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I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office. I doubt it lasts, at least in software. Talented people are going

I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office. I doubt it lasts, at least in software. Talented people are going to have lots of remote options making it harder to find good people willing to show up for daily cubicle warfare. I was someone who preferred to be in the office every day prior to the pandemic. But after adjusting, I really, really like working from home. Truth is, I can't imagine I'll ever take another job that expects me to show up to an actual office everyday. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

blunte 6y ago
No you're certainly not the only one. I've found a good way to filter recruiters is to tell them up front, "I will only do full remote with occasional, non-regular office visits." Once you've tasted freedom...
- mech422 6y ago
  I've been doing this for 20 years now... Surprisingly, the recruiters are starting to answer "sure - no problem..." :-)
munificent 6y ago
> Talented people are going to have lots of remote options making it harder to find good people willing to show up for daily cubicle warfare. I worry a lot about how this cuts the bottom rungs off the ladder for junior developers. Senior developers can be very productive without frequent access to in-person help, and are valuable enough that they can get work-from-home if they want. But junior developers have more frequent questions, need to absorb software engineering culture, and need to have more work and task structure created for them. Remote work is really hard for them.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  When I was a junior engineer I preferred remote work. It was easier to screen share with a senior and talk about the problem over a computer screen where I could actually see the code, than it was to squint from over their shoulder. It also gave me the chance to drive and for the senior to correct my mistakes / give me feedback.
- necrotic_comp 6y ago
  As much as people don't like it, our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in (breaking out into smaller calls when necessary) brings down the level of "hey, can I ask you a question?" bc we can see if someone is at their desk. I think this is something that would work for more junior people as well, and I'd be happy to break out / share a screen as needed.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    > our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in this is incredibly bad for the environment. i just hope it's at least not as bad as commuting
  - chakspak 6y ago
    Wow, all day? That's a lot! My team and others have been having "office hours" meetings where everyone is just working, but often the cameras are off, mics are muted most of the time, and we only do it for a few hours a week. I definitely agree that there is a lot of value in being able to jump in and ask questions in the moment. That's a big benefit of having these calls for us. Maybe we should try having them more often. :)
    - necrotic_comp 6y ago
      It's really not been that bad - we had a few people who were remote initially and they had the cameras on in their home office so we could shout over and ask questions and it would feel like they were in the office. Now we're all remote so we keep the same meeting open. I guess people have differing levels of comfort.
  - dunefox 6y ago
    > having a video conference open all day with everyone in This sounds absolutely horrible.
    - necrotic_comp 6y ago
      Honestly, it's fine. Most of us are on mute for most of the day. In a trading environment, you need a hoot, and this is pretty much our equivalent. It works well and (at least with how our team works) it's not invasive.
- ewmiller 6y ago
  When I was a junior dev, my team was on the east coast of the US, but we worked daily with people from Ireland. This meant every meeting had a Skype link, and everyone was well equipped to screen share and collaborate remotely. The benefit was this also made them amiable towards WFH situations. Big snowstorm? Everyone can WFH for the week. Want to go visit the west coast for a few months? Sounds great, we'll see you online. Point being, as a junior dev I never felt left out in the cold. Some of the best pair programming sessions I ever had during that time were with a dude from Ireland while we alternated screen sharing. So as long as the team culture is supportive of remote collaboration, I think junior devs will be fine.
