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WeWork CEO Says Least Engaged Employees Enjoy Working from Home

cedricd 5y ago
This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. My guess is that even at companies that officially support partial remote time employees will start to feel some pressure for taking advantage of it. Adam Neumann once asked his executive assistant if she 'enjoyed her vacation' after coming back from maternity leave. Now they have a different CEO, obviously, but I can see the parallel -- any kind of situation that deviates from butts in seats at the office will be frowned upon.
- sco1 5y ago
  > This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. > My guess is that even at companies that officially support partial remote time employees will start to feel some pressure for taking advantage of it. I'm sure it's not the same in all sectors, but in the govt realm I was feeling this before the pandemic, with the pandemic flipping it completely (for now, at least). We have a long approval chain to get authorization to work remotely, with an explicit time code to go with it. I felt almost guilty requesting up to 2 days a week remotely and almost never took more than 1. Then the pandemic hit and management discovered that a lot of people didn't need to sit in a cubicle 5 days a week to get their jobs done. There's even rumblings from higher up the chain to emphasize getting work done where it's most efficient; hopefully that translates to a better attitude towards working remotely.
- necovek 5y ago
  > This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. Unfortunately, a company where any significant proportion of staff actually works from an office will implicitely have remote workers at a disadvantage — pass-by discussions with actual decisions might never reach them, so they'd be missing a lot of context (at best, they'd get decisions without the reasoning). Basically, remote work requires full team to switch to remote-friendly practices, like relying on written forms of discussion. Basically, the office should only be a place for chit-chat and building the team spirit. Some people need more of that, and others need less.
chad_strategic 5y ago
I got to get back to work, because I'm dis-engaged because I work from home. So I can't spend an hour explain how wrong this article is. Yet WeWork major competition is work from home.
raxor53 5y ago
Is WeWork still around? After their last CEO, I thought they shut down most operations.
- chad_strategic 5y ago
  Softbank owns them entirely now.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  Many of the WeWork competitors shut down (e.g. Knotel) during the pandemic, which ironically puts them in a better position for when the pandemic ends
moogly 5y ago
Well, is it really that surprising that a CEO for an office space rental company would be spreading FUD about working from home?
muttled 5y ago
The guy who makes his fortune renting office space is saying that it's virtuous to be in office space. Seems like he might be a bit biased.
- lwhi 5y ago
  Exactly.
jjk166 5y ago
On the contrary, people who are self motivating and focused on productivity are likely far more engaged than those who require an office environment to get things done and focus on merely being present. The engaged individual doesn't ask to get back to work, they already are working.
thrower123 5y ago
I will certainly be very disengaged if I'm made to go back to the office. Probably disengaged right out of the company with my two weeks' notice.
benjaminjosephw 5y ago
Office renting firm says that "good" employees like working from offices. What a headline for WeWork to land in the WSJ. This, right here, is proof that clever spin and intelligent marketing is always going to be more effective than just pumping cash into advertising.
- lwhi 5y ago
  Is this clever spin? It feels like quite an obvious play to me ..
almost_usual 5y ago
WeWork is still a thing?
crftr 5y ago
This is a sales pitch that lacks empathy. It's obviously in his best-interest to promote an office culture, but this pitch makes him sound like a psychopath (the clinical definition).
- akomtu 5y ago
  That's his job: doing amoral things so investors could keep their reputations clean.
tw04 5y ago
Odd, I've seen the EXACT opposite. The folks who spend half their day chatting around the water cooler instead of working prefer to be in the office all the time. I won't comment on whether or not that means they're good at their jobs because some people can just get their job done in a couple hours every day. But I WILL say that claiming people "least engaged" enjoy working from home is rather silly. Our most successful folks prefer working from home because there are fewer distractions and they get more accomplished in a work day. That being said, I think most people enjoy a balance because at some point you can't really build a team spirit without some face-to-face time every now and again. Whether that's in an office or just doing a team dinner.
- loopz 5y ago
  I can multitask, both be working and talking to relevant people.
  - addison-lee 5y ago
    In reality your brain is rapidly switching between the two tasks, performing neither at your full capacity.
    - loopz 5y ago
      I work when talking though, so it was more of a joke.
    - crummybowley 5y ago
      It really depends on the individual's overhead for context switching. Yes there is a cost, but I also think this cost is not uniform in all people. Also, nobody even on a single task, is using 100% of their capacity. So I would wager that some folks can, and do perform as well at 2 task at the same time as others do a single task. Also remember, that somebody new to a tech might already be multitasking in the sense they are learning and doing at the same time, but somebody who has been doing the same type of work for 10+ years might not need the extra cycles for the learning part, and those could be used elsewhere. Think about typing a comment on the internet. This entire comment took seconds to write. I am multi tasking. I am instructing my fingers to press buttons, while forming the words I wish to type, and then on top of that spelling them out. Take me when I was 8 and do the same thing and a post like this could have taken 15 minutes. While I know that there are probably 8 year olds today that could have done the same thing in less time than I can now, when I am in in my 30s. The point being, folks can do more than one thing at once, and different folks can do more things at once as well or even better than other folks doing a single task. We see it real well in the athletic world. Its clear some folks have bodies that allow them to run faster, or further, or jump higher, or even better eye hand coronation. To think that mental task and traits don't work the same way on a individual bases would be willfully dishonest. Some folks simply have a pertinently to spell well (I am not one of those), Some can so math with ease, and others ponder the vast theoretical realms of quantum mechanics. People like Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson exist, they are like top athletes in the brain game. Its clear that they have more capacity than myself, and others. So it stands to reason that some folks, and maybe many folks, can multi task better than others, and maybe that trait is what made them successful. From my experience the talks at the water cooler are the ones that result in real change and progress. Its where the exchange of ideas happen. To think you know enough that you can sit in your box all day long and skip over hearing other peoples ideas is just elitist attitude. You won't know if you are right or wrong until its too late, and you won't be exposed to new fresh or challenging ideas without the social interactions. Hiding a way in a a box won't expose you to uncomfortable situations that will help you grow.
