11 ms·

Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office

124 points by aseerdbnarng 5y ago

emc3 5y ago
In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. They will try to decrease WFH compensation initially, like the loss of benefits threat in the article, but the number of potential employers is higher for WFH workers, giving them leverage.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Compensation changes are hidden in “cost of living” adjustments.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Inflation is already here. Miserly COLAs are not going to cut it for the next few years.
- mech422 5y ago
  I've been WFH for 20 years now... It gets easier all the time, the pay gets better, and I actually have a much better setup at home then I've ever had in an office (Granted, I've had 20 years to set it up...) I'm not concerned about 'losing out' in any capacity going forward, especially now when its become so common.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Where do you find work? Is it all for one client or are you more of a consultant/contractor?
    - mech422 5y ago
      I'm currently a full time employee at a contract firm. Befor e that, I was full time with an international firm and before that I was full time with a local CDN provider. that goes back about 10 years...
    - not_jd_salinger 5y ago
      In tech there have always been a relatively large number of remote friendly companies. I worked for the better part of a decade fully remote, in full time, reasonably well paying positions at a wide range of companies. I only returned to an office a bit before pandemic broke out and don't have any intention of returning to an office full time now. After the pandemic there was an even larger number of companies that are at the very least remote friendly. Most < 1000 employee tech companies I know are never planning on returning to an office full time. I also believe a fairly large number of the major tech companies are also planning to be fully remote friendly going into the future. Pre-pandemic getting a fully remote job didn't take too much work find, and now nearly all companies I've talked to in the last few months are willing to support remote roles.
    - autarch 5y ago
      I've been working remote since 2002. I've done both full time and contracting. I've been full time only since 2011 at two different employers. There are _enough_ employers that will allow fully remote employees that it's not hard to find jobs, and it's only gotten easier in the time I've been doing it.
- the-pigeon 5y ago
  > In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. Why? A company hires an employee because they think they can make more profit than that employee costs them. My expenses have nothing to do with the equation except when the company wants to be cheap and figures out they can up their profit margin per employee by lowering salaries due to low competition for employees.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Your expenses also do not determine your value to the company. It's simple supply and demand. If you require $250/hr but a smart person in say Brasil will do the same work, to the same standards, for $100/hr, what is the rationale for the company to keep paying you? You might complain that the Brasilian is leaving money on the table but that's not in your control.
    - antonvs 5y ago
      > You might complain that the Brasilian is leaving money on the table He's not though. He's undercutting someone else to get the business. Race to the bottom is one of the most fun features of capitalism!
- nullc 5y ago
  > In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. Do you mean pay you more because the office no longer needs to provide space and power for you, but you provide it for yourself? ... and because you can be called 'in' faster without the 45 minute commute? :P
  - tpxl 5y ago
    No joke - yes. If my company gets big enough to need employees, I plan to compensate them for home offices.
- qchris 5y ago
  For one, I'd argue that working from home probably requires additional pay over working in the office. I'm sure some people have a "spare" bedroom that they can convert into an office, but there's a lot of people, including almost all the tech-oriented professionals under 30 that I know, that don't even have their own one bedroom apartment, let alone are able to pay for a second bedroom just in case. Working at the kitchen table all day around roommates (or partners, or children if you're a parent, or maybe even disruptive pets) is not exactly a recipe for deep work productivity. If workers are also now expected to provision their own work space (space, desk, chairs, monitors, etc.), then the compensation model around those jobs also needs to be adjusted to account for that.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    And a lot of property now needs expanding or is no longer attractive to buyers. the other question is should employers pay a share of your property tax contribute to a sinking fund for repairs
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Companies will make offers. Prospective employees will negotiate based on conditions and salary. For some, working from home reduces costs (raises hand). No commute and no real incremental costs; I have a dedicated office and have never had free food offered in an office. For others it's a big cost. If someone wants to live in a dense urban core and a company is 100% remote, that may not be a good deal.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> If workers are also now expected to provision their own work space (space, desk, chairs, monitors, etc.), then the compensation model around those jobs also needs to be adjusted to account for that I've been working from home for 5 years. Standing desk, Aeron chair, dual ultra wide monitors, it goes on and on. It all adds up to about 1% of my compensation over those years. I spend whatever it takes to have a great working environment, if I see something that will incrementally improve the 8 hours a day I spend working I immediately buy it. As far as my income goes it amounts to a rounding error. >> there's a lot of people, including almost all the tech-oriented professionals under 30 that I know That's called selection bias. You have chosen to live in a location with expensive real estate. Good for you. Other people made different choices. I have rooms in my house I haven't been in for months.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Yeah, I'd want to be paid at least 25% more, since by requiring me to commute to the office, you are taking two hours a day from me that's of no use to either of us.
kevingadd 5y ago
"One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post" Some of the stuff companies do truly baffles me. It's only the beginning of June, you can't really assume your whole team is fully vaccinated. Why would you bring everyone in for lunch and then send them home? All downside and near-zero upside. It'd be another matter if it was a full day event where you did some meetings or seminars in addition to the meal, but are you really going to make people commute in, eat, and go home?
- irq11 5y ago
  Vaccines have been readily available to anyone who wants them (in the US) since mid April, even in the highest demand parts of the country. If you are not vaccinated, at this point, there is no excuse. (edit: obviously, I’m assuming the article is talking about a company in the US, since the article is about the US.)