- vp8989 6y ago
  Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore. If it's disseminated via oral lore it's expensive to change and is often misinterpreted across a large enough org. A silent killer of engineering orgs is bad practices that stick around because that's the way it's always been done. No one knows why because it wasn't written down. The only way to fix that is for someone high enough to provide blessing, but maybe none of those things are individually disruptive enough to get the CTO involved. So everyone eats the costs in perpetuity. Much easier to just write everything down. Increased difficulty for juniors to ramp up when you are remote is a symptom of a culture with lots of overly complicated processes that are not well documented.
  - munificent 6y ago
    > Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore. I'm always startled by comments like this because it's so counter to how I understand humanity. We are social mammals. No amount of good grammar and excellent font choice can substitute for sharing the same physical space together, an act that has been core to what it means to be human literally since we first speciated. Yeah, writing stuff down is important. But engineering culture is a culture in the real sense of the word and trying to transmit that entirely through text sounds to me like raising a baby using a six-axis robotic arm.
    - vp8989 6y ago
      "sounds to me like raising a baby using a six-axis robotic arm" No it's like raising a baby using advice you read from books that are peer reviewed and revised over time vs. just listening to what your parents say.
      - rabidrat 6y ago
        No, it's like raising a baby using advice your parents wrote down for you because they were parenting remotely. "Peer review" is your stepdad quickly skimming through your mom's PR and saying 'sure looks good'.
      - 6y ago
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. It's a reasonable concern, but in practice I don't think it turns out this way. Two points, entirely anecdotal: 1) A few years back, I sort of "restarted" as a Salesforce developer. I had well over a decade of web dev experience, but I was new to SF. Everything about it was unique to this environment. I worked in an office, but my boss worked from home (ironically enough). So I was effectively remote working with him from the get go, and I found it worked really well. 2) My kids learn a remarkable amount of stuff on their own: Minecraft, Roblox, Scratch. All these programming environments that they've become really proficient at, and entirely on their own. This is effectively remote work. There was no one holding their hand. I think the bigger issue is going to be getting employers to trust that the junior is working well. In truth, most junior employees probably don't have the maturity and discipline to be productive remotely. I certainly wouldn't have back when I was 18-22. I would have taken every chance I could to goof off, and not even considered whether that was a problem. That kind work ethic (i.e. a bad one) tends to get beaten out of you pretty quick in the early days of a professional career. But a lot (most?) people fresh out of college still have that student mentality of viewing "adults" (bosses, teachers, parents) as authority figures to be rebelled against to some extent. I wouldn't trust someone with that mentality to be productive unsupervised. The natural counter point is that if you can't be trusted, you shouldn't be hired. But I think that's a mistake. There's an awful lot of talented and smart young people who need a break or two in order to develop the appropriate work ethic and achieve their potential. All of which is to say, I share your concern about opportunities for junior developers (and junior workers in general), but for different reasons.
austincheney 6y ago
> I doubt it lasts, at least in software. History suggests that talent is not a cause to warp office culture. Office culture will out weather a loss of talent until the business implodes. If the need for talent becomes clearly paramount then it will be outsourced.