sytse 5y ago
Hybrid remote is the worst of both worlds. The best remote employees will move to fully remote companies so they can move out of the B-team. Over time Sandeep will be right when he says: "Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home."
- geodel 5y ago
  Maybe worst for you. For many like me avoiding 3 hr of commute per day even for 2 days a week is better than no remote at all.
  - sytse 5y ago
    I agree that some working for home for all people makes sense. With hybrid I refer to some people never being in the office https://www.wired.com/story/hybrid-remote-work-offers-the-worst-of-both-worlds/ https://www.wired.com/story/hybrid-remote-work-offers-the-wo...
    - geodel 5y ago
      Ah okay. Thinking about today's workplaces particularly in IT everyone seems to a JIRA slave. Pretty soon even visiting rest room in office may require tracking via Jira ticket. So in these places I hardly see much collaboration that does not have tracking id. I guess issue is most companies where daily work is same thing getting repeated endlessly or minor variation of it vs places developing new things. Now stories about second kind of places are so amplified that it tends to ignore the fact that most places are in fact doing repetitive and/or heavily tracked tasks which can be done remotely. And precisely for this type of work it wouldn't matter if everyone is remote / some are remote or permanently remote / partially remote.
villgax 5y ago
Laughs on behalf of gitlab at a company which has no purpose of existing
not2b 5y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
- abakker 5y ago
  Thought this exactly.
wolfretcrap 5y ago
Since I am working from home, half day I am writing code, other half day I am doing machining on mill and lathes. My performance on code related work has shot up, you need an escape to increase your productivity. Sitting at a desk all day will not make you productive.
fairity 5y ago
OP takes the one line in the article that can be perceived as a personal attack and uses it as the post title. Why not use a title that actually represents the primary argument in the article? That is, the WeWork CEO is saying that some time in the office is paramount for collaboration and efficiency. The question is just how much time is optimal. 3-days a week or 5-days a week.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > OP takes the one line in the article that can be perceived as a personal attack and uses it as the post title. OP literally took the headline from the WSJ article, consistent with the "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." guidance. Your ire is more properly directed at the WSJ headline author. * - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fairity 5y ago
    The WSJ article title, at the time of my comment, was "Wework CEO says workers who want back into the office are most engaged". You'll see evidence of the original WSJ article title in the slug of the URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ceo-says-workers-who-want-back-into-the-office-are-the-most-engaged-11620837018 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ceo-says-workers-who-wan... For me, at least, the WSJ article title update came after the HN post.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I fetched the article at 11:32 AM EDT (per my browser history) and the title and headline were as posted for me. In any case, it seems unlikely that the OP would conjure up a title that happened to match what the WSJ later changed their title to match character-for-character, so I'd wager that OP copied from WSJ rather than vice-versa or for them to be entirely independently derived.
  - chad_strategic 5y ago
    Just be clear I never changed the headline, it was directly from the WSJ. (nor did I have any intent to confuse) WSJ article title was the epitome of clickbait.
ryneandal 5y ago
Since I started working remotely years ago, I've put in fewer hours than being in the office, but I've been the most productive I've ever been. The ability to walk away when you aren't being productive and soft reset is one of the most valuable aspects of working from home, IMO.
- scatters 5y ago
  > The ability to walk away when you aren't being productive and soft reset Why can't you do that in the office?
  - ryneandal 5y ago
    Peer pressure, external distractions from colleagues, etc. You can get a break in-office, but the distance you can get pales in comparison to working from home. It's legitimately one of the best productivity and mental health decisions I've ever made.
  - loco5niner 5y ago
    In the office I can go take a nap in my hot car. At home, it's in my bed. Office: a walk around the office building and cars/traffic. Home: go outside and water my plants Office: take breaks with co-workers or no-one Home: Play with my baby/spend time with my wife. Etc...
geodel 5y ago
I know he meant it to show as a negative but I think it is fine in decent number of scenarios. The companies who have lot of "least engaged" employees, may be they can look at their work culture. Or better concern themselves more with outcomes instead of outlays. This way "disengaged" employees like me would rather produce results remotely instead of buying into, motivation, engagement, or workplace well-being bullshit while suffering claustrophobic workplaces.
mgarfias 5y ago
So I’m supposed to show my engagement by wasting 1-2h per day commuting? And what is “engagement” anyway?
windex 5y ago
Nice template: make an outrageous statement, get press time, create an issue for vacuous debate, ride the wave on misconceptions about worker efficiecny while WFH, gaslight everyone back into overpriced real estate, make bank.
joelbondurant 5y ago
duh, b-team losers love wfh.
hermitsings 5y ago
WeWork. haha.
drivingmenuts 5y ago
There’s a thing to be done, and hopefully, some sort of timeframe to complete it. There are a number of ways to contact all the people involved. End of story. Where in all of this is a central office necessary? I stay engaged by the quality and quantity of work, not by useless office politics (which happen regardless) and seeing people whose only connection is that we work for the same company. Those people are there to solve specific issues and if one arises that needs their attention, well, I can reach them.
akomtu 5y ago
He meant "the least engaged in office politics prefer WFH" which is a tautology.
emmap21 5y ago
Too bias - This statement is over-generalized and exaggerated. You can share observations, but to extract what is underlying - it needs a backup data. During a pandemic, most big tech let their employee work from home. WFH means that you are able to get tasks done by yourself with lots of autonomy. IMHO

