RTO has simply become a structural disadvantage. Companies that cannot manage remote teams simply won't be able to attract top talent.
Even if 80% of companies RTO the remaining 20% that recruit remote-only jobs will create massive disruption in top performers. HR has their head in the sand because so many companies are either freezing hiring or reducing headcount, but there's a real issue here. Talented people just don't need to consider onsite work, period.
The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job. Maybe you want a big name on your resume. Either way those are jobs that will need to be filled again.
In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products. The cost of a failed product release outstrips their lease cost by orders of magnitude. I don't get the play here. What's the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?
> Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.
And who don't work for an employer who, simultaneous with RTO, is working to make in-office work a shit experience.
Hot-desking* in an open-office space, while you Zoom with your remote teammates based in a different office? WHO WOULDN'T WANT THAT?
* Now euphemized as "hoteling."
I actually like working in-office, but FFS, at least give me a cube with some storage, open desktop space, 3 or 4 walls that are taller than I am when sitting (and preferably when standing) that's in the same building with my team.
"Hoteling" is an awesome euphemism. Give me a desk that's depressingly impersonal, wasn't cleaned very well after its previous occupant left, and is always three degrees too cold. (At least there's free breakfast, right?)
Just FYI, I was a consultant for Deloitte in the early 2000's in Boston and they called it that even then, because consultants frequently travel and were out of the office anyway, so the incentive of paying for less under-utilized office space was already there.
And, heh, if you didn't reserve a desk in time then you basically got stuck in the hallway on a "floater" terminal with a lot of foot-traffic behind you
That is exactly the conundrum. Why would a hybrid team be in the office at the same time? Most likely, only if there’s a requirement to be there at that time. So hybrid doesn’t really work either.
I'm one of those who are most certainly more productive in-office (learned the hard way and the soft way via various work experiences). The reasons don't matter, but we are a significant minority.
The problem is that you can't have a discriminatory work policy. If for example you make a rule that "if you are considered productive, you can work more days from home; if you are considered to be becoming less productive, then you must come to the office more," then a few things happen, first and foremost being that people who are visibly in the office more are perceived as slackers, which can be a self-fulfilling belief, and the people who are out of the office more are "primadonnas" or "boss bootlickers". All of this creating more tension, as the "productive mostly from-home'ers" are also less likely to get promoted, etc. Basically there are a bunch of knock-on effects from treating employees differently in this capacity.
I have a friend who had hard data showing he was more productive when he was WFH and he still ended up having to RTO after covid lockdowns. I'm sure this wasn't a decision made lightly by management.
There's always the option of finding a 100% WFH company where they basically don't hire (or end up retaining) anyone with any ADHD =) and where those highly self-disciplined folks can go to thrive. But a large company like Blizzard won't be it.
I almost want to apologize to the people who are more productive when 100% WFH for having to comply with RTO policies for the sake of people like me. People like me are grateful for your sacrifice.
a significant factor in choosing my current role was that it was 100% on-site. Of course, this comes with a significant amount of nice amenities like catered lunch, free beverages/snacks, a gym, etc. It's also close to where I live. I understand people's reasoning for wanting to WFH, and they are valid, but just wanted to voice there is a subset that don't prefer this way (or thrive when WFH, I am like you, I am much less productive at home).
At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
> At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
Part of it may be that working on-site is still culturally considered the default, and WFH an exception. This creates an interesting asymmetry: if you're less productive at home than in the office, then obviously you should work from the office; if you're less productive in the office than at home... then you're a bad employee and should be let go.
> They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.
It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority.
And they are a minority indeed [0]. In fact, if the average HN poster was a white male, the RTO crowd would be overrepresented and thus it would explain that, in each one of these debates, there is always a good bunch claiming that in person office work is great.
> It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority.
YMMV. It seems to me that "zealots" on either spectrum (fully remote or fully office) are vocal minorities. Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days.
HN crowd seems to have a lot of vocal proponents of fully-remote work.
> Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days.
The numbers given don't seem to back that up.
Either way, the hybrid model is also polarizing, as it proves ineffective over time when people go to the office in non overlapping days, effectively turning going to the office into the same experience as working from home, just away from it.
While hybrid works for me, only fully-remote enables you to move far away from the office and, potentially, significantly improve your quality of life. I totally get why people feel so strongly about it.
My annecdata is that I feel far more productive (concentrated) at home, but going in 1-2 times a week is very important for incidental communication that can have important consequences. I currently manage a fully remote intern, but we have him come ~ two days every month. So far this seems to work.
They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).
I dont think you can generalise this way, its is also dependent on where you are living or what your commute looks like.
As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
Same. I’ve been working remotely for 23 years. I love working in an office when I get the opportunity to. The context switch is what I miss the most. It’s a 30 minute bike commute downtown for me. I had a chance to work in an office downtown several years ago and it was one of my favorite experiences.
And before anyone asks, yes, happily married, kids at home, excellent home office, healthy social life.
Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
Pointing out that this isn't OP -- took me a minute, I was confused by the tone switch from 'there's nuance here and its conditional based on current circumstances' to chiding of a position no ones advanced.
And I'm very much RTO crew! Who is calm about it because of exactly that conditionality on current circumstances.
Why is it not possible? There have been countless times where co-workers have booked in time on the calendar (for observability for the team) to meet up with a friend for lunch, or to even meet up after work and support local businesses around their home.
Re: "1 on 1s walking around the block and seeing this cool cafe that closes at 2pm?"
That does sound nice. All of my in office jobs were sitting at my desk staring at a computer for 8 hours. No one was walking around the block. :-) But that was over ten years ago.
They edited to make it less confusing / sarcastic, tl;dr they're lecturing people, with a family, who don't want to RTO, who think you only need to socialize with family
Married, my wife also works a demanding career, and we have 3 kids and 2 dogs.
I've been part-time remote since ~2012, full-time since 2016. I've recently taken a hybrid role. I really, really enjoy going into the office twice a week these days. The change of scenery is helping my brain. Plus, my kids preschool/daycare is equidistant from our home and the office, so it's not actually adding any measurable commuting time to my life. My daily commute is ~40 minutes in total regardless of where I sit my ass down to work.
I'm fortunate that my life is set up this way but I know from going into the office twice a week for months now that I'm not alone, most of my colleagues are in similar situations.
I'm all of those things - and /much/ prefer working from home. If I was made to RTO - even one day a week - I would find another job that was 100% remote.
From the ones I know and myself, it more about where they want to life. If I would be living in the suburbs with a long commute, I'd definitely insist on working remote only. But since we are living around 10-20 minutes from the office by bike or public transport anyway, I enjoy the social interactions with coworkers a couple times a week, working from home the rest of the time.
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to go fully remote as well. Wouldn't come to my mind to advocate that others to have to go to the office, just because I enjoy it once in a while.
That's not my experience - but then I work in quite a different line of work (investing) to the majority here. My experience is there isn't really any correlation between age, home situation, etc and desire to work in the office. Most people I work with (of all levels of seniority) seem to be happy with a hybrid setup (which probably averages out over the year at 1-2 days per week WFH, 3-4 days in office or work travel). In fact that's what we naturally did ourselves before there were any rules set from above.
I assume the statement was geared towards those who do not prefer working in-office. No need to force RTO for those willing to (or already did) return to the office.
If you have a group that consists of four home office warriors and one office worker (and assume they're all the best of the best) you still either have an office they go to or you don't, and if one person is alone in the office, what is the real point?
I think the end is going to mash out, but the real underlying problem that nobody wants to directly address is managers know who they'd be fine with working from home, and those who they are not so fine with (and it could all be entirely legitimate). Since they can't discriminate, they just slam to the lowest common denominator.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, I can only speculate. Maybe the lone office warrior wants to get away from noisy construction at home, family, etc.?
I know we have been WFH since March 2020, and we're _just_ starting to talk about RTO. No one wants to, but the state institution we work for is about to demand it. We have plenty of low performers that may work better (or, with some of them, actually work) being in the office. For our team, that would come at a significant disadvantage for those who _can_ work remote who now have to juggle managing the lower performers.
