"Emergency" WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up". I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I also feel kind of personally insulted and victim of ham-handed collective punishment.
I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered.
I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet.
Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about "special performance measuring procedures" and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come.
We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can't approve our WFH requests since they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course in the last three years. They don't know when the course will be offered again. I've been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle.
I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...
This guy goes into a bar in Mexico and there’s a dog lying in the corner, every so often the dog whimpers and whines a little. The guy asks the barman “what’s up with that dog?” And the barman said “oh, he’s probably lying on a nail.”
After a few more minutes and another set of whines, the guy asks the barman “so why doesn’t he move?” And the barman says “it probably doesn’t hurt enough for him to get up.”
It is not so easy. Changing jobs cannot be always the answer. In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies and also it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch. On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K.
A job change can also mean - inheriting someone else's problematic code base, new office politics and colleagues who may not get along with you. Hardly 0-5% of pay rise really does not justify all this. All in all, one cannot switch jobs easily when the options and benefits of switching are not so good.
> In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies
This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now.
> it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch
If you work in IT (generous, but it is HN...), this should be your experience unless you switch more than once every two years. Then everyone will mistrust you, but you can still do it as a contractor.
> On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K.
Making around or above 100K in the EU is indeed very unusual. Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
>This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now.
Your statement definitely does not apply where I currently live (Austria). No tech company I've interviewed here is 100% remote as of now. They always expect more or less around 30-50% in office presence for new hires. They almost always have some staff at near 100% remote but those are usually tenured employees that management does not want to lose, so they get extra privileges as a bonus.
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape.
That's also not true. American tech workers don't have higher salaries because they get less social safety, but they have higher salaries because a lot more investment money, by orders of magnitude, gets poured into their tech sector compared to Europe where most goes into real estate instead, while the US also has a smaller supply of devs due to their expensive higher education and tougher immigration laws than Europe, meaning that the high demand of devs in the US can't be met by their low supply of workers, so their salaries naturally rise accordingly. It's that simple, basic supply and demand, nothing to do with the presence or lack of social safety from the government, as US taxes aren't that much lower than in Europe.
Hmm - it appears I was mistaken: "regional offices in London, Berlin and San Francisco." But the gentleman that interviewed me was in Austria. They are remote first, and have people all over from our conversation.
> it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
Can you elaborate?
I assume the canonical source for information about the US is American TV, but I really can't imagine what you watch that makes you think there is no safety net, even for people making $100K.
I have american colleagues who are undergoing various treatments and they know they can't lose their job because their health insurance would end and they cannot afford to pay for it without a job. Yes some kind of medicaid or other would eventually kick in, but it would still mean potentially months of going without cancer treatment because you lost your job.
In (most) European states it's just not a concern that anyone ever has - if you are getting treatment under national health service then it has nothing to do with your employment status and any treatment would just continue. If you need time off due to ilness it has to be paid for as well(employer only pays for a while, then the state takes over).
There’s a patchwork of federal, state, and local safety nets with a lot of holes to fall through. Generally speaking, you have to be just fortunate enough (esp. with regard to mental health, social support, and having a mailing address) to have the wherewithal to secure the benefits, but not so fortunate that you don’t qualify. People with everything stacked against them tend to become homeless, and there are few people going out into the field to rescue them.
So there is obviously no bottom-most robust safety net, as plainly evidenced by the homeless situation. But there are a bunch of safety nets that do sustain millions of people. Welfare, subsidized housing, social security (retirement, and disability), medicare, Medicaid, to name the big ones.
In severe cases, they fall into the unable to secure benefits / care for themselves category. In the absence of consistent policy, they're at the mercy of individual psychiatrists who have sole discretion to place them in long term care, or turn them out on the street. In America, life is like a box of chocolates.
Can you list off the top of your head five laws, programs, or benefits that your American buddies making six figures told you don't count as part of a safety net?
>It is not so easy. Changing jobs cannot be always the answer.
This. Everything you said is true about most of Europe, and even more so outside of major tech hubs.
Companies call the shots and employees have to follow if they want to stay employed, because there are no good alternatives to go to, when all companies just act the same and pay the same. And most companies here don't give a damn about what their employees actually want and presume they can bait you with a +10% salary increase but exact same inflexibility, toxic environment and management practices. Good luck with that.
Plus, interviewing and changing jobs in the tech world is a monumental effort, taking both time and a mental toll after several rounds of interviews with several companies, on top of your regular job, time that could have went into hobbies, dating, socializing, travelling, cooking, etc., so there's a lost opportunities cost associated with the job hunt.
I've been interviewing around for about 4 months so far, to hopefully change to a better , less stressful tech job, and I'm already completely exhausted from all the "complete our 20-questions, 6 page HR online form about yourself, before you can submit your application, because our time is more valuable than yours", "solve this week long take home test, and when you're done, we'll let you know that unfortunately this position has already been filled", "there will be several rounds of interviews after wich we'll just ghost you, because f*ck you", "you didn't sound passionate enough about our company's products in your cover letter", etc. And, apparently there's a labor shortage. Yeah ... right.
God, I'm so exhausted from all this, some days I just can't get out of bed anymore and sit there wishing I get hit by lightning, or die in my sleep and end my misery.
I'm glad you acknowledge it; with rising cost of living, housing prices, and (in my case) medical expenses (the part not covered by insurance, like physical therapy; we're still trying to get a diagnosis so it will be covered), I can't afford a 20% pay cut.
Even pre-pandemic, I rejected an offer from a company literally across the street from where I live, because their offer was >30% lower than what I was earning at the time. I just flat out told them I wouldn't be able to afford to live there - and I live in some of the cheapest houses in this area.
Yeah, there is a 'just change jobs' crowd who pop up in every conversation about working conditions.
There are switching costs which mean the employee often takes a hit on attempting to move. It's like buying a car, car doesn't work as advertised so someone says, "well stop whining and sell it, you're in market." Like yes, but also nope.
I'm starting to doubt this advice. I'm a "change it" sort of personality by nature - a reformer. When faced with these 3 options, I've chosen "change it" many times. And more often than not, I've found myself in a political crossfire, with new unwelcome knowledge of the various forces (typically some combination of self interest, ego, and turf-guarding) that are responsible for the thing I'm trying to change.
My current lesson is - most things that look like an easy win would have been claimed a long time ago if not for some unholy hidden mess. If I'm to vote for "change", I should be prepared to deal with the unholy mess. It doesn't matter that I don't see it, it's out there somewhere.
Since I rarely want to take on an unholy mess, and I'm not good at the kind of doublethink that would allow me to love a thing I'm not inclined to love, usually that just leaves one option.
> If I'm to vote for "change", I should be prepared to deal with the unholy mess. It doesn't matter that I don't see it, it's out there somewhere.
Yes. This is the old point about the Serenity 'prayer': grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Or, as soldiers say more succinctly, "Pick your battles".
I've slowly internalised this over the years. It also applies on a micro-level: when reviewing someone else's work, if something that isn't critical actually gets the job done, just go with it, unless there is an actual problem with an obvious solution that you can suggest. Don't complain just because something is done differently to how you would do it.
The point about Unknown Unknowns is also totally relevant. And cans-of-worms. You really must be very confident you are right before opening them.
"I'm a "change it" sort of personality by nature - a reformer."
One of the things I've learned is that authority is a real thing. If you don't have the authority to change something, don't try. You will fail, and it will do nothing but cost you. I've jousted with this many times, and it was a failure every time. (More technical type stuff, but the same holds for this sort of thing too.)
Authority doesn't have to be given from on high; there is also some distributed authority that arises from the unofficial de facto org chart that every organization has. I've managed to push some things through with that (and relevant amounts of consensus) when I was more careful to ensure I had the authority.
But if you don't have at least some authority, you will fail.
This comment is is, not ought. You are welcome to feel about it however you like. But when it comes time to determine your own actions, you should work in the space of is and not ought.
That doesn't mean the only option is to give up. One may attempt to acquire the authority. This can either be by direct appeal, or in some cases, through the long-term acquisition of authority called "respect". One may attempt to convince an existing authority to help with whatever your issue is. Though in this specific case if the problem is specifically fighting existing authority that may not help. There are other options.
But it is a total wishful thinking myth that if you're just smart enough and good enough and just take charge, by golly, you can get anything done! In fact, after a while, when you see someone and on day 3 you see them charging around just trying to change things, you start to see someone who isn't going to be there long.
(Now, I actually like fresh perspectives on my team and don't squash people if they have new ideas, but at the same time, I ask them to take a couple of weeks and be sure they fully understand the changes they are proposing before we consider their suggestions. The end result is better suggestions, and we have taken many of them. This is why I'm specific about it being "day 3"; on day 3, you may know enough to have identified a problem, but you don't know the solution yet.)
But if you can't acquire some authority somehow, your options are reduced to deal with it or leave it. There is no "just bull through and change things anyhow". The entire political structure built into our very genes will not permit it. You're fighting not just your current organization but millions of years of evolution. You will not win.
I think this is an excellent point. At the start of my career I would blithely assume that my authority was that which was formally given to me, in the official org chart. I'm still learning how to gauge how much real (formal plus unofficial) authority I have at a given moment, what it entitles me to do, and how to build it if I need to.
I guess this is what it looks like when a nerd learns how to do politics.
>If you don't have the authority to change something, don't try. You will fail, and it will do nothing but cost you.
My theory has been that you look for things people already want to do but can't, and try to enable them with the resources at hand. You can change things that you don't have formal authority for (possibly not for the better) by simply removing roadblocks.
I agree - from experience - but your assertion the easy wins are deceiving also reminds me of the joke about the economist who won't pick up a ten dollar bill in the street because in an efficient market someone else would have already got it.
Worse yet, IME, being a keen participant in HN's technical side almost precludes one's ability to overcome the other players, those who fight in the name of some combination of self interest, ego, and turf-guarding.
To vanquish these, in the name of The Right Way, one ultimately must engage them in social combat, whether by proxy or directly. And they're better at it than you are. Nerds may be clever, and they may actually be right, but the other players are usually more convincing. And I don't mean merely argumentatively.
Exactly. I was once tasked with replacing a piece of software. Enterprise software is such a mess, but I had 4 vendors before the downselect, and one was clearly the optimal choice both for price and performance. Presented it to upper mgmt and was asked to keep researching the options. Did this dog and pony show for another month until one of the sales engineers for the #1 vendor mentioned that my executive had a previous relationship (at another company) with the sales exec. A bad relationship. So my exec was never going to sign off on a sale that would benefit the sales exec, but he didn't want to come out and tell me outright. He simply wanted me to read between the lines and skew the evaluation in favor of the other candidates.
The "Schmoozer" class is full of this type of crap. I'm convinced that outside of a few unicorn companies, meritocracy is an illusion.
I hear ya--influencing change is indeed exhausting. I think the love and change aren't mutually exclusive, though it depends on we're defining it. For me, if I don't "love" a place, I won't care to change it. If I do love it, I'll put in the work, and I'll be pretty loud about it because if change doesn't happen relatively quickly, then there's no point in my sticking around.
I think you're missing the point. If you don't love it, then either change it or leave. It doesn't require doublethink to love something. If you get somewhere, and you don't love it, _then_ you're left with two choices. If you're unwilling/unable to go through a change process, or if you've selected a company that's bad at change, then yes, now you only have one option.
I read “change it” as encompassing any modification to the status quo short of quitting it altogether. So, yes. But so also would be writing a petition to reinstitute work from home as a “performance bonus” and getting it signed by as many other company bright-lights as possible. Lots of options.
I'm doing this, new company policies are half a week in office. I get there 2 days a month since December (4 days this month but I needed to met coworkers). I do get email from the management occasionally but I either ignore them or use a poor excuse 'i didn't feel well enough to take the train this week '. They know I'm able to find a new job so they don't have any leverage.
Reporting in, both as employer and targeted as employee through recruiting channels. Recruiters are in full swing and it is hard to find people with data/analytics skillsets. Developers seem similar. Knowing coding seems like foot in the door, modern applications have all kinds of disparate dependencies like k8s, docker, virtualization, Kafka, etc.
At least give it a try. I suspect based on join dates that I’m similar or older than the OP. The more senior you get, the more time it can take on a search, but with remote work, you should definitely be trying.
That said the dog has only one nail to deal with. Adult life means balancing rent / stability / safety / job. It's sad that manager never understand what people want to be happy for their company and so easily find ways to make us go into cynical mode (slow down and cope with side project).
Or, it’s that the dog does tell all his doggie friends about his predicament, but any time they’re about to give him actionable advice for solving the core problem, he cuts them off, more interested in emotional catharsis.
Ageism is real. After some point in time, it isn't so easy to hop jobs anymore while your current company still values you (even if they make mistakes). So you don't rock the boat until you don't need to job anymore.
In countries where it is very hot during the day, there is a cliché that people make the minimum effort necessary or even less.
The cliché is true during the hottest hours, but it fails to admit that it is simply because most activity moves to the twilight hours when the heat subsides.
When I was in Cairo for work, the amount of people flowing out of their homes at dusk was unreal. Areas that were literally dead an hour earlier, became bustling with humanity.
When I left, I thought it was so stupid to build these big offices near the desert and to pack them full of people working 9 to 5 with massive amounts of aircon, effectively imposing on them the Northern European way of life - folks have been inhabiting those areas for millennia, they know how to properly deal with the environment they live in, let them work at night instead and save all that energy.
> "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up"
Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job.
We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone in senior management asking me, 'how will we know people are working at home?' My response was 'how do we know they are working in the office?' If people aren't getting any work done it doesn't matter where they are. Management just feels better about seeing them in the office.
Alternatively, if these people have taken a 2 year vacation and the company appears to be operating fine, maybe there's no problem?
I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being done satisfactorily and someone is just jealous or on a power trip.
If they can take a 2 year vacation and the company is operating fine then their roles should be eliminated because they do not serve any function to the company
A Company is not a charity, people are not kept on payroll just because
Sure, but systems aren’t designed for individual termination throughput.
It’s easy for people to game the system and turn around and claim that it’s a discriminatory practice. It’s also easy for management to cut off an employee in bad faith to drum up a case for termination.
The easiest way to weed out the assholes is to change the rules for everyone, and purge those who are insubordinate. You’ll lose a few producers, but not as many as HN would leave you to believe.
Alternatively, the world was in a state were these people really did not need really to be working because economy was so slow, and government grants were paying for those salaries anyway, so people were kept on the payroll.
Now that the economy is "back on track", we need them to be working - like they did before the pandemic, not like they did during the pandemic - so the work organisation gets back to a pre-pandemic state.
layoff freeze laws have been a thing in many countries during COVID
basically not only people took a 2 years paid vacation, they also could not be fired which incentivized the more parasitic workers to work even less
I know personally of a mailwoman working in Northern Italy for Italian Postal service (a public service) that went back to her home in Sicily and never showed up at work for 9 months because she could not be laid off.
So my mother in law who's also almost blind didn't get her mail for many weeks.
Nothing we could do about it.
There were no consequences whatsoever.
Many companies have difficulty assessing performance, so whenever they get the opportunity to safely fire people who have transgressed in some fashion they do so. My company had famously never performed layoffs. We've been in business since the 19th Century. But eventually all good things must end, and during the 2008 crisis, some newer mgmt found an opportunity to fire people who didn't play their game. We only laid off 30 people, but it was a huge shock to the company culture, and made people re-evaluate what they thought the social contract was about.
This was exactly what I told my boss when I said I need to work remotely from now on. You have no idea what I'm doing whether you can see me across the office, or if I'm home. In my defense, I was able to display that working from home for me boosted my productivity. I can also get my son to school without having to deal with bus schedules.
In my company managers were just given a free pass on difficulty with WFH managment. It was never treated as a "performance issue" by the corporate system. People are still measured the the world that existed 10 years ago. What is particularly galling is that they are now promoting agile hot desk offices as being exciting and new.
I think it is indefensible to bring people back to work in any workplace where mask wearing is needed at your desk. If you're admitting in that way that there is a risk in being in the office then you shouldn't be requiring them to be there!
Wow no indeed. I would be looking for a new job. Masks are a measure for times when no other option is available, not a standard check mark for every employee. From which management level upward do these rules not apply? It probably coincides with having your own private office…
My company has been mandating 3 days/week at the office, with mandatory masks also. You're right, managers above a certain level have their private office and don't need to wear a mask all day.
I'm not using that pattern here am I? I don't use it anywhere — I find it ill-suited for written communication. Those three words serve only to convey my agreement with rkangel and utter surprise at this being mandated for a desk job.
My wife, who spent much of her career in corporate HR, would often note:
"People who want to work, will work wherever you put them. People who don't want to work will find a way not to work wherever you put them."
