10 ms·

In the office full-time? No thanks, say 86 per cent of tech professionals

74 points by sefrost 5y ago

frankbreetz 5y ago
>> 80 per cent of tech professionals don’t think they will be working for the same company in two years. That is a lot. I am of the current opinion that I will try to get a job offer every year and if I can't refuse it, I won't. Some people warn me job hopping looks bad on a resume, but I disagree and I think the article makes my point >>“People changing jobs every year or two can be seen by employers as a red flag but, actually, it shows these people are ambitious, adaptable and knowledgeable, traits that every employer looks for.” Plus this is the sort of thing that works itself out. If it looks bad on a resume no one will hire me until I have been in a place long enoungh
- glouwbug 5y ago
  Well I mean tech tenure is what, like, 8-20 months anyway? We’re not building bridges; software projects complete quicker on average than your average megastructure. People move on once the project is done
  - tdeck 5y ago
    In what sector of "tech"? Perhaps it's sample bias, but I've never observed this behavior (leaving after less than 12 months, or after your first project) in any of my peers. I could definitely see that for contractors but people who leave that early usually don't do it voluntarily.
    - glouwbug 5y ago
      Certainly - if years of JIRA bug crushing appeals to the onlooker, power to them. I personally find myself either exhausted or bored after 18 months. This is about the time I've learned as much as the job can offer without the need of extensive force (adhering to the 80 / 20 rule, at the very least)
- schoolornot 5y ago
  How do you gauge when it's time to leave? What indicators do you use?
- arpa 5y ago
  I am currently in process of getting a very lucrative offer; one of my major considerations was that I've only been in the current position for 7 mo. Your comment was very reassuring for me. However, I have once been declined a position for not having worked enough at (then) current place, and have been asked about whether I would also leave the company in a year or so.
  - GianFabien 5y ago
    The question that should be asked is why are good staff worth more to the other organisation? If you are doing good work, then surely the current employer should be willing to give you a suitable pay rise that will disincentivate you from changing jobs. It does cost them more to hire a replacement but apparently that is too complicated for the average PHB to grasp.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > The question that should be asked is why are good staff worth more to the other organisation? Because management is betting that total dollars saved from not raising everyone’s wages is more than total dollars spent on hiring and training and other costs of people going to work elsewhere. It is not too complicated for the average PHB (what is that?) to grasp. It is known that many people will not leave or shop around for higher wages, so the bet is that letting a few people go is worth it. This especially works out for employers in environments where coworkers can and are expected to take on the duties of the person that left. In that case, hiring someone new does not cost the employer much.
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        Pointy haired boss.
eric4smith 5y ago
It depends on the person for sure. BUT as a business owner, employees focus a LOT more when they are in the office and working with peers. The focus is actually quite dramatic. There are just too many distractions in the modern home. Today's world, where we are at the moment, was built on people going to work every day. It worked. Look at how we have advanced. Sure, now that we have reached to this point, some people can work at home. But the sustained work is done with your colleagues beside you. The internet. The vast, vast majority of companies that are the backbone of any country. The financial system that runs credit and capitalism. All these things were built in the office or it's equivalent.
- dgeiser13 5y ago
  Being in the office is a giant distraction. When I'm in front of my computer at home during work hours I simply work, no distractions. When I'm in the office and I try to work I spend time trying to block out distractions so I can work.
- LambdaComplex 5y ago
  I feel like you're projecting. Or, at the very least, operating under the assumption that your exact experiences reflect everyone's. I live by myself. There is nothing in my home that can/will distract me, aside from the internet--which I can just as easily use as a distraction from an office. When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work. And, on top of that, there's currently one single person I can think of of who a) I interact with regularly at work and b) works from the same office as me (if I were to go back to my employer's local office). (Also, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that your entire "argument" is an Appeal To Tradition logical fallacy anyways)
  - mgkimsal 5y ago