Obviously, it'd be easy to let go of the low performers and replace with more solid people, but being a state employee makes that somewhat difficult (HR, salaries, etc).
I know more than a few extremely skilled engineers who'd leave if their team wasn't local, simply because they hate doing everything over virtual meetings.
No matter how much I you puff up about the advantages, most workers will choose cutting their commute to zero with the lost costs/ time wasted as a net positive. The calculation on workers remote / local benefits and costs were always there, but they're certainly more heavily scrutinized now. So sure those guys will find the few willing to come to office while the rest just make more staying at home. Enjoy!
I love working on site. I wish my preferred employers would pick up and move to my comfortable suburb near my family and friends. They won't. Why did we ever allow that to become choice and why did we ever create a culture where the "obvious" answer was to move away for decades?
I'm glad I left to get world class experience, and I'm glad I'm back to stay.
So I expect young people will do what I did and move on site.
Yeah that line was a bit of a daft generalisation not helping the rest of the argument. Different strokes for different folks, and there are definitely strengths to on site that full time remote can't match (remote has its own strengths), especially team cohesion - or we might as well all be off shore contractors.
Yeah I liked the office when I actually had an office but during Covid they got us out of our offices and when we returned put us in cube farms. It sucks ass.
The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.
Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up.
When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year.
Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years.
Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth.
tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.
> The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.
It's such an amazing own goal that as municipal politicians overly pandered to the nimby attitudes of established wealthy homeowners, and disallowed any and all new housing in desirable near downtown areas, they induced a requirement for massive, shitty commutes, which people are now naturally and smartly abandoning for WFH as soon as they can, thus destroying the economies of said cities' downtowns.
All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built.
I still often go into the office purely for the enjoyment of a pleasant and healthy 15 minute bike ride into work. I recognize however that most colleagues do not have that privilege of a short commute, and I understand completely why they'd rather stay home.
> All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built.
Perhaps to some extent, but the type of housing in cities is mostly restricted to apartments, which is not satisfying for everyone, especially those that prefer living outside the city.
I don't know, I work tangentially with a lot of HR people and they always seem to get excited about projects that the regular workers are guaranteed to hate. I think HR people are just wired differently.
I mean, they're the "people people", and a good chunk of the job seems to be advertising the company itself to potential candidates. That alone attracts pretty much the opposite of what software development does. Plus, based on my (limited) experience, HR is one of the few roles where you're expected to drink more of the company kool-aid than most employees, and you must be visibly excited about it, whether you actually like it or not.
I think even that varies—partly by the nature of the organization.
Most HR people I have known have not been "people people" so much as they have been "process people"—they lived for rules and procedures being meticulously spelled out and required to be followed to the letter.
(...And then there's the finally-now-former head of HR I knew who was mostly just a "platitudes person"—any problem that came to her, she had a whole bunch of pleasant-sounding drivel to say to get the person with the problem to go away, only later to realize their problem was never going to be solved, at least not by HR.)
RTO is fast becoming my last hope for employment. I used to imagine myself to be a member of that pool of “top talent,” but several grueling months of unsuccessful job searching have roundly dispelled any pretensions I might have had.
I hate to say it, but I have to recognize when I’m without leverage. I’ll absolutely go back to the office if it means I have a job.
If your judgement of your job finding ability and work quality is based off the last few months, I wouldn't be to hard on your self. It's tough for everyone right now.
Gotta do what you gotta do, though the hiring game has been a farce for years and absolutely grueling. Getting a job is luck, and it's the most unlucky time to need one. I got laid off last month from a remote job and don't even believe there's a chance at even landing an in-office job anywhere for any company right now in tech. Might call up some moving companies and start doing that or random temp jobs for cash to pay bills.
> Do you not have a network of people you can ask for work?
This always used to be my lifeline. 2022 was the fourth layoff of my career, and each of the three previous times, someone I'd worked with previously got me in the door at their new place, and I had a job again within a month.
This time, I've had at least half a dozen direct referrals from former coworkers, and only one has even gotten me to a hiring manager interview. Brutal doesn't even begin to describe it.
As a consolation, I've gotten a bit of freelance work through my network, but since that reduces unemployment benefits, it doesn't really help pay the bills so much as it helps support my mental health.
> I think this might be part of the strategy of the current layoffs, to kinda push the issue with economic force.
what's going on with the current layoffs is that companies overhired from 2020 to 2022, and now they're over-firing to compensate.
there's also a snowball effect to it, because if you see that you could fire your people and re-hire roughly equivalent new talent for less, that's very appealing for the kind of manager who sees staff as a cost center.
and there's also a real estate invesmtent factor, both in terms of ego ("I met with architects for a year to build our shiny new campus, of course you peons will be more productive where I can keep an eye on you") and in terms of actual financials ("we've been spending $X per year for property taxes on this empty building").
of course it's always going to be a blend of factors, especially in an industry where tons of research proved open plan offices were detrimental and open plan offices became the norm anyway.
There might be a slight disadvantage in the "Got RSUs in the early 2010's" group but for everyone else money still talks.
A box full of cash will convince many to come to the office a couple of times a week. It's still very hard to get FAANG expensive-city level compensation with a true promise that you will still be fully remote 1 year from now.
For the companies trying to pay startup wages plus demand in office, that will end badly
There's a legal employment concept called "quit for cause", it's kind of the inverse of "fire for cause". In CA (and very much IANAL), if your contract is for remote work and you are required to RTO, that'd qualify as "cause". AFAICT you can tie this to other things, like "I can quit and keep the signing bonus", "I can quit and get my first year's stock", things like that - at least on a legal level. Negotiating that in (and enforcing it) are other questions.
From a NYS perspective: At least for the purposes of drawing unemployment, there's a similar concept here, "constructive dismissal". I know someone who had their job changed almost completely underneath them, into something that they had repeatedly stated was unacceptable to them. They quit, and were able to claim unemployment exactly as if they had been fired without cause.
It is not just about teams and people. It is political - cities are struggling when people do not come to work, and it is financial - many companies have taken loans putting the real estate they own as collateral; if commercial real estate devalues, these companies are facing margin calls.
Yes, but this is like the opposite of a tragedy of the commons scenario. Are you saying the companies do this in order to save the cities and real estate prices? That's likely not even a small factor at the bottom of the list.
It's sunk cost fallacy -- especially at the FAANGs. These companies spent billions on monuments to the company's greatness. These buildings, MPK 20 & 22, The Donut, Amazon HQ2, the Circus Tents, aren't just unsellable from the psychological sense, they're unsellable in a practical sense. The number of companies that need/want 2.8 million ft2 (262,000 m2) of nigh-undivided office space can be counted on one hand -- and all of these already have their own white elephant.
Mix in monkey-see-monkey-do management of smaller firms, and of course straight up class antagonism towards workers, and you've got RTO über alles.
> The number of companies that need/want 2.8 million ft2 (262,000 m2) of nigh-undivided office space can be counted on one hand -- and all of these already have their own white elephant.
I partially disagree: if necessary, rent out various parts of this office space to multiple companies.
Totally agree with this, I’m just saying that few, if any, companies would make the decision to force people back in the office based on the well-being of cities or the real estate market.
All companies act in their best interest and that’s kind of it.
My experience is that companies almost never own their own buildings - at most they may have a long term lease, and even then long term is maybe 5 years.
Commercial real estate is a highly complex beast. Some companies build offices and sell them to an affiliated REIT while guaranteeing occupancy rates, banks build their office towers and go through great length to turn them into cash assets. It is very different from state to state due to taxes and regulations.
My experience is certainly limited. Seems to me, for a bank to enter into that kind of arrangement aligns much more with the core skill set vs tech companies in the typical HN community. But even then I could see the FANG companies with a lot of guaranteed cashflow owning, but at some way down the scale to smaller companies, I would think it strongly becomes to something to avoid for tech companies.
I bet that many of the execs and board members have ties to commerce around offices: the overpriced rental complexes, restaurants, cafes and so on. Who wouldn't want to pay employees and simultaneously set the rent prices where those employees have to live?