This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. My guess is that even at companies that officially support partial remote time employees will start to feel some pressure for taking advantage of it. Adam Neumann once asked his executive assistant if she 'enjoyed her vacation' after coming back from maternity leave. Now they have a different CEO, obviously, but I can see the parallel -- any kind of situation that deviates from butts in seats at the office will be frowned upon.

sco1 5y ago
> This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. > My guess is that even at companies that officially support partial remote time employees will start to feel some pressure for taking advantage of it. I'm sure it's not the same in all sectors, but in the govt realm I was feeling this before the pandemic, with the pandemic flipping it completely (for now, at least). We have a long approval chain to get authorization to work remotely, with an explicit time code to go with it. I felt almost guilty requesting up to 2 days a week remotely and almost never took more than 1. Then the pandemic hit and management discovered that a lot of people didn't need to sit in a cubicle 5 days a week to get their jobs done. There's even rumblings from higher up the chain to emphasize getting work done where it's most efficient; hopefully that translates to a better attitude towards working remotely.
necovek 5y ago
> This suggests a potentially disturbing trend -- companies or managers that will start implicitly punishing employees for working remotely. Unfortunately, a company where any significant proportion of staff actually works from an office will implicitely have remote workers at a disadvantage — pass-by discussions with actual decisions might never reach them, so they'd be missing a lot of context (at best, they'd get decisions without the reasoning). Basically, remote work requires full team to switch to remote-friendly practices, like relying on written forms of discussion. Basically, the office should only be a place for chit-chat and building the team spirit. Some people need more of that, and others need less.

chad_strategic 5y ago

I got to get back to work, because I'm dis-engaged because I work from home. So I can't spend an hour explain how wrong this article is. Yet WeWork major competition is work from home.

raxor53 5y ago

Is WeWork still around? After their last CEO, I thought they shut down most operations.

chad_strategic 5y ago
Softbank owns them entirely now.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
Many of the WeWork competitors shut down (e.g. Knotel) during the pandemic, which ironically puts them in a better position for when the pandemic ends

moogly 5y ago

Well, is it really that surprising that a CEO for an office space rental company would be spreading FUD about working from home?

muttled 5y ago

The guy who makes his fortune renting office space is saying that it's virtuous to be in office space. Seems like he might be a bit biased.

