I'll Return To Office when local employers learn how to compete with remote employers.
I've said it before, I don't like working from home. But I dislike working for underpaying petty feudal overlords with garbage tech stacks and mediocre management even more.
I know what my local market is like, and there's plenty of remote companies happy to outcompete them. So that's what I'll do.
That said:
Apparently showing that you can continue to deliver at a high standard, remotely, for two years is not an indicator that you will be able to work like that always.
In reality, I know that Google's own metrics showed marked decline in productivity during that period. I witnessed it first hand and saw all sorts of deadlines slip and things get cancelled.
Whether that was due to WFH or people dealing also with having kids and spouses at home -- and the fact that the whole world was seemingly falling apart around them -- I don't know. I know I didn't cope well with it.
But also, I think those kinds of Big Companies proved themselves absolutely woefully incompetent in adapting. They didn't handle it well. At least my team didn't.
It’s unfortunate, but there is a strong link between company culture and their remote work offerings.
At this point, companies that are “office first” tend to be of the poorly managed, tech-debt riddled, low trust variety, while remote first companies tend not to be, but also tend to have an actively hostile culture towards in-person work.
I believe there is a slowly growing cohort of people who do their best work when regular or semi-regular, in-person collaboration is involved. In time, I think well-managed organizations with proper tech practices will emerge that recognize this, and will attract the right people for it.
Until then, and for as long as each side in this straw man debate views the other as a mutually exclusive, almost existential threat, then this “rhetoric” from both sides most certainly won’t end and we will all continue to be subject to articles filled with lists of value judgements and personal projection on “the one true way everyone must work”.
Sorry for not being clear, but my post was more so addressing my anecdotal experience with small to medium sized companies, not big tech or FAANG type companies.
I can’t really comment on whether Oracle’s culture is more or less repressive than Apple or Amazon. I mean, we all probably know the reputation for each of the above companies, but given your findings on who’s remote friendly and who isn’t, it could be just as likely that those reputations are backwards today.
Regardless, to clarify, my post was very much based on my own anecdotal job hunting in my own state of Michigan. I was also trying to bring attention (albeit poorly) to the dichotomy of wfh vs office, and the missing (and still-being-defined) middle ground.
I’m sure there are exceptions, and as someone who is looking for where I can fit in and contribute in a post-pandemic world as a software engineer who enjoys working from home but also greatly values the work I was able to do in an in-person, collaborative environment, I would welcome anything that proves me wrong. :)
I've said it before, I don't like working from home. But I dislike working for underpaying petty feudal overlords with garbage tech stacks and mediocre management even more.
I know what my local market is like, and there's plenty of remote companies happy to outcompete them. So that's what I'll do.
That said:
Apparently showing that you can continue to deliver at a high standard, remotely, for two years is not an indicator that you will be able to work like that always.
In reality, I know that Google's own metrics showed marked decline in productivity during that period. I witnessed it first hand and saw all sorts of deadlines slip and things get cancelled.
Whether that was due to WFH or people dealing also with having kids and spouses at home -- and the fact that the whole world was seemingly falling apart around them -- I don't know. I know I didn't cope well with it.
But also, I think those kinds of Big Companies proved themselves absolutely woefully incompetent in adapting. They didn't handle it well. At least my team didn't.