I mean, sure. But let's acknowledge that "global pandemic" was justifiably considered a low probability before 2020. Even today should companies price in a meteor strike? Will they be out-competed in an existential timeframe if they do?
a) "global pandemic" was _not_ considered a low probability by epidemiologists or by governments. the US set up a pandemic office during the Obama administration for exactly this reason. partly because everybody knew climate change and globalization increased the risk of pandemics, and partly because pandemics tore through Asia and the Middle East in 2002 and 2012.
b) remote work has been making office buildings obsolete for decades now. it is fundamentally absurd to say that you need people to get together in one room in order to build a distributed system. neither office buildings nor the "open plan" spaces inside have made any real logical sense for the tech industry in a very, very long time.
I agree with you in general but in the context of real estate investment I'm not sure the sudden normalization of WFH and effect on commercial real estate was reasonably predictable.
From a macro perspective it certainly was predictable given the trends that have been mentioned. From a micro “make as much money from the most suckers now” and “build it and sell it to a REIT” perspective it was able to be ignored.
In the example I provided, it would be those that sold their commercial real estate before the pandemic. Other winners would be pharmaceutical companies, residential builders, internet retailers, people that prefer working from home, and families that enjoy each others company to name a few.
Obama set up a pandemic preparedness office which coordinated with China. can't call it a huge win, since the other guy dismantled it in 2018, but easy to say there's a person who saw a thing that others missed.
(edit: oops, I said that already. sorry, it's been a week. only just saw this reply.)
the big win with remote work is not selling off commerical real estate but being smart enough not to buy it in the first place. or to found a screensharing and video chat company. so a big winner there is Zoom. and a whole set of winners would be the companies who were already doing remote work and didn't have to skip a beat.
other companies which saw a boost from the pandemic: literally all of e-commerce. every sketchy ad on Instagram selling a $10 product from Alibaba for $50. and the platform they ran on: Shopify. which of course overhired when it saw a huge boom in traffic, and now has had to correct that overhiring.
None. But that's orthogonal to your GP's point - "They should have done their homework." This was not a case of missing "homework". This was literally a once-in-a-century event no one plans for.
There are many once-in-a-century possibilities like flooding, fires, terrorism, pandemics, structural failures, wars, ecological disasters, eminent domain, etc. Add them all up and you actually have a many-in-a-century event scenario. Companies that are already setup for remote work will be at an advantage, by not having a large percentage of their resources at a single or several large locations, and able to continue operations with little or no disruption.
In short, the remote model is decentralized and therefore more resilient and less risky.
Sure but what you do about these events is very different. Eminent domain and business districts are almost synonyms and much different than a war or terrorism. How do you price all of this into your real estate buying decisions? I don't dispute the benefits of remote work but can we at least admit that the world changed drastically and unpredictably in the last few years?
The impact is the same regardless of event. A centralized location being affected by any of these events is going to impact business negatively to a much greater degree than a company whose workers are spread out in different locations.
As for real estate buying decisions, it depends on the industry of course. So, given a standard tech business, you buy what you need for positions that cannot be performed remotely and estimated space for those workers that desire to work at that location hopefully in a location close to where these workers live (which is likely not in a typical downtown city location). Basically, smaller satellite offices near where the people that have to go to a physical location live.
It isn’t though. Eminent domain increases property values. Pandemics and terrorism decrease it.
> So, given a standard tech business, you buy what you need for positions that cannot be performed remotely and estimated space for those workers that desire to work at that location hopefully in a location close to where these workers live (which is likely not in a typical downtown city location).
This is divorced from the reality I live in. My city developed a business district complete with housing and entertainment near downtown. That area is dead now and the city is understandably concerned. It wasn’t a bad idea before but now it hasn’t worked out. But I can’t blame the businesses who invested. They seem to have made all the right decisions. It wasn’t clearly a mistake pre-pandemic. In fact it was all very progressive and forward-looking.
> "I don't get the play here. What's the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?"
Devil's advocate: maybe it's a low-cost way to avoid layoffs? As in "we'd like to reduce headcount, but layoffs are expensive and look bad. If we enforce RTO, a certain percentage of our less-dedicated employees will quit and we won't have to pay out severance etc..."
I believe this is the way many companies are going, even if they don't need to reduce the headcount, they can scoop up hungry workers cycling them out for average performers.
I keep sharing that many companies have not defined the remote policy. It's up in the air and they simply haven't said anything about not working remote. My fear is it will all end in two weeks, asking all non-dedicated full time remote workers to be in the office.
Now what happens when your company's processes require high performing people with experience that can't be hired just of the street? Or need several months to years worth of recruiting to replace?
Companies always lose talent, experience and institutional knowledge when they cut headcount - whether it's through conventional layoffs or otherwise. The gamble is that the reduced expenses are more important/valuable to the company than what is lost.
I feel like vaccine mandates did something similar for companies, it helped them to remove the less intelligent employees. Sometimes it's better to convince the trash to take itself out.
Case-by-case (what Google / OpenAI does) where top talent is identified and allowed WFH may outcompete both full-remote and both no-wfh companies (no-wfh is over at this point).
It's a nice dream to have everyone wfh, but most people may not have that leverage / experience.
Case by case wfh doesn't work as well as all remote. Missing out on key decisions because you weren't there is a big risk, as is falling behind on camaraderie.
It can cause big divisions that CAN work (a work from home boss, for example, managing people who are mostly in an office) but can also cause a haves/haves not issue.
Going for work from home with defined "in office" periods (say one week a month at an office or working resort or whatever) can be a better division, but that puts the people who thrive in an office environment at a disadvantage.
why would top talent risk their jobs and get less for the sake of supporting underperformers? thats how unions work in this case. they make a lot more sense where there's stuff like blatant safety issues in factory settings than when e1s are Mad Online that they have to go into office and it's Literally 1984
Why do doctors and writers have unions? None of them are in a meat packing floor.
Everybody thinks they’re special until they’re not. Tons of top talent at Amazon and Facebook were recently laid off. You’re not safe just because you’re smart.
Remote introduces some challenges to be sure, but you gain access to such a wider pool of talent and it is such an employee benefit.
If you want the best talent you probably need to offer remote work or be ready to pay double because it is worth that much to most people. I would not hate the idea of working in an office a few days a week again, but the only way I am even going to consider relocating is for, at minimum, double my current salary and some kind of contract with guarantees.
> Companies that cannot manage remote teams simply won't be able to attract top talent.
> The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job.
Speak for yourself. Among the engineers I know who are "top talent", many of them prefer hybrid while small fractions prefer either fully-remote or fully-office setup.
>>In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products. The cost of a failed product release outstrips their lease cost by orders of magnitude. I don't get the play here. What's the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?
One employee (who does not want to work in the office) claims return to work is the cause without providing any evidence. I would be very wary of drawing the conclusions you are. For all we know they are in crisis because their employees are producing 10x less when working from home versus when they are in the office.
>>In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products.
Blizzard's chief operating officer, the person whose job is to avoid such crises, quit/was fired when Microsoft acquired Blizzard. He went to Yuga Labs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club people. That may be part of why Blizzard is in trouble.
Are the numbers of people in offices actually going up much? The company that runs cloud-based security gate systems said a few months back that the number of people badging in was below 50% of pre-pandemic levels. The commercial real estate market is tanking.[1]
We've passed "peak office". Between work from home and better AI, there's just no real need for about half of the US's office space. Tearing down suburban office buildings to build housing is now a thing. The office building itself now has negative value.[2]
It's even worse in retail. Shoppers are not returning to malls.
About the only thing that malls had left going for them was trying on clothes; and a bunch of stores shuttered their dressing rooms during Covid and never re-opened them.
So why bother? Order online and return what don't fit, and stay away from the ghastly creepy malls.
As a (former) mall rat in the lovely upstate NY, malls are great. You could go there and hang out with friends, maybe shop but usually not, socialize, people-watch, get a bite to eat. They are basically the "walkable town center" that suburban USA sorely lacks, and in the dead winter or scorching summer, are pretty awesome.
Yea, back in my youth the mall was the place to be. Hang out at the music shop and dream of owning that drum kit or bass guitar. Hit the food court with your friends. Maybe buy a pair of shoes or something.