    > When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work. I was in an office setting in late 2019, and was often told "go ask so-and-so, he/she knows the foobar/etc". And... when I went to their desk, I was... interrupting. But I was told to do that. And... for the 'company as a whole', I guess you could say it all balanced out and they did knowledge transfer of what I needed to me, then everything eventually "got done". I was painfully aware that I was an intrusion, and was preventing them from hitting whatever deadlines they had to hit. But... this is how the management structured stuff. No scheduled time to document (and update existing docs) from what I could tell. Just "go talk to so-and-so". And that was seen as a 'benefit' of being in the office. It didn't help that some of the people I'd go to were actually quite hostile to this, and took it out on me some. Some just ... answered some questions then... trailed off and stopped responding to me (weird). A couple folks were quite helpful, but the process was still an unaccounted for interruption.
benreesman 5y ago
Engineering line managers who don’t firmly grasp the technical subject matter sometimes (in my anecdotal experience, often) use “ass-in-seat”-style proxy metrics to do performance management. This is harder to do remote. Reading the tasks and diffs is not harder to do remote. Such managers are often effective at impacting the organization (for better or worse). I am not surprised there is a “back to the office” lobby, and I won’t be surprised if it’s an effective lobby.
- atoav 5y ago
  As someone who has the comparison between working solo/freelance on software and being "managed" I can assure you that in my case the "impact" this kind of management has is that it reduces my productivity by at least a magnitude. Much of what you have to do in this environment is done so managers have the feeling they know what is going on and they have a grip on it. Most of which could be solved for them if they just checked the git issues, commits and/or the wiki. Very often they don't do that legwork so theh have to convince themselves of their usefulness in another way. Being on site makes it easier to follow this dark pattern. Engineering managers should not stand in the way of their engineers, but remove roadblocks ahead and create an environment where quality is achieved. Of course that doesn't equal total freedom for everybody, but IMO good engineering managers should feel nearly non-existent when you do a good job. When you make mistakes they should feel like a good friend preventing you to run into your own doom. When you are lazy they should act as an stark reminder.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  The useless managers have migrated to Jira with their unproductive busy work. I made the mistake recently of doing some project management work for a toxic organisation and the standup meetings are just a long sequence of the main manager bullying overworked guys with surprise tickets. Organisations can be just as awful with WFH as the office, but at least I can say obscenities about people out loud on Teams with my microphone muted. The back to the office lobby simply havent worked out how to abuse Jira and Teams properly yet.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Conversely - measuring performance by any means is going to be really hard. Having to pilfer through diffs is probably just as bad. The notion that 'people want to stay home, away from the office, and have less oversight' is barely worth a survey, it should mostly be obvious. The question is what can we do to be effective? Communications, oversight, coordination - this is all real, and hard.
genericone 5y ago
Soft tech maybe. Biotech/Semiconductor/Automation/Space sectors will still be 90%+ office/lab.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 5y ago
  Hello from my fourteenth month of working from home for a semiconductor company. (I'm not quite sure how the people who really do need lab space have been coping, but the thing is that so much of the company is software (firmware and tooling) or simulation/verification that we were able to carry on mostly business as usual. Much to the surprise of the management who were previously skeptical of WFH)
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    Was working at a semiconductor company when the pandemic started. They sent a millions of dollars of lab equipment to people's houses who had the space/power to use them; and reconfigured the in-office labs for social distancing + setup two-week rotations; then actively prevented all non-essential employees from working in the office. As far as I know, there was no outbreak in the company.
borvo 5y ago
Clickbait for the kids. "“For baby boomers and Generation X, it was quite common to stay in the same company for most of their working lives. Today’s working landscape is different, with millennials and Generation Z open to the concept of job hopping,” he continued. “People changing jobs every year or two can be seen by employers as a red flag but, actually, it shows these people are ambitious, adaptable and knowledgeable, traits that every employer looks for.” Generation X'er here. Pretty sure I remember these same articles being a thing - with Generation X being the job hoppers - back when I was ... younger. Job hoppers had a bad rep back then too. It all depends on how long and what you accomplished. Oh you say you invented tcp at your last job where you stayed for 6 weeks? Gonna be an interesting conversation, or maybe an entertaining one.