The people who used WFH as a "2 year vacation" are the same people who will wander the office engaging in random conversations and scrolling Facebook the remainder of the day.
I always wondered why we presume traffic and cubicles are a cure for the lack of motivation.
It’s a level of friction that discourages the worst behaviors.
You probably lock the front door of your house. The reality is, it’s not a meaningful thing in most cases, as a moderately in shape middle aged man, I could likely kick or pry it in in seconds.
We do it because it keeps honest people out and increases the friction for the bad guys - kicking the door down in itself becomes a felony. (Burglary)
Likewise, people are on a bell curve of sorts with respect to motivation. The people on the bottom are a waste of oxygen and require explicit directions for every task, and the other extreme are self-motivated and will create novel tasks to complete without any direction.
Some people need the office to function appropriately on that curve. I have one guy on my team who came to work physically every day during the full lockdowns in NYC because for him, the context shift of being in the office was important. He is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, but he can’t work at home. Another colleague is living on an island somewhere.
The rest of us are in the middle. Combine that with other business requirements, and you have to make a decision that’s best for the business.
Since the door/lock analogy is widely used I would like to point that they have 2 other major advantages
1: they have the effect of warning you of unauthorized access: you can maybe break a door/window in a matter of minutes but you wont catch me napping nor you will be able to make it look like nobody broke in.
2: they keep unmotivated attackers out and can move the attacks off to you and on less protected properties.
Locking your door looks more like an historical artifact from the time the police wasn't ready available for policing the neighborhood of normal people.
Probably you should then have looked at the dog joke on the top. If I DONT want to do stupid work beleive me , I will work very hard to find smart ways to NOT do your stupid work. In other words I will be the absolute lazy programmer whose output is so good that it scares their manager to the point of insecurity. These are the kind of people that wants “their” team back in office. Again something very stupid but it is a viscous circle…
If that’s how you work, it’s in your interest to keep the stupid going.
Look at what happened to COBOL people. Eventually, the bean counters figure it out, and “work from home” becomes, “work from the Philippines” at 1/5 the cost.
I know there are some employees that have children at home during the day, making it difficult to get any work done. This is especially true in cities where there is often not enough room for a dedicated office. My boss does best in the office, because almost everyone is home, so it is quiet (unlike his home situation).
Cubicles, as opposed to an office with a door that closes mean someone is likely to walk by and see what you are wasting time doing. Once in a while everyone has 'compiling' time to waste, but eventually it gets obvious
> But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...
None of those points prevent you from looking to see what other jobs are available and applying for any that look interesting. Who knows, you might find something that is better on all counts. Worst case scenario you don't find anything better, which will mean you're no worse off than you are already, you learned a few things in the interview processes, and maybe the knowledge that your current role is better than various alternatives you looked at makes things seem a bit more tolerable where you are now?
That was me. I worked in a place for 22 years that completely devalued WFH, and cancelled it entirely (pre-pandemic) with the Big Boss stating "We all know a 15 minute face-to-face conversation is better than a multi-day email chain". Then our organization collapsed under the weight of being "Agile" and laid off the entire group.
I'm glad they did...I got a substantial severance package, "retiree" benefits, and a much better fully remote WFH gig that pays better.
I would have stayed at the first place if it was possible to do so, but I'm much happier since they forced my hand. I'm certain I won't have to go back to an office before I retire.
> I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I also feel kind of personally insulted and victim of ham-handed collective punishment.
Have you used these to go to your CEO directly re your WFH request? It's where I'd start.
Depending on how flat your organization is, this would be a job killer in many companies. Your CEO may grant you WFH, but all of the execs you report to will be aware of you going over their heads. Depending on how much political capital you have, this can be very risky.
Nope, work with your direct manager and if that's ineffective, change jobs. The amount of times you'd be able to access the CEO for help is extremely low. If you've developed a "Rabbi" at your company, you might be able to circumvent a bad manager eventually, but until you escape his influence and control you'll have to deal with him. Get a new job is usually the best way to deal with poor immediate managers.
>I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown
It's a business not a skate park, tell your CEO that you appreciate the positive feedback but that if he really means what he is saying: he should put his money where his mouth is and give you a sizable raise or a considerable bonus.
Agreed -- this is the kind of feedback that is actionable and, given OP's description of multiple employees feeling uncomfortable with the new hybrid arrangement, the kind of feedback that could improve the company's future.
Money makes them think about value. When I took my current job in 2016 I wanted more than they could pay, they wanted me to be based in an office (Oh it would only be officially we dont mind you working from home)
We compromised, my contract says I work from home and they pay me for my time and travel if I go somewhere, and they can afford me.
Can they justify paying you an extra $50k a year (or $10k, or $100k) just to have you in an office?
You can just start looking at offers and applying to them "purely as a hobby". What do you have to lose? What do you fear could happen if you got a new job? And why do you fear it? (After answering, try repeating the last question a few times to go deeper.) The answer to those questions could help you understand why the current job maybe is important to you, or alternatively that your fear is not really something you want to be afraid of, and thus can go and start the adventure of applying!
"I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss..." - this tells me that you are a very loyal employee and you also find security more important than other aspects of your career. That is certainly your decision, but I suggest you to keep looking at the balance and consider the compromises you are making because of this. Based on my experience there is considerable talent shortage on the job market, and loyalty is seen as a positive by reasonable hiring managers.
I love working from home, and I have a very enlightened employer but I do have some sympathy with the companies that have a chunk of employees who just don't work when they're at home.
The situation in my company is simple to manage - we hire good people who are very capable and then trust them to get on and do the job. That works with the sort of people we hire and the sort of work we ask them to do. If they're at home we'll generally work just the same, because we're pretty well motivated.
Not all companies are like that though. My partner worked for a charity where maybe 2/3 of people worked exactly the same during the pandemic, but a good chunk (mostly of the lower level admin staff) didn't. Some of them were very unsubtle - they'd never answer Teams calls, and would return them half an hour later and never produced any output anyway. Some were more subtle like the colleague who'd log into Teams first thing and then go back to the Playstation for a few hours of the morning before actually starting work. Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done.
What we need is for these employers to be focusing on output rather than hours in the office. They are stuck in a mindset and approach that barely worked in the past where if you had someone in an office for 8 hours a day you'd probably get something out of them. If they focused a little more on what they were getting (and I don't just mean some basic metrics with no human insight) then we wouldn't need bums on seats and the people not doing anything at home would be pretty obvious.
It's the same here as in your partner's place. Even the proportions.
This is government work: hiring practices are bad by design and "firing practices" unexistant.
No one is ever fired. This means that the place is perennially understaffed in practice and depends fully on the goodwill, personal/professional ethics and patience of those that will do the work.
But since they can't fire and we all have to live together somehow, management likes to keep the illusion that everyone is the same. So sometimes they will design promotion schemes or bonuses that favor slackers over the guys doing the job, or punish everyone equally for the sins of a few.
It's a pretty kafkian environment, but it's sort of a golden cage too: Pay is good, benefits great, stability rock solid. I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay.
> I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay.
I think you're underselling the rest of the world a bit. Many if not most companies aren't great, but there are a good chunk that do empower their employees to do their job properly and that's how you get the most job satisfaction. Of course, this is without knowing your sector and role - it does vary.
You're in a great position that you're in a job you're largely happy with. You should use that as allowing you to carefully choose your next role, rather than as an excuse not to. It's also great in salary negotiations - you can pick a large number because in the worst case you go back to your perfectly reasonable job!
I've been at the same company since 2007, and although this isn't government work, it sure works that way. For anyone to be fired, you need solid evidence that the company has lost a good sum of money. That creates an environment where there's little trust among the lower end workers and the higher tier ones. I stay because I make great money for where I'm located, the job is stable, and if I need to just take off for a doctor's appointment, there's no issue as long as I get my work done.
> Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done.
I disagree as I think those people did no work while in the office and kept doing no work outside the office.
I worked in a building where one person had a personal laptop open, daytrading all day. Instead of working. Of course they should have worked, but they didn’t.
People will shirk work in the office and outside.
I think it’s silly to assume someone who would log into Teams and then play PlayStation wouldn’t just close their office door and play games on their iPad for hours.
As someone who has probably experienced it, I wonder if ageism is more or less prevalent in remote jobs. I suspect, with zero evidence, that it might be diminished a bit, and could even be an asset since you've got a proven track record of being disciplined and productive in a remote environment. Perhaps it's worth testing the job market and finding something that is a better fit.
> No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up".
This is exasperating: it’s basically saying managers aren’t doing their jobs and you should pay the consequences. If someone really did goof off that much, their supervisor should be looking for a new job too.
What I suspect is that nobody did this and what you’re really hearing is that senior management are distrustful and don’t believe people are working if they don’t see them. Everywhere I’ve heard that, it’s been pure projection.
Either way, I’d reconsider leaving. You have a stable situation so you can look for a place you really like without time pressure but the respect gradient probably won’t improve unless you have C-level turnover.
> not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up
How is it not easier to fire those individuals? And not now, when you can just bring them to the office and have them be productive from day one (unlike new hires who would replace them), but one year ago.
It's actually pretty easy to fire people in government jobs. The problem is its uncomfortable to have hard conversations. Most government jobs are so far away form service delivery that they are very abstract. This makes the impact of lazy people seem insignificant. However, if you look at government with more of a service delivery focus, think FEMA. You wouldn't see many people who just laze about because the work is right there in front of them and they can link their work with outcomes in the real world. When you write policy or work in some meat grinder paperwork mill or even do just regular ICT sys admins corporate services stuff everything starts to get blurry.
Anyway, the rules and processes exists. Essentially PIP someone, explain and document expectations, and follow up. And you know what, most of the time, people can improve.
> It's actually pretty easy to fire people in government jobs
I suppose it depends on the government, but my experience is that it’s extremely difficult to fire people. I spoke with HR at a US federal organization that said their termination rate is .1% of employees and half of those are during the 1-year probation period.
That’s extremely low and I think an indicator of how hard it is to fire people in government.
I do have people say funny things like “It’s easy to fire people, you just fill out this paperwork and spend 20% of your time tracking a performance plan for two years.” Even though theyve never successfully fired anyone. While pointing to their group’s lack of firing as an example of their great management.
I think this is an example where theoretically it is possible, but practically it is very difficult. As evidenced by very few being fired.
What do you think the termination rate should be, and why?
One big confound to remember is that it’s generally hard to get US government jobs because a lot of work has been outsourced to contractors, so the federal workforce trends older and more experienced. That pool of people is less likely to be fired for cause in general.
When thinking about why you believe more people should be fired, consider the politics — both the general managerial class tendency to shift accountability to workers and the specific culture war points favored by people who oppose government regulation – and ask whether what you’re basing that on is fully in the worker’s responsibility. I’ve seen plenty of .gov inefficiency but an awful lot of that has been required by policy (not just agency, often by Congress) and underfunding. The latter often isn’t just a simple number being too low but also things like having money budgeted to contract out work but not to hire people to adequately supervise them. Very, very few situations have been as simple as “Fred chose not to do his job” without significant other factors contributing to the problem.
I’d also note that while I have seen a couple of cases like that, that’s less than I saw in .com or .edu and for exactly the same reason: they were high enough up the org chart and a buddy even higher up sheltered them. HR could have fired them if they weren’t being told not to.
I don’t know what the rate is, but for comparison, a similarly sized organization, but private sector had a 1% firing rate or 10x.
But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up. It’s like saying “Batting .500 is easy” when their own at bat it .200 or not even measured.
> I don’t know what the rate is, but for comparison, a similarly sized organization, but private sector had a 1% firing rate or 10x.
What was the relative breakdown of their workforce by seniority? What did that look like on the .gov side if you include the contractors who've been the majority of the workforce growth since the 90s? I've seen a lot more churn in the latter and suspect that if you combined the two that gap would close considerably.
> But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up.
On the subject of data, you have one anonymous anecdote of unknown size or completeness.
I don’t have good data, but it’s all I have. The .1% is a good measure and it’s not an anecdote, but it’s only relevant to a single organization and not generalizable to all government organizations.
I wish I had better. But I have tons of anecdotes of people claiming firing is easy without any direct experience or data. So there’s that too.
Contractors are completely different as they aren’t fired at all and are easy to get rid of, sort of. But comparing contractors and employees in federal government is comparing apples and oranges.
But I stand by that it is very difficult to fire government employees.
It’s not hard to fire people for non-performance. You have to document it and give them time to improve (or find something clear it - thinking of a guy whose timesheet included leaving early for happy hour, who was out pronto) but it’s mostly a question of whether the managers feel like they can back up their claims.
> "I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered."
We start back at the office next week and this sums up exactly why I have no interest in going back full time.
I'm similar age. Twice in the last few years I left great jobs due to somewhat similar reasons of misaligned environment and values. I left without having anything new lined up. I also kinda needed the money. But despite my fears I quit. Within days, on both occasions, I got a new higher paying job that aligned better with my preferences and values. But perhaps most valuable was a sense of satisfaction for having integrity.. the old expression "being able to look in the mirror...".
This approach worked well for me, but maybe I was just lucky.
I've found that once you start having thoughts like this, you've left already, if only in spirit, and you remain physically only as a form of self-delusion or rationalization of fear. You can find good pay and slack elsewhere. Your current employer sounds like a nightmare.
> But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market
Your decision to not even try will cost you more jobs than ageism
All your reasons is why I have never had any interest in working in an office, ever. Now that my current company has been remote since the start of the pandemic and I've gotten an exception to be permanently remote, I will never step foot in an office again if there's anything I can do about it. I couldn't care less about supposed career growth impacts, free snacks or food, collaboration, all the other propaganda they put out. You are right to be insulted by not having an option to work remotely and you should just start looking for better jobs
When we returned to the office in 2020 after a few months of WFH at a Chinese megacorp, due to the lack of meeting rooms, everyone just did zoom meetings from their desk. Nobody really needed to be in the office; we never met due to the size of the company.
They could be telling the “not about you” to everyone, though, and that would also act as some kind of free carrot for them, I.e. you feel somehow appreciated in a very abstract way with no cost to the company. I haven’t seen any organisation where one person can keep things running, so hard to believe this as an argument. I assume, like most companies outside segments such as hospitality, yours also did well in the last couple years. In that case, the excuse that people were on leave is insulting and should be insulting to you too.
This. WFH fights this more than anything. When interviews were happening online, i had deliberately set lighting to be low so that my wrinkles are not clear.
"they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course"
- I work for a small company so pardon my ignorance here but...ergonomically safe?? Please god tell me it's something more than that. Like some sort of security measure. What's so hard about flipping open a laptop and using a VPN?
They are highly demanded[1], companies are just extremely stubborn and are trying to force employees to accept their terms.
You could see that the past year and a half in restaurants that are willing to close down entirely (often with a sign saying they're short staffed) for days, weeks, or permanently, rather than raise their wages enough to hire and keep the employees they need to function.
[1]: "Newly published research from the Pew Research Center that surveyed roughly 10,000 Americans from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30 found that nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 6 in 10 U.S. workers who say their jobs can be done from home, at 59 percent, are doing so from home all or most of the time. Now, more workers say they are working from home out of choice than necessity.
Among those who have a workplace outside of their home, 61 percent said they are choosing not to go in, while 38 percent said they’re working from home specifically because their workplace is closed or unavailable to them.
Interestingly, Pew Research noted just the opposite was true earlier in the pandemic, with 64 percent of people indicating they were working from home because their office was closed while 36 percent said they were choosing to work from home."
I've been desperate to hire for the last two years. There's no way I can filter for location at this point. It took work, but we've made remote only official through HR and made our last several hires as remote only. We still aim for same or similar time zone.
Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations.
I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc).
When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. When managers say collaboration is better when everyone is in the office, they don't mean those "water cooler moments" we apparently have. They mean those times they can talk to you as they stand by your desk so you can't ignore them.
I strongly disagree. I find that talking to other people is required at every single level.
Junior engineers need mentoring, need to talk to other people to understand what's asked of them.
Mid-level engineers/ICs need to talk to other people to understand the architecture design, collaborate with other mid-level engineers, and push back or report back issues that arise during the work.
Seniors and up need it for design reviews and achieving consensus.
Critically, to advance in your career, you need to start participating in conversations with the next stages. All of this is easier face to face.
I fully agree that conversations are necessary to advancing a career, technical or otherwise. But I believe these technical conversations translate online pretty well, and have pre-pandemic too (eg successful FOSS that's all coordinated remotely, like Linux). That's not the case for the more management-centric decisions. If you're discussing other people (both in an HR sense and in a process design sense) body language and other non-verbal cues are much more important.
I've found these technical discussions, pair-programming, mentoring, architectural consensus building, are all much easier to do "remotely" than typical management-style discussions. Our project's technical team size fits into the "two pizza" rule, although just barely probably, so it's not like we're super tiny.