However, in the last several years the attitude of malls has changed. We had a spate of kids being kids and running through the local mall last year and it scared all the shoppers. Now they won't let kids in without an adult and keep hassling them at every turn. Malls have become a hostile place to shoppers. At least in my area.
As a former Florida mall rat, malls hated this and tried to end it. Sunset Place Mall had a policy for several years that any group larger than 4 that wasn't actively shopping had to leave. They even had cringey signs written in text-speak and emoticons, before emojis in text were common. I still remember " U grp 4+? $$ :) or go :("
"They're not there to work. They're not there to shop. They're just there" - Mallrats
For a picture of the mallrat era, see the intro to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". (1982) [1] That mall, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, was torn down in 1999.
Maybe they're still great for some (after all, I'm hardly a teenager anymore) but the times I've been forced by some Apple repair to enter them, they've felt pretty darn dead.
I've seen speculation that free returns might not be as abundant as they have been in the past.
I personally dislike returning goods, so I'd rather go fit stuff at a mall when it's something that needs a good fit. Especially jeans, I apparently have a strange pelvis because I find it very hard to find comfortable jeans. But stuff like T-shirts and socks are pretty easy to order online.
The first store to get rid of free returns will be absolutely devoured in the market, especially if they're dumb enough to still have no dressing rooms at the same time.
I just wish they would sell the same damn jeans year in and year out and stop futzing with the sizes and fits.
If Amazon ended free returns they'd likely suffer potentially brand-ending harm. Walmart and Target are already nipping at their heels and can offer in-person returns.
Amazon is also mildly disliked by all their customers anyway.
Even that's a false assumption IMO - Amazon has the advantage in that returns aren't all-or-nothing, they can instead be more granular about who they allow to return items.
It’s not that simple. For folks who prefer remote, remote is a benefit. For folks who prefer an in office work style, remote being an option is an “anti” benefit since it totally kills the value of in person work.
You’re going to lose top talent either way. The last org I worked at went remote and lost a bunch of high performers to places that were in office.
I ended up leaving for unrelated reasons. It seems like things ended up totally stabilizing and now they are in a happy state of remote culture, but it absolutely cost them along the way.
I don't believe this is true at all. I tend to prefer the office, but if I have the option of remote work, this is a good thing. I may never use it, but it's there if my situation changes (temporarily or permanently).
It's a benefit to everyone, whether or not they use it.
I don't think this is true because of network effects. I tend to prefer the office, but my company has a remote work option. The result is that most people work remotely and eventually I had to close down the office -- no one besides me was coming in.
I don't support "return to the office" mandates, but the reasoning is sound: the value of an office is not realized unless most people attend.
But that explains very poorly what we're seeing...
If it was an expense they'd be able to ditch (soon or eventually), you'd think they'd be forcing people to do remote. Not doubling down on RTO. You don't say "if you don't return, I have no justification for this huge waste of cash"...
This assumes that RTO is a rational and economic decision.
From everything I've seen, at least 80% of the time it's almost entirely about emotion, and mostly control.
Managers who never learned how to actually manage in any way besides "if your butt's in the seat, I guess you're working, otherwise, you're slacking off and stealing from the company!" are desperate to get people back where they can act like they manage them.
Managers who (overlapping with the first) have bought fully into the narrative that the manager/subordinate relationship is an adversarial one, and believe that every employee is constantly going to be trying to find every way they can to avoid working, cannot imagine employees being more productive at home without draconian surveillance.
People at all levels who worked in offices all their lives, sacrificing so much that they could have had if remote work was an option, see others enjoying remote work now (even some just starting their careers!), and are resentful. "If I had to do it, you have to do it!" Or they just see it and genuinely don't believe it's possible to work properly anywhere but an office.
People are not fully rational creatures. If you look at the decisions managers and execs make and say, "But it's so clear that this is worse for the company; why would they do that?", or, worse, "They must know something I don't know, and this is actually better" (and I've seen many people express both sentiments about the RTO push), you're making the mistake of believing that everything they do is motivated by cold hard logic and numbers.
It is not a benefit to everyone. I enjoy face-to-face interaction with colleagues, while I dislike any form of online communication, as it drains my energy.
I disagree. I massively preferred working 100% in the office with colleagues and would return to that in a heartbeat if it was an option. I know many others who feel the same.
The worst of all worlds. You still have to come in so you can't move far enough away take advantage of cheaper locales but now you have to work in uncomfortable spaces bench seating if you are really unlucky designed to remind you, that you are college.
Or take the permanent desk and remote into all meetings anyways.
Data point: My company has this setup and it's my favorite out of all options.
I actually do want to go in the office 1-4 times a month + 2 full weeks at the middle and end of the year. People being nearby means that when we think in person is important we actually get to coordinate it.
I don't have "benches" or anything, there's literally a full dusk with multiple monitors and a nice chair any time I want it (more or less), the office is not meaningfully less comfy than pre-pandemic for me.
I will admit that I value "cheaper locales" less because my family is here and nowhere else but this is not true for many of my current and former coworkers and many of them love the setup as well.
You misunderstood “sharing desks”. You get a normal desk, but have assigned days to the desk, and you share a monitor setup. Then everyone keeps their keyboard/mice in a locked drawer etc. if you aren’t coming in 4 days, there will be a different employee using that desk and chair the days you aren’t there.
> If your goal is to ensure that you're getting rid of your top talent, it's a fine strategy.
Usually, you're not going to fire your top talent over corporate policy for the plebs. You're going to bend the rules.
If the company isn't bending for you, you might not be top talent - and more like just slightly above average talent - in which case, yeah, the company doesn't really care about you.
And if you really are top talent, you're not concerned if your company doesn't bend. You can go anywhere. Who cares?
"Top talent" is probably the wrong way to look at this, because it's only a relevant label in the context of (broad) role and level of seniority. Almost noone in any given company is truly indispensable, and employers may not feel the need to retain even top talent at some levels and in some roles because those roles just aren't that important or they don't view them as needing "top talent" to perform.
I think the term "key person" is probably more helpful - you can be a key person (and thus your employer might go out of their way to retain you) without necessarily being "top talent" by virtue of eg being uniquely qualified, in a position where it would be disruptive/expensive to replace you, etc.
...anyone who isn't an ice-cold sociopath? Your job is often a big part of your identity, particularly in the games biz which is so passion driven.
Leaving behind a project you grew, kickass tech you had a hand in, and friends you made is a major life trauma, even if you're doing it voluntarily to chase something new.
I love my work, I have to be reminded to eat because I'm so into what I'm doing, consistently, every day. I don't understand people who say things like "thank gods it's Friday" (why are you spending most of your life doing something you want to get away from?!).
However, it is still just work! It's not my company, it's not my identity, and it gives me no value as a human being. You are not your success. My colleagues are not my friends, though we can hang out and have fun. My accomplishments at work are not my value as a person, though they give me satisfaction.
Work is work, don't buy what they're selling, and put down the cool-aid.
> ...anyone who isn't an ice-cold sociopath? Your job is often a big part of your identity, particularly in the games biz which is so passion driven.
I'd argue this is unhealthy and a recipe for disaster. But different things work for different folks.
> Leaving behind a project you grew, kickass tech you had a hand in, and friends you made is a major life trauma, even if you're doing it voluntarily to chase something new.
There's kickass people at most good companies. The idea you can't make work friends & work on cool stuff unless at your current job in your current role seems limiting.
> The idea you can't make work friends & work on cool stuff unless at your current job in your current role seems limiting.
I never said that. If you work on cool stuff with great people it is healthy to reflect on the pain and loss of that chapter ending. Yes, "there are more fish in the sea." Heartbreak is still heartbreak.
I wish people would stop abusing the word trauma. If you actually see moving jobs as a "major life trauma" you are much too fragile and would likely benefit from building some resilience
What would you rank as a bigger loss? My list is pretty short. Wife, kids.
Losing a job means you lose your friends, your work, your brand, your routine, maybe the commute you chose your house for. Maybe you'll have to move your family. Your kids lose their friends. Your wife loses hers. Maybe you lose them in the somewhat likely divorce. Maybe you're upside down on the house you bought in that town and now you lose all your savings to move. Maybe it was a layoff, maybe you can't even afford child support. Maybe you're deported.