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    IANAD, but I'm sure there are some medical contraindications for certain individuals, such as people who are immunocompromised, that may legitimately keep them from being vaccinated. That's why achieving herd immunity is important, and my understanding is that we aren't quite there yet. Never change, HN.
    - irq11 5y ago
      Herd immunity is not a fixed vaccination percentage pulled from Anthony Fauci’s latest media appearance. It’s the immunity level at which cases stabilize and begin to decline. It is defined by observation. Cases are at all-time lows in the most vaccinated locations, and are dropping rapidly nationwide.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        No, it's the level at which people not eligible for vaccination are no longer at risk because most of their peers are incapable of spreading the disease. The political aspects are just some stuff some people made up.
post_break 5y ago
We were told for years, there is no flex time, don't even think about it. While the higher ups obviously flexed whenever they wanted to. Suddenly covid hits and I'm scrambling to get everyone setup so they can work remote. We go a whole year working remote with almost no issues or lost productivity. And now we're back in the office and the mood has definitely changed.
- tibbydudeza 5y ago
  That sucks.
- walshemj 5y ago
  Are you salaried ?
- pinkybanana 5y ago
  > We go a whole year working remote with almost no issues or lost productivity I've heard a lot about this claim "no lost productivity". However that is for the employer to be evaluated, not for the employees. The complaining employees lose credibility when they make claims like that in complex fields, because productivity is very complex metric to be measured in many jobs.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    Unless you're talking about something that can be objectively measured--widget output from an assembly line, average times to retrieve/place something in a warehouse, and so on--the "complexity" you note is just fertile ground for gaming. It's downright trivial for an employer to massage "productivity" numbers in a way that supports their agenda.
commandlinefan 5y ago
Well, if remote work isn't feasible (for the reasons stated), neither is offshoring. Or outsourcing. Or physical satellite offices.
- aplummer 5y ago
  I’m not sure that sells it, because I don’t think offshoring and outsourcing is feasible…
  - addicted 5y ago
    The flip side is that if remote work is absolutely the same, then offshoring and outsourcing are also. Why have your employees work remotely in a city 100 miles from their original office at 80-90% of the cost when you can have them be 1000 miles from the office at 30-40% of the cost. If you find employees in Central and South America they would also be in the same timezone.
    - thrower123 5y ago
      We just have twenty years of experience that any initial cost savings generated by outsourcing are illusory and come due with interest on the back end.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        I agree that has been the case but I don't think it is a certainty that it will continue to tbe the case. Certainly many immigrant workers in IT do good work and are well paid. Why could they not do the same thing from their home country?
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Depends what you're outsourcing. We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory. A lot of communications type work suffered from outsourcing due to language barriers and poor connectivity and poorer skillset from workers in other areas of the world (or even the US). That may not always continue to be the case. I'm guessing the top 10% or 20% of workers do not need to be worried since they can provide so much value that outsourcing is not worth it. But if you're in the bottom 4 quintiles, I would be wary.
throwawayboise 5y ago
One worker complained that the manager “wanted butts in seats because we couldn’t be trusted to [work from home] even though we’d been doing it since last March,” adding: “I’m giving my notice on Monday.” I've seen this with my current employer. Their message has been that going forward at some point, "Working remotely is not an option." There's really no reason I can't work from home. I've been doing it since March 2020. I don't have any customer-facing responsibilities; I administer servers and write code. The only thing that requires my physical presence is the occasional need to install or replace hardware. It was one thing to not support remote work in 2019 when it was an unknown. In 2021, we've proven it can work; workers know it, and employers should know it. There's no un-ringing that bell. I'm older, and have no desire to return to the startup lifestyle again but there's no doubt I can find remote work. As I see it, the choice is mine, and taking a mini-retirement and looking for new opportunities if my employer wants to be inflexible is not exacly unappealing.
- geodel 5y ago
  All great points. It is similar for me. Server/App admin plus some coding. Most meetings happen over webex because teams are distributed across cities in different time zones. But working from home is not an option. Also actually flying to different offices to collaborate face-to-face is not an option either because "Hehe who flies mere devs for meetings, isn't there a slack / zoom / webex?"
  - sneak 5y ago
    If you know how to code and admin boxes, you have your pick of jobs. There’s no reason to ever go back to an office if you don’t want to unless you’re on some terrible immigration twist-your-arm situation where you get deported if you get fired from that particular job.
- vertis 5y ago
  I've been doing remote contract work since I became a digital nomad in 2018. Before the pandemic it was absolutely a minority of companies that were comfortable with the concept. A lot of them from the Basecamp school of thinking. Since the pandemic kicked off, this has changed. Despite the fact that there are many employers out there trying to force everybody back into the office, there is also a large pool of companies that have realised the wheels didn't fall off during the pandemic. I've been speaking to a lot of current and ex-colleagues in the tech industry. Both on the management and on the employee side. Even the managers are increasing looking at where they're going to work from long term. Realising that they really can move to cheaper cities (in Europe), possibly with better weather, and keep working just the same. I think there will be a bit of tension this year, but I can't see it just going back to the way it was previously. So many of the previous objections are just obviously false now. In a lot of cases I've seen teams become more productive (not to mention happier), because they're not sitting in an office. I've seen the faces of most of their kids and pets now, and it turns out that's pretty cool as well. That BBC host was a real trendsetter :D
addicted 5y ago