Pair-programming is great online. Better than in-person in my experience. Simply share your screen, and I can put it up on my second monitor. We've successfully mentored numerous junior-ish devs during COVID, with heavy use of remote pair-programming.
Architecture type discussions main drawback is missing a whiteboard, but there are a plethora of online tools of varying quality. In practice we often use draw.io and show a bit more finished copies than pure whiteboarding, but we've used other more simpler solutions for whiteboarding here too.
Design discussions/architectural consensus take place fine online, we just haven't had any issues. Just like pair-programming or architecture, we might screenshare but mostly we talk. And we find we don't lose anything from this. Sure, you don't get body-language, but that isn't needed for discussing bearer tokens.
In summary, while I agree that technical discussion is necessary at all stages, I believe that technical discussions is far less negatively impacted by remote when compared to non-technical discussions (i.e. managerial).
Yet somehow the world of open source keeps putting out high quality software with teams distributed across the planet in different time zones with different native tongues.
I agree with you about juniors, new hires, and maybe about advancing your career, but I would argue many technical discussions are just as good if not better in a virtual environment. Sharing screenshots, code snippets, or just being able to reference information during the discussion makes it all easier.
For me, my boss has told us he wants 2 people on site every day per week, doesn’t care who. In the event a new server or other hardware is shipped to the building he wants a safe two-man lift to be possible.
I think it’s fair, and he doesn’t care who goes in, so it ends up being the people that like being in the office the most that show up.
IMO zoom is plenty good for that. What are you missing that you aren't getting from zooming with someone face to face at this point? I just don't get it. It's way easier to just schedule a zoom meeting and fire off an email with a link and share a screen, than it is for me to haul myself all the way to where someone else is sitting and take turns poking fingers at eachothers laptop screens in an awkward huddle, hoping we don't disturb others.
Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?
In my experience if you are going into a large (more than say 5 people) meeting to get a consensus for a decision you've made, you start with one-to-one conversations with every meeting participant, get them on side, then the large meeting is just a rubber stamp.
> Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?
Written communication often takes orders of magnitude more effort, since it lacks the immediate feedback loop.
Lower down the tree people want to get promotions and that transition won’t happen abruptly but gradually. I agree with the overall sentiment, though. My experience is 80% of time in office on zoom or hybrid zoom/in person meetings, which does make it purely only worth it for the 20% impromptu discussions. The result is even worse exhaustion not only from commute but also from completely drowning the schedule to manage and do both. We need to rethink work and this will take some time. I would love 1 week retreats on an island every qtr for the impromptu collaboration needs and satellite offices in neighbourhoods where people can meet for specific tasks. I think I am not imaginative enough and who knows how things will change as online literate generations take the helm.
I would be making 1/4 of my current salary if I didn't work in a place were impromptu discussions could happen.
If my job was WFH (its not and can't be), I would still probably be doing the same stupid entry level shit with mediocre raises. Thanks to impromptu/casual conversation though, I got pulled out from under my manager and moved to a much higher position in another department (this was over a year or so, not just a one off conversation)
I could interact with higherups without being viewed as "going over my bosses head", and to me that's insanely valuable.
Satellite offices seems a good idea, if it's cheaper for the company.
In the case of my job, they could have maybe 20? for the price they're paying now.
But I wouldn't go anyway. Maybe once a month or every six weeks or so. Just because there will be people who prefers an office and to keep up with their faces, but I have no business there.
>> Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations.
> I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face.
That's also undermined by other decisions, like offshoring and distributed teams.
> The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc).
That's not true. Maybe only "higher up management roles" are exclusively like that, but there are plenty of other roles that include a significant amount of that, or a significant amount that occurs at irregular/unplanned intervals.
Also remote work is a lot more socially isolating, and I feel it makes work relationships a lot more one-dimensional an tenuous. That might be fine if you're a loner, but that's certainly not true of everyone.
> When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else.
The other day my manager said that he misses coming to the office because back then if he wanted something he could just come over and ask.
Meanwhile I've specifically chosen to work remotely so as to not be bothered by anyone when I need to focus.
In my pre-COVID job I had a manager who would come over and tap me on the shoulder, sometimes not to engage me in conversation but just as a sort of primate greeting.
That was about as low on the morale barometer I have ever been, and I hope I never have to anywhere near an environment like that again.
What's even weirder is that is the low level employees that are being told to go back. The execs probably never worked fully in office even before the pandemic.
This should tell you exactly why they are asking you back and it's not "collaborating". That's an excuse. It's because they don't trust you and think you're goofing off at home.
I do the exact same job in my office than with my laptop anywhere else.
Im in my mid 30s, and most of employees are +45 in my job. They really want to come back, and there are already a few in there, but whats the point?
I guess they feel lonely, bosses too, but my life is so much better with WFH.
Now Im just used to go places with my laptop, my phone as hotspot, and do work somewhere nice and quiet.
I can even travel on workdays. This very week Im heading to Madrid to visit a friend. I don't need to take time off as I'll be capable of working there.
It's usually just around my province, but knowing I can do this if I want is very liberating.
Im not a SWE, I'm aiming to be one, as I currently work for an ISP and get low pay. Getting even a junior job in SW will likely give me a jump in income. I wonder if I will be able to continue with this lifestyle, because I'll probably need more concentration, not sure yet.
Of course the fact that I can do this makes my otherwise boring and alienating job, with low pay, much more attractive. I didn't leave because I was afraid when the pandemic, now I just take it easy while I i study to change career.
Of course I have no kids, no wife, no responsibilities. If I don't do this now...
The same thing for me. I go to another city and pay a visit for a week, but say I need to be available on Teams from 9 to 5 and attend some meetings, and get some work done. Usually it slows me down a little, so I do some extra prep work before the visit and catch up when I return home. It's like a little vacation without taking time off.
What do you do on your city visits? I would like to do that but everything I like to do is only open during the day, and where I live by 5pm when I finish work it's dark and cold
Usually I go back to my hometown and work during the day, and visit friends at night. I go out during the day on the weekend.
I go out during lunchtime during the week (or message on Teams that I will be out for a little while), but usually that is for appointments or errands - on my last visit to my hometown I visited my accountant to do my taxes.
You can change time zones too. I went skiing recently and ran into some people who wfh in the east coast. They were living right in breckenridge for the season, working in the mornings, then by quitting time east coast time hit they still had a few hours every single day to go out and ski in mountain time.
It might go either way to be honest.
I'm currently living and working Spain as a SWE (immigrant) for a US company and the amount of useless meetings there is insane. That makes it quite hard to work on-the-go as half of the day is spent in meetings (most of them with camera turned on).
We rearely do that. We just type the stuff we need in teams and the occasional formative talk once a month or so.
Meetings are about twice a year, and they appear in my teams calendar so I can plan ahead.
When I feel we need a serious discussion I write a long ass text, and people usually follows without needing a call. It's like forums, so that's something I'm used to.
But again, my job is very jump in, jump out. I don't really need too much focus, it's pretty much helpdesk with some admin, so I can get distracted without problem, and I don't really need to keep any code model in my head.
My only worry if I find a job in SW will be that, the need to keep my mind focused, not being able to be pretty much anywhere. I hope the pay offsets this fact.
That sounds like a dream to be honest. I wish I could work without having meetings where nobody likes to say anything and it just drags on.
Wrt the SW job, it might be more difficult in the beginning as it takes some focus to understand the system and how your work fits into the bigger whole.
After a time it becomes easier to understand and to jump in, jump out.
Of course this completely depends on the company and job type. My job is very non-demanding and I can easily coast by on just 3-4 hours of work a day. Other people are in a different situation.
Can I ask how are you dealing with taxes, working for a US company in Spain? Are you contracting your SWE services and billing them? Or are you an employee of the US company?
Yes, that's common for sure, but you also don't have to deal with the amount of BS that comes with being a contractor in some countries. It's the case of Spain, where the Tax Agency and Social Security are very aggressive and gives lot of headaches depending on what you do.
Some employees even have premiums for putting their hand in your pocket. So yea, it may be more expensive but the peace of mind that gives you for offloading all of that to someone else is priceless.
Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to make commuting easier, we are opening satellite offices in the metropolitan area...which (when all satellites are open) scatters teams between up to four offices. So nearly all of our meetings will be via Zoom, even if team members are "in the office."
I don't want to criticize too much, because I work for an otherwise great employer, but this decision just has me shaking my head.
The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...
The absolute worst is being in an office with several people who are on the same call as you at their own desks. You can neither listen to the call nor the person near you speaking and you hear everything the say with a 2 second delay.
In our office, this created in-group out-group dynamic within the meeting each time. The in-person people were making jokes to each other and commenting stuff while online people had no idea. So, result is that the same meeting have one group coordinating with muted microphones and other oblivious. Perfect.
It did not created some kind of real split (yet), but the potential is super clear and it is pretty much guaranteed to happen.
Ah yes. This is horrible when a big chunk of the meeting are in the same room with several others joining online.
Honestly, given the choice an all face to face meeting is the best. However, with any kind of cross location collaboration this quickly becomes impossible (even before WFH). An all online (ideally in their own workspace) meeting is far better than any other mixed mode alternative.
I've had that as the standard practice for meetings at a job so we accommodate remote/other employees but the employer had bought us good noise-canceling headsets so there was no issue when a person near to you will be speaking.
So all the people in the office on calls are wearing noise cancelling headphones so they can take part in meetings with people who may be in the same office. Even with good noise cancelling they have to be permanently muted if not talking to avoid bleed though noise from the environment. All of the other people around then are forced to wear noise cancelling headphones to cancel out the noise of all the people around them talking into their noise cancelling headphones.
Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
It is a massive problem, especially if people don't mute when not speaking, or if people nearby are speaking at the same time (on a different meeting). Nothing to do with noise cancelling headphones
Conference rooms are a great idea. Unfortunately, while we have multiple conference rooms set up for video meetings, we don't have nearly enough of them.
We have "Phone booths" that essentially are sound isolated single person meeting rooms for calls both video and phone. Of course, they are incredibly hard to find empty. From where I'm sitting I can see 3 of them, and this is in an area that has probably 80-100 desks in it. How am I ever supposed to use these?
The one thing I think they did right is keep the surface high enough it's hard to type on. Now people can't camp them all day.
I now would have to take a plane to go to the office so I am now 100% remote but in my previous company they implemented hybrid for those who wanted and the idea was that the conference rooms were to be used for those being on site and the rest of the team would be remote. All rooms had been equipped with decent audio and camera that made the process seamless. People who wanted to be there 3 days a week or more could have a fixed office and leave belongings, other would have to reserve a shared one and work in a clean desk method.
No company can expect having an hybrid system work without a little bit of investment and some decent guidelines. With so many space gained in the offices there is a lot of space to liberate to build more small conference rooms and some storage area for those who don't have a fixed desk but may wish to keep things on site.
Not just that but if it is a private meeting and you are not on a laptop, then you have a problem unless all parties are in the office. Management meetings where you might be discussing problems in the team need to be made in private.
Its even worse when you have a zoom call with some people in a meeting room on one line, and other people connecting on another line. The people in the meeting room basically have their own discussions since the people on zoom can't get too many words in due to being talked over. Then usually the audio or video is terrible in the meeting room and if you are on the zoom call you can only hear who is standing closest to the AV equipment.
Unless you're steno-typing, good luck matching speech speed with your typing. And I'm not even talking about audio & visual cues.
There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. It's better reserved to either deliberate asynchronous communication, or very short, often purely factual, conversations.
> There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting.
I think it can come close, provided everyone involved are experienced, fast typists, but it’s definitely a different dynamic if someone is slower. I’ve had incredibly fast chats in typing that were close to real time, face to face discussions. And when you reach a certain speed, the illusion of actual speech and listening is created, which is a fascinating phenomenon in and of itself. There’s a certain level where you reach peak verbal acuity and everything you type transcends the medium itself. At that point, you can seemingly intuit little tics, idiosyncrasies, sarcasm, humor, emotion—almost everything you get in a real time, face to face meeting.
In one of my previous jobs, I worked at a company where this was what things were like even before the pandemic. I worked in one office, but members of my team were scattered across two other offices. I had a 90 minute commute only to sit in an office where none of my immediate colleagues worked, and most meetings were done over WebEx. Here and there, people would travel to my office for some big marathon meeting/conference session. And to add insult to injury, if my manager happened to show up at my office that day and I wasn't there, I was given a hard time about my absence.
It was horrible and demoralizing. I got to a point where I basically didn't show up to the office at all except for the occasional scheduled meetings, which were about once a month at most. I got three hours of my time back every day and actually increased my productivity, because I was able to stay home and deal with some health issues that I had at the time.
That said, lots of people at that company sporadically worked from home, and even in the offices with my colleagues, there were days where as much as 1/3 of the team wasn't present.
There seems to be a kind of critical mass number of working in the office: below that amount, and the office starts to feel like a ghost town, and it's benefits shrink past the point of being worth the commute.
So I think companies are wrong to force people to come in every day every week, but it's clear that the benefits of working in an office on the manifest when there are enough people in the office.
The crazy thing is the pandemic still wasn't long enough to teach companies how to work remote or hybrid. I literally forwarded a list of 10 best-reviewed books, articles, etc about remote working to my org's leadership, and I don't think they read any of them. They certainly never changed the way they work. We still spend upwards of 25% of our time in meetings with no agenda to talk about coming up with a plan to start working. We still don't document needed information, we just bug people on Slack for the same information over and over. In-person people are still "huddling" around a laptop that nobody on remote can hear.
I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that working in person is better for productivity. But what it does do is make 50% of the people feel happier - the people who want to escape their home-family to be with their work-family. In this sense I totally understand why management is forcing people to come into the office: it's because management just likes in-person, and they don't want to learn how to work hybrid or remote-first if they keep the office.
I think there continues to be a competitive advantage for remote-first companies. They can be more productive, have a global pool of talent to choose from, and potentially lower overhead. I think we're going to see incumbents remain in-person while disruptive companies will be increasingly remote-first.
The head of HR at my last job actually took a paid course (I think it's free now) by gitlab based upon a convo I had with her.
The company ignored it all and said "back in the office".
I suspect that it was because of the CEO who was saying throughout the pandemic that he wasn't a fan of remote work. That's how the decision was made, based on one old guys feelings.
They don't care about you as an employee, remember that.
I'm an old guy, and I have to disregard 99% of what our C-level officers say about technology. Most of what they understand is out of date with technology from the early Oughts, much less the 2020's. They make purchasing decisions based on what they read in airline flight magazines, or what their vendor buddies recommend while they're golfing.
Their feelings are formed by cronyism, nepotism and ignorance. When it comes to embracing change, they're fine when it something motivated by these three factors, but when it means a perceived loss of control, or a loss of prestige, then they resist.
> a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff.
This is hardly surprising. At the last few offices I worked in during the Before Times, everyone in the open office crammed a few feet apart was typing away and focused on their monitors, wearing headphones that said "don't interrupt me!" And watching Slack.
Yep. And the management of these companies are dabbing their misty eyes as they grieve over all the "impromptu" "serendipitous" "water cooler" innovation sessions that have been lost.
You can just see the visuals in their minds. Stock images of their lowly, loyal drones clad in business casual, smiling, scurrying about with manila folders in hand, shaking hands. Not a single human being that they actually know or have observed in the workplace.
These people wouldn't be caught dead near a humble IC, and yet they have the gall to tell us how best to get our work done.
Granted, I live a 20 min walk away. The walk in is through a beautiful county park, surrounded by nature.
Most of my colleagues who live further away have stopped coming in. Understandable, I wouldn't want to get in a car to get here, traffic in the UK is horrible.
It's all about personal circumstances, really. Living close to my workplace, having access to a nice office that is (now) mostly quiet, I quiet enjoy the new work culture :).
> Granted, I live a 20 min walk away. The walk in is through a beautiful county park, surrounded by nature.
This is likely the reason you love coming into the office. The fresh air, greenery in the park, and the walk that gets your blood flowing ... emotionally you _should_ be in a better place. Compare this with someone who commutes 30 minutes in traffic, and they will arrive at the office in a worse emotional state.
It took me a long time to realize that in addition to the team culture, my happiness/satisfaction at work depends a lot on my commute and the ambiance at the office (quiet and comfortable is good; noisy and cramped are bad).
More of a reason for those that used to commute to take some of their reclaimed time to take a stroll/exercise during their normal commute hours... maybe even doing some of the things they would have done in the car or on the train like making calls or listening to podcasts.
Of course I'm a hypocrite for not exactly doing this myself... instead I take a short drive to pick up coffee in the morning. There's no traffic (esp at 5am) and it's quite a beautiful location. It at least helps define somewhat of a boundary between work and home life for me.