If we're stooping to personal insults, are you a child with zero real life experience?
Iirc, 1 in 4000 men take their lives in a layoff. In a year like this, shut your fucking mouth about how "fragile" other people are, you absolute twit.
Your employer will get rid of you in a blink if needed, as current layoffs show, getting too attached to your work is not healthy - no matter how passionate you are about it.
Companies hire and promote the best because the value they deliver massively outstrips their cost. If that wasn't the case, they'd already be pip'd out.
Using RTO to increase attrition is an absolutely brain dead strategy.
That can probably be described as gross misconduct or insubordination, and be used as a valid reason for immediate dismissal with no benefits. Then you'd have to argue that the company's demand was not reasonable, and then it sounds like you're pretty much in the same place as if you argued constructive dismissal to begin with. I have no idea if they're legally or practically equivalent.
That would be dumb - now not only they are losing talent, but they are also marking themselves as 'no go' for such talent by shutting off remote work. In future they could have to work as hard as Microsoft to change that reputation like how Microsoft had to work hard to change their reputation about Open Source software. (and still couldnt actually manage to do that).
I've been WFM for 7 years now. I don't think RTO is a bad thing, but its all situational. How silo'd are projects and how much inter-team coordination do you need? How long is your commute? What kind of person are you (some people just work better in office environments)? Do you need physical access to equipment? The list goes on.
Being fully remote has allowed flexibility for team members to relocate without being forced to leave and thats been the biggest advantage. Going from a FTO to WFO or RTO is a big transition that requires re-defining workflows and communication mechanisms. Products like Zoom and Slack have made that far easier, but the bigger the organization, the harder the transition.
Personally, I miss having an office. I've lost human connection by being isolated at home that isn't replaced with normal social interactions. Maybe thats just older men not making time, but office space traditionally filled that role for me.
I've been WFO for the last 3 years and I love it. However, one of my favorite work times was being in the office when I was younger. I think the difference might be that we had lots of stuff to do in the office. They had a great cafeteria and a pond to take walks around at lunch. There was free food (sometimes) and free soda (all the time) and they even had a parade every couple of weeks.
Some of my best memories, and most productive times, were when me and a couple of co-workers would walk down 5 flights of stairs to get some Dr. Pepper at 3:00 in the afternoon. It helped break up the day and get your brain juices flowing again. And the caffeine didn't hurt. It's kinda hard to get that when you WFH.
I just don't see how people can be more productive at home, maybe if they work in isolation. But my experience is that a culture of very interactive programming with team members solves problems fast and you can make light year jumps. Taking a project from a week into a day with two hands on it. That kind of thing works great in person. And it doesn't just benefit junior devs, but also srs who collaborate better.
I think people are afraid of pair programming and it's very weird, as I love it. I do it a lot on zoom but it's not as good as in person.
I've done pair programming on specific projects throughout the years and I find it to be utterly exhausting. I would resign if my job required it.
I find myself more productive at home because there's often way too much office chit-chat between meetings that does nothing but serve to distract. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but there's an understanding among my hybrid team that if we need to get something done, we'll be WFH those days. Not to mention, I'm senior enough to always be in meetings and never program anymore, and for that I can do anywhere especially when the people I meet are in different parts of the world.
You can do pair programming on zoom too. Also maybe not everyone enjoys dealing with other people, especially nerds?
For me WFH is definitely more productive. For a start, I don't have to commune for 90 mins into office. If I RTO I'll politely remove all meetings from other time zones out of 9-5 because I need to catch a train or drive a car.
Also, by WFH I don't have people who happens to enjoy a lot of chatting and "collaboration in person" to suddenly appear in front of me and request a talk! God finally I can work.
My manager and I have been doing some pair programming in VSCode’s “multiplayer” mode (can’t remember what it’s called). The implementation is pretty well done.
Is RTO being driven by the government? There suddenly seems to be huge push this year and not much in 2022. Allegedly commercial real estate is something that many banks have exposure to and will not be solved unless RTO is implemented. This is just my hypothesis and obviously correlation isn't causation.
In Canada's capital Ottawa, this has been pushed for by the municipal government. Office workers downtown were what kept most of the overpriced, mediocre, restaurants, franchises and coffee shops afloat. These places are often the only convenient option for office workers. Nobody would ever go to these by choice - they are only ever open 9-5 Monday to Friday - so they needed the government to step in and force their customers back to the office.
This is a really interesting question to me because one can’t help but notice there are entities which are going to suffer immense pain if remote work continues.
Specifically, anyone holding the bag of commercial real estate - particularly in high CoL cities.
Edit: I strongly suspect there is a story here because if you happened to be holding that bag you would lobby, lie, cheat, steal, whatever you needed to do to try and get out from under that impending doom.
I don't know the way I see it some big companies decide to try it and every C-level that sees the article follows. Seems like that's more likely in my mind at least. There was a game about this for Amiga written in 1991.
I think this is what's happening. It's just follow-the-leader. "Apple and Google are doing it, it must be a good idea." I've had no official internal justification.
There is certainly worry that as lease contracts expire, the combination of higher interest rates and vacant offices will create huge losses for real estate developers, and these can cause a cascading domino effect of further losses.
How the communication flows from the government or RE developers to executives is beyond my understanding, but it looks like there is not much willingness to rethink how corporate office space can be used in other ways, and more willingness to just go back to the status quo.
I have seen RTO being driven by the muni. There is an immediate risk for urban decay as all the secondary effects of thousands of people coming to place for 9+ hours a day disappear.
Lots of city tax revenue vanished when people stopped coming into work.
It's funny to see this considering that, for WoW at least, it seems that pandemic and WFH helped them create the best expansion since 2016. The last two expansions had worse design and systems than their latest. I personally think the only reason WoW hasn't caught on again is that BfA / Shadowlands killed enthusiasm for the game.
I personally think Blizzard's fate was sealed when they were bought by Activision. Big corporate overlords can never keep their mitts off of successful subsidiaries for too long.
I too have played since beta. But yeah, I'm wary of that and ready to head for the door if that happens, but I just resubbed a bit to enjoy 10.1. I'll play for a month and then disappear until new content drops again. It's not going to my forever game anymore, but when it's good it'll get a month or two out of me.
There was only one game in between. The number of viable titles in this genre are looking almost as bad as RTS which has also taken a big tumblr on popularity over the years. The question will stand if D4 will be able to engage the hardcores more than POE and still be able to attract normals enough to stick around and spend the big money. Time will tell.
True, but I don't know if that actually disproves my point. They stumbled at first but after a few years of WFH they are backing firing on all cylinders, better than they were before COVID. They proved it could work.
> The same employee also speculated that Blizzard is "tightening its belt right now and they want people to leave", which may affect Blizzard's plans for Diablo IV's post-release updates.
If true, talk about incompetent management. If you need to slim down, ideally you'd want to identify the people and groups that can be laid off with least overall damage and do it all in one shot. "Layoffs by RTO" is a great way to have your best, most-employable staff trickle out over a period of months - constantly reminding anyone left behind that they're stuck working under a bunch of ding-a-lings so they might decide to leave next.
How is Bobby still getting paid "the big bucks" to run ActivisionBlizzard this way?
The worse a company is doing the more they have to pay the CEO to stick around. It’s a little strange but that’s where we end up.
For the benefit of all companies, we need to find a way to produce more people qualified to lead large organizations so that they’re easier to swap.
I support policies that make it easier for people to make organizations and remove roadblocks to achieve this. This will make existing companies leaner and produce more stock of qualified leaders.
Bad for the companies which are not managing to make WFH to work.
It's surely not easy, though. It requires a number of skills on communication, organization (time management, adequate environment), and a good amount of discipline, both from managers and "managees". But I don't see companies trying to develop such critical competencies deliberately. They simply send people home and dream with the resulting cuts in costs -- at least that's my experience.
I've seen WFH working amazingly well in some places; working terribly in others; or even working well at the beginning and deteriorating after some time; and, in the cases where WFH worked well, that happened essentially out of luck.
