYC etc, there are plenty of
small cities with tech jobs that will pay good money with low COL and a short
commute they can go work at. They absolutely should quit, for themselves. That
was true before any pandemic.

> The people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled
> into gross office politics that pit employees against each other.

Again, where was any of this mentioned? It sounds like you are projecting the
issues of some companies. These companies should absolutely change their
behavior, but again, this was true before the pandemic. I'm not sure how
someone quitting will tech them a lesson either as those places probably
already have high turnover and they won't have much issue hiring n the current
market.

You say you create it through leverage, but I see no such leverage being
developed in quitting even if all of this was true.

~~~
ryanSrich
> This approach is a very logical decision and honestly complaining this
> loudly about that step is incredibly privileged in a time where many are
> facing layoffs and pay cuts.

I addressed the privilege in my post. It's in bad faith to bring it up as if I
didn't, also gaslighting.

> How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global
> pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed?

Playing a global pandemic step by step is not the issue. The pandemic exists.
As a business, you were forced to do away with your archaic work-location
policies. To then go back on those is repugnant. Simply keep the change the
pandemic forced.

> That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the boot" approach
> at all, but many companies have quite nice policies in regards to how
> COVID-19 is being handled.

For jobs that can be done remote, anything less than the option to work 100%
remote forever is corrupt.

> These companies should absolutely change their behavior, but again, this was
> true before the pandemic.

Every company that forces employees into an office has gross office politics.
The power dynamic of the commute is a self-fulfilling prophecy for this very
issue. Asses in seats are office politics.

~~~
adjkant
> I addressed the privilege in my post. It's in bad faith to bring it up as if
> I didn't, also gaslighting.

You addressed it in respect to the ability to quit. I'm talking in terms of
the standard you are setting and projecting onto all companies. I don't see
how that's in bad faith or gaslighting. I don't think you know what that term
means based on your use.

> For jobs that can be done remote

This might be the key issue - it sounds like you are massively undervaluing
aspects of non-remote work that are beneficial to both workers and companies.

> Every company that forces employees into an office has gross office
> politics.

We're gonna have to agree to disagree. I'm all for more remote companies
existing, but offices are not inherently corrupt.

~~~
ryanSrich
> I don't think you know what that term means based on your use.

You made me second guess if I did in fact address the issue. I did.

> it sounds like you are massively undervaluing aspects of non-remote work
> that are beneficial to both workers and companies.

You're right. I am undervaluing it. Being in person has no inherent benefits
over being remote. Maybe 20 years ago, but the internet has fixed those
issues. Low-fidelity remote work is a cultural issue. Not a technology issue.
Companies refuse to do remote work correctly so they can continue archaic co-
located work.

~~~
adjkant
> Being in person has no inherent benefits over being remote.

Socializing. Clearer communication with better nonverbal interpretations. The
ability to more easily drop by someone's desk, to whiteboard in a room, etc.
For some, productivity. Separation of home and work life. Even an excuse to
get out and about.

Yes, there are ways to get some remote analogs for some of these, but they
don't magically work the same for everyone.

> Low-fidelity remote work is a cultural issue.

That doesn't make it any less of an issue to implement. If anything, that's
harder than a technology issue. Why would you trust these bad companies to
implement any sort of sane work culture in a remote setting than they do in an
office? If anything, remote only offers more abuse vectors.

> Companies refuse to do remote work correctly so they can continue archaic
> co-located work.

I think you're far too pessimistic here. Laziness and resistance to change is
far more likely than malice in regards to not going remote.

------
deegles
I'm in the worst of both worlds right now. Unable to commit to fully remote
but still having to pay to live close enough to commute. I think a lot of
people are stuck like this until their companies decide on a long-term
solution.

------
niklasd
I've heard now from a couple of people that they've enjoyed remote work and
some have already sucessfully negotiated that in future they will work part
time from home. So it really seems that some of the change will be permanent.

~~~
conanbatt
I've worked remotely most my life but as a new parent...I really want an
office.

~~~
untog
As a (not quite so new) parent I really want a coworking space that's a five
minute walk from my apartment. That way I can do school dropoffs and pickups
so much more easily. In my dreams expanded remote work means lots more
coworking spaces popping up. I know, I'm a dreamer...

~~~
ghaff
I assume there will be plenty of co-working spaces at least in cities. But, at
least so long as the company has an office you could go into, I wouldn't
expect they'd reimburse you for it. Some companies will do this but, in my
experience, it's only if there is no company office in a city.

------
superfamicom
Companies who were the butt-in-seat type most likely didn't have a sudden
realization that WFH and telecommuting was productive, most likely they want
you back in the office but they just don't want to do the required work to
transform the office into a safe environment.

------
purple_ferret
I wonder how good their remote security is. I imagine every single government
regularly tries to hack them.