The office is not as bad as people make it out to be. Its commuting that really sucks. I used to hate working in the office and then I moved to an apartment next to work and I decided to walk in even while WFH was an option because I did slightly prefer going to the office and being with everyone.
> The office is not as bad as people make it out to be
Correction: "[my] office is not as bad [for me] as [other] people make [their offices] out to be [for them]"
Every office I've worked in has been horrible to work in. I hate being around other people, the random distractions of office noises/smells/etc, and I hate not having control over my environment so that I can be comfortable. For people like me who specifically want to not see other humans unless they're family or friends, it really is that bad.
Glad to get validation/confirmation that there really are multiple of us out there in the world lol. It's discouraging that people are either completely ignorant or are willing to deny that others are different, including in how much interest we have (or don't have) in being around others. I feel the same as you about people and hope we continue to have options expand for controlling who we interact with
Exactly my feeling. I love working in the office, but I hate any kind of commute. Commuting in London is particularly atrocious, but I guess it could be worse (any US city apart from NYC).
My office is also a 10 minute bike ride or short bus ride away, and I never minded going in previously.
My company is allowing permanent work from home, however, we are keeping our office, as not everyone has a great home office set up.
However, my company actually expanded during the pandemic, and we don't actually have enough desks for all the employees. Instead of increasing our office space, my company decided to move to an open seating. This makes sense, as people are just now coming and going on their own hours.
I suppose this is fine for some people, but it really isn't ideal for developers.
I have _my_ keyboard and _my_ mouse that I want. I'm not lugging this into the office anytime I come in. I really prefer working on my snappy workstation, with my standing desktop and perching chair.
I don't drink coffee, so the office coffee machine isn't useful to me, but I do like to have cups of my preferred yan cha (loose leaf tea), which means I need a kettle and tea pot (Making tea is part of my ritual that lets me take an important mindfulness break).
I was previously able to mostly accommodate myself, since I had my own permanent desk and storage space. But now that I don't, I rarely come in, and it is usually just for a meeting, lunch, or to have some facetime with colleagues.
I don't see myself wanting to do serious work from the office, as the space is no longer designed for that.
I’ve commuted by foot through a park, great but when it’s -20c not so great.
I’ve commuted by bike, a 60 km round trip through a big city, and loved it… the exercise, being outside and the time alone to think. 3-4 hours of riding was the best part of the day.
Until winter came and I had to make the trip on a train and I got sick and hated the noise and people.
I don't exactly love the office but prefer it. I like to have a strong separation between working and living space/time. I have a room in my apartment that I could use as an office, but I rather use it for hobbies than work. Even when, almost a decade ago, I was freelancing and could work from wherever, I worked from home only an hour or two in the morning before moving somewhere.
That said, me wanting this separation is probably not stronger than a bad commute. It is currently a 15min stroll. Before that, it was an 45min train ride, but in Switzerland where trains are quite comfortable and I could use the time to work, do some admin, listening to podcasts, read a book or chat with friends.
Definitely not in favor to require people back to the office and thus force them living nearby. I like for people to have options.
My office is between my kitchen and the bathroom so the commute isn't exactly onerous
However when the sun is shining I'll take a 20 minute walk a few times a day through the country, or I'll take an 40 minute long walk to a nice cafe for lunch.
If it's pissing it down then I won't.
Working from home doesn't stop me from choosing to go for a walk, or run, or bike ride, or horse ride, before starting work.
I don't have an "office", but in my experience, and when I do visit various offices around the world, offices tend to be surrounded by buildings and traffic and shops, and tend not to be surrounded by fields, mountains and lakes
My workplace requires me to visit the office once every two weeks. And even then I only go for a friendly one-on-one type of lunch with my boss. Nothing we ever discuss justifies the two hour commute, the same things could be discussed in Zoom. And yet, I am supposed to visit every two weeks.
Now it turned out that during my last visit my boss had already been infected with covid. So not only me, but my wife and my two kids will need to stay home, isolate and take days off to look after the kids. WTF is the point of this? I am losing valuable vacation days, my boss also loses an employee for days (and my wife's boss ditto) and the kids will go bat-shit crazy because they will not be allowed to go outside.
Yay. How much fun the office it is.
And this was just one example of how idiotic and unproductive this whole on-site in-person office work arrangement is.
At some places, you get to choose when to use sick days but not vacation days. All else being equal, in that case, I'd sometimes prefer to burn vacation.
I have a cynical view about this, but also expect it all to come out in the wash over time.
My cynical view is that some older executives are, indeed, not as effective in remote companies and younger ones, because they have no practice running remote companies and haven't adapted. Additionally, many senior and middle managers never figured out how to assess and reward actual productivity on their teams, so relied on their ability to schmooze to create a veneer of contributing, and schmoozing is easier to do in person. Finally, managing facilities is a big job, especially at bigger companies, and few executives are going to point out that their main job functions are now outdated and the company should de-invest. Imagine being an executive who is overseeing the capital costs of real estate development for a very large tech campus as an extreme example.
However, it is also my view that remote work-forces are inherently more efficient in multiple ways for many industries. I have been working from home and managing remote teams since 2008. Every time I go to an office I am absolutely shocked by how much time is wasted in an office. Time that could be spent exercising, doing laundry, gardening, so many things that are beneficial to someone's health and work productivity. I believe that market forces will solve these problems of ineffective execs and managers. I could imagine some specific companies making a co-located office their competitive advantage by appealing to the minority of knowledge workers who prefer working that way, though.
Bullseye. The company I work for has a large home office, plus a satellite office tower in the same city. Plus a satellite office in a second city. So even before COVID, we were working with users remotely. We own all three buildings and land, and have always been proud of that for some reason. Very emotionally invested in the Home office.
Obviously COVID changed all that and exposed the opposition to remote work as just obstructionist. Our company was 100% remote for over two years, and both sales and profits have never been higher. Yet some of management really just can't deal with it now. Ironically, the IT mgmt is the one most opposed to remote work and barely signed off on a hybrid model.
I'm in the same age cohort as most of our executives, and though your comment may seem ageist, I think it's spot on. These VPs and managers love to schmooze, have $$ lunches, golf with vendors etc. Their entire work life is designed around schmoozing and building their little networks with vendors so they have a safe landing spot if things go bad in their careers.
You might say this is the same as ICs who build networks, but I don't get paid to network. I don't recommend technologies based on who I golf with.
Mgmt needs to realize they can't unring this bell, and will continue to lose effective performers who (especially in IT) have more options since COVID.
> We own all three buildings and land, and have always been proud of that for some reason
Many businesses -- despite whatever their mission statement may be -- are not-so-thinly veiled real estate vehicles. Even businesses with a healthy income from whatever good or service they provide will often have another 25%+ in income from real estate gains. McDonald's is probably a good example of this.
I learned this pitching a business plan where an executive thought the "occupant mission" was compelling, but that we needed more expertise on the types of properties we could add value to.
It's hillarious when you get some bullheaded executive who comes into these companies specifically to part out this real estate and raise profits for their tenure before they exit.
For example, a lot of studios in hollywood in recent years have sold their back lots, and are now just leasing them back from some holding company. I'm sure this arrangement made a lot of money for some people, but I imagine in a few decades this will hurt the studios when these land owners start negotiating the next round of leases and realize they have literally all the leverage.
In my previous job, my boss (CEO) did not "believe" in remote work. He pushed so hard for everyone to be in the office during 2020 that there were several covid outbreaks in the office.
The punchline is that we had offices both in California and Mexico... and I was specially hired to open and maintain the office in Mexico.
I flew several times a year to Cali (thankful) but I just couldn't make him see that covid or no covid we would have to make remote work , because I was working remotely for him.
I ended up leaving for a 2x salary position and fully remote job.
When COVID broke out I was working with a manufacturing company, helping to fix their PMO. One of the big issues they had was that the only way to get parts through the factory was for the PMs to go down to the shop floor and constantly babysit and move them; the primary directive from management was "the PMs should not be going to the shop floor." Perfect! So COVID hits and I suggest we send the PMs home to work since they are only at their desks working on their computers and talking with customers.
Corporate VP: "But if we send them home how will we know if they are working?"
Me: "How do you know they are working now?"
Of course the most ironic part was that VP was on the phone calling in from home because he lived in a different state that had no business operations in his area.
Not surprising to me, that company has since shut down.
I would say the benefit of schmoozing (which i dont like) is information sharing about the organization. One thing thats particularly hard in large remote companies if information sharing outside of rigid structure (ie 1 on 1, meetings). Much needed even if some of it isnt great info.
And yeah i would say your take is pretty cynical and pretty ageist -> diminutive to someone for their ability to contribute is reduced greatly by using their age as a proxy.
I don't think "schmoozing" is necessarily information sharing. It can be, but more often than not it's simply "socializing, but with the goal of career benefit rather than friendship". Hanging out at the water cooler, golfing with other execs, having an extended lunch at the bar, doing "one on ones" where you don't talk that much about work, walking the hallways for the simple purpose of looking busy to everyone else. These are all schmoozing.
Having a hallway conversation with one person where you pass on critical business information isn't really schmoozing, but it is harmful to the overall organization.
> My cynical view is that some older executives are, indeed, not as effective in remote companies and younger ones
At the beginning of the pandemic, all our "boomer" leadership couldn't even properly share their screen on zoom. We then switched to Teams, and they couldn't figure that out either.
I actually in a one on one suggested all of senior leadership should take a class on remote work, and Teams, because 90% of the friction was actually self created.
HR loved the idea, but guess what? They never took it.
Meanwhile, software engineers are expected to learn 5 new things every month. It really has created a riff where pretty much everyone in engineering has no respect for our senior leadership. This further undermines the return to the office because its clear as day: Remote work doesn't work for THEM, but it does for the rest of the organization.
I do agree that this will all die out due to market forces, younger companies are going to force the hands of incumbents and slower moving organizations.
Two years into the pandemic, we still have executives who can't be bothered to learn something as simple as how to mute their microphones during a Teams meeting. I think it's a subconscious reaction to the idea of them being muted. In a normal meeting, no one would ever think to mute them since they're so high on the food chain.
I think there's a deeper, wider systemic issue here.
People think they'll get better at remote working by a) being bad at it, b) putting no effort into getting better at it and c) doing it a lot.
...and in some ways it makes sense. Surely, if you do something for long enough, you'll get better at it right?
The reality is, though, I guess, that in most domains, if you don't make an effort to get better, then the ceiling for the skill level you can acquire by just repeating the same mistakes over and over is pretty low.
It's like having a soccer match every day and never putting any practice in between.
You get a lot of experience playing, and you'll get better, a bit, slowly... but at the end of the day, two years later you're still basically rubbish at it and a let down to your team.
That's the problem I see: People not actually believing that they have to put effort in to get better at working remotely...but, I don't think it's fair to say they can't be bothered.
A lot of people are trying really hard to Make Things Work... they're just doing it wrong, because they don't think that they need to actually learn new skills.
That's different to being lazy.
Perhaps its particularly pronounced in people who aren't accustomed to taking feedback; but it happens in all kinds of teams at all kinds of levels.
Work in a hybrid team where you have to meet up physically to do 'difficult' meetings where more than 3 people have to talk? Have a team that doesn't really talk to each other outside of standup? Got an agile coach who can't share their screen? Have big online meetings where no one turns on their cameras and only one or two people actually speak?
Yeah. I mean, I've had all those things on and off in the last two years. It's a bit of a joke really.
It's not just execs who struggle with remote working. They're just easy targets, because they're especially bad at it.
At least in my org, our CIO has an admin assistant who handles his videoconferencing. Because he's unwilling to put in a few minutes to learn an essential tool.
I also find it hilarious when fellow IT associates demonstrate the same level of incompetence in Teams/Webex. Leaving mics live, taking their cellphones into the restroom. It really shows how the intelligence of any org is a Bell curve.
I have observed that work is kind of a social event for senior managers. Some don't even plan much, so they like/need to have their teams at arm's length so that they can request a report or dispatch a task as soon as it is required.
I love being back. The office is quite empty, but after two years of not being around 500 people every day I think it would be overwhelming to all be back together in one instant. I'm happy to be in that first wave of those returning. It's not just the office, it's the area I work in. I work downtown, I've forgotten how much I missed all of my favorite cafes, coffee shops, casual lunch places. They remember me too, it really made my day when one of my favorite lunch places recognized me and we had a great chat for 10 minutes. I'd forgotten how much of that life is missed. I live alone, I'm a fairly solitary person, I don't get out much. I always said work from home would suit me as long as I still did a few things in the week (go to a bar once a week, have lunch out a couple of times) but I didn't do any of these things, my friends have become hermits and we hardly see each other even at weekends. The last two years have been hell frankly. I've come to realise my work is my social life. Call that if you like but it's the reality and I actually enjoy spending time with people that share interests with me. Since I've been back in the office I've been to a bar and had a nice relaxing conversation over a beer for the first time in 2 years. Not all of us are lucky enough to have that opportunity to have amazing social lives away from work. I wouldn't go back to working from home if you doubled my salary.
This is the best case. I took a remote job at a new company right after the lockdowns started in my area, and I've loved it but for the same reasons you love your office.
I live in a small town, on the main residential street in the old neighborhood. I have a family ( wife and two kids ) and we love our neighbors.
Before Covid, the commute was awful. The area where the office was located was insular. I watched my security cameras to keep up with my garden and family and feel connected to the world that mattered to me.
Now I'm able to walk in my garden and pull weeds between tickets/meetings instead of taking a lap around an exurban campus. I talk to my neighbors when they are out doing the same, or at the end of our days ( tag-team visiting Taco Tuesday gathering last night after the kids went to bed... )
Everyone is in different seasons, ( heck I might be looking for an office in a few years depending on the kiddos schedules, ) but community is the make-or-break factor.
A ton of businesses are dealing with a bad hand right now. They know they cant successfully force everyone back to the office. If news goes out about X entity is going back to the office. Recruiters go to linkedin and reach out to all of those people and offer them work from home and a raise.
Flipside, if you dont go back to the office. What are going doing holding so much $ and costs for nothing? Everyone who realizes this also cant rush out to sell. There's already loads of empty buildings and who is buying? Nobody, you'll get wrecked.
Then add on top, even if you decide to force everyone back into the office and accept the losses. How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home??
> How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home??
Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.
> I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them.
Alternate POV: this could save cities as we know them. All top American cities have been struggling for about 20 years now to handle urban growth, as cost of living goes through the roof and small businesses disappear when their renewed lease comes at twice the rent. As always, the survivors are those who can afford the change: homeowners and the wealthy on the residential side (keep in mind cities like Boston are majority renter), and large corporate renters on the business side (think Starbucks instead of Local Coffee Co)
Pre-war growth patterns (ie, densification and transit) have been generally outlawed, and big companies seem to have endless pockets to raise salaries to attract more highly paid workers to compete on rent; so there’s been no counterbalance on this trend. Until remote work.
Right now cities are still expensive, but the next few years as we transition out of the pandemic will determine whether remote work is here to stay; if so, you will likely see another suburban migration of ‘former reluctant office workers’ (we already had one wave at the start of the pandemic), and city real estate might finally cool off for the first time in decades
I should have put more emphasis on "as we know them." I think think cities will exist for sure, and they might be better. So I agree with you there, and I actually hope the same.
But modern cities have had two phases: first industrial growth, and more recently white collar/information worker city cores. Industry will still exist, but has already moved further out from city centers and cores. Currently, the life blood of large cities is closely tied up with the mega corps having their ego towers there and thus attracting innumerable highly paid workers which then spend their money in those city cores. With that going away and/or substantially changing, cities will change drastically too.
Essentially urban sprawl/suburbia/single family homes cost more for the city (road upkeep, water/gas pipes, etc.) than what they contribute in taxes, so many cities are in a positive feedback loop of building more houses to get quick money to do maintenance on the previous rounds of growth.
I expect that opposite will happen. Cities that are built for people (and not cars) will thrive. Nobody wants to drive everywhere. Cities that support multi-modal transportation and have mixed residential / commercial centers will thrive.
Chicago does this well. From my front door I have the follow options:
* The El (train, local stops)
* Metra (train, commuter that gets out to the burbs)
* Bus
* Taxi
* Divvy (e-bike rentals)
* Personal bike
* Walking
... and finally, yes, I can drive. But driving sucks. It's slow, expensive, and you still have to find parking.
No, Chicago is not dangerous on a per-capita basis. The news is incentivized to get attention, and "OMG you'll get robbed and shot" is a very effective and crude way to get those clicks.
Chicago is no different than any other large city in that being aware of your surroundings and not doing dumb things is expected.
Chicago is no St. Louis or New Orleans, but 1000 out of 100k is 1%.
One of the reasons I never consider living in the midwest again (Toledo) is because my bike was stolen so many times as a kid. Crime doesn't make for nice living.