I’ve worked from home (WFH) since 2013. I’ve been a top performer so many different times I’ve lost count.
Each time I left an employer since I started- a basic requirement in my job search was -“remote”
Just as important as the job title and salary range.
I’ve managed remote teams myself and understand the unique challenges WFH can create - however, it is up to the company leadership to set clear expectations about what WFH looks like (and what it doesn’t).
Company’s mandating return to office failed in setting expectations and managing to them accordingly. Don’t blame the entire workforce- learn from what didn’t work for your company and adapt. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind by those who did.
We have the same discussion over and over. Let me summarize the comments: some people like working remote, others prefer hybrid and some love going to the office every day. Companies that force a single work style will necessarily lose workers.
The more interesting question, IMHO, is whether companies mandating a given work style will be more efficient than others that give people the choice. And among the ones mandating a style, whether one style in particular is more efficient in general.
Which company from the options below is more likely to beat their competitors in the long run due to higher efficiency, quality, time to market etc?
1) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from home.
2) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from the office.
3) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers and give them the choice.
Long term staff retention really seems to pay off in the entertainment industry. Nintendo, Valve, FX, NBC, off the top of my head. Not sure how viable it is for smaller companies.
My company is also forcing people to RTO even when there are multi hundreds of open opposition (and probably a thousand more silent opposition).
As the article suggests, top performers can pick jobs anywhere and anytime. Even a depression as bad as 1929 still maintains about 60% employment. RTO will just drive away two kinds of people: top performers who prefer remote work, and people who are OE. Even for the second group, they are still good performers as they can handle two jobs without being noticed.
Either way, only those inexperienced and coasting are going to stay. Good luck pushing out projects then.
My company is losing dozens of irreplaceable people due to forced RTO, and it may catastrophically undermine some of our products. Leadership does not care. It's shocking to me.
It now seems a bit obvious that this type of policy will lead to the best performers flying the coup, as they are the ones most likely to be in a position to dictate the terms of their employment.
The last org I worked at went remote during the pandemic, and lost a big chunk of top performers because of it. They went to companies with the sort of vibrant office that my org had prior to the pandemic.
It’s a lose-lose. And hybrid isn’t a solution at all; it’s a bad outcome for both sides.
Over time things are just going to settle into remote orgs and in person orgs, and all that’s happening now is that companies are deciding which side of the fence to come down on. Either choice hurts in the short term.
You've repeated a few times that the top performers left because of WFH, but I don't believe you. Unless you're in some weird industry where top performers love vibrant offices (which don't really exist) this seems made up.
I mentioned my situation twice, because it was relevant to both comments. I worked at a tech company. We had an internal poll when decision making was made around this, and the breakdown was about 30% prefer full time in office, 40% wanted hybrid, and another 30% wanted full time remote. The high performers who left were mostly in sales and marketing, for what it's worth. Engineering suffered almost no attrition, but IMO (and I say this as an engineer) SWEs are much more fungible than sales people even if they are more expensive.
I think the discourse on forums like this one and Reddit, dominated by highly-online folks (especially engineers), has given folks a skewed perspective on the general population's preferences regarding office work. Most folks in my personal network do not work in tech. Among them the solid majority prefer a hybrid setup, with only a small portion preferring full-time remote or full-time in-office. But that leads to a very strong majority preferring that their organization have an active and vibrant office.
Not the person you’re replying to but I work in an industry not to dissimilar to games and many of the top performers love in-person collaboration. They come into the office every day even though they’re not obliged to.
As does forced WFH for some people (minus the climate aspects). Or unskillfully conducted WFH (even when everyone agrees in principle).
I think it's pretty clear that this is a topic that people have organic, gut-level differences of opinion on -- and not without a very substantial basis (thinking here of the experience of people who hate WFH and find it to be as damaging to their mental health as others find it to be liberating).
I'm still in the camp that holds that on balance there are more benefits to WFH, and fewer downsides - provided everyone is on board. But what's needed to bridge the divide is more empathy for the other side - not a bullet to the head of everyone who disagrees with us.
I agree with you but it’s usually the onsite crowd that wants _everyone_ else onsite. I am all for mixed setups with some onsite some offsite but i strongly disagree with the anti freedom side (those who want everyone on site).
They should start with educating them how to manage remote/hybrid environment, because that's the most likely reason for their opinion.
I've worked in all ranges from fully on-site to fully remote and it's all in organization and workflow and I can absolutely see some manager seeing drop in productivity when trying to pretend no changes are needed to be made for remote work.
I'd imagine game dev is a more collaborative sort of thing, at least at various stages. Where it'd help to be in office, at least to some degree.
Maybe they can have management require being in office during key parts of projects or for parts of the month. Rather than a mandatory 3 days a week thing across the board.
Ok but... let's just pull a Pareto here and assume that times requiring the team to be together in the office are 20% of the total working time of any project.
You are now paying rent (and utilities) for a space that is severely underutilized for 80% of the time.
What about the food catering? The security? Parking space?
All these collaterals cannot be dynamically scaled up and down at will.
Sure but not all of the business are developers or highly optimized for remote style work. It’s going to vary and keeping the base office can still potentially make sense for larger orgs.
Plus you don’t need catering nor the total office size demands when you have 20% utilization at various times.
You can offer those perks through monthly stripends not via the office. You can also stripend traveling costs to the office for the allotted monthly group time.
Usage can also be coordinated and staggered virtually to manage demand.
It’s going to require adapting to a new reality not pigeonholing the old system into the new one just in case people might use the office all at once.
My comment was trying to address the fact that the current 3-days in the office rules are probably just a coarse grained response to the very real and present problem that companies are facing right now.
Downsizing the office space to ensure handle just 20% of the headcount might be the answer, but:
a) It will take time
b) Getting rid of 80% of your office space is not really that much easier than getting rid of 95% of it, which is why the various companies are trying not to do it at all.
I'd love to see someone that C-levels would actually read write about this. None of them are checking PCGamer but this is a real problem, they read about trends and just follow them and I'd love to see some of them actually see what this is causing instead of just that everyone is doing it.
C level of a mid sized start up. Depends on the team. If you're doing js maintenance then I don't really care where you are. If you are developing new features I want you in an office at least two days a week with the rest of the team. Going off pointless tangents because you didn't understand the spec is something I'm seeing constantly regardless of seniority.
>It's worth noting that the mandatory office attendance doesn't apply to ABK's executives. Recently hired execs like Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao, and Chief Communications Officer Lulu Cheng Meservey, have full-time remote status.
I can't imagine Blizzard execs would be so stupid to think that they wouldn't lose great people to other companies. Those people didn't have a single issue finding a new position somewhere else that paid better would be my guess.
Not just with this but other changes I am seeing, my strategy is to be in the top 20% talent and broaden my skillset so that I can have options. RTO is one thing but what if employment in tech itself becomes difficult. You already need lots of social networking and groveling as it is.
You know what I keep wondering, why don't these companies look at the numbers and say "if you want to WFH you will get a 20% paycut" instead? People who are good at their job and like the company might just stick around even then. They get to save on top expensive talent.
Maybe some of those employees don't want to return to Blizzard offices _in particular_ considering that's where many of them were outright sexually assaulted?
In the US there was a proposal that I saw that would have given tax credits to businesses that allowed WFH as the default if they were willing to allow their corporate real estate get turned into housing (which in addition to selling it would have netted another credit) and for builders to get some additional leverage to take over these estates and turning them homes and service businesses. It was projected in 3-5 years time not only would the labor market generally be more competitive it would alleviate a lot of housing issues (not all, but alot)
It was killed before it got to committee, and my second hand understanding is the Biden administration didn’t like it because it risked “possibly killing down towns across America”
> It's worth noting that the mandatory office attendance doesn't apply to ABK's executives. Recently hired execs like Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao, and Chief Communications Officer Lulu Cheng Meservey, have full-time remote status.
Basically, if we want these rights of remote work, we're going to have to unionize and fight for them.