74 points by sefrost 5y ago

>> 80 per cent of tech professionals don’t think they will be working for the same company in two years. That is a lot. I am of the current opinion that I will try to get a job offer every year and if I can't refuse it, I won't. Some people warn me job hopping looks bad on a resume, but I disagree and I think the article makes my point >>“People changing jobs every year or two can be seen by employers as a red flag but, actually, it shows these people are ambitious, adaptable and knowledgeable, traits that every employer looks for.” Plus this is the sort of thing that works itself out. If it looks bad on a resume no one will hire me until I have been in a place long enoungh

glouwbug 5y ago
Well I mean tech tenure is what, like, 8-20 months anyway? We’re not building bridges; software projects complete quicker on average than your average megastructure. People move on once the project is done
- tdeck 5y ago
  In what sector of "tech"? Perhaps it's sample bias, but I've never observed this behavior (leaving after less than 12 months, or after your first project) in any of my peers. I could definitely see that for contractors but people who leave that early usually don't do it voluntarily.
  - glouwbug 5y ago
    Certainly - if years of JIRA bug crushing appeals to the onlooker, power to them. I personally find myself either exhausted or bored after 18 months. This is about the time I've learned as much as the job can offer without the need of extensive force (adhering to the 80 / 20 rule, at the very least)
schoolornot 5y ago
How do you gauge when it's time to leave? What indicators do you use?
arpa 5y ago
I am currently in process of getting a very lucrative offer; one of my major considerations was that I've only been in the current position for 7 mo. Your comment was very reassuring for me. However, I have once been declined a position for not having worked enough at (then) current place, and have been asked about whether I would also leave the company in a year or so.
- GianFabien 5y ago
  The question that should be asked is why are good staff worth more to the other organisation? If you are doing good work, then surely the current employer should be willing to give you a suitable pay rise that will disincentivate you from changing jobs. It does cost them more to hire a replacement but apparently that is too complicated for the average PHB to grasp.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > The question that should be asked is why are good staff worth more to the other organisation? Because management is betting that total dollars saved from not raising everyone’s wages is more than total dollars spent on hiring and training and other costs of people going to work elsewhere. It is not too complicated for the average PHB (what is that?) to grasp. It is known that many people will not leave or shop around for higher wages, so the bet is that letting a few people go is worth it. This especially works out for employers in environments where coworkers can and are expected to take on the duties of the person that left. In that case, hiring someone new does not cost the employer much.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Pointy haired boss.

eric4smith 5y ago

It depends on the person for sure. BUT as a business owner, employees focus a LOT more when they are in the office and working with peers. The focus is actually quite dramatic. There are just too many distractions in the modern home. Today's world, where we are at the moment, was built on people going to work every day. It worked. Look at how we have advanced. Sure, now that we have reached to this point, some people can work at home. But the sustained work is done with your colleagues beside you. The internet. The vast, vast majority of companies that are the backbone of any country. The financial system that runs credit and capitalism. All these things were built in the office or it's equivalent.

dgeiser13 5y ago
Being in the office is a giant distraction. When I'm in front of my computer at home during work hours I simply work, no distractions. When I'm in the office and I try to work I spend time trying to block out distractions so I can work.
LambdaComplex 5y ago
I feel like you're projecting. Or, at the very least, operating under the assumption that your exact experiences reflect everyone's. I live by myself. There is nothing in my home that can/will distract me, aside from the internet--which I can just as easily use as a distraction from an office. When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work. And, on top of that, there's currently one single person I can think of of who a) I interact with regularly at work and b) works from the same office as me (if I were to go back to my employer's local office). (Also, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that your entire "argument" is an Appeal To Tradition logical fallacy anyways)
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  > When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work. I was in an office setting in late 2019, and was often told "go ask so-and-so, he/she knows the foobar/etc". And... when I went to their desk, I was... interrupting. But I was told to do that. And... for the 'company as a whole', I guess you could say it all balanced out and they did knowledge transfer of what I needed to me, then everything eventually "got done". I was painfully aware that I was an intrusion, and was preventing them from hitting whatever deadlines they had to hit. But... this is how the management structured stuff. No scheduled time to document (and update existing docs) from what I could tell. Just "go talk to so-and-so". And that was seen as a 'benefit' of being in the office. It didn't help that some of the people I'd go to were actually quite hostile to this, and took it out on me some. Some just ... answered some questions then... trailed off and stopped responding to me (weird). A couple folks were quite helpful, but the process was still an unaccounted for interruption.