4+ year Chicago resident here. Chicago neighborhoods vary night and day to each other. Crime is very well contained to the dangerous ones, and the neighborhoods where are tech worker can afford and would want to stay in are very safe.
>Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.
This is actually a super interesting subject I haven't considered. What is the tenability of cities without fossil fuels? I think we do know, it's really the cities that collapse.
Farmers might emit lots of CO2 and carbon taxes directly attack them, but ultimately they cant go anywhere. The cities need to eat. So those carbon taxes don't harm them at all.
How does public transit work? Generally speaking they are all diesel. Do we have a plan to spend a trillion $ converting this all to electric?
What's even the point of giant office buildings anymore? Downtown cores are dying if not dead as it is. When people stay home, the sharwarma spot downtown wont be able to afford to stay.
It's obvious what will eventually happen. These office buildings convert to high density residential. However, what happens after that?
If I am 100% remote, why even be in the expensive high tax city? I could go buy 10 acres and pay $100/year in nonsense taxes. Do my own utilities. never again worry about nuclear war because nobody will be nuking rural areas.
I really dont think we have quite thought out the consequences of our actions.
I’m not sure I follow. Americans tend to have high emissions regardless of location. This makes sense if you consider that society almost everywhere except ultra dense cities is built around personal automobiles; and dense cities obviously have lots of other needs for energy as you’ve noted
I also wouldn’t say cities are particularly less capable of electrification than anywhere else. Bus systems can be electric. Subway systems are already electric. There are some diesel train systems that would be expensive to electrify (eg Boston regional commuter rail), but even this isn’t impossible (frankly it should have been done years ago, and a study in the 2010s had recommended it because it gives other benefits like improving reliability and reducing maintenance)
As you’ve noted, there’s a big question mark on how cities will adapt central business districts around a non-office world. It’s also worth noting cities have handled such a transition before: during the industrial revolution, cities were full of factories, and over time these shuttered and were replaced or turned into housing.
Not everyone wants 10 acres or cares about the threat of nuclear war. Cities will be for those people.
> What is the tenability of cities without fossil fuels? I think we do know, it's really the cities that collapse.
I walk everywhere. It's suburbs that collapse without fossil fuels.
> How does public transit work? Generally speaking they are all diesel. Do we have a plan to spend a trillion $ converting this all to electric?
Our subways have always been electric. Our street cars are electric, and have been for a century, before that they were horse driven. All new buses are electric.
> What's even the point of giant office buildings anymore? Downtown cores are dying if not dead as it is.
This is probably true.
> I really dont think we have quite thought out the consequences of our actions.
The consequences of NOT following these actions will horrific.
>I walk everywhere. It's suburbs that collapse without fossil fuels.
I think shooting from the hip the suburbs hurt without fossil fuels for a short time. However, who are the people buying teslas it's rich folks in the suburbs. Who in 10 years will be driving the gasoline toyota econobox. It's the poor in the cities.
>Our subways have always been electric.
That doesnt cover everything. Not all cities have a subway. Not all subways are electric, the danger of frying people made a number of subways diesel. My understanding is that much of NYC subway is still diesel for various reasons.
> Our street cars are electric, and have been for a century, before that they were horse driven. All new buses are electric.
I'm not sure I follow. This is certainly not true in the general sense. Perhaps true where you are? Where are you?
>The consequences of NOT following these actions will horrific.
That's the big debate there. Climate change isn't even important to the discussion.
If we fast forward ~75 years. We know without question that we are going to run out of fossil fuels. If we do nothing to switch now, it's a certain collapse of society.
Clearly we must do something. The sooner we begin, the less painful it is in the long run.
However, we cannot ignore the consequences. We must address these issues.
> That doesnt cover everything. Not all cities have a subway. Not all subways are electric, the danger of frying people made a number of subways diesel. My understanding is that much of NYC subway is still diesel for various reasons.
I'm disputing YOUR generalization, that [all] cities are doomed, not creating a new generalization that they are all fine.
>Cities existed before oil. A city without cars can actually be a massive improvement
True but cities required domestication of the horse. There were literally horse shit all over the roads and the occasional dead horse that was abandoned.
The answer isn't subways or monorails neither.
The answer may be robotaxis. I am very optimistic that this could solve a large degree of the issues.
If you were to replace all inbound/outbound subway connection of Manhattan with bridges and car traffic you would need 49 bridges the size of Manhattan bridge as a replacement.
Cars are very useful to go wherever you want, but are literally the worst for volume.
Similarly to how trucks are necessary to move stuff around but they cannot replace train freight/air planes/container ships.
>If you were to replace all inbound/outbound subway connection of Manhattan with bridges and car traffic you would need 49 bridges the size of Manhattan bridge as a replacement.
dont take me as attacking nyc and/or their subway. I'm certain at some grand time in the future all cities have a subway with rapid transport.
> The answer may be robotaxis. I am very optimistic that this could solve a large degree of the issues.
What I was trying to say is that cars (autonomous or not) are to mass transportation what copper wire is to the internet: better to keep the bulk of it out of it.
Also car infrastructure is extremely expensive, both in and of itself and as a collateral, parking lot requirements have a huge maintenance and spatial cost.
That's unlikely. For a start, many people like living in the city. It's fun and their friends and family are all there. Then there's everyone with children at school so they're not going to mess with the kids' education and friendship group. Another big problem is rural broadband. I know the countryside is nice, I may well retire there, but it's not where I am now and it's only a very small number of people who like the isolation.
>That's unlikely. For a start, many people like living in the city. It's fun and their friends and family are all there. Then there's everyone with children at school so they're not going to mess with the kids' education and friendship group
Down on my imaginary future ranch, I have a 10kw solar array charging my cybertruck and it drives me to the concerts, friends/family, and all that for free.
Children playing at the park? Is that even a thing anymore? Xbox/PS# seems to be replacing that entirely. We could discuss if this is a good thing or not but that same cybertruck can self-drive the kids to wherever they are meeting up.
>Another big problem is rural broadband. I know the countryside is nice, I may well retire there, but it's not where I am now and it's only a very small number of people who like the isolation.
That's what just broke. Why suddenly this became a thing. Starlink or 5g with long range 5ghz wireless backhaul. Rural suddenly has good relatively reliable fast internet access.
> Children playing at the park? Is that even a thing anymore?
Have you been to a park in a child-raising area lately? They are absolutely packed all the time with kids. Sure, you don't see them downtown, but you head out to the suburbs and you absolutely do.
>Have you been to a park in a child-raising area lately? They are absolutely packed all the time with kids. Sure, you don't see them downtown, but you head out to the suburbs and you absolutely do.
Oh for sure. If the kid is not quite old enough for the xbox/ps# age. They are totally out at the park. You never see kids out above whatever that age is.
I did see some older kids out tobaganning this winter. maybe in the age 8 range, which is unusually old compared to the playground soccer field age kids.
wouldn't that be the opposite? Where I live right now, the nearest grocery store is in the next town over and there is zero public infrastructure to get there. There is no uber or taxi or bus. You just don't live here without a car, period.
Jobs will leave the cities insofar as they are not bound to the city anymore. People might decide to stay in one city or another, but the job will not define where and how, this will change the dynamics
> What are going doing holding so much $ and costs for nothing? Everyone who realizes this also cant rush out to sell. There's already loads of empty buildings and who is buying? Nobody, you'll get wrecked.
1) how many companies actually own their buildings? i think generally it’s only the already successful companies which own instead of lease — i.e. the ones who can recover from such a hit.
2) IF the office had negative utility, then the company is harming themselves by using it. whether they’re willing to sell it or not, that fact remains.
>How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home?
You're looking at it wrong. Plenty of jobs simply can't be done remotely. If it gets to the point that people can't afford to move around much, they'll either permanently move closer to their workplace or find a job closer to their home.
Also, arguably the current discussion around WFH to me is evidence that even most office jobs can't be performed remotely (productively). Even if one person can WFH by themselves, they still need to interact with coworkers who may not be able to do it.
>You're looking at it wrong. Plenty of jobs simply can't be done remotely.
This data is now in. It's roughly 2/3s of jobs cant be done remotely.
> If it gets to the point that people can't afford to move around much, they'll either permanently move closer to their workplace or find a job closer to their home.
That transition happened during the financial crisis in 2009.
>Also, arguably the current discussion around WFH to me is evidence that even most office jobs can't be performed remotely (productively). Even if one person can WFH by themselves, they still need to interact with coworkers who may not be able to do it.
That's a debate I'm sure many management are about to have and flipside going to make lots of recruiters pretty busy.
Frankly for me it's 1 thing that really puts me off going back to the office. When I need to hit the shitter. I walk 2 seconds from my office to my toilet. I have nice soft toilet paper.
At work, I have to go through like 2 security zones and then hope that nobody is using the stalls already. If they are, and that's common. I have to walk to the other side of the building and then hope those shitters arent in use.
Then there's a good chance the one that's empty is going to be atrocious. Then I have to wipe with 1 ply sandpaper. It's just better to be at home.
Note that what I'm saying is not that most office jobs can't be done remotely at all. What I'm saying is that most can't be done remotely without harming productivity in some way. For example, if someone can do their job entirely by themselves and only needs to periodic check ins to report progress, yes, that person can remotely just fine. If someone works in a closely-knit team where interaction needs to be frequent and someone in that team can't adapt to remote work productivity is going to suffer by having everyone in physically different locations.
I don't think it's as simple as "management doesn't want WFH because of a temper tantrum".
I think it's incumbent on those professing a job can't be done remotely to demonstrate it. My mgmt hasn't done it beyond bland platitudes about culture and teamwork, despite record setting sales and profits the last 2 years.
I don't understand the headline. What's the 'worst part of working from home' in this context?
In my case, my employer isn't forcing anyone to come back to the office, but there's definitely an unspoken understanding that 'collaboration' and 'team feeling' will improve if we're at the office more often.
But when I go to the office it perfectly reflects the experiences described in the article: I'm almost always the only person from my team in the office at the time, or otherwise the only other team-member has their work to do, and I have mine, so we sit next to each other on the considerably less comfortable office chairs than I have at home, and work 'side-by-side' with our headphones on, and pretty much don't speak to each other any more than we usually do in Meet or on Slack.
I tend to use the days for wondering around and chatting randomly with other people at the office: hang with the Sales people, mosey past the Support team, spend half an hour in the office kitchen.
I guess this is ok if the idea is to be a more socially cohesive group, but it's disastrous for my productivity, and I always have to work twice as hard for the following days at home - even though it takes a while to regain my focus afterwards, so the rest of the week is often a little bit disrupted by the wasted day at the office.
I don't want to only work at home for the rest of my life though - but it feels like we haven't worked-out what the new situation should be just yet. And in the meantime, managers are just thinking in outdated terms of getting everything back to 'normal'.
> […] and I always have to work twice as hard for the following days at home […]
Why? If socializing in the office is part of your job now (explicitly or implicitly), you're working your hours either way. If that leaves you with too little time to get things done, address it with your manager.
This is really interesting - I wonder how much the set-up of someone's compensation package correlates with how much someone is willing to go back to the office. Mine's almost exclusively performance based and so I tend to want to work from home. The people going into work getting antsy about other people not being there are people who treat work more like a hobby or have a more basic pay structure.
I actually prefer being in the office but we're in a sort of death spiral of the place having turned into a social hub and me feeling like I'm being left to babysit people at my own expense.
Same experience as me, went in nobody was there. Spent day doing the exact same thing as at home with a different view and extra 50 minutes of driving. Did not go in again.
Totally the same for me. I have started going into work one day a week at my own prompting just to get some bike commute in (I just don’t like biking in circles unless there’s some mileage away from the city). No one else is there but I have seen a few old friends in the tiny remnants of the cafeteria. And I sit all alone up in the top floor where it used to be execs so I have an awesome view of the mountains and so on. And the network bandwidth is much nicer than my wifi.
I was in the same situation. In the end I solved the problem by cycling the same amount of kilometers each morning and evening but in a different direction (and nicer surroundings - without having to go along the street).
Totally not the same for me. I anticipated that I will move less when WFH and started eating healthier and less chocolate. I think it has to do with self-discipline.
This is great, so long as you have the choice to just WFH when you're not feeling it - you have a cold, the weather is shit, the bike needs maintenance etc.
We had a small office in a smaller town (Odense) in Denmark and reopened ~July 2020. We had no masks within the office by agreement among ourselves, but were very strict in our personal lives. We really enjoyed the interaction during lockdown, and I think that our commutes were all less than 10 mins helped.
Something like that is very hard in practice unless you live extremely close, like walking distance.
Even in a densely populated area such as Manhattan, getting from midtown to lower manhattan (which is quite close btw) is 20 minutes either biking or taking the subway.
This is what I love about working from home. I live somewhere with frankly a decent amount of transit as far as american cities go; I can take a subway or bus lines to work from my place, but it still takes a ton of time (like 45 mins if the stars align with the schedule, over an hour if they don't).
Meanwhile, with working from home, I've been simulating a commute. I walk for 5-30 mins maybe with a mug of coffee, or go biking in the morning, then come back and start working. It helps give some separation between home and work. Then I do the same thing at the end of the day to close it out and help clear the head.
Thats what I like about wfh. I can simulate a commute in my neighborhood. Do I want to bike to work today? OK, I can decide how far work is, then I come home after that and start working. Do I want a 5 min walk with a mug of coffee? I can do that too. Do I need to work in a walk to the grocery store to get stuff for lunch? Boom, convenient errand and morning commute while working from home.
That's what I did when I had a 10-minute cycle. A 25-minute minute walk gave me a chance to, depending on the morning, either listen to a podcast or shake off the morning grogginess before heading in to work.
I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later.
Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both being heated/cooled for 24 hours. The employee wastes 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Similarly the employer wastes time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms in building B, etc.,etc., in addition to paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself.
The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful. Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.
I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space.
To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org.
Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the office could ever achieve a 10% increase in output.
They didn't say anything about preference, they merely said output. Does people preferring to work from the office mean they are so much more productive so as to make up that cost? That's the question that we're faced with, and if the last few years are any indication, the answer seems to be "No".
This is definitely not universal. Our team switched to a soft hybrid model whereby we almost always work from the office, but use WFH for deliveries, snow days, kid sick days, etc. We did that as soon as the vaccine became widely available and it completely turbocharged our productivity. We delivered more in the first three months after coming back than the preceding year of fully-remote work.
That's interesting - and quite the opposite of what I've personally experienced and heard. Are you saying then that when the lockdown happened and your team was sent home your productivity tanked? What happened? What wasn't it addressed? What's caused your team's productivity to soar now?
We're building a highly specialized product (GNSS Radiooccultation). Its specialized enough that we have to rely on hiring people with generic skills and then developing the specialized skills to work in the domain. In essence, we are relying on internal on-the-job training to build up our team. Remote work failed for us for the same reasons that remote education has been failing everywhere: 1/4 to 1/2 of the job is adult professional education.
Makes sense. Seems like we can generalize this to if you're working in a niche area requiring lots of training to bring new hires up to speed then perhaps WFH isn't the best of environments? Going forward maybe your team needs to think through how to best do your onboarding. Maybe you would need to get together for a couple weeks (or have "high touch" time) and then go back to primarily working from home? It's something to think about.
I'm a big fan of hybrid, albeit default remote. But this is one example as to why. For most groups, most of the time remote is fine. There will be circumstances where there's no substitute for in person communication. You cite a great example.
For your situation I would imagine in a hypothetical example where your team composition stays steady for a long period of time you'd find that you required onsite less often. And in that case I'd advocate that defaulting back to remote is a good thing.
> You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.
I don't see anything in the OP's comment that referred to any assumptions about peoples' preferences: they were addressing the practical wastefulness and harm to the world's environment from the office-working conventions we've 'conformed to' in the past.
You may prefer to commute to work, and sit in an office instead of somewhere else (doesn't necessarily need to be a home), but that doesn't affect the inherent environmental wastefulness of all this 'busy' activity.
I don't think the person you're replying to assumed anything about preferences - people can still prefer to work from the office, and still not have working from the office generate >10% boost in productivity...
I think many of us see how various managers are pushing people to get back to the office, but I'm not sure the impact is really there. I suspect there are a lot of people who are far more effective at home than in the office, but it's my personal opinion sadly.
Then why can't they share a wework type office nearby their home instead of companies trying to utilize and manage all than space in the center of a city.
In the end, someone has to pay for office space: either you as the employer, or your employees in the form of higher rent/mortgage for a larger home with dedicated office areas. (And for employees with families based in urban areas, such a larger home may be entirely unaffordable.)
True, of course. But geographically distributing the need for space reduces the very concentration of demand in the office park areas.
The larger home (with an office) may be entirely unaffordable in the city center where HQ was, but with remote you can move elsewhere where it can be cheaper than an apartment in that city.