~~~
ryanSrich
Can you elaborate on what you mean by remote security?

\- Cloud security?

\- Controlling physical safeguards remotely?

\- Something different?

~~~
purple_ferret
physical security of remote devices

------
aphextron
I've been trying recently to wrap my head around what life is going to be like
from here on out. Where do we go? Things will never be the same again. Remote
work will now be completely normal, that's for sure. But how do we get back to
living our lives? Fundamental assumptions I've had about the things I've
wanted to do in life are now basically no longer an option. Will Silicon
Valley no longer really be a "thing" anymore with physical meetups,
hackathons, conferences etc. being a thing of the past? Surely at some point
we have to reckon with this, rather than just hunkering down in our caves.

~~~
raz32dust
This is not forever. We will likely have a vaccine at some point, may be
within a year or two. We will also keep getting better at treating it over
time - in identifying susceptible populations, developing cures, and hospitals
being better equipped.

~~~
geomark
Near term availability of a vaccine seems like wishful thinking. The data is
noisy, but some of it indicates antibodies to the virus are short lived. That
would implicate the usefulness of a vaccine. And that's if one can be
developed, a serious question given the lack of success in developing vaccines
for other human coronaviruses.

------
jb775
Not a good time to own commercial office real estate. Office rental rates will
likely race to the bottom as more and more businesses decide to stay remote.

------
ubermonkey
A cycling pal of mine is an in-house lawyer at a big oil company here in
Houston. They were told a couple weeks ago that there were no plans to go back
to the office until at LEAST 2021. All the work is being done just fine.

~~~
perl4ever
Working for a unionized public sector employer, they are nevertheless doing
the charade of "well, we'll go back next month, oops, maybe not" over and
over. So I guess it's not just the heartless capitalists.

Most recently, a mid-July date was mooted for returning to the office, but a
few days later it was announced that the union-negotiated work-from-home
arrangements have been extended to October. It's ambiguous whether there will
be a transition period, or if really nobody wants to go in.

But nobody seems to want to push things out as far as next year all at once.
Some employees feel threatened and say they're not going back until there's a
vaccine. I'm just kind of bemused for the moment, because I'm almost 100% sure
that as things get worse, there is no chance of following through on the
plans, yet the authorities keep making them, and then pushing the date out a
little more.

I'm fine with going back to the office as soon as other people are and
management can explain why we should. But I'm not sure that's happening in the
forseeable future. Every day we get an email from our dear leader talking
about going back as though we need to keep our hopes up, yet we are also told
how well we are doing working remote. So...why return?

------
ineedasername
My workplace is pushing aggressively to eliminate remote work, with 50% off
remote work in the next couple of weeks. I'm in one of the biggest hotspots,
and as the last few months have shown, a significant amount of work has been
perfectly viable from home. But before this shutdown, my workplace had a hard
ban on WFH. It's the "the workers will be lazy if they're not in the office"
mentality. As though you couldn't be lazy at work as well.

------
OldFatCactus
A friend that works there told me that they have been polling their employees
for strong feelings around going permanently remote

~~~
levesque
I have strong feelings against permanently remote. I feel like this hasn't
been fully thought out. Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth
than remote video calls (in other words, it conveys more information). Not to
mention that this transfers the costs of office space to the employee, maybe
this is why all employers are quick to jump on this bandwagon. Curious to see
where this new trend will fall in 2021.

~~~
flak48
Many companies have been reimbursing home internet and electricity bills since
March. Mine even paid for an chair, desk, monitor and lamp of my choosing for
my home office.

I hope this becomes the norm if remote becomes mainstream

~~~
jrockway
This is probably not the norm. I have a friend that works in a call center,
and they've been working remotely during the pandemic. Her company won't pay
for anything; she uses her personal laptop, personal consumer-grade Internet
connection, etc. The consumer ISP doesn't provide their stated upload and
download ever, and the ISP charged her $100 to come out and investigate the
issue without fixing it. (You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it
doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge
the customer for telling them that!?) The company won't pay for the debugging.
When the Internet dies, she's told "welp, you're done for today" and doesn't
get paid. (She also works 4 days x 10 hours, so one bad day costs more than
the average 5 x 8 employee.)

It is kind of a nightmare making every employee responsible for being the IT
director for free. I imagine that most companies are not going to see good
results here. (It's good when it's good, but what do you do when it gets bad?
Nobody has a plan.)

All in all, consumer ISPs seem to be doing pretty good with the pandemic, but
I worry that it's mostly a string of good luck rather than solid
infrastructure investments.

~~~
Spooky23
> You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what
> is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for
> telling them that!?