I work for fully unionized company in Germany. Even salary comes from union’s table. You vote, elect your representatives. And you know, the bosses come, have meeting with union representatives and layoff happens. Apparently both sides agree, that this measure was needed to keep business running. The there is another meeting and full return to the office happens. There is no miracle in an union.
What sometimes is forgotten is that when someone says "power to the people", they actually just mean, "power to this other person", because end of the day, not all workers are walking into a room and shouting, so your biggest power as an individual is always going to be who you choose to work for and what crap you choose to take before you walk out.
That is an indirect expression when a direct one suffices.
Why choose to work for people who's morals you don't agree with and force them to change their minds instead of aligning yourself with those that you consider virtuous and running a company the right way? I cannot understand wanting to perpetuate bad companies and bad managers and owners.
It's like joining a defense company and try to force them to sell crutches vs going to work at a medical company designing crutches.
"Why choose to work for people who's morals you don't agree with"
Most people don't have infinite choice about their employers. This is the second time I've had to explain this on Hackernews in a week, but employers enjoy a structural advantage in the labor market which basically necessitates unions if workers are to represent a comparable market power.
Just because a person doesn't have good employment choices doesn't mean they shouldn't have collective bargaining rights.
I don't agree employers enjoy a structural advantage, demonstrated by the fact that when inflation went up and salaries stayed flat, people stopped going to work. It works, and it works quickly. Perhaps you remember all the ads from fast food joints offering sign-up bonus for what had just been minimum wage jobs.
The government should enforce some basic rules and provide a safety net for workers to be able to quit their jobs and find another one within a reasonable amount of time. That actually works, not propping up failed businesses with morally bankrupt leadership or just pure lack of sense through a union. I believe your cure is worse than the disease.
I'd argue that if people are forced to work in fast food at all, typically part time, without benefits, and almost no regularity to plan their lives around, and where the training materials explicitly suggest that the employees use state benefits, it is indicative of a structural advantage on the part of the employer.
I think we have way too different ways to look at the world when you see things like this.
I support a livable minimum wage that doesn't require multiple full time jobs or state support if you're employed to have a simple but dignified life. We should agree on that and can leave the rest for a different dance.
In market based economy the market will "point to the lack of improvement or change as a reason to return to WFH".
companies that allow WFH are more flexible then RTO companies. Top talent seems to like WFH more than RTO. In a few years we will see which companies improved: RTO or WFH?
Where in the world is this magically efficient market based economy that you speak of? I’ve read of this beast in econ books, but I have never seen it in the wild.
Why would companies enforce RTO if there was no advantage to it? Surely they'd love to get rid of those expensive commercial office leases and all the servicing costs that come with them, if WFH was just as good or better?
I have no doubt that many employees are individually just as productive or more so when WFH. But collectively, does something suffer? Are teams less productive, less creative? Less opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, etc? What reasons are companies using for justification when they make these RTO decisions?
In any case, hybrid work (eg: 3 days in the office per week) seems to be becoming the norm here in the UK. That seems like a good compromise to me.
I have no doubt that companies perceive a benefit to RTO. It may even exist! I'd just like to see the data. What are these productivity metrics? How do I get access to them to optimize my own productivity? I have never seen any hard data on this. My performance has always been measured in soft terms, even when it uses "data". It is all perception.
> Why would companies enforce RTO if there was no advantage to it?
You'll have to ask them, but you can't possibly think that companies always (or even most of the time) do the best thing for the company, right? There's so much evidence to the contrary in just daily business life, not even including the big news events, that any sane person would know that companies often do things that are contrary to their own existence, because "existence" is not a driving factor in capitalism, it's profit.
If you and no one else wants WFH, the union isn't going to care about it. If most people want WFH, companies that refuse to allow it will have to pay more to attract or retain talent.
> If you and no one else wants WFH, the union isn't going to care about it.
So the exact same as a non-union workforce.
> If most people want WFH, companies that refuse to allow it will have to pay more to attract or retain talent.
I love how people just assume companies are this perfect machine that both know what's going on and understand the choices made, especially in a thread where Blizzard clearly isn't able to deal with their choices and almost certainly didn't intend to lose such talent.
The claim was that unions would be an improvement.
> I love how people just assume companies are this perfect machine that both know what's going on and understand the choices made, especially in a thread where Blizzard clearly isn't able to deal with their choices and almost certainly didn't intend to lose such talent.
Markets don't cause everyone to be perfect. They just cause poor decisions to have consequences. Now they're experiencing the consequences, and anyone seeing it may want to make different decisions than they did.
They can also be worse in other areas too, right? And we were talking about this one area.
But the same logic generalizes. If you're in the minority then the union doesn't care about your concerns and if you're in the majority then the company does regardless of the union because it costs them too much to not.
Or you know, you can quit and go to a full-remote company. Good companies need good people so this would fix itself. If most of my colleagues and the owners of the company I work for decide they prefer to work in an office, why would I enforce my will upon them, instead of finding people that agree with me? I quit my last job to work fully remote and my boss knows I'd quit the day we'd remove that.
At this point it’s almost sad that we can say “the market will fix itself” and give up any conversations about improving situations. Market only fixes itself if the power dynamics are the same on both sides, which are not. “Go to a full remote company” only works for you ironically is because not enough people are doing it. Say only 20 jobs in the market offered remote work and there were 2000 people looking for remote work, would you say “just quit if you don’t like it” work as you’re suggesting? Because remember, companies can hire a replacement but you can’t find another job.
Ironically, quit if you don’t like it only works at scale if there is collective action. And collective action is hard if you’re doing it on your own, separately from everyone else.
I think you are looking at it wrong. Here's how I think of "the market":
Say you have company X that makes SaaS. They mandate RTO for all workers. If there are really as many people wanting remote work as you say, then a remote work competitor Y will spring up and talent will start bleeding from X to Y. That happens a lot not just with remote work but all sorts of disruptions that company X types don't like to adapt to.
You know how recently employers cried about lack of people and had to raise salaries? That is the power of the people. Stay home and don't work for who you don't agree with. That is the true power of the market. Not having a new set of people come into the room declare themselves "for the worker" and purport to speak for all of us. We speak with out feet.
And pay your rent or mortgage with what? I’m all for people having power, but the reality is that without a safety net of savings or the welfare of family, friends, or government this is a difficult strategy.
Is the market broken? The only “failing” seems to be that you can no longer make FANG money (ie ~300k+ total comp with 5+ years experience) and also get WFH as a given. There’s still WFH jobs if you can take 50k off your total comp.
And that lower pay is still double what you can make in other countries.
Is this the hill we want to die on? Don’t we have a lot to lose?
If you could get your first born's weight in $precious_thing , you'd have a line of people doing just that. Sell a piece of your humanity and autonomy? Cool!
"The market" is whatever the fuck you can get away with to get even more money for you. Most are ethical-ish, but if you look too hard, you might see the 10 year olds in the butcher plant, or the 8 year olds assembling your Apple shit.
I think that summarizes what I think of anyone who leans on "the market".
Its also worth pointing out that 'the market' memes that people lean on have other requirements; the most crucial is buyers and sellers having equal power, which the labor market immediately discards, by dint of the relative urgency and immediate outcomes of failing to make a deal on the market.
A person selling labor has to balance their price against the urgency to secure food, shelter, and access to medical care.
A company buying labor can frequently afford to wait months or even years and it may not even make sense for them to hire some one at market rate - the more you pay someone the more others expect to be paid and the more they expect to see their own salary grow.
It's something to reflect on when people think companies are behaving stupidly for having interview processes that leave unfilled positions for months - the buyers on the market have fewer and different pressures than the sellers, maybe what they are doing isn't stupid just inhuman.
> Its also worth pointing out that 'the market' memes that people lean on have other requirements; the most crucial is buyers and sellers having equal power, which the labor market immediately discards, by dint of the relative urgency and immediate outcomes of failing to make a deal on the market.
It absolutely does.
And having actually read Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", most types here usually stop at chapter 2.
There's so many caveats that Smith wrote about with Capitalism, and they're mostly just ignored, or swept like an externality under the rug for someone else to clean up. But again, that's the point of not reading/ignoring past chapter 2.