Or you could rent a small office away from the crowds where it's cheaper. This is what I've been doing since pandemic start. Sure, I wish the employers would pay for it but it's still so much better that it's worth it. On fuel alone I save enough every month to pay the rent a couple times over. And my commute is ~5 minutes on a bike instead of 60-90 minutes sitting in traffic.
Larger home with dedicated office areas? How many people are living in homes without computers? People already want homes that support using a computer, WFH status or no.
Sure, everyone has some sort of a space where a computer could be used. But there's a huge difference between "kitchen counter or dining table or couch where you can unfold your laptop on occasion" and "a place where you can work in comfort and without interruptions from the rest of your household for 8 hours at a time every day and not develop back and wrist pain".
US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years.
My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total.
I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there.
One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who already have a tendency to stay home and not socialize much at work.
The majority of people are not like that, most people don't have the means (spare rooms, gear, technical abilities) to do it _and_ are marginalized for not being able to socialize in person, because they tend to lean towards depression by staying home all day.
Also WFH tends to discriminate people doing "less important" jobs, like for example in a couple if one of the two has a highly paid job or a responsibility job, the other one will tend to be the one doing chores (cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids) while if both go out to work there's less pressure to compensate because both can't physically be home to do what need to be done anyway.
There are studies showing that WFH makes gender inequalities worse.
Basically the point is that many people find meaning and purpose in their jobs, if you remove the "purpose" (getting dressed, going out, meeting other people, sharing work experiences with them) it simply becomes a tedious activity to them that fulfills none of their needs.
WFH is also doing an amazing job to help people who would otherwise be marginalized.
In particular, I've seen how remote interviews help people that are wheelchair bound or have subtle issues with their eye-sight (that are only noticeable up close) get through some of the hidden (or even unconscious) biases that still exist in all of us and end up screening-out some otherwise great candidates.
On the subject of disabilities in tech, one of the best things for me about WFH is that I have a disorder which casues (among other things) light sensitivity issues and most offices have horrible lighting for triggering that. Being able to WFH where I have things set up to be comfortable as possible in this respect is an absolute godsend and I honestly wouldn't go back to the office even on a hybrid basis if my salary was tripled. I quit my last job over a mandatory return to the office, it's an absolute red line for me now when considering a role.
> Also WFH tends to discriminate people doing "less important" jobs,
You are mixing pandemic with WFH. When you work, you still need childcare and otherwise be working. Doing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO.
If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said, especially of people that don’t like direct “confrontation” of large meetings and “loudest first” prioritization. Video conf chat has become a valuable and documentable discussion medium that can include comment not urgent enough to interrupt the speaker in the moment, but still useful to the overall context. I hope some of these inclusive benefits are retained with hybrid or whatever approaches are utilized for work in the future.
Another interesting inclusivity question is the location itself. People tend to congregate by common traits, so locating an office in a given neighborhood or city implicitly discriminates those groups who do not have a large presence nearby. Remote definitely allows (but importantly does not guarantee) a much more diverse employee population and greater fairness in access to these jobs. There are of course counter points with availability of working space and internet connection, so this is a very complex issue.
> oing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO
If people are home, they can be pressured to do more, because they literally have more time to do them and are literally physically available for exploitation.
Simple as that.
> If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said
You are mixing self segregation with inclusiveness.
> Video conf chat has become a valuable and documentable discussion medium that can include
Only if you sell video chat software.
Least path of resistance states that video chats pose less barriers, so you're making more of them and they end up lasting longer than before.
It also enables more monitoring from management and the idea that workers are always available.
(guess who's not saying no to the boss? the more vulnerable or the less vulnerable?)
Care to include sources for any of these claims that you say have been observed?
I definitely don’t sell software, but I do see it as my responsibility to make sure all of my team members are heard.
On the exploitation, unfortunately domestic abuse is possible regardless of work styles and homes are not always the safe space we expect them to be. That problem exists with or without ability to work remotely. Society and employers should be aware of that and have means of helping those affected. There are many great NGOs and non-profits doing great work in this area and I’d encourage all of us to donate more to such causes and do volunteer work.
EDIT: On self segregation, that may have started that way, but demanding that people leave family ties and their friends to move for job opportunities is not all that positive either. Give people a choice and the ability to, but don’t require it. That is much friendlier and fairer.
Good places to see this are New York and New Orleans.
New Orleans' French and Spanish quarters have residences on top of business concerns. We Americans, on the other hand, built separate residential and commercial neighborhoods with a train connecting the two.
Likewise for Manhattan. Dutch-settled areas have homes on top of shops. This pattern continues for a bit under the British, but converts to distinct residential and commercial streets before going whole hog on the pattern with non-commercial neighborhoods.
I'm not sure this is a cultural divide so much as a political city planning one, at least today. Mixed-use zoning is a debated topic in my city. That being said, I absolutely despise the separate residential/commercial zoning and how spread out things are here (mostly because of individual car-culture).
> when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world
Emperors, scientists and other productive members of the elite have done this since age immemorial. If anything, the average person finding their work meaningful (versus simply toil) is a recent phenomenon.
Finding meaning in the labor you do is absolutely not connected to scale of said labor.
It is easier finding meaning in your labor if your labor is directly creating or providing a meaningful service to your community.
Do you see how I am not saying job? Because no one wants to do the same thing for 40 hours with surveillance. However finding meaning in labor has been a thing for millenia.
ah . well that's also not true, nowadays there is a job market and toil is reserved for the working class / service class perhaps. Most people are middle or above class in modern societies
The late Studs Terkel showed us all - 50 years ago - how work was a search for both "daily meaning and daily bread". The speed and efficiency credo of the modern age has restricted independence and creativity almost out of existence for millions - but far from this being a serf mentality - this was foisted upon people by others.
I think you’re referring to his book Working. Tacking on a recommendation for it both for the subject at hand, as well as it just being an engaging look at daily life in the early 70s (which really feels like a different world in so many ways) told through engaging oral history.
I think it's backwards: people find meaning in their jobs because it's their only activity (or is largely their main one) .
To let it go for good we'd need people to make themselves entertain in different activities other than working.
But mostly it's because (I think) it's activities they enjoy doing and actually have meaning in the real World, even if on a much smaller scale than the global one.
>Basically the point is that many people find meaning and purpose in their jobs, if you remove the "purpose" (getting dressed, going out, meeting other people, sharing work experiences with them) it simply becomes a tedious activity to them that fulfills none of their needs.
If the only purpose you have in a job is to put on uncomfortable clothes and socialize I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
>if you remove the human aspect and insist on framing the issue like that, can't we say the same thing for almost any job?
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to boost your ego and brag I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to chose the colors in an excel spreadsheet cells I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to do something a machine can do better I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to farm kind animals to later cruelly kill them I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
- If the only purpose you have in a job is to make money for yourself I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.
Well... yes, we should. The last one is obviously unreasonable since we live in a society where money is required to live most lifestyles. I recommend reading Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...
"- If the only purpose you have in a job is to make money for yourself I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job."
Wait, what? That literally is the purpose of the job for the employee. If you don't agree, try setting total compensation to zero and see who continues to show up.
This has been my observation over the last 20 years. I truly enjoy socializing and collaborating in person. I usually worked from home once or twice a week before the pandemic. It was a fantastic convenience as I lived an hour from my office. Once the pandemic hit we were fully remote. At first I thought, "see? we're more productive, this is truly better". As time wore on, I can see why a hybrid approach might be a better solution. I have never seen a more disengaged engineering staff. We gather weekly on Zoom for a general "shoot the breeze talk about tech" conversation and 95% of the cameras are off. Those folks are completely silent. That's their choice of course but it makes the work environment very lonely. I've tried to rile my team up to go into the office once in awhile for whiteboarding sessions/collaboration but they're simply not interested. So, perhaps your assumption is true. Engineers, for the most part, do not want to socialize, they simply want to do their work and get paid. The only problem I have here is, I feel our product suffers due to lack of collaboration.
>>I feel our product suffers due to lack of collaboration.
Is there a way to measure the loss in productivity or product quality?
>>I have never seen a more disengaged engineering staff.
How does the perceived lack of engagement by your team members (by choice, for the most part) impact the mystical, (un)measurable "collaboration" factor?
It might help managers and/or senior leadership to better argue points for hybrid in-office arrangements if data points could be brought to bear to counteract the very real benefits (for some) of WFH combined with varying individual social preferences.
The suggestions in the last paragraph of the article are so simple to articulate, yet difficult for (especially lder) managers across most levels to crisply quantify.
This was entirely a commentary on the social aspects of developers. We had an initial surge in productivity and then a lull. Product quality suffered a bit due to mis/non-communication. Not everyone made the transition to WFH in an effective way.
The engagement factor is realized with a very terse "yesterday I worked on recommendations, today I'll do the same". At that point the developer disappears for a few hours, never participates in any chat where less senior developers are asking questions. It's very siloed. The hardest part for leaders is to see how this translates into metrics they can understand. I'm absolutely ecstatic our org has adopted a "forever" WFH policy. I'm just cautious in how it'll all play out.
> I've tried to rile my team up to go into the office once in awhile for whiteboarding sessions/collaboration but they're simply not interested.
If your team is shipping and hitting deadlines then they realize that all this extra socialization stuff is useless cruft and rightly are rejecting it.
If shipping is the only thing that matters, then we're in great shape. If shipping the right things matters, we're probably going to need to collaborate a bit. Over the past year, we could have killed a few features just by pushing back as a group. Instead we've waited until they've lost an A/B test.
But your sentiment is exactly the point I was trying to make. Many (if not most) developers really aren't interested in any social benefit/experience. Your use of the word "rightly" puts you (and forgive me for broadly categorizing, I don't know you at all) in the "I come here to do my work and get the heck out so I can live my real life" group. For others, it's not so binary. It's not Work vs Life. Life bleeds into work, and work bleeds into life (with obvious healthy boundaries). For example, my lunch times with other developers was a high point of my day. I looked forward to talking to those folks. We tried it via Zoom. It was just awkward. My current team seems to fit with your sentiment. I'm the oddball and I'm okay with that.
Honestly the US commute is not even that bad. Avg transit commute in like Paris is 50 mins. Meanwhile even though Americans have to suffer in traffic or whatever (which imo seems better to have your own personal air conditioned bubble full of music than a cramped sweaty bus), avg commutes even in places like Houston that have the worst traffic out of anywhere are hardly over 30 mins.
I have noticed that the 'American system' works best in - America, although copied all over the world. The cars, houses, gas prices, street width, availability and size of parking spaces, etc. are all optimal in the US. Even Canada, supposedly a US clone, has higher gas prices, less parking in the cities, and lower salaries and higher taxes (though less gun crime). Europe is even worse (again, in those parameters). So, if you are going for the US lifestyle, be in the US. Otherwise, stick with what is better where you are: public transport, walking, public healthcare to take pressure off sticking with car centric job, etc.
> Also WFH tends to discriminate people doing "less important" jobs
Anecdata but my partner and I have a huge income disparity. I'd say our responsibilities are pretty even. There are things I tend to do and they tend to do. But in my mind at least it evens out.
Good comment. While it seems obvious, the whole environmental, infrastructure cost and land (mis)use aspects are not in the conversation often enough. Usually it's only work productivity and preferences.
The key observation is really that the societal costs of supporting a commute culture are so enormous that for it to make any sense, the productivity of being in-office would have to be many multiples higher than remote.
We can argue whether remote or office is slightly more productive this way or that way, and there are plenty of studies showing both directions so it's probably a wash, depending on team.
But no study ever suggests that in-office could possibly be so immensely more productive than remote that it could justify the costs to society of doing it.
Of course, it'd be great if there is some research attempting to quantify this more precisely (including road construction & maintenance, inefficient land use, pollution, time lost, health impact from the stress, and on and on). Any links?
I work remotely. I rent an office. It's only about 3.5 miles from my house, so my commute via car or bike is rather short. I don't have a space at my house where I can do my job effectively at home. Renovating my house to make such a space would incur costs which would exceed a few years of rent at the office. So from a risk reduction and net-present-value point of view, renting the office is cost effective.
If I end up renting the office for a decade, then it won't end up cost effective. But I've never stayed at any job for that long before so I assume my job situation will change in a few years.
If my job changes such that I am required to report to a physical office which is not the one I currently rent, I can cancel my lease (with 3 months notice). This provides me with good flexibility and minimizes my risk, my upfront costs, and any need to remodel my home.
Having an office where other people are around also gets me to socialize for a small part of the day.
when I visited NYC I got the feel for the battle for every square inch of room on every sidewalk, street, and building. Being able to like sit at a table to eat at a small place you picked up your food has got to be a huge cost in space just for that to exist.
Then I started thinking about all the massive skyscrapers that are just offices that people show up to for just 8 hours a day and then reallocate the space crisis to their residence elsewhere. It seems like a comical design choice almost.
Good points. If anything, it is underestimating situation for large part of the world. At one point I was spending 5 hours in commute (NOT USA) per day. I moved after few years but I am sure 100s of thousands people are still doing it.
The psychological toll it took on me while travelling through crushingly crowded trains and buses still terrifies me.
If large number of paper/computer workers do not have to commute, space is left for people who have to travel for more serious reasons and have their commute less unpleasant.
It's not dumb, but it's dumb with what offices have become. Nobody likes the open plan office, but if I had my own office (with a door!!!) then I'd certainly go in every day. Maybe it's time to re-imagine what the office is?
Exactly this is the thought that crossed my mind today.
You do something good for me and I give you $X for that.
Now on top of that for $X I want you to also come to a building I built for you , stay there for 8 hours a day and do the thing I want you to do. All for $X.
However there is Joe who will give you $X for the same job and a little more.But you get to choose where and how you do it.
Let's not deal with absolutes here. I enjoy working from home because my setup is comfy and I live mostly alone. But I'm also aware not everyone has the privilege like this. Not even myself last year before I moved out.
I work from home in a 1br. I prefer my own desk area, especially my own toilet (my word the stalls at work after the first cup of coffee must have hit...), being able to concurrently do a load of laundry while concurrently doing some other work task, working out in meetings, getting random stuff from the grocery store if i need something for lunch or another bag of coffee, and being able to make appointments at government offices during the day when its actually convenient vs the limited hours they are open on saturday when the entire 9-5 contingent of the city floods the dmv. Not to mention my day just expanded by a full two hours because I am no longer burning that on commuting on a bus that bounces too much to even read my phone screen.
At work I have a windowless office and a lopsided desk chair, and people have stolen my food from the fridge.
Some people don't have a choice, in Florida during the summer time if you aren't running your AC full-time the humidity and heat will ruin your home. It stays in the 80's even overnight (both temp. Fº and Relative Humidity %).
Sounds similar to the climate here in Buenos Aires, maybe slightly warmer. To my knowledge people generally don't keep AC's running when they're not around, in the summer. I've never heard of a building being ruined by environmental humidity.
Fair enough. I knew homes in the US where typically made of wood, but not that that was also true in Florida. Wood is not a traditional material here because it's obviously going to rot in a humid environment.
Wood homes are easy to build, maintain and modify. They are far better in earthquakes than masonry construction (because they flex). On the other hand, there are issues like susceptibility to humidity and fire risk.
Yeah, only the exterior of Florida homes are concrete because we get seasons of natural disasters that like to throw palm trees everywhere. Interior & roofing is still 2x4 construction
May through August in Atlanta it doesn't really make sense to turn the AC off while out of the house (down a few degrees, sure - but not off). You're going to either pay for the ac to run normal cycles while you're out, or you're going to pay for the ac to run full blast for an hour at 6pm when you get home to bring the temp from 90+ back down to ~78 (which is still in the peak power rate times for GA power - 2pm to 7pm).
The house heats up more and more until it reaches temp equality with the outside. If reaching equilibrium takes longer than you're out of the house... you save basically nothing by turning the system off. It's going to either pump the heat out slowly over the day, or all at once when you get home, and there just isn't much savings to be had.
That's not even talking about the condensation and expansion/contraction issues that will damage your home.
Turning the AC or heating completely off when you're not at home is never recommended. To save power, you just let them run at temperatures a few degrees outside your comfort zone when your away, and it will still have enough thermal inertia to quickly get back to comfort levels when you're back without the risk of condensation/mold.
Where I live, this is even written in my rental agreement, that when I leave home for long winter vacations, I must leave the heating ON.
That is a glib response that sounds great, but it is wrong! If you have good insulation it can at best save very little energy. If you have bad insulation it can save a lot, but the solution is fix your insulation not play with the HVAC controls.
As a Canadian I don't have a choice for most of the winter. The cold will creep in and start causing problems if I leave it unheated at -20 (C or F, take your pick) for 10 hours. I certainly reduce the heat, but I can't turn it off.