Easy, the CPE equipment is garbage or placed in a shitty location. I'm a nerd,
but my ancient wifi setup started to struggle with the entire family working
and schooling all day. I upgraded to a Ubiquiti solution with multiple
antennas and life is good.

~~~
jrockway
We are talking about wired performance here.

I worked on the CPE team for Google Fiber, and indeed, WiFi performance is
something that we spent a lot of time on and never got perfect. The average
ISP using off-the-shelf CPE doesn't stand a chance. I fear that the CPE is not
the problem in my friend's case, and the ISP is just aggressively
oversubscribing, and so nothing can be done. Switching to the business plan
won't make a difference unless they drop all consumer traffic whenever the
business subscriber needs to send and receive, and they are not charging
enough money to lead me to believe they're doing that. I don't know anything
about DOCSIS, though... I have worked at two ISPs and they both used GPON. The
limitations of GPON, however, I understand well ;)

~~~
Spooky23
That's unfortunate.

With COVID wfh, I've definitely heard alot of horror stories about local ISPs,
especially with time of day based issues. (10 & 2) seem to be high-disruption
periods. Where our folks have gotten engaged, 30/35 times it's wireless
issues.

One thing that I would offer is for your friend to try to get input from
neighbors in a rough proximity. I did have an issue a few years ago with Time
Warner Cable where a contractor screwed up and hung the wrong grade coax on a
pole.

~~~
jrockway
I like the idea of surveying the neighbors. We will try that next :)

------
zoolander2
how much of these permanent WFH will impact Uber's revenue? I swear work
commuting is a big chunk of their revenue

~~~
perl4ever
I don't understand how people could possibly do that; apart from the cost, my
experience with Uber and Lyft was awfully stressful. Something new and
unsettling would happen in 5/6 rides - I didn't particularly feel like it was
worse on average than a regular cab, but I didn't feel secure either. Drivers
taking their hands off the steering wheel, fumbling and accidentally hitting
the SOS button, tailgating...I only used them when I absolutely had no
alternative.

------
staysaasy
Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how dogmatic both
sides have become. The tone of the debate is verging on a religious argument
(on both sides), but it's all centered on work-related topics which typically
don't engender such extreme responses.

~~~
ghaff
A lot of individuals have very strong preferences. And those who want to go
back to how things were also realize that, if many companies shift to a more
patchwork employees can continue to WFH if they're able to and want to, many
offices won't ever go back to the way they were.

In addition, many feel (probably with some justification) that there's a real
opportunity at the moment to influence policies that favor their personal
preferences. And you won't influence if you don't take a strong stand.

~~~
staysaasy
"In addition, many feel (probably with some justification) that there's a real
opportunity at the moment to influence policies that favor their personal
preferences. And you won't influence if you don't take a strong stand."

This is a great point, and that's exactly what makes this an interesting
leadership challenge IMO.

------
irrational
Same with my company. People who must be on campus can go back to the offices
by the Fall, but everyone else - probably not until next year.

------
k__
Next step in work evolution, I'd say.

Now we just have to increase entrepreneurship by some orders of magnitude and
things will scale like never before.

------
umwbk9gagy
I've always assumed most writers for these papers don't actually come into the
office anyway. What's different? They're extending that to full time staff as
well?

~~~
cbron
Yes. I worked for a major newspaper and would guess that all the people in
editorial make up less than 50% of the staff. You have business, accounting,
tech, delivery, support, sales, security etc...

------
SupriseAnxiety
“The End Of Times is Neigh”

Times New Roman Times Magazine Times Square Hmm.

------
holidayacct
That's good for their sysadmins and softwar engineers. They love to raise
anxiety levels and create ambiguity interpeters (people who start believing
there is meaning in people and objects around them) in NYC. Yes, this is a
real thing... Don't ask for details, the short story is someone discovered
they could exploit people with genes for paranoid schizophrenia to make them
anxious and afraid to the point they look for meaning in things around them.

------
fierarul
Everybody talks about online mobs and trolls but what happens when the entire
workforce is online?

How vicious can one (mob) be against another co-worker when you can't
phisically see him to calibrate what's really going on and the reaction to
what you do?

~~~
dannyw
Well hopefully you don't have vicious mobs at your workplace.

~~~
tsm
My generally-pretty-friendly workplace has recently had quite a bit of
viciousness about:

a) bbatsov's response to calls for Rubocop to be renamed

b) The use of "master" as the canonical branch's name in our main git repo

c) Linking to xkcd #75 (which uses the c-word) (the link was provided in
response to a thread about mixed levels of profanity)

~~~
onetimeonly____
When bikeshedding meets virtue signaling you know you're in for a good ride

~~~
Polylactic_acid
I have to admit I have a weakness for reading but not participating in these
shit-hit-the-fan github threads. So many people arguing over something so
trivial.