It's also why I read all of it, to understand why I disapprove of it, and other systems that may be better. But, no system yet can handle that digital and intellectual things cost a lot once, but free for ever after creation.
A tragedy of the commons has never been solved without centralized organization, and the “but the market will fix it!” responses are frankly just boring now
For your analogy, market proponents know about this, it is called "externalities". Yes, governments have a place here as they need to make sure the party responsible for certain activities will price their externalities (in your example, polluting a river).
The problem with pollution is that it creates externalities that are not borne by the polluter. Can you help me understand what externalities are involved in the RTO context?
Here are a few: more traffic and pollution, more traffic accidents and deaths, increased budgets for roads to accommodate, reduced family time, higher stress and increased medical costs, increased transportation costs born by employees and government transit authorities, …
it's simply a tragedy of the companies who persist to live in the past. Remote capable companies will outperform these RTO companies by attracting the best talents and by reducing their running costs for not having offices. In a few years time, these RTO companies will have to adapt or slowly die, that's why "the market will fix it"
Simply because it replicates the same inequality that was inherently built into the feudal system by companies that originated from industrial revolution copying it into the new production modes: The elites always had the right to 'working' remote, or not working at all. But the serfs, and later the 'employees' have always had to show up in the farms during feudalism so that the overseers could make sure that they were not slacking and therefore 'stealing from the lord' by their lack of productivity.
The factories/companies in the industrialized society copied this format and culture exactly as it was in late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this format, the benefits of the commons (in this case the capability of remote work that technology enables) is removed from the serfs artificially by forcing them to return to work just like how the unwilling serfdom was forced to go work in the factories by shutting the commons off to them by passing enclosure acts.
> The tragedy of the commons is a phenomenon described in economics and ecology in which common resources, to which access is not regulated by formal rules or fees/taxes levied based on individual use, tend to become depleted
Okay but with remote work, what's the unregulated common resource being depleted or ruined?
The parent term is "Collective action problem", but, like calling all nasal tissue paper "Kleenex", people often forget the parent term and use the most well-known specific term (including me, recently).
Okay, so because the Blizzard employees aren't unionized, they can't force Blizzard management to back off this plan. I get that, and if those workers decided to unionize to address this issue I think that would work. But it doesn't stop them from seeking employment at other remote work companies. If the collective of employees at Blizzard can't or won't unionize, seeking employment at other companies is their next best option for those individual employees who care the most. That 'commons' hasn't been ruined, because such remote work companies really do exist and are a realistic non-ruined option.
"The commons", here, is the status quo of the last couple of years in which many employees at all software companies could work remotely. This commons is now being sectioned off into companies that allow full use of this resource, and those who don't.
This is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy about a common good that briefly existed as a common good, but it's not technically a "tragedy of the commons" in the original sense.
I understand people conflating the terms in this example.
> Okay but with remote work, what's the unregulated common resource being depleted or ruined?
The power of workers to dictate their working conditions. Currently, this common resource is being overused by elites who are able to command remote work for themselves but not for regular level workers.
The suggestion to which you responded was "Or you know, you can quit and go to a full-remote company." The "commons" would be the entire job market for games programmers, not this company specifically.
Quitting simply has much higher frictional costs as an employee than as an employer. As a result employers will always have more leverage, including your next employer.
>If most of my colleagues and the owners of the company I work for decide they prefer to work in an office, why would I enforce my will upon them
but this isn't the case, it's management making BS decisions no one really likes. the market is in favor of capital & management in the current market climate so collective action is the only way to push back imo
One of the benfits of some union-negotiated frame agreememts in Germany, which applies also to non-Union and covers saleries up to low six-figuers, is stuff like 2 days of work-from-home per week.
It’s a market for both corporate success and talent. My wager is that companies that optimize for how people want to work and letting them work best will be structurally advantaged in both profit and talent acquisition and retention. Once the emotions die down and boards realize they can boost EPS by reducing real estate and their competitors with open working arrangements are eating their lunch in their markets the corporate provided management mandated human hamster wheel warehouses will be shut down.
In theory yes, in practice, the market produces ugly effects all the time. Child labor, for example. But I suppose you vote with your wallet or something.
this assumes there's always an alternative employer who offers remote work as an option. tech is pretty privileged as a field bc demand > supply for a very long time affording many benefits other fields don't have. now that demand has decreased, companies can affront more control. could easily see remote work become incredibly scared as middle / small companies following signals of larger companies mandating rto
It seems that there's a paradox here: if remote work is good for companies, then why would there not be other companies offering it as an option?
It seems like at least one of these statements has to be false. My guess is that remote work is not actually good for all companies, which is leading some of them to call for RTO. Other companies will keep it, but perhaps not as many as employees would like. The same could be said for many aspects of work, like free lunches/dinners/massages, which are also disappearing as the supply/demand equilibrium is shifting as you describe.
No thanks. Remote work is not a life or death working issue to galvanize the need for a union.
It would be interesting to see what a "perfect Storm' would look like to make a technology workers union make sense in the real world (in the US).
On paper a union kinda makes sense until you see your union dues going to support batshit candidates for office. Here in the US virtually all unions support left leaning policies and the democrat party. Time and again the democrat party claims one thing and does another. Like the backstabbing the Biden administration did to Railroad workers. They did not settle that in workers best interests. They solved it to prevent economic disruption.
I would rather negotiate my own salary needs than leave it to a union.
Technology workers make tremendous amounts of money once you hit middle to senior level career stages. Even more so if you have a specialty. No way would folks given up that level of autonomy.
It is simple enough that the remote work issue is settled through the job market. If a company advertises for only onsite work, they have that choice. Likewise me as a worker can exclusively look for remote work. Despite this economy, the technology worker still dictates the terms. For now. I am sure it will go in cycles like everything else.
Yes, let me give up even MORE personal and professional autonomy. I'm sure that joining a union will help me accomplish my career goals as a remote developer.
This may be more palatable for the company rather than calling the extra money for being in the office a "commute stipend", even though they are effectively the same.
Is he seriously tweeting about this? Basically that is insubordination and grounds for termination. If this manager doesn't agree with the company policy, and isn't willing to pick up the slack of workers who are leaving or who have left and maintain the release date of the product, he's going to be shown the door too. Spending time creating a map of who left isn't a good move either and is not going to give any excuses as to why work can't get done, especially if it wasn't asked for by senior leadership.
Every one is replaceable, including this manager who is questioning senior leadership. Complaining about it on Twitter isn't going to change anyone's mind who has made these decisions, it's just going to result in your own dismissal. It's a lot better to quiet quit and look for a new job if you feel your job has become impossible.
The only thing worse than overbearing nanny leadership that insists on controlling how and where people work is thin skinned leadership who can’t take “insubordination.”
I don’t think they’re intending to change their leaderships mind. But maybe the mind of other leaders less feckless.
I really wish you weren't though - it makes me somewhat sad to see how often the more motivated and passionate a person is about what they do and even the success of their company, the more likely they are to eventually cross some political or etiquette boundary and end up paying for it.
The rub for me is how you are expected to show all the signs of motivation/passion throughout your career to anyone above you in the hierarchy who asks, but are then (as you describe) inevitably punished for it if you accidentally take any of that motivation/passion to heart.
Motivation and passion are for the little people. They would do well to remember not to let their passions trick them into speaking out of turn.
Sometimes some people aren't replaceable. This is inconvenient. That it is inconvenient isn't the same thing as it being false. Claiming that everyone is replaceable won't make it true.
Companies that punish employees by termination not for insufficient productivity, but rather for differing opinions on how to run the company well eventually discover how bad of a mistake that turns out to be, even if they're no longer capable of recognizing said discovery.
Even if 80% of companies RTO the remaining 20% that recruit remote-only jobs will create massive disruption in top performers. HR has their head in the sand because so many companies are either freezing hiring or reducing headcount, but there's a real issue here. Talented people just don't need to consider onsite work, period.
The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job. Maybe you want a big name on your resume. Either way those are jobs that will need to be filled again.
In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products. The cost of a failed product release outstrips their lease cost by orders of magnitude. I don't get the play here. What's the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?