benreesman 5y ago

Engineering line managers who don’t firmly grasp the technical subject matter sometimes (in my anecdotal experience, often) use “ass-in-seat”-style proxy metrics to do performance management. This is harder to do remote. Reading the tasks and diffs is not harder to do remote. Such managers are often effective at impacting the organization (for better or worse). I am not surprised there is a “back to the office” lobby, and I won’t be surprised if it’s an effective lobby.

atoav 5y ago
As someone who has the comparison between working solo/freelance on software and being "managed" I can assure you that in my case the "impact" this kind of management has is that it reduces my productivity by at least a magnitude. Much of what you have to do in this environment is done so managers have the feeling they know what is going on and they have a grip on it. Most of which could be solved for them if they just checked the git issues, commits and/or the wiki. Very often they don't do that legwork so theh have to convince themselves of their usefulness in another way. Being on site makes it easier to follow this dark pattern. Engineering managers should not stand in the way of their engineers, but remove roadblocks ahead and create an environment where quality is achieved. Of course that doesn't equal total freedom for everybody, but IMO good engineering managers should feel nearly non-existent when you do a good job. When you make mistakes they should feel like a good friend preventing you to run into your own doom. When you are lazy they should act as an stark reminder.
smackeyacky 5y ago
The useless managers have migrated to Jira with their unproductive busy work. I made the mistake recently of doing some project management work for a toxic organisation and the standup meetings are just a long sequence of the main manager bullying overworked guys with surprise tickets. Organisations can be just as awful with WFH as the office, but at least I can say obscenities about people out loud on Teams with my microphone muted. The back to the office lobby simply havent worked out how to abuse Jira and Teams properly yet.
jollybean 5y ago
Conversely - measuring performance by any means is going to be really hard. Having to pilfer through diffs is probably just as bad. The notion that 'people want to stay home, away from the office, and have less oversight' is barely worth a survey, it should mostly be obvious. The question is what can we do to be effective? Communications, oversight, coordination - this is all real, and hard.

genericone 5y ago

Soft tech maybe. Biotech/Semiconductor/Automation/Space sectors will still be 90%+ office/lab.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 5y ago
Hello from my fourteenth month of working from home for a semiconductor company. (I'm not quite sure how the people who really do need lab space have been coping, but the thing is that so much of the company is software (firmware and tooling) or simulation/verification that we were able to carry on mostly business as usual. Much to the surprise of the management who were previously skeptical of WFH)
- bradstewart 5y ago
  Was working at a semiconductor company when the pandemic started. They sent a millions of dollars of lab equipment to people's houses who had the space/power to use them; and reconfigured the in-office labs for social distancing + setup two-week rotations; then actively prevented all non-essential employees from working in the office. As far as I know, there was no outbreak in the company.

borvo 5y ago

Clickbait for the kids. "“For baby boomers and Generation X, it was quite common to stay in the same company for most of their working lives. Today’s working landscape is different, with millennials and Generation Z open to the concept of job hopping,” he continued. “People changing jobs every year or two can be seen by employers as a red flag but, actually, it shows these people are ambitious, adaptable and knowledgeable, traits that every employer looks for.” Generation X'er here. Pretty sure I remember these same articles being a thing - with Generation X being the job hoppers - back when I was ... younger. Job hoppers had a bad rep back then too. It all depends on how long and what you accomplished. Oh you say you invented tcp at your last job where you stayed for 6 weeks? Gonna be an interesting conversation, or maybe an entertaining one.