As far as I can tell this article contains fewer arguments about whether work from home is better or not, and more arguments about how certain companies are messing up the transition through bad communication. The one argument, #3, about corporate culture is in favor of not WFH. They are saying that research shows corporate culture is important, but the methods used to build corporate culture when people are WFH are failing badly. Which indicates that if corporate culture is indeed important, then the only way to really build it without pointless BS is by having people working together in a physical location.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Office is a space where complete strangers can become a collective, sharing common goals and establishing bonds that can help achieve great things. This is possible with remote work, but much harder. In my experience, remote workers are generally rather detached from their colleagues and projects. YMMV, but I vastly prefer working from office.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  This has only been my experience in very small startups with all the people in the same room or at least the same building. In all my other jobs, including the startups that have grown into more traditional businesses, I have been pretty much a heads-down worker. I come in, do my work, and go home. There's not really much bonding or common culture going on that remote/on-site would really change anything.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  This strikes me as a very romantic view of what offices are. Maybe it is possible for an office to be like this, but I would suspect that it is an exceptional case. Mostly offices are where people go to do sufficient work to get paid, and the only real goal coworkers have in common there is a desire to receive paycheques and make sure the company doesn't go under so they can continue receiving paycheques. If people didn't have to make money they absolutely would not spend their days pushing paperwork around and sending emails as part of some shared collective goal.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    I wasn't talking about what all offices are, but about what some of them can be. It is clear that many offices are dull hives that suck the life out of their occupants. But why be in such office? Why should someone have a job just to get a paycheck, getting miserable in return? There are always options. To look at it from a different side, office is a tool, which, used correctly, can give a tremendous boost to productivity. But it is not a given. It has natural advantage - like physical proximity between people and disadvantages - the need to commute being one of them.
darth_avocado 5y ago
The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the same people. I think there's a lot of different things going on here: 1. Control freaks are losing their minds in the Pandemic and they want some of the control back. 2. Extroverts are losing it and want things to be social again. 3. People who have bullshit jobs and absolutely don't add any value except look busy on "make work" are having a hard time justify their need in the company. 4. People who absolutely cant stand their families want to spend time away from them. And to all of these people I will say, go to the office if that's something you want, but don't make me go too.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Just wait for the mass exodus. Remote work is turning out to be a requirement for hiring people. So once the company starts bleeding (good) people who find remote jobs with other companies, they are going to be difficult/impossible to replace. At some point, the execs will have to suck it up and offer remote work.
  - pinkybanana 5y ago
    If remote work is a winning concept on the market, why we needed coronavirus crisis for it to get adopted? Are markets not working?
    - luxpir 5y ago
      Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few.
    - machinebun 5y ago
      > Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few. You need enough buy in from enough companies to actually have a competitive market for remote work. I think things were moving in that direction but slowly (as things tend to do) - COVID just accelerated the trend.
madengr 5y ago
We had higher billable hours during the summer lockdown than ever, though they still came up with the excuse for 2% raises; “well the economy is not good”.
wrs 5y ago
I'm trying and failing to think of any important part of "company culture" that only works for people in the same room. Culture is made of shared values (codified in actions, not PowerPoints), communication norms, peer reactions, shared history, inside jokes...all of that stuff can work remotely. If your company has more than one office it already has to work remotely.
- walshemj 5y ago
  I think that is not really true remember work is not just "me me me" its a collective endeavor.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  In this instance, corporate culture is a stand in for 'what the boss wants the boss gets'. I can't think of a company culture that is healthy and also different from what it appears everyone wants: flexibility in their work location and schedule. Who are these worker-bees that prefer to waste 2 hours of their day in stressful transit to get to a stressful environment that have no negative health consequences from the stress?
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  If your company has more than one office, they each have their own culture, which hews more or less closely to the cultural commonalities between offices. Shared values, communication norms, peer reactions, shared history, and inside jokes can exist when people aren't in the same room, but that culture tends to be a lot thinner. It would be more fruitful to discuss whether that's a good or bad thing—the bare existence of culture isn't what anyone is talking about here.
  - wrs 5y ago
    Sure, there is office culture, but I think “company culture” has to be what’s in common between the offices, by definition, no?
    - GavinMcG 5y ago
zeta0134 5y ago
I'm firmly in camp "office time sounds wonderful" because I live alone, and as it turns out, not having any humans nearby is downright depressing. I'm also somewhat introverted (weird, right?) and while I was living with other people, I desired quite the opposite; staying at home was much less distracting than being in the chaos of a shared space most days. So which do I prefer? Ehh, it depends. I'm not planning to live alone forever, it's just where I'm at right now. I'd imagine others are in a similar boat; we're different, and not necessarily constant either. So, as much as I encourage opening the offices back up and will take part in that space if given the chance, I wouldn't force that on anyone. I think the responsible thing to do is to measure performance rather than seat-in-chair, and so long as everyone's pulling their weight, let each employee make their own informed decision. It's their health on the line, after all, and healthy employees do better work.
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  Sounds like... you want some office time and probably some "non-office" work time, and that you'd want that to be at least partially under your control (both now and long term). And you probably recognize the benefits in having people have a (large) degree of autonomy in how they do their work. There are some things which are better done face to face, in person, and some things where... working solo (in surroundings of your choice) can allow one to be more productive. IMO, there's no one "right" answer on this issue beyond "more autonomy", and I suspect we'll see more contractors/freelancers in Coworking spaces and more WFH arrangements to accommodate that, even if it's not touted publicly much. It's somehow fine to have a group of people you've never met work in India, and they can get their work done OK, but you can't do the same thing from 15 miles away from your main office? Just insane.
- vertis 5y ago
  While I think a hybrid situation is perfectly fine, there are also a bunch of solutions to this that don't require a permanent office. For example, co-working can facilitate some of the desired interaction while at the same time putting the power in your hands.
- daltont 5y ago
  I'm an introvert and WFH all the time has made me borderline crazy, but it is sure nice not to have to drive to an office 30-minutes away when most days I could just starting working.
CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
The pros and cons of remote work have posted many times here. Just like most things, it is going to come down to market forces determining whether remote work will stick. If employers discover that they can pay less (in real estate and salary!) if they offer remote work as an option, while keeping the efficiency of an office worker, then the companies that do this will have a competitive edge. If companies discover that having employees in the office is a competitive advantage, then I don't care how harshly HN lambasts office work, it will make a comeback. I expect the result will be somewhere in the middle. Certainly different jobs and industries are going to be affected differently. As HN is mostly computer jockeys, I have no doubt that remote work will be more common to the people here.
sva_ 5y ago
Is it possible that this pushback against working from home might (at least in part) be motivated by a desire of keeping real-estate prices up? After all, if offices aren't needed anymore, prices would probably plummet, and real estate is a very popular asset among a certain group of people.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  And housing prices as well, if people weren't tied to geography by a commute they can work from wherever they like and a lot of them would move somewhere a lot cheaper.
jdhn 5y ago
I really believe that if the push to return to the office continues, we're going to see articles crying as to how "entitled workers" are leaving companies who push for limiting/ending remote work. As an anecdote, I had a conference call with coworkers from another company who said that there were lots of people from their company that were leaving because the company had reneged on their promise to continue full time remote work.
whoisjuan 5y ago
Here’s the thing, while remote work this year has been a net positive in productivity for many tech companies, that wasn’t necessarily the case for all companies, mainly because of their inability to measure it. Many companies were more concerned about trying to keep a iron grip on employees than enabling them to be successful as remote workers. There are some naive executives who believe having an office is a big part of what helps them operate successfully. These executives are just entrenched in the old ways. They can’t fathom a world where their employees can work efficiently in a remote environment because they build all their management based on the idea of personal face to face interactions. There’s another group of executives that’s even worse. Those who simply operate from mistrust. They need to have their employees in the office because otherwise they can’t validate and measure their employees output (although this is just as hard to measure in person). They need to see the employee physically present because for them employees salaries can only be justified when they add working hours, not based on the merits of their output. But a reality check is here for all of them. One positive outcome from Covid is that it’s fully rebalancing the power between employer and employee. Definitely eager to see how this plays out.
okareaman 5y ago
If enough people hold firm this is a chance to change the corporate office paradigm for good. There are a lot of good reasons to WFH and a lot of bad reasons managers have for not allowing it. I programmed from home for 12 years, then worked in corporate offices for 5 years. I did my best work at home. I was really happy with my work output and quality of work I produced. Then working in offices I could never adjust and both myself and my employers were disappointed in my output. It's due to a lot of small things, like I sometimes get burned out thinking about a problem and need to take a quick nap to refresh. This was never possible in an office. It was better for my wife too. If she wanted to run out while the kids were napping, I was there for them while I worked. It was just so nice compared to the hell of being stuck in some office park with people I didn't know that well and didn't even like that much.
hvocode 5y ago
I wish it were only leaders who are desperate to get back to the office, but it seems like the other force pushing for return to office time is the cohort of people where work IS their social circle. I can't relate to that crowd - even when I was young and single, my social circle was largely outside work and in grad school I tended to socialize outside my department. This social argument I sympathize with - nobody likes to be lonely. But please - don't force everyone to go back to one model of working simply to support a subset of people who've chosen to make their life revolve around their employment.
rgblambda 5y ago
>As another worker put it, “I can tell you, most people really don’t give 2 flips about ‘company culture’ and think it’s BS.” Is there anyone who doesn't think "company culture" is bullshit?
- Hypergraphe 5y ago
  "company culture"... decoy for "teambuilding on your free time"...
- antonvs 5y ago
  > Is there anyone who doesn't think "company culture" is bullshit? There shouldn't be, but if life has taught me anything, it's that there's always an audience for whatever bullshit someone is selling. Politics in the US over the past few years provides proof of this that's so far past reasonable doubt it's not funny.
EMM_386 5y ago
As a software engineer, I will never, ever work from an office again. There are zero reasons to. And this isn't even related to Covid, I've been working remotely for 6 years. Everything I do is carefully tracked. Every line of code is logged and timestamped. All my assigned tasks are viewable by anyone, with every associated line of code one click away. When I am connected to the VPN to access work resources, everything is carefully logged. If we need to do a meeting, we use Microsoft Teams. You can chat with me whenever you want, and can schedule a video call whenever you need to. At least with my job, a senior software engineer, there is zero need for an office. I realize not everyone is in my position, and there are plenty of jobs that do require you to go into a physical office space. This career is not one of them.
johbjo 5y ago
The observation that many office jobs are meaningless must have been made many times before the pandemic, and I/we can't be the only ones to have made it. Maybe the purpose of many workplaces, from the perspective of some managers and workers, is not only related to the output of the company. I have come to the belief that part of the purpose of "work" for some people is "live role playing" careers, and thus they want to fill the roles for the other co-players. From this perspective, it's not surprising that people want to return to the office.
Hypergraphe 5y ago
Yeah well, I think it depends of your workplace. I would never want to trade back my quiet home office with a view and my high end gear for my company's fully crowded and super loud openspace and the low cost gear waiting for me at my desk. I don't want to waste my time commuting anymore as it doesnt make any sense. But I admit that I miss eating lunch with some of my coworkers or taking a cofee break with them.
IdontRememberIt 5y ago
I wonder if returning to a more human/intimate offices size (vs open spaces) would not solve a big part of the frustrations about productivity. (Only because I remember my first offices +20 years ago).
mbrodersen 5y ago
Offering remote work is a competitive advantage. You get access to a larger pool of talent. The smart companies realise this. If you are a manager and you can’t figure out how to manage people remotely, then you are an incompetent manager.