lwhi 5y ago
Exactly.

jjk166 5y ago

On the contrary, people who are self motivating and focused on productivity are likely far more engaged than those who require an office environment to get things done and focus on merely being present. The engaged individual doesn't ask to get back to work, they already are working.

thrower123 5y ago

I will certainly be very disengaged if I'm made to go back to the office. Probably disengaged right out of the company with my two weeks' notice.

benjaminjosephw 5y ago

Office renting firm says that "good" employees like working from offices. What a headline for WeWork to land in the WSJ. This, right here, is proof that clever spin and intelligent marketing is always going to be more effective than just pumping cash into advertising.

lwhi 5y ago
Is this clever spin? It feels like quite an obvious play to me ..

almost_usual 5y ago

WeWork is still a thing?

crftr 5y ago

This is a sales pitch that lacks empathy. It's obviously in his best-interest to promote an office culture, but this pitch makes him sound like a psychopath (the clinical definition).

akomtu 5y ago
That's his job: doing amoral things so investors could keep their reputations clean.

tw04 5y ago

Odd, I've seen the EXACT opposite. The folks who spend half their day chatting around the water cooler instead of working prefer to be in the office all the time. I won't comment on whether or not that means they're good at their jobs because some people can just get their job done in a couple hours every day. But I WILL say that claiming people "least engaged" enjoy working from home is rather silly. Our most successful folks prefer working from home because there are fewer distractions and they get more accomplished in a work day. That being said, I think most people enjoy a balance because at some point you can't really build a team spirit without some face-to-face time every now and again. Whether that's in an office or just doing a team dinner.

loopz 5y ago
I can multitask, both be working and talking to relevant people.
- addison-lee 5y ago
  In reality your brain is rapidly switching between the two tasks, performing neither at your full capacity.
  - loopz 5y ago
    I work when talking though, so it was more of a joke.
  - crummybowley 5y ago
    It really depends on the individual's overhead for context switching. Yes there is a cost, but I also think this cost is not uniform in all people. Also, nobody even on a single task, is using 100% of their capacity. So I would wager that some folks can, and do perform as well at 2 task at the same time as others do a single task. Also remember, that somebody new to a tech might already be multitasking in the sense they are learning and doing at the same time, but somebody who has been doing the same type of work for 10+ years might not need the extra cycles for the learning part, and those could be used elsewhere. Think about typing a comment on the internet. This entire comment took seconds to write. I am multi tasking. I am instructing my fingers to press buttons, while forming the words I wish to type, and then on top of that spelling them out. Take me when I was 8 and do the same thing and a post like this could have taken 15 minutes. While I know that there are probably 8 year olds today that could have done the same thing in less time than I can now, when I am in in my 30s. The point being, folks can do more than one thing at once, and different folks can do more things at once as well or even better than other folks doing a single task. We see it real well in the athletic world. Its clear some folks have bodies that allow them to run faster, or further, or jump higher, or even better eye hand coronation. To think that mental task and traits don't work the same way on a individual bases would be willfully dishonest. Some folks simply have a pertinently to spell well (I am not one of those), Some can so math with ease, and others ponder the vast theoretical realms of quantum mechanics. People like Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson exist, they are like top athletes in the brain game. Its clear that they have more capacity than myself, and others. So it stands to reason that some folks, and maybe many folks, can multi task better than others, and maybe that trait is what made them successful. From my experience the talks at the water cooler are the ones that result in real change and progress. Its where the exchange of ideas happen. To think you know enough that you can sit in your box all day long and skip over hearing other peoples ideas is just elitist attitude. You won't know if you are right or wrong until its too late, and you won't be exposed to new fresh or challenging ideas without the social interactions. Hiding a way in a a box won't expose you to uncomfortable situations that will help you grow.

sytse 5y ago

Hybrid remote is the worst of both worlds. The best remote employees will move to fully remote companies so they can move out of the B-team. Over time Sandeep will be right when he says: "Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home."

geodel 5y ago
Maybe worst for you. For many like me avoiding 3 hr of commute per day even for 2 days a week is better than no remote at all.
- sytse 5y ago
  I agree that some working for home for all people makes sense. With hybrid I refer to some people never being in the office https://www.wired.com/story/hybrid-remote-work-offers-the-worst-of-both-worlds/ https://www.wired.com/story/hybrid-remote-work-offers-the-wo...
  - geodel 5y ago
    Ah okay. Thinking about today's workplaces particularly in IT everyone seems to a JIRA slave. Pretty soon even visiting rest room in office may require tracking via Jira ticket. So in these places I hardly see much collaboration that does not have tracking id. I guess issue is most companies where daily work is same thing getting repeated endlessly or minor variation of it vs places developing new things. Now stories about second kind of places are so amplified that it tends to ignore the fact that most places are in fact doing repetitive and/or heavily tracked tasks which can be done remotely. And precisely for this type of work it wouldn't matter if everyone is remote / some are remote or permanently remote / partially remote.