Looking at the comments and article, I almost feel like a freak for actually not minding going back to the office.
My commute to the office is about a 10 mins walk - maybe that’s the difference with many others here. Either way, I like the separation between work and home. I also believe that online meetings and chat are not a great substitute for actually talking to people, especially when you are building something together.
> My commute to the office is about a 10 mins walk - maybe that’s the difference with many others here
That is exactly the difference. Every single comment in here from someone who likes or doesn't mind returning to the office mentions that their commute is short and simple (quick walk/bike)
The thing about meetings is that it's increasingly rare to have all parties in one physical location. Maybe for very small software shops, but even then, that's going to hurt the business in the long run in terms of recruiting top talent. Any company that expects all of their IT staff to be local is foolish. Even Apple, notorious for not allowing remote work is hedging. It's simply a fact of 21st Century IT employment now. Whether it's WFH or remote offices, you'll have people spread out across different regions, and you'll need to accommodate this in your meetings.
I have a friend who's entire company is remote. Employees in the multiple states, as well as multiple overseas companies. Extremely successful, top tier company in his field. This is the model for most tech companies for the rest of this century.
I, too, don't mind going back to the office. But I also have a very short commute - 5 min walk. OTOH, I work with people that have a 1 hour commute each direction, and they tend to WFH much more frequently.
I think the motivation to work from home is inversely proportional to your commute distance / time.
I like that, too. The problem is, those who are left enjoy catching up. That is fine in general but I noticed I'm much less productive in the office than at home because I need to listen to small talk whenever I go to the kitchen or just pass my coworkers. I'm not an introvert and I enjoy talking to people in general, but when I'm at work, I have a certain amount of things to do and I really want to complete them all. When I'm WFH, nobody is calling me on Zoom saying, "Hi, what's up, have you seen the last Batman"? That is perfectly fine by a friend after work, but during work hours I prefer to be focused on my work and decide when to take a break when I need to, not when someone comes to my desk (sometimes with trifle issues that could be solved more easily by async communication).
People see this as a waste, but that is how team relationships are formed. Jeff from accounts may be eating up time today talking about Batman, but 3 months down the line you'll be ringing him up saying "hey buddy, I need a favour on those TPS reports" and he'll oblige because you've formed a bond. It's human nature.
I found WFH was great when we all left the office en masse and had already got a close-knit team. Changing jobs during the pandemic and trying to build new relationships remotely was really, really hard because that human-level interaction wasn't there.
Yes, I agree with you and I didn't see it as a problem when we had just one day in the office - I just took into account I'll do 1/4 less than usual - but now that we have 3 days in the office, it becomes visible. It's not a huge problem, just one of these little hings that make me think about finally switching my job to one of these companies offering giving you a choice between hybrid and fully remote, meaning you can come to the office when you want/need rather than when your boss thinks you should.
We solved it by every now and then burning a friday and having potlucks at the beach or some park. Not mandatory but if its convenient people show up, and people actually do make the trek from far off sometimes just to have a cookout and a little fun. Its all social too, work isn't mentioned at all in conversations.
The other thing this article does not mention is that with many open office floor plans, the amount of conference rooms was never enough to satisfy meeting demand. So even though I might have coworkers on my team with me in my same location that needed to meet with others in another location, we could never just grab a conference room at the last minute and all sit together there. Instead, we would all have to dial in from our desks (often back-to-back in the open office) and manage mute/unmute there to prevent echo.
I'm glad people are seeing how ridiculous this was.
We noticed a lot of "meeting fatigue" with teams early in the pandemic and after a lot of feedback realised that it was because the limited number of conference rooms was constraining the overall number of meetings. Once that constraint was lifted and everyone could meet online, the number of meetings shot way up. It's come down a bit since then but is probably still much higher than it was when everyone was in the office. It will take some adjusting to go back to that, and honestly I doubt we ever will.
I think that people coming in and being alone or not talking whole day are things that will solve themselves over time. People/management will start to coordinate when who comes. People will start to socialize again.
But, omg, I really don't want to go back to office. I like not having to travel there. I like breakfast in peace taking my sweet time for it and lunch at home. I like extra sleep I am getting in the morning. I like extra exercise I am getting. I like being at home when kids come, have quick chat with them before returning to work.
I think WFH could be a blessing when you have a family. I still like WFH to a certain extent because I get more focused and more productive. But it has one major drawback: for solo people, like me, living alone, far from friends and family, it's very hard to not feel lonely. And to fill the loneliness gap, I tend to work more, casually burning out myself and then ending up depressed and feeling overworked.
I am still trying to build a social network on this new city, but it's a very hard process and a very long one. For now, going to office, makes me feel less lonely and I get some interactions and also do some activities with co-workers.
> And to fill the loneliness gap, I tend to work more, casually burning out myself and then ending up depressed and feeling overworked.
This happened to me working in an office every day. I moved to a new city for work and lived alone. My friends and family were hundreds of miles away.
Co-workers are not going to solve this problem for you I am sorry to say. They're a temporary reprieve at best. You're going to need to build some sort of social circle for yourself outside of work.
You really should treat that situation as a major problem that needs to be addressed. You wouldn't drag around a broken leg, don't drag around loneliness and depression. Going into the office can't be your only in person socializing. It's only going to end up feeding into depression. It's not a fun spiral to get on.
It's the harsh reality but I completely agree on your take. As you summed it up, "You wouldn't drag around a broken leg".
How did you approach this issue? Did you manage to create a strong social circle outside of work? Any helpful tips for the lost me would be appreciated.
First the companies offshored the jobs, now the employees offshore themselves.
At some point, somebody will start asking why the Indian working remotely in India is paid less than the American/European expat working remotely from Bali.
Pretty sure competent people anywhere in the world get the same salary in remote only companies.
That has actually become a trend in Portugal: people are quitting local companies to get US/German/UK salaries working remotely for US/German/UK companies.
Nope. I know of several remote only companies that take advantage of local wages. Say someone in Bulgaria can make 30K € locally, but a US employee would cost 100K USD. The company will pay the contractor 60K in Euros. Still a huge bump for the Bulgarian, but far less than a US employee, even after you factor in employment taxes.
Many companies already do location based salaries for remote workers, meaning you will be paid less if you live in Bali than San Francisco. Essentially, the company is performing location arbitrage rather than the employee.
Next companies create more attractive work places in cheaper areas and lures employees there.
Talk about privilege here. Just this week I've receive an e-mail from my employer stating that due to the influx of Ukrainian immigrants most of the main cities are full and people are encouraged to look for accommodation in nearby satellite cities. I'm used to 2 hours commute stripping away 4 hours of my free time. Not US. Good luck finding accommodation near business centers.
Some people (such as myself) rely on the somewhat enforced structure of going into the office to "attach" other life things onto, like exercise and going out. Without that structure, i'm miserable.
This isn't a personal attack, we all live our lives differently, but in my opinion that attitude is holding back a lot of people. It used to hold me back. People who 's main social life is their coworkers, rely on the structure to keep them healthy, need the commute because it's their only quiet time, etc.
Everyone can have all of these things and work from home 100% of the time. It requires greater self awareness, self control, and communication with your family.
That can be easier said than done, but if its accomplished it is in all ways better than relying on wasting a large portion of your day in a building you wouldn't otherwise want to be in every day.
I'm not entirely sure what communication with my family would have to do with it. But honestly if there's one thing I don't think anyone would accuse me of is a lack of self-awareness. I know how my motivations work, and I know that the structure of physically _having_ to leave the house is beneficial for me.
My main social life has never been my coworkers, it's been the salsa parties I used to go to 4-5 nights a week, primarily after work. If I'm already in town, it's significantly easier to motivate myself to go to them.
The official name for ours is Collaboration Days. But since every team has a different CD, it's almost impossible to have in-person meetings outside of our team. In within our team, if we have to wait for Collaboration day to make decisions etc, we'd be hopelessly broken and inefficient.
> others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom.
I saw this even before the pandemic. Open office situations are noisy and distracting, everyone set up their desks so they would stare at walls, put on headphones, and used Slack to talk to people right next to them. One CEO even doubled down on it, giving attaboys to the people who sent the most Slack messages.
I don't have a problem with Slack. I like it, and feel it helps remote work. I just feel that this article is 100% correct that if everyone in the same room/office is using slack to talk to each other, something is broken with communication within that organization.
This is the same as my office in London. There's little point going in, and when I have done, my experience is the same as this article - waste 90mins in each direction getting in, to sit on my own, and reply via email + Teams.
But, well, "collaboration".
I'm sure it's time and cost effective for senior management that are paid $$$$ and only have a really short commute from the office. But not for the other 99% of the workforce.
So far I've managed to resist coming in to the office for pointless reasons.
Our team was already split between the US and UK, and we tend to work outside of our team across multiple projects with people all over the world. So all meetings were always video calls even pre-pandemic.
Some senior managers want us to be in the office 20% of the time to get that nebulous "collaboration" thing... Which literally never happened in person anyway. On the other hand, my managers have said we shouldn't come in unless there is an actual reason to do so.
There is a big reason to Work from office, apart from the merits of the case like close collaboration, productivity et al. Most important of all is being able to see your manager on a day to day basis, a lot of people don't really understand how important seeing your bosses on a day to day basis can be to their careers.
Most people have a problem of neglecting what isn't front of them, it's not malice or anything its just how it is. We ourselves have forgotten people with whom we don't have in person check often. People change with time, and people tend to work more closely, and are more likely to give promotions, rewards or anything for that matter to people with whom they have a daily check-in.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, compensation, benefits and overall career trajectories of people who work with top bosses at office is better than those working from remote.
There’s truth to this but the reality is that even when you’re in the office you might not see your boss on a day to day basis. I haven’t lived in the same state as my boss for the past seven years. Remote work for me has been a great equalizer.
One advantage of WFH: Zoom has put me in front of more senior leadership on a more frequent basis than I’ve ever seen while in the office. I’ve talked to managing directors on a weekly basis, sometimes daily, for the past 18 months or so. Prior to that it was quarterly at best.
Bear in mind that not everyone is particularly career-focused. I'm perfectly happy getting "meets expectations" at annual reviews, and if I'm not happy with the pay rise (as happened to me last week), I'm happy looking for another job to get the bump I want.
People who bother to go on HN probably skew more towards career-focused than not, but plenty of people are very happy doing the work given to them and no more.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. I love this community but sometimes it bums me out. If work is what truly makes people happen, then awesome, have at it. Personally, I get some but not all of self-fulfillment out of it. I use the paycheck to do the things I actually care about.
>I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, compensation, benefits and overall career trajectories of people who work with top bosses at office is better than those working from remote.
The way people find new jobs today is already largely digital. Networking events still exist as a once-every-so-often opportunity. The majority of recruiters and employers are still looking at personal projects, all which are accessible from a distance. Realistically there is very little reason the majority of people are affected by this when it comes to new jobs.
The majority of people don't grow well staying at the same job. This immediately lessens the impact of removing physical connections as a means to get better compensation. We've seen dozens of articles regarding this. As an added benefit, I wouldn't be surprised remote workers would have an easier time job hopping too.
I see many reasons the above would unfold, but even without WFH things have been trending against company loyalty and dedication being a great way to further oneself in most of the west.
Not my experience. I find that people who have good ideas and do quality work can be noticed and recognized in a remote environment. It's the mediocre that need face time to move up.
I'm sure my experience is not universal and it varies a lot with team and company.
My team prior to COVID could be broken down into four categories: introverts who perform well, introverts who don't perform, extroverts who perform well and extroverts who don't perform well.
When in the office, the un-performing extroverts could schmooze, bullshit, and kiss ass to maintain status. They've lost that now, and it's obvious how they're performing (though measuring performance in IT is very tough).
The extroverts who previously performed well are doing the same, but have learned how to use online tools to maintain their status. Now it's even easier to kiss up privately to your boss or scheme with another manager behind your bosses back.
The introverts are even more interesting. Past underperformers have improved dramatically. Whether it's not having to play the Game that they're unable or uncomfortable, they've all inarguably improved. The introverts who were doing well prior to WFH are also improving, though not at as dramatic a rate.
Not sure how "have a daily check-in" requires being in the office? If anything, more communication happening in open channels vs 1:1 talks means more visibility to higher levels.
You haven't seen your cousin or a friend for a while? What is your perception of them now? I am sure all that Facebook liking and commenting hasn't given you a clue of what they are now, and more importantly even the perception of them from when you last had a chance to see them often has now been long forgotten/hazy.
The facts here are anybody you don't see often, you don't know them well enough and they don't figure anywhere in your list of top people to give anything.
I have heard this argument against WFH many times over. Especially from my relatives that work in bullshit jobs (cough ... investment banking ... cough).
I wonder if people that brings up this understand what they are really saying.
Because it's not like WFH reduces the amount of promotion that goes around.
Its just have the potential of reallocating it differently.
And this means that they are afraid that they will be out competed by others that are willing to be near decision makers to influence (or rather manipulate them).
I would argue that this says more about those people than about WFH.
>>I would argue that this says more about those people than about WFH.
Not sure what your argument is, if a person eats lunch with another person on an everyday basis, or may be goes for a tea break walk, they are also likely to talk things about family, games and other such stuff. You really shouldn't be surprised if this sort of a relationship has a stronger bonding and more meaning, and this just can't be developed by some one calling another person for a 2 minute call. And by the definition when some opportunity comes up they are more likely to remember them due to both proximity and frequency of interactions.
If you have a friend whom you only occasionally ping on Facebook for a 'Happy Birthday!' message, you shouldn't be surprised if you aren't invited to parties after a while. It doesn't mean 'it says more about them', they are just reciprocating your feeling towards them, you don't want to see them in person, now neither do they.
Maintaining good relationship with bosses is just one of those hygienic things you do at work, like dressing well, or using a mouth freshener or showing up everyday etc etc. If you want any influence at all, there are a few set of things you need to do, there's enough literature written about this. Things like talking well, agreeability, consensus building, clarity, having the other person empty their thoughts etc etc. You just have to do this regardless of whatever profession you are in, because this is how humans work.
I maintain a good relationship with my boss by communicating clearly with him. By asking him questions about his expectations, and by providing him with information that he needs to do his job. He trusts me to do these things, despite not knowing much of my personal life, and definitely NOT because either of us "empty their thoughts."
My boss isn't my friend. He's my boss. Clear boundaries are healthy boundaries.
I'm not surprised - I really do understand all of this and know how the game works and kinda even know how to play it, just .. I'm really reluctant to do it.
If I did it would be a bit like in the famous quote from Groucho Marx : "I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member"
The thing is that I was just really trying only to point out what a shitty system we have all developed together (we as a society) through this kind of tactics.
I suspect that You are looking at this only through the point of view of individual that is optimizing their own outcomes (the individual being yourself probably). But I try to look at this from a bit more systemic point of view. And what I see from up there isn't pretty.
Of course for me this isn't only purely theoretical thing - what really buggers me are the logical consequences of this system.
For example I really do not want to work for someone that becomes by boss only
because he can play social game (and maintain proper relationships with key persons in company). But the thing is, that in this system, almost always this kind of person wins.
As I work for a company that was founded during the pandemic, it's 100% remote in the truest meaning of the word. I never even considered there might be a different perception for 'WFH' which were in-person jobs that turned remote.
I think for those jobs, both camps are right. To say WFH was just a temporary measure is just as valid to say you like working from home so much now you want that.
>> I never even considered there might be a different perception for 'WFH' which were in-person jobs that turned remote.
True, I was not talking about true remote job in truly remote company - if there are no possibility for in personal meeting than the power dynamic changes and the play ground is leveled for all players.
> The facts here are anybody you don't see often, you don't know them well enough and they don't figure anywhere in your list of top people to give anything.
Then you leave and find work with someone that doesn't have the attention span of a goldfish. If you're producing work of value you should be compensated. If the company is doing well then all of the employees should be doing well. No one should have to put on a song and dance for their managers to get their work recognized and rewarded.
If your manager can't remember you unless you're in front of them at all times they're not fit for their job.
Utterly ridiculous. My best friend lives 1600 miles away, and has for 10 years. We chat daily, sharing more details of our lives than I ever thought possible.
My mom lives 2000 miles away, I only get to see her once a year. Yet we talk on the phone, write emails, have FaceTime, and yes, like on FB or Instagram.
A cousin I haven't seen in a long time will take catching up at meals and activities; that's the role of family reunions.
The idea that you need to be physically close to be emotionally close is just silly.
I think many of the problems come down to the different world executives live in. Different people in many ways. Most executives have little experience at the core operations of a business in a technical manner. They tend to climb from Sales and Marketing teams, or Accounting. So they may understand who they sell to, and what the markets/competition are like, but they rarely are good at understanding the fundamentals of managing and motivating people.