124 points by aseerdbnarng 5y ago

emc3 5y ago

In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. They will try to decrease WFH compensation initially, like the loss of benefits threat in the article, but the number of potential employers is higher for WFH workers, giving them leverage.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Compensation changes are hidden in “cost of living” adjustments.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Inflation is already here. Miserly COLAs are not going to cut it for the next few years.
mech422 5y ago
I've been WFH for 20 years now... It gets easier all the time, the pay gets better, and I actually have a much better setup at home then I've ever had in an office (Granted, I've had 20 years to set it up...) I'm not concerned about 'losing out' in any capacity going forward, especially now when its become so common.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Where do you find work? Is it all for one client or are you more of a consultant/contractor?
  - mech422 5y ago
    I'm currently a full time employee at a contract firm. Befor e that, I was full time with an international firm and before that I was full time with a local CDN provider. that goes back about 10 years...
  - not_jd_salinger 5y ago
    In tech there have always been a relatively large number of remote friendly companies. I worked for the better part of a decade fully remote, in full time, reasonably well paying positions at a wide range of companies. I only returned to an office a bit before pandemic broke out and don't have any intention of returning to an office full time now. After the pandemic there was an even larger number of companies that are at the very least remote friendly. Most < 1000 employee tech companies I know are never planning on returning to an office full time. I also believe a fairly large number of the major tech companies are also planning to be fully remote friendly going into the future. Pre-pandemic getting a fully remote job didn't take too much work find, and now nearly all companies I've talked to in the last few months are willing to support remote roles.
  - autarch 5y ago
    I've been working remote since 2002. I've done both full time and contracting. I've been full time only since 2011 at two different employers. There are _enough_ employers that will allow fully remote employees that it's not hard to find jobs, and it's only gotten easier in the time I've been doing it.
the-pigeon 5y ago
> In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. Why? A company hires an employee because they think they can make more profit than that employee costs them. My expenses have nothing to do with the equation except when the company wants to be cheap and figures out they can up their profit margin per employee by lowering salaries due to low competition for employees.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Your expenses also do not determine your value to the company. It's simple supply and demand. If you require $250/hr but a smart person in say Brasil will do the same work, to the same standards, for $100/hr, what is the rationale for the company to keep paying you? You might complain that the Brasilian is leaving money on the table but that's not in your control.
  - antonvs 5y ago
    > You might complain that the Brasilian is leaving money on the table He's not though. He's undercutting someone else to get the business. Race to the bottom is one of the most fun features of capitalism!
nullc 5y ago
> In-office work needs to be compensated differently than WFH. Do you mean pay you more because the office no longer needs to provide space and power for you, but you provide it for yourself? ... and because you can be called 'in' faster without the 45 minute commute? :P
- tpxl 5y ago
  No joke - yes. If my company gets big enough to need employees, I plan to compensate them for home offices.
qchris 5y ago
For one, I'd argue that working from home probably requires additional pay over working in the office. I'm sure some people have a "spare" bedroom that they can convert into an office, but there's a lot of people, including almost all the tech-oriented professionals under 30 that I know, that don't even have their own one bedroom apartment, let alone are able to pay for a second bedroom just in case. Working at the kitchen table all day around roommates (or partners, or children if you're a parent, or maybe even disruptive pets) is not exactly a recipe for deep work productivity. If workers are also now expected to provision their own work space (space, desk, chairs, monitors, etc.), then the compensation model around those jobs also needs to be adjusted to account for that.
- walshemj 5y ago
  And a lot of property now needs expanding or is no longer attractive to buyers. the other question is should employers pay a share of your property tax contribute to a sinking fund for repairs
- ghaff 5y ago
  Companies will make offers. Prospective employees will negotiate based on conditions and salary. For some, working from home reduces costs (raises hand). No commute and no real incremental costs; I have a dedicated office and have never had free food offered in an office. For others it's a big cost. If someone wants to live in a dense urban core and a company is 100% remote, that may not be a good deal.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> If workers are also now expected to provision their own work space (space, desk, chairs, monitors, etc.), then the compensation model around those jobs also needs to be adjusted to account for that I've been working from home for 5 years. Standing desk, Aeron chair, dual ultra wide monitors, it goes on and on. It all adds up to about 1% of my compensation over those years. I spend whatever it takes to have a great working environment, if I see something that will incrementally improve the 8 hours a day I spend working I immediately buy it. As far as my income goes it amounts to a rounding error. >> there's a lot of people, including almost all the tech-oriented professionals under 30 that I know That's called selection bias. You have chosen to live in a location with expensive real estate. Good for you. Other people made different choices. I have rooms in my house I haven't been in for months.
thrower123 5y ago
Yeah, I'd want to be paid at least 25% more, since by requiring me to commute to the office, you are taking two hours a day from me that's of no use to either of us.

kevingadd 5y ago

"One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post" Some of the stuff companies do truly baffles me. It's only the beginning of June, you can't really assume your whole team is fully vaccinated. Why would you bring everyone in for lunch and then send them home? All downside and near-zero upside. It'd be another matter if it was a full day event where you did some meetings or seminars in addition to the meal, but are you really going to make people commute in, eat, and go home?

irq11 5y ago
Vaccines have been readily available to anyone who wants them (in the US) since mid April, even in the highest demand parts of the country. If you are not vaccinated, at this point, there is no excuse. (edit: obviously, I’m assuming the article is talking about a company in the US, since the article is about the US.)
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  IANAD, but I'm sure there are some medical contraindications for certain individuals, such as people who are immunocompromised, that may legitimately keep them from being vaccinated. That's why achieving herd immunity is important, and my understanding is that we aren't quite there yet. Never change, HN.
  - irq11 5y ago
    Herd immunity is not a fixed vaccination percentage pulled from Anthony Fauci’s latest media appearance. It’s the immunity level at which cases stabilize and begin to decline. It is defined by observation. Cases are at all-time lows in the most vaccinated locations, and are dropping rapidly nationwide.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      No, it's the level at which people not eligible for vaccination are no longer at risk because most of their peers are incapable of spreading the disease. The political aspects are just some stuff some people made up.