blunte 6y ago

No you're certainly not the only one. I've found a good way to filter recruiters is to tell them up front, "I will only do full remote with occasional, non-regular office visits." Once you've tasted freedom...

mech422 6y ago
I've been doing this for 20 years now... Surprisingly, the recruiters are starting to answer "sure - no problem..." :-)

munificent 6y ago

> Talented people are going to have lots of remote options making it harder to find good people willing to show up for daily cubicle warfare. I worry a lot about how this cuts the bottom rungs off the ladder for junior developers. Senior developers can be very productive without frequent access to in-person help, and are valuable enough that they can get work-from-home if they want. But junior developers have more frequent questions, need to absorb software engineering culture, and need to have more work and task structure created for them. Remote work is really hard for them.

randmeerkat 6y ago
When I was a junior engineer I preferred remote work. It was easier to screen share with a senior and talk about the problem over a computer screen where I could actually see the code, than it was to squint from over their shoulder. It also gave me the chance to drive and for the senior to correct my mistakes / give me feedback.
necrotic_comp 6y ago
As much as people don't like it, our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in (breaking out into smaller calls when necessary) brings down the level of "hey, can I ask you a question?" bc we can see if someone is at their desk. I think this is something that would work for more junior people as well, and I'd be happy to break out / share a screen as needed.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  > our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in this is incredibly bad for the environment. i just hope it's at least not as bad as commuting
- chakspak 6y ago
  Wow, all day? That's a lot! My team and others have been having "office hours" meetings where everyone is just working, but often the cameras are off, mics are muted most of the time, and we only do it for a few hours a week. I definitely agree that there is a lot of value in being able to jump in and ask questions in the moment. That's a big benefit of having these calls for us. Maybe we should try having them more often. :)
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    It's really not been that bad - we had a few people who were remote initially and they had the cameras on in their home office so we could shout over and ask questions and it would feel like they were in the office. Now we're all remote so we keep the same meeting open. I guess people have differing levels of comfort.
- dunefox 6y ago
  > having a video conference open all day with everyone in This sounds absolutely horrible.
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    Honestly, it's fine. Most of us are on mute for most of the day. In a trading environment, you need a hoot, and this is pretty much our equivalent. It works well and (at least with how our team works) it's not invasive.
ewmiller 6y ago
When I was a junior dev, my team was on the east coast of the US, but we worked daily with people from Ireland. This meant every meeting had a Skype link, and everyone was well equipped to screen share and collaborate remotely. The benefit was this also made them amiable towards WFH situations. Big snowstorm? Everyone can WFH for the week. Want to go visit the west coast for a few months? Sounds great, we'll see you online. Point being, as a junior dev I never felt left out in the cold. Some of the best pair programming sessions I ever had during that time were with a dude from Ireland while we alternated screen sharing. So as long as the team culture is supportive of remote collaboration, I think junior devs will be fine.
vp8989 6y ago
Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore. If it's disseminated via oral lore it's expensive to change and is often misinterpreted across a large enough org. A silent killer of engineering orgs is bad practices that stick around because that's the way it's always been done. No one knows why because it wasn't written down. The only way to fix that is for someone high enough to provide blessing, but maybe none of those things are individually disruptive enough to get the CTO involved. So everyone eats the costs in perpetuity. Much easier to just write everything down. Increased difficulty for juniors to ramp up when you are remote is a symptom of a culture with lots of overly complicated processes that are not well documented.
- munificent 6y ago
  > Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore. I'm always startled by comments like this because it's so counter to how I understand humanity. We are social mammals. No amount of good grammar and excellent font choice can substitute for sharing the same physical space together, an act that has been core to what it means to be human literally since we first speciated. Yeah, writing stuff down is important. But engineering culture is a culture in the real sense of the word and trying to transmit that entirely through text sounds to me like raising a baby using a six-axis robotic arm.
  - vp8989 6y ago
    "sounds to me like raising a baby using a six-axis robotic arm" No it's like raising a baby using advice you read from books that are peer reviewed and revised over time vs. just listening to what your parents say.
    - rabidrat 6y ago
      No, it's like raising a baby using advice your parents wrote down for you because they were parenting remotely. "Peer review" is your stepdad quickly skimming through your mom's PR and saying 'sure looks good'.
    - 6y ago
nickelcitymario 6y ago
I'm not sure this is true. It's a reasonable concern, but in practice I don't think it turns out this way. Two points, entirely anecdotal: 1) A few years back, I sort of "restarted" as a Salesforce developer. I had well over a decade of web dev experience, but I was new to SF. Everything about it was unique to this environment. I worked in an office, but my boss worked from home (ironically enough). So I was effectively remote working with him from the get go, and I found it worked really well. 2) My kids learn a remarkable amount of stuff on their own: Minecraft, Roblox, Scratch. All these programming environments that they've become really proficient at, and entirely on their own. This is effectively remote work. There was no one holding their hand. I think the bigger issue is going to be getting employers to trust that the junior is working well. In truth, most junior employees probably don't have the maturity and discipline to be productive remotely. I certainly wouldn't have back when I was 18-22. I would have taken every chance I could to goof off, and not even considered whether that was a problem. That kind work ethic (i.e. a bad one) tends to get beaten out of you pretty quick in the early days of a professional career. But a lot (most?) people fresh out of college still have that student mentality of viewing "adults" (bosses, teachers, parents) as authority figures to be rebelled against to some extent. I wouldn't trust someone with that mentality to be productive unsupervised. The natural counter point is that if you can't be trusted, you shouldn't be hired. But I think that's a mistake. There's an awful lot of talented and smart young people who need a break or two in order to develop the appropriate work ethic and achieve their potential. All of which is to say, I share your concern about opportunities for junior developers (and junior workers in general), but for different reasons.

austincheney 6y ago

> I doubt it lasts, at least in software. History suggests that talent is not a cause to warp office culture. Office culture will out weather a loss of talent until the business implodes. If the need for talent becomes clearly paramount then it will be outsourced.