villgax 5y ago

Laughs on behalf of gitlab at a company which has no purpose of existing

not2b 5y ago

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

abakker 5y ago
Thought this exactly.

wolfretcrap 5y ago

Since I am working from home, half day I am writing code, other half day I am doing machining on mill and lathes. My performance on code related work has shot up, you need an escape to increase your productivity. Sitting at a desk all day will not make you productive.

fairity 5y ago

OP takes the one line in the article that can be perceived as a personal attack and uses it as the post title. Why not use a title that actually represents the primary argument in the article? That is, the WeWork CEO is saying that some time in the office is paramount for collaboration and efficiency. The question is just how much time is optimal. 3-days a week or 5-days a week.

sokoloff 5y ago
> OP takes the one line in the article that can be perceived as a personal attack and uses it as the post title. OP literally took the headline from the WSJ article, consistent with the "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." guidance. Your ire is more properly directed at the WSJ headline author. * - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fairity 5y ago
  The WSJ article title, at the time of my comment, was "Wework CEO says workers who want back into the office are most engaged". You'll see evidence of the original WSJ article title in the slug of the URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ceo-says-workers-who-want-back-into-the-office-are-the-most-engaged-11620837018 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ceo-says-workers-who-wan... For me, at least, the WSJ article title update came after the HN post.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I fetched the article at 11:32 AM EDT (per my browser history) and the title and headline were as posted for me. In any case, it seems unlikely that the OP would conjure up a title that happened to match what the WSJ later changed their title to match character-for-character, so I'd wager that OP copied from WSJ rather than vice-versa or for them to be entirely independently derived.
- chad_strategic 5y ago
  Just be clear I never changed the headline, it was directly from the WSJ. (nor did I have any intent to confuse) WSJ article title was the epitome of clickbait.

ryneandal 5y ago

Since I started working remotely years ago, I've put in fewer hours than being in the office, but I've been the most productive I've ever been. The ability to walk away when you aren't being productive and soft reset is one of the most valuable aspects of working from home, IMO.

scatters 5y ago
> The ability to walk away when you aren't being productive and soft reset Why can't you do that in the office?
- ryneandal 5y ago
  Peer pressure, external distractions from colleagues, etc. You can get a break in-office, but the distance you can get pales in comparison to working from home. It's legitimately one of the best productivity and mental health decisions I've ever made.
- loco5niner 5y ago
  In the office I can go take a nap in my hot car. At home, it's in my bed. Office: a walk around the office building and cars/traffic. Home: go outside and water my plants Office: take breaks with co-workers or no-one Home: Play with my baby/spend time with my wife. Etc...

geodel 5y ago

I know he meant it to show as a negative but I think it is fine in decent number of scenarios. The companies who have lot of "least engaged" employees, may be they can look at their work culture. Or better concern themselves more with outcomes instead of outlays. This way "disengaged" employees like me would rather produce results remotely instead of buying into, motivation, engagement, or workplace well-being bullshit while suffering claustrophobic workplaces.

mgarfias 5y ago

So I’m supposed to show my engagement by wasting 1-2h per day commuting? And what is “engagement” anyway?

windex 5y ago

Nice template: make an outrageous statement, get press time, create an issue for vacuous debate, ride the wave on misconceptions about worker efficiecny while WFH, gaslight everyone back into overpriced real estate, make bank.

joelbondurant 5y ago

duh, b-team losers love wfh.

hermitsings 5y ago

WeWork. haha.

drivingmenuts 5y ago

There’s a thing to be done, and hopefully, some sort of timeframe to complete it. There are a number of ways to contact all the people involved. End of story. Where in all of this is a central office necessary? I stay engaged by the quality and quantity of work, not by useless office politics (which happen regardless) and seeing people whose only connection is that we work for the same company. Those people are there to solve specific issues and if one arises that needs their attention, well, I can reach them.

akomtu 5y ago

He meant "the least engaged in office politics prefer WFH" which is a tautology.

emmap21 5y ago

Too bias - This statement is over-generalized and exaggerated. You can share observations, but to extract what is underlying - it needs a backup data. During a pandemic, most big tech let their employee work from home. WFH means that you are able to get tasks done by yourself with lots of autonomy. IMHO