post_break 5y ago

We were told for years, there is no flex time, don't even think about it. While the higher ups obviously flexed whenever they wanted to. Suddenly covid hits and I'm scrambling to get everyone setup so they can work remote. We go a whole year working remote with almost no issues or lost productivity. And now we're back in the office and the mood has definitely changed.

tibbydudeza 5y ago
That sucks.
walshemj 5y ago
Are you salaried ?
pinkybanana 5y ago
> We go a whole year working remote with almost no issues or lost productivity I've heard a lot about this claim "no lost productivity". However that is for the employer to be evaluated, not for the employees. The complaining employees lose credibility when they make claims like that in complex fields, because productivity is very complex metric to be measured in many jobs.
- sidlls 5y ago
  Unless you're talking about something that can be objectively measured--widget output from an assembly line, average times to retrieve/place something in a warehouse, and so on--the "complexity" you note is just fertile ground for gaming. It's downright trivial for an employer to massage "productivity" numbers in a way that supports their agenda.

commandlinefan 5y ago

Well, if remote work isn't feasible (for the reasons stated), neither is offshoring. Or outsourcing. Or physical satellite offices.

aplummer 5y ago
I’m not sure that sells it, because I don’t think offshoring and outsourcing is feasible…
- addicted 5y ago
  The flip side is that if remote work is absolutely the same, then offshoring and outsourcing are also. Why have your employees work remotely in a city 100 miles from their original office at 80-90% of the cost when you can have them be 1000 miles from the office at 30-40% of the cost. If you find employees in Central and South America they would also be in the same timezone.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    We just have twenty years of experience that any initial cost savings generated by outsourcing are illusory and come due with interest on the back end.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I agree that has been the case but I don't think it is a certainty that it will continue to tbe the case. Certainly many immigrant workers in IT do good work and are well paid. Why could they not do the same thing from their home country?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Depends what you're outsourcing. We outsourced manufacturing and those cost savings were certainly not illusory. A lot of communications type work suffered from outsourcing due to language barriers and poor connectivity and poorer skillset from workers in other areas of the world (or even the US). That may not always continue to be the case. I'm guessing the top 10% or 20% of workers do not need to be worried since they can provide so much value that outsourcing is not worth it. But if you're in the bottom 4 quintiles, I would be wary.

throwawayboise 5y ago

One worker complained that the manager “wanted butts in seats because we couldn’t be trusted to [work from home] even though we’d been doing it since last March,” adding: “I’m giving my notice on Monday.” I've seen this with my current employer. Their message has been that going forward at some point, "Working remotely is not an option." There's really no reason I can't work from home. I've been doing it since March 2020. I don't have any customer-facing responsibilities; I administer servers and write code. The only thing that requires my physical presence is the occasional need to install or replace hardware. It was one thing to not support remote work in 2019 when it was an unknown. In 2021, we've proven it can work; workers know it, and employers should know it. There's no un-ringing that bell. I'm older, and have no desire to return to the startup lifestyle again but there's no doubt I can find remote work. As I see it, the choice is mine, and taking a mini-retirement and looking for new opportunities if my employer wants to be inflexible is not exacly unappealing.

geodel 5y ago
All great points. It is similar for me. Server/App admin plus some coding. Most meetings happen over webex because teams are distributed across cities in different time zones. But working from home is not an option. Also actually flying to different offices to collaborate face-to-face is not an option either because "Hehe who flies mere devs for meetings, isn't there a slack / zoom / webex?"
- sneak 5y ago
  If you know how to code and admin boxes, you have your pick of jobs. There’s no reason to ever go back to an office if you don’t want to unless you’re on some terrible immigration twist-your-arm situation where you get deported if you get fired from that particular job.
vertis 5y ago
I've been doing remote contract work since I became a digital nomad in 2018. Before the pandemic it was absolutely a minority of companies that were comfortable with the concept. A lot of them from the Basecamp school of thinking. Since the pandemic kicked off, this has changed. Despite the fact that there are many employers out there trying to force everybody back into the office, there is also a large pool of companies that have realised the wheels didn't fall off during the pandemic. I've been speaking to a lot of current and ex-colleagues in the tech industry. Both on the management and on the employee side. Even the managers are increasing looking at where they're going to work from long term. Realising that they really can move to cheaper cities (in Europe), possibly with better weather, and keep working just the same. I think there will be a bit of tension this year, but I can't see it just going back to the way it was previously. So many of the previous objections are just obviously false now. In a lot of cases I've seen teams become more productive (not to mention happier), because they're not sitting in an office. I've seen the faces of most of their kids and pets now, and it turns out that's pretty cool as well. That BBC host was a real trendsetter :D

addicted 5y ago

As far as I can tell this article contains fewer arguments about whether work from home is better or not, and more arguments about how certain companies are messing up the transition through bad communication. The one argument, #3, about corporate culture is in favor of not WFH. They are saying that research shows corporate culture is important, but the methods used to build corporate culture when people are WFH are failing badly. Which indicates that if corporate culture is indeed important, then the only way to really build it without pointless BS is by having people working together in a physical location.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Office is a space where complete strangers can become a collective, sharing common goals and establishing bonds that can help achieve great things. This is possible with remote work, but much harder. In my experience, remote workers are generally rather detached from their colleagues and projects. YMMV, but I vastly prefer working from office.