And when they hire managers to take care of these details, they hire people they can identify with. People who are like them, but lower in status and experience. Yet people with the same goals towards climbing the corporate ladder. These managers (I lump anyone below C-Level Officer in this group) also lack hands on experience in the current environment, but they know how to play the game. They quickly find out who the decision makers are, what they want, and their vulnerabilities. This allows them to advance.
Then these executives higher and promote people who do have current experience. They expect them to manage the workers/ICs. They base their hiring decisions on the same fallacious ideas that they believe in. And when a manager presents them with differing opinions, that challenge their world view, they both resent and dismiss these opinions. One because they don't understand the technical side of business, and two because they are threatened. So they try to exert control.
For them, it's all about status and schmoozing; cronyism, nepotism, corrupting vendor relations, all cloaked in talk of "culture, collaboration, cooperation." When they reach out to employees with a satisfaction survey, bad results (less than high approval ratings) means that the lower status managers failed to impart the company line effectively. The parallels to the Soviet Union are unmistakable.
When you view it in terms of Managers are from Mars, Workers are from Venus, you'll start to understand how status, power and privilege play a huge role in how workplaces are designed and managed.
Before the pandemic I was working in an office with a 45 min / 1 hour commute one way with lots of traffic. My tiny little office shared a wall with my senior dev, I literally couldn't be closer to him, and we still only communicated over Teams. If it weren't for passing people on the way to get coffee I could go an entire day without speaking to anyone except via Teams. The owner loved the office but he showed up around 10am-ish or whenever he felt like it, and he could afford a place nearby. No wonder there's a dramatic disconnect between his experience and mine. Every day that I wasn't needed for some in person meeting (most days) I had an extremely bitter, traffic-filled drive home.
Not opposed to the office myself, "new" offices are nowhere what the glory of the old office days.
One hybrid day in the office meant none of the familiar faces also shared the same areas.
Instead I saw one maybe two familiar faces and the rest of the empty office was a doldrum of emptiness.. The undependable nature of the new "who's on first" office musical chairs is gaudy. It's a mishap waiting to happen, and there are no world expert managers who also have experience re-engaging a whole new social scene in a post apocalyptic world of the empty office space. Drudgery is the new office scene... Blehhh
I've been working from home for a bit over 5 years now. Before Covid, we used to have quarterly meetings where all of us full time WFH people went into the office for a day of in-person meetings. We'd get A BUNCH of work done, then go back to normal. In person collaboration is better, but you don't need it every day, or even every week. Our team was highly distributed so monthly was not practical. But this was a good system, we haven't done it since Covid, and I think we're worse off for it.
Not necessarily. In Paris I had a 45 minutes subway commute, or a 35 minutes -somewhat dangerous- bike commute (time for a one-way trip), and while sometimes I could appreciate either the disconnection the subway provided me or the physical effort need for the bike ride, it was mostly a hassle and lost time I am not compensated for.
Living close to where you work is pretty expensive, especially when the CEO likes the prestige associated with the building or area (and lives nearby, of course, but he gets 10 times my salary).
I think you have a point — a typical US commute is probably worse than, for example, a typical UK commute. But that's not to say UK commutes are acceptable — my 2 hour each way commute was expensive as well as horribly uncomfortable, and that was on pretty much one of the best rail lines I've used for commuting! Unless we solve the "it's too expensive to live near where you work" problem, I think the trend has to be more towards WFH.
I live in Philadelphia, commute was still 45min-1hr. Would either have to walk 15 min to the El, stay on its for about 25-30min, then walk another 15ish min to my office. Or take a trolley to 30th street then transfer to the El then walk.
When I moved to a different neighborhood, I'd take Regional Rail, which was about 40 mins door to door. Only advantage is there aren't people shooting up or getting raped on RR.
Driving actually would only take ~15min door to door if I left after rush hour. But then parking was very variable. It could be instant (finding spot right when I get there) or I'd have to drive around for 10 minutes.
Honestly, I liked commuting either of those ways (outside of finding needles on the El) since I'd just listen to music or a podcast.
Ehh, 40 minutes on a crowded tram isn't much better. A 1.5 hour walk is better in the actual experience, but that extra 50 minutes comes out of my sleep.
Train and bus rides come with their own set of problems, whereas any other form of transportation is generally much slower, pushing people to relocate closer to the office in an often expensive and very population dense area. The premise remains the same: time spent commuting is often time better spent differently.
The return to office has generally been an awful failure. Business owners and management have broadly failed onto address employee experience, and generally have done nothing to support hybrid working. For example, there are simple tools and practices that help teams coordinate their schedules to be in the office at the same time, while not overbooking space (which has often been reduced). Bad management is basically being exposed as inept with high turnover. They can get away with it for a while as a good portion of the cost isn't directly reflected by a line item in the balances sheet, but either their days are numbered or the days of the company will be.
> Instead, a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff.
Hahaha, like this wasn't true before the pandemic.
Same situation with me. I go to office 3 days but most of the time the meetings are taken from the desk, on zoom. This is because most tech employees have bigger monitors which is convenient compared to tiny laptop screens.
IMO remote is extremely popular among employees and many will jump ship if given remote option. Any eventual plans for mandatory all 5-day at office will be suicidal for knowledge work companies.
Of course, the big monitor and quiet room that some of us get to enjoy were paid for by our salaries, net of tax. Yet if we try to convince the employers paying those salaries to give us computing equipment that we like and private offices, it's hopeless.
Being forced to go back to office was one of the reasons (among many) that I left my last employer. My boss gave me the same spiel about how being together increases collaboration and is good for career advancement, while at the same time half of my department was on the other side of the planet and 5 of the 8 developers on my team lived out of state.
On top of all of that, I have invested heavily in my home office on my own dime (they didn't give any stipend even though work from home was pretty much mandated). I found that my writs and fingers were starting to hurt so I invested in a a more ergonmic split keyboard [1] and mouse which I would have to lug into the office with me.
I feel that my new employer, one that's exclusively remote, has a better approach of us doing an "on-site" every quarter or so where everyone from around the country gathers in a city for those higher level meetings and team bonding activities.
We do design days in office once a quarter, fits within the project planning takt and feels great to catch up in person outside of the occasional after work drinks, some however do still choose to come in on a regular basis on their own accord. We greatly reduced our office space since the pandemic and i personally can't see us ever going back to the former status-quo.
My story goes back 7 years. I had a life reevaluation and my family decided to prioritize location independence. Pre-pandemic my partner and I had been working remotely for years.
I never hated being on-site, I never had a monster commute. Actually one of my commutes was a fabulous bike tour of the major monuments of the national mall. I had a beer keg and a dog to warm my feet when I got to the office.
But once I got out of the office environment for a little while it was like being "red pilled". I could no longer ignore the absolutely silly justification for bringing everyone into the same place, I saw it only as a productivity destroyer for myself and others, I saw the relationships for what they were, shallow and transactional. My first and only stint back on-site it felt like coming back to high school after years and being amazed and all the silly things that loomed so large in your former life.
I'm not a hermit or an introvert. The office is still dead as a doornail for me.
I go into the office, and everyone just works, no one talks. Even the people that really wanted to be back in the office don't chat. So I spend a day in silence, rather than a day at home taking coffee breaks in the yard with my dog.
I'm going with a 7/3 split, favoring WFH. If it rains that ratio can change.
I think the long-term consequences of the shift to remote and WFH are going to be fascinating.
- we need to redesign our homes, because every working adult needs a study/workspace that is quiet (and preferably not their bedroom)
- we need less office space, and probably don't need an office at all. Commercial real estate is going to hurt
- we need less transport infrastructure. If the Rush Hour stops being a thing, that has huge implications for transport planning (and business models)
- we can hire from different regions/countries/cultures. This has been happening over the last 20 years or so, but it steps up a notch with remote teams.
- we don't need to live near a city any more. Rural villages with decent wifi are viable again.
- "management by walking around" stops working. We actually have to measure employee output, rather than how long they moisten the chair for.
I work from home since 2006. I feel that my capacity to maintain or even expand my professional network is very limited. I remember my 13 years of work before 2006 and they were very intensive in terms of social interactions, meaning, happy hours, in-office birthday parties, visits to clients' sharing the same taxi leaving from the office, meetings, both formal and informal ones at the water cooler, or at the printing bay. WFH is nice. I saw my two kids being borne and stayed with them for many years afterwards. It was priceless(tm). But I think my networking and, in some way, my employability were affected.
I'll venture a bet (not sure it's 100% true, but a fun idea to explore): sometime last year there was media hype about FAANG developers quitting their jobs to join crypto/web3 projects. Surely, ballooning crypto valuations played a large role in that, but part of it might have been driven by SV companies moving back to hybrid work schemes, while crypto projects have perfected the 'work-anywhere-you-want, literally' (just let us know which time zone) and 'we'll pay for everyone to get together in an actually cool location from time to time'-schedule.
I don't recall ever seeing a statistic of any sort attached to this particular claim. I'm sure there are more than zero people who ever did this, but hard numbers, or even soft ones, haven't been put forward.
> all the benefits of working from home (no commute, more focus, hanging out with the dog, whatever it may be)
More focus…hanging out with the dog…
These things literally contradict each other. The fact that someone can type this out and not even realize that just goes to show why everyone is convinced they have become so much more productive WFH, when companies dhar actually track their employees and their productivity have hard data that shows otherwise (Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up).
> Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up
Yes they would. Both companies have the same toxic management types that see their direct reports as serfs in their fiefdom. They bitch and moan to upper management to get their serfs back in the fields.
It's not difficult to focus while hanging out with a dog. The sort of attention they want typically isn't the same as a coworker standing over your desk. Petting a dog releases endorphins and oxytocin while dealing with the hovering coworker only generates cortisol.
I have my cat sitting next to me on a window ledge. Every now and then she makes a noise when she sees a bird. Totally disrupts my day. Can't focus for a good 24 hours. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Imagine replacing my cat with my former cubicle mates. One who has ADHD and feels the need to verbally express every thought that comes to mind. And who gets upset when he doesn't get the validation he desires. Now that disrupts my day. Add in 2000 other employees in my company, any of which can walk by my desk and ask me about XYZ.
> Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up
"They must have the data" is a very popular way to appeal to authority lately.
I don't see how to be honest. I don't have a dog but I hang out with my spouse more now that we both work from home: instead of going to make coffee in the little office kitchen or walking to a cafe we both hang out in our kitchen while we make coffee, we eat lunch together (admittedly we did that sometimes when we worked in offices too because we didn't work too far apart), and we have more time together in the mornings/evenings without having to commute. You add all that up and we get more time together while spending the same amount of time working...
It's the same way that I have more time for housework: I can do things like quickly put a load of laundry in the machine while I'm stuck waiting to hear back from a colleague or do it on my lunch break or I'm waiting for some long process to execute before I analyse the results. In the office I'd be sitting on my hands waiting, at home I can get some non work related tasks out of the way
As of yet we've only been into the office a couple of times and mostly as an excuse for a social event. I didn't actually mind the time we spent working in the office, as we deliberately all came in as a team. I did however have to bring some headphones and plug in to get any work done, same as the old days.
I don't mind the chance of scenery and would be happy to do it once in a while. I just hope the flexibility we have at the moment is retained. Thankfully my current employer has cut office space so much it would be impossible for us all to turn up if we wanted to.
Many years ago, I tried working at a bigger company. I made a mistake and accepted a job in a satellite office. I did not realize it would cause exactly this. I was supposed to be in office every day, but most of the relevant people were in the HQ, so all discussions were done online. It felt so pointless and even lonely to spend the time in the office. I tried doing that for a few months and eventually left. I really wonder what will happen now that people experience this on a larger scale.
The only thing I missed when WFH was the lucnhes and in-office jokes and fun. I can still have those, if we're in the office once per week or even less. Everything else is better from home, from not having to wear pants to saving myself an hour a day because my workplace is 5 seconds away from my bed.
I see all the articles about people quitting, and all the articles like this one about ridiculous patches to work life that aren't working, and I have to wonder, is there someone doing it right that is also paying well?
Sadly I dont think there are good short term incentives for most companies to go 100% remote yet. For example, most companies obtain tax benefits from buying office space which incentivates company owners to invest on real estate without spending their own money, then there are mid-managers who keep people accountable only through meetings. And from the political perspective, why would some local politicians be interested on incentaviting remote works? that would hit hard other businesses like restaurants at business areas and that would also decrease housing prices, rental prices and local population because people could decide to move to other more affordable areas.
Covid19 created a real short-term incentive for remote work, that generated some momentum around it, there are some companies which saw the real productive value behind remote work but most others didn't see it and they are taking these mid-road of "hybrid" work.
For knowledge workers, on-site today seems a lot like off-site of yesteryear. This time it's an unscheduled, unscripted team-building exercise, where you pay to attend and a fraction show up.
Lots to figure out. Exciting times for HR and recruiters.
Is there something about introvert vs extrovert? My wife, an extrovert, loves commuting and meeting people in person. I, however, could careless as I commute to an office just so I can take Zoom calls from there.
My personal theory is that hybrid work is deliberately made to be chaotic and disastrous, so that when management wants people back 5 days a week; there will be much less grumbling.
If that is the case for a given business than it would only make sense for everyone to microwave sardines for lunch (near managements offices until wfh is reinstated.)
Roman houses had a commercial thing at the front. Cities had lavish public baths, people had banquets, socialized in the market. The Industrial era lasted too long
In a hierarchy of options, it’s unsurprising most companies are settling in the worst of options, much like they did with their poorly designed open office plans.
There’s nothing worse than the “flexible” options companies are settling on, where people come 2-3 days a week, have no fixed seating arrangements, and need to get used to a new setup every time.
During the pandemic (in one of the lower case moments) I went back into the office with my Manager. It was to on-board a summer intern. I realised from that point that I needed a 100% fully remote job.
* The office was mostly empty
* The only communication was between my manager and myself and it was pointless
* There were several people in what appeared to be 8 hour long teams meetings
* None of the people who were pushing to get people back into the office were actually in the office. None of the exec team for example none of the HR or any of the older engineers
* You had bizarre rules with the mask which was you didn't need one when you are sat at the desk but moving about you need one. Not only that most people were ignoring those rules completely
* The office actually felt even more shit than what I imagined it to be
* I still needed to do the daily stand up via teams
* I didn't have a webcam / microphone at the desk so I had to use my own headset and go without the camera
* You couldn't it right next to someone and talk to them about their computer so I had to have a teams call with the intern to get them setup
* The intern forgot everything I told him as he didn't take any notes and asked me the same questions that I had already answered for the next 2 weeks
* The normal cafeteria was shut (looked permanently) so I had to drive to get my lunch
* I had forgotten that my chair was actually broken so moving from my £300 secret lab chair to a 10 year old farty broken cheap £25 office chair was a culture shock
* The toilets had every second stall blocked off (pre-pandemic) these were always full and you would often have to wait
* If the toilets had more that X people in them you had to wait in a queue outside
* Only 1 person at a time was allowed into the kitchen not sure how that was supposed to work if the office was full
* I had never noticed this before but the décor in the place was terribad. The carpet was skanky/mostly worn away. Two walls were painted headache inducing red. They had a bunch of shit art on all the walls. The plants were all either fake or dead. There was 0 natural light. The windows didn't open and were facing a 3 story brick wall.
* I felt quite breathless when I was there as you couldn't open a window the place was very stuffy and felt like the o2 levels were low
* The AC would make a loud grinding noise every 30 minutes that felt like the building was going to collapse
My overall experience was that I felt degraded like the company had "done a Will Smith" and smacked me in the face in front of everyone. I started looking for a 100% remote job immediately after this.
This exactly the mindset at Barclays in the UK except we are a globally distributed across 5 offices. When they started their back to office nonsense they caused an exodus on our team in Glasgow and now we are all working fully remote for for 50% more money
Got to justify the absolutely massive campus they've built by the Clyde somehow. In my experience, there's been quite the PR push recently on how amazing this new campus is (I'm not a Barclays employee).
According to consistent research, remote workers work more hours than their office-bound counterparts. Working at home is clearly more productive than working in an office, according to studies.
> a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff.
I don't get why they are not just talking to each other, is it that hard to say "I'll be in on Wednesday, will you? So we can chat about X" and why are so many people living 2 hours away from where they work then complaining about it. Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.
> Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.
A business chooses their office location based on business needs. The business isn't worried about the myriad reasons people choose to live in a particular place.
So businesses are rarely right next door to every employee's house. Traffic in cities will easily make a short distance into a long duration commute. Living in more affordable suburbs makes for longer distance commutes.
I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered.
I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet.
Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about "special performance measuring procedures" and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come.
We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can't approve our WFH requests since they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course in the last three years. They don't know when the course will be offered again. I've been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle.
I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...