I'm fairly certain people working on-site never stopped companies from laying them off in droves when it suited them. So I'm fairly certain Citadel CEO Ken Griffin is full of shit.
Don't underestimate the face-to-face element of it.
People are assholes online. Sometimes even trolls. But in real life, they're often just respectful normal people.
Heck, you wouldn't say that Ken Griffin is full of shit to his face if you met him but you said it on an online forum.
Edit: I think I should be clear that the face-to-face element of it does make it that much harder. I remember having to fire someone face-to-face multiple times. Each time, it made me very nervous because I don't know how this person would physically react upon receiving the news. I also built real human connections with them so it's extra difficult. I believe that remote work makes this process far easier on both the manager and the company. In fact, I believe that managers would subconsciously choose to fire the remote worker over the in-person worker if all things are equal.
For those who didn't read the article, the main point is in this quote:
>If your boss doesn’t know you personally, they won’t stick their neck out to save your job.
I think a lot of those that think firing people is trivial were never in the room when the decisions were made or the conversations were had. It's always a tough decision even in relatively cold industries like finance.
Bit of a tangent, but it's like the reddit crowd that's convinced of how the world works without much experience (think the /r/antiwork or /r/fuckcars. It's just easy to be cynical. I heard the argument recently that you should be weary of cynical people, because if they think everyone is shitty they're more likely to accept it and be shitty themselves. If you think the person driving a large car is just an asshole (as opposed to someone with a big family), you're more likely to be an asshole and let the air out of his tires
> I think a lot of those that think firing people is trivial were never in the room when the decisions were made or the conversations were had.
There is so much discourse on HN (and elsewhere) that everyone agrees with and you just read and you're like they clearly have no idea what it is to actually be in the situation they're talking about.
As a champion of front running trades via payment-for-order-flow in general, and as a key villain in the GameStop saga in particular, surely there’s no shortage of people eager to tell him as much or worse to his face.
I mean it’s kind of the point here. If you are getting canned it really isn’t about whether your boss knows you.
Also, remote work doesn’t mean you don’t have relationships with people. You can build amazing relationships with remote situations (sometimes much stronger than office relationships) if you… I don’t know… manage your company well?
Sorta. It was more of a 'fight me' comment versus slander. The issue is that the unprofessional congressman tried to fight a witness _during_ a hearing in progress based off comments from Twitter.
I think nearly every single person in Chicago would happily tell him to eat shit and tell him they hope he gets hits by a car in Florida so they won't have to keep reading about him trying to use his money to decide how people in the US should live their lives
> Heck, you wouldn't say that Ken Griffin is full of shit to his face if you met him but you said it on an online forum.
You severely underestimate people if you don't think some people would curse him out to his face. I worked for him as an employee of a subcontractor. They wanted NDAs not only from the place I worked, but wanted to bind me personally to their NDA. I told someone who directly reports to him something much stronger than they're full of shit.
Dude is a toolbag, no matter how much money he has.
> People are assholes online. Sometimes even trolls. But in real life, they're often just respectful normal people.
I really don’t think this is the case and it really doesn’t match my personal experience. Especially under their true name, people behave as they would talking face to face.
I wish this was true but it's not my experience. When we switched to WFH during covid, the same people (not all of them of course) who were nice, courteous, and helpful in person, turned to dismissive a-hole towards their peers on-line.
You see, it's more damaging for you to be an a-hole in person in the (open) office because then everyone can see and hear you and know who you really are as a person, but in chats you can be as dickish and as dismissive as you like and nobody else, especially your boss will be the wiser thinking still that you're a great guy.
This behavior is more difficult to pull off in the office where everyone can see what you're up to and your boss can come up to you saying "hey Anton, can you please stop playing World of Tanks and help Joe solve that issue?" versus WFH where Anton can paly world of tanks undisturbed while complaining he can't help anyone right now because he's super busy.
It's not universal behavior of course, and I'm not advocating for RTO or workplace surveillance, but exclusively 'on-line' presence does tend to bring out the worse in some people, especially out of those who are not contempt with their job they chose and will do anything, other than quit, to not do their duties and hold others back.
“I just don’t want go back to work, and ignore the fact that there are people need to go to work to make living and are willing to work in The office. “
Honestly I feel all these RTO rants are so unnecessary since if you get a remote job just keep it if you like. Or change a job if you don’t feel like to RTO, that’s the only ACTUAL action you can make impact. Instead of “telling” employees RTO is bad for them.
Whether it was that time my old boss yelled at me because I put off a scrum training exam until the 15th (due the 30th), or the respect I’ve gotten for having long hair…I find WFH has brought me closer to an objective, professional environment.
So I’m willing to take the worse for the better. I don’t give a shit if your 6’3 and give a firm handshake, there’s too much bloat in the workforce and I don’t think personal relationships are all that important here.
You misunderstand: work is not about a collection of individual contributions by skilled professionals, it's about convincing someone to give you time and money in exchange for providing the minimum satisfactory output. The client doesn't care how well or hard you work: he wants it asap for as little money as possible, and everything else in the chain between the client and you reacts to this tension.
If a manager never sees you, and you produce a difficult to sell output, then he's not gonna suffer reputational damage for your sake defending you and your reasons for being X or Y on the output. If you produce an obvious advantage, then yes, but it's not everyone, and not every year: you will need, at some point, for someone else to do something for you.
If not, no big deal anyway: you can just be fired and move on. But it's never gonna be about firm handshakes, it's about trust even in temporary failure.
I very much agree with this, but it took me a long time to get it. I believe it’s one of the key difficulties for more technical types : understanding that software engineering, once you go past the very local aspects of it ( my dev on my workstation in programming language A ) is first and foremost and human activity.
Some may want to ignore this, but like you said at some point it becomes quite expensive to ignore, so you’d rather have something quite valuable to sell to compensate for it.
I may have found the only two sane people on HN. Of course, my handle is 'oldandboring' and yours is 'Agingcoder' so perhaps our grey hairs have something to do with this.
I find it's not just technical people but everyone, everywhere seems to have irrational understandings of the nature of business and of the employer-employee relationship.
I think there is merit to everything you say, if you’re flying blind and wondering why anything happens to you
but if you objectively don’t care and work with integrity towards company output, none of the reindeer games matter
yes, in a tighter job market where you have no savings all those things in your current job and those prior relationships matter
if you want to reject that at the risk of being poorer, people are saying that’s fine too. if thats the reason you’re not financially stable: understandable, good for you for keeping a work life balance or prioritizing your mental health
people aren't trying to say you’re inaccurate, only wrong in the sense that it’s not a necessary way to live and they aren’t going to pretend that it is anymore
True, and it's much easier to quit a company if you're remote. Who gives a crap about a few avatars on your screen?
That said, you just need a single yearly offsite to turn strangers into friends and improve cohesion, without sacrificing flexibility, productivity and life quality by forcing everyone to a dull office in a polluted city.
I'd still prefer it to "being escorted out" of the office or being locked out to get your personal items. It's nice to turn the tables where they need to ask for their hardware back.
he is lamenting this. but not for why you might guess.
> A disconnected—some might say unfeeling—workplace will be a “wild card” as industry leaders try to guess the unemployment rate going forward, Griffin went on.