throwawayboise 5y ago
This has only been my experience in very small startups with all the people in the same room or at least the same building. In all my other jobs, including the startups that have grown into more traditional businesses, I have been pretty much a heads-down worker. I come in, do my work, and go home. There's not really much bonding or common culture going on that remote/on-site would really change anything.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
This strikes me as a very romantic view of what offices are. Maybe it is possible for an office to be like this, but I would suspect that it is an exceptional case. Mostly offices are where people go to do sufficient work to get paid, and the only real goal coworkers have in common there is a desire to receive paycheques and make sure the company doesn't go under so they can continue receiving paycheques. If people didn't have to make money they absolutely would not spend their days pushing paperwork around and sending emails as part of some shared collective goal.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I wasn't talking about what all offices are, but about what some of them can be. It is clear that many offices are dull hives that suck the life out of their occupants. But why be in such office? Why should someone have a job just to get a paycheck, getting miserable in return? There are always options. To look at it from a different side, office is a tool, which, used correctly, can give a tremendous boost to productivity. But it is not a given. It has natural advantage - like physical proximity between people and disadvantages - the need to commute being one of them.

darth_avocado 5y ago

The whole pushback against remote work is absolutely nuts. When the companies were staring at shutdowns and loss of revenue, everyone gladly accepted the idea that people can work from home. And contrary to the popular belief, productivity increased (our own CEO admitted at one point in an all hands). But the minute there was a sign things are opening up, there's a complete opposite viewpoint being pushed from the same people. I think there's a lot of different things going on here: 1. Control freaks are losing their minds in the Pandemic and they want some of the control back. 2. Extroverts are losing it and want things to be social again. 3. People who have bullshit jobs and absolutely don't add any value except look busy on "make work" are having a hard time justify their need in the company. 4. People who absolutely cant stand their families want to spend time away from them. And to all of these people I will say, go to the office if that's something you want, but don't make me go too.

mywittyname 5y ago
Just wait for the mass exodus. Remote work is turning out to be a requirement for hiring people. So once the company starts bleeding (good) people who find remote jobs with other companies, they are going to be difficult/impossible to replace. At some point, the execs will have to suck it up and offer remote work.
- pinkybanana 5y ago
  If remote work is a winning concept on the market, why we needed coronavirus crisis for it to get adopted? Are markets not working?
  - luxpir 5y ago
    Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few.
  - machinebun 5y ago
    > Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few. You need enough buy in from enough companies to actually have a competitive market for remote work. I think things were moving in that direction but slowly (as things tend to do) - COVID just accelerated the trend.

madengr 5y ago

We had higher billable hours during the summer lockdown than ever, though they still came up with the excuse for 2% raises; “well the economy is not good”.

wrs 5y ago

I'm trying and failing to think of any important part of "company culture" that only works for people in the same room. Culture is made of shared values (codified in actions, not PowerPoints), communication norms, peer reactions, shared history, inside jokes...all of that stuff can work remotely. If your company has more than one office it already has to work remotely.

walshemj 5y ago
I think that is not really true remember work is not just "me me me" its a collective endeavor.
cosmotic 5y ago
In this instance, corporate culture is a stand in for 'what the boss wants the boss gets'. I can't think of a company culture that is healthy and also different from what it appears everyone wants: flexibility in their work location and schedule. Who are these worker-bees that prefer to waste 2 hours of their day in stressful transit to get to a stressful environment that have no negative health consequences from the stress?
GavinMcG 5y ago
If your company has more than one office, they each have their own culture, which hews more or less closely to the cultural commonalities between offices. Shared values, communication norms, peer reactions, shared history, and inside jokes can exist when people aren't in the same room, but that culture tends to be a lot thinner. It would be more fruitful to discuss whether that's a good or bad thing—the bare existence of culture isn't what anyone is talking about here.
- wrs 5y ago
  Sure, there is office culture, but I think “company culture” has to be what’s in common between the offices, by definition, no?
  - GavinMcG 5y ago

zeta0134 5y ago

I'm firmly in camp "office time sounds wonderful" because I live alone, and as it turns out, not having any humans nearby is downright depressing. I'm also somewhat introverted (weird, right?) and while I was living with other people, I desired quite the opposite; staying at home was much less distracting than being in the chaos of a shared space most days. So which do I prefer? Ehh, it depends. I'm not planning to live alone forever, it's just where I'm at right now. I'd imagine others are in a similar boat; we're different, and not necessarily constant either. So, as much as I encourage opening the offices back up and will take part in that space if given the chance, I wouldn't force that on anyone. I think the responsible thing to do is to measure performance rather than seat-in-chair, and so long as everyone's pulling their weight, let each employee make their own informed decision. It's their health on the line, after all, and healthy employees do better work.

mgkimsal 5y ago
Sounds like... you want some office time and probably some "non-office" work time, and that you'd want that to be at least partially under your control (both now and long term). And you probably recognize the benefits in having people have a (large) degree of autonomy in how they do their work. There are some things which are better done face to face, in person, and some things where... working solo (in surroundings of your choice) can allow one to be more productive. IMO, there's no one "right" answer on this issue beyond "more autonomy", and I suspect we'll see more contractors/freelancers in Coworking spaces and more WFH arrangements to accommodate that, even if it's not touted publicly much. It's somehow fine to have a group of people you've never met work in India, and they can get their work done OK, but you can't do the same thing from 15 miles away from your main office? Just insane.
vertis 5y ago
While I think a hybrid situation is perfectly fine, there are also a bunch of solutions to this that don't require a permanent office. For example, co-working can facilitate some of the desired interaction while at the same time putting the power in your hands.
daltont 5y ago
I'm an introvert and WFH all the time has made me borderline crazy, but it is sure nice not to have to drive to an office 30-minutes away when most days I could just starting working.

CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago

The pros and cons of remote work have posted many times here. Just like most things, it is going to come down to market forces determining whether remote work will stick. If employers discover that they can pay less (in real estate and salary!) if they offer remote work as an option, while keeping the efficiency of an office worker, then the companies that do this will have a competitive edge. If companies discover that having employees in the office is a competitive advantage, then I don't care how harshly HN lambasts office work, it will make a comeback. I expect the result will be somewhere in the middle. Certainly different jobs and industries are going to be affected differently. As HN is mostly computer jockeys, I have no doubt that remote work will be more common to the people here.

sva_ 5y ago

Is it possible that this pushback against working from home might (at least in part) be motivated by a desire of keeping real-estate prices up? After all, if offices aren't needed anymore, prices would probably plummet, and real estate is a very popular asset among a certain group of people.

lamontcg 5y ago
And housing prices as well, if people weren't tied to geography by a commute they can work from wherever they like and a lot of them would move somewhere a lot cheaper.

jdhn 5y ago

I really believe that if the push to return to the office continues, we're going to see articles crying as to how "entitled workers" are leaving companies who push for limiting/ending remote work. As an anecdote, I had a conference call with coworkers from another company who said that there were lots of people from their company that were leaving because the company had reneged on their promise to continue full time remote work.

whoisjuan 5y ago

Here’s the thing, while remote work this year has been a net positive in productivity for many tech companies, that wasn’t necessarily the case for all companies, mainly because of their inability to measure it. Many companies were more concerned about trying to keep a iron grip on employees than enabling them to be successful as remote workers. There are some naive executives who believe having an office is a big part of what helps them operate successfully. These executives are just entrenched in the old ways. They can’t fathom a world where their employees can work efficiently in a remote environment because they build all their management based on the idea of personal face to face interactions. There’s another group of executives that’s even worse. Those who simply operate from mistrust. They need to have their employees in the office because otherwise they can’t validate and measure their employees output (although this is just as hard to measure in person). They need to see the employee physically present because for them employees salaries can only be justified when they add working hours, not based on the merits of their output. But a reality check is here for all of them. One positive outcome from Covid is that it’s fully rebalancing the power between employer and employee. Definitely eager to see how this plays out.

okareaman 5y ago

If enough people hold firm this is a chance to change the corporate office paradigm for good. There are a lot of good reasons to WFH and a lot of bad reasons managers have for not allowing it. I programmed from home for 12 years, then worked in corporate offices for 5 years. I did my best work at home. I was really happy with my work output and quality of work I produced. Then working in offices I could never adjust and both myself and my employers were disappointed in my output. It's due to a lot of small things, like I sometimes get burned out thinking about a problem and need to take a quick nap to refresh. This was never possible in an office. It was better for my wife too. If she wanted to run out while the kids were napping, I was there for them while I worked. It was just so nice compared to the hell of being stuck in some office park with people I didn't know that well and didn't even like that much.

hvocode 5y ago

I wish it were only leaders who are desperate to get back to the office, but it seems like the other force pushing for return to office time is the cohort of people where work IS their social circle. I can't relate to that crowd - even when I was young and single, my social circle was largely outside work and in grad school I tended to socialize outside my department. This social argument I sympathize with - nobody likes to be lonely. But please - don't force everyone to go back to one model of working simply to support a subset of people who've chosen to make their life revolve around their employment.

rgblambda 5y ago

>As another worker put it, “I can tell you, most people really don’t give 2 flips about ‘company culture’ and think it’s BS.” Is there anyone who doesn't think "company culture" is bullshit?

Hypergraphe 5y ago
"company culture"... decoy for "teambuilding on your free time"...
antonvs 5y ago
> Is there anyone who doesn't think "company culture" is bullshit? There shouldn't be, but if life has taught me anything, it's that there's always an audience for whatever bullshit someone is selling. Politics in the US over the past few years provides proof of this that's so far past reasonable doubt it's not funny.

EMM_386 5y ago

As a software engineer, I will never, ever work from an office again. There are zero reasons to. And this isn't even related to Covid, I've been working remotely for 6 years. Everything I do is carefully tracked. Every line of code is logged and timestamped. All my assigned tasks are viewable by anyone, with every associated line of code one click away. When I am connected to the VPN to access work resources, everything is carefully logged. If we need to do a meeting, we use Microsoft Teams. You can chat with me whenever you want, and can schedule a video call whenever you need to. At least with my job, a senior software engineer, there is zero need for an office. I realize not everyone is in my position, and there are plenty of jobs that do require you to go into a physical office space. This career is not one of them.

johbjo 5y ago

The observation that many office jobs are meaningless must have been made many times before the pandemic, and I/we can't be the only ones to have made it. Maybe the purpose of many workplaces, from the perspective of some managers and workers, is not only related to the output of the company. I have come to the belief that part of the purpose of "work" for some people is "live role playing" careers, and thus they want to fill the roles for the other co-players. From this perspective, it's not surprising that people want to return to the office.

Hypergraphe 5y ago

Yeah well, I think it depends of your workplace. I would never want to trade back my quiet home office with a view and my high end gear for my company's fully crowded and super loud openspace and the low cost gear waiting for me at my desk. I don't want to waste my time commuting anymore as it doesnt make any sense. But I admit that I miss eating lunch with some of my coworkers or taking a cofee break with them.

IdontRememberIt 5y ago

I wonder if returning to a more human/intimate offices size (vs open spaces) would not solve a big part of the frustrations about productivity. (Only because I remember my first offices +20 years ago).

mbrodersen 5y ago

Offering remote work is a competitive advantage. You get access to a larger pool of talent. The smart companies realise this. If you are a manager and you can’t figure out how to manage people remotely, then you are an incompetent manager.