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The work-from-home future is destroying bosses' brains

• jacksnipe 5y ago
  I don't want to discount this kind of reason for wanting to "return to the office", and I think it's definitely part of the cause. However, speaking as an Individual Contributor, I want to be back in the office so badly. I miss feeling really, humanly connected to my teammates. There's just no positive sense of camaraderie. Sure, we can bitch together about things, but I just find myself unable to connect with my coworkers as fellow human beings in my monkey sphere. Before we went WFH I legitimately loved my job. Now I hate it.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Of course, you're depending on your coworkers feeling likewise.
  • matz1 5y ago
    Instead of 100% return to the office how about having (optional) get together offline meetup every once in a while, it can be about work or simple lunch.
    • ebiester 5y ago
      How do you do that when everyone lives x,000 miles away now? Why would I stay in <big city close enough to commute> and pay <outrageous> rent/mortgage if I'm remote? (Honest truth: that's what remoter weeks are for.)
      • CoastalCoder 5y ago
        Could flying the remote staff to an in-person meeting every 1-2 months be a good balance? As long as the flights are reasonably short (e.g., within the continental U.S. or within the E.U.), it's probably still cheaper than maintaining office space for the remote workers.
        • ghaff 5y ago
          Quarterly is more doable. That's basically what my extended team did pre-pandemic.
          • throwaway_25434 5y ago
            And now you are discriminating against senior people with family/kids who just can’t fly out of town for a week every couple months.
            • matz1 5y ago
              at some point, you just have to say : well that's too bad.
            • ghaff 5y ago
              Quarterly (or less often) is every 3 months. And at least all the senior people I work with already travel a lot more often that that under normal circumstances. People can and should absolutely pick the jobs that work for them. And that may include positions where you go into an office daily and rarely travel. But, traveling to an off/on-site every few months for a work week is probably one of the costs you pay if you want to be remote. If you want a position that is 100% remote that never requires you to physically leave your home, you're welcome to look for such. But don't expect a lot of options at a well-paying tech job. Unless you can do something as a remote consultant.
              • irq 5y ago
                > If you want a position that is 100% remote that never requires you to physically leave your home, you're welcome to look for such. Every job I've had from 2010 to 2021 has been like this. Some had optional but not required in person meetups, some had no meetups. These jobs are not hard to find if you have a good reputation for being effective remotely.
                • ghaff 5y ago
      • enobrev 5y ago
        Just chiming in to say some of us live in the big expensive cities precisely because of the life we lead outside of work. Otherwise, agreed.
      • robotburrito 5y ago
        Because there is more to life than work and cheap rent. Large cities are cultural hubs with thousands of interesting people and many wonderful things to experience.
  • twobitshifter 5y ago
    Imagine a non-pandemic environment where you could go to a buddy’s house and work. Or for many people, their closest relationships are with their spouse and family. You no longer have to be separate from them for most of your waking hours. Work picks your “friends” for you and in many cases you won’t get along. It seems like you were lucky to be in a good situation.
    • loopz 5y ago
      I wouldn't want to mix friendships and work. I'd also be wary about alliances forming outside of the workplace.
      • jimmyspice 5y ago
        I think they meant working at a non-colleagues house. At least, that's what I plan to do when it's possible, every now and then. I think the change of pace would be nice, back at university I'd do the same with people not on my course. Being genuinely fond of each other makes time go faster. Of course, I'd also want to work outside of the office, with my colleagues too. A change of environment every now and then can't hurt.
    • rodgerd 5y ago
      > Imagine a non-pandemic environment where you could go to a buddy’s house and work. I'm imagining it and it sounds like the literal worst thing.
      • h4waii 5y ago
        You could, not have to. You would have the option to, while for most people they simply do not.
    • hatchnyc 5y ago
      Pre-pandemic I used to occasionally do this with my coworkers and my boss, it was nice. Of course now all my coworkers and many people I knew have left the city and moved out of state, so this won't be possible again.
  • silicon2401 5y ago
    As an IC, I fully support extroverts going back to the office. I just want introverts like myself to have the option to never go back to the office. I don't understand why people think it's either one or the other
    • CoastalCoder 5y ago
      As an introvert myself, I think I totally get your take on this. But I've also been the only remote member of an otherwise in-person team. It was a truly terrible experience (as many others have written). I fear that the policy you're suggesting would make everything better for those in the office (the extroverts) and worse for those working remotely (the introverts).
      • bpye 5y ago
        I have been in that position before, and with certain groups it has been difficult. My, perhaps optimistic, hope is that post-COVID even those that return to the office will be more understanding for the challenges of those that are remote, it is an experience we have all lived now.
      • silicon2401 5y ago
        Frankly there's not much I dislike more than having to be in the office. I'd take the risk any day of the week.
    • stank345 5y ago
      FWIW I'm definitely an introvert and I can't wait to get back in the office. I don't want to have to talk to people all day but I really want some actual meatspace interaction. Being locked up for a year with two small children and only my wife as the other adult to talk to has not been good for my mental health.
      • bpye 5y ago
        Is this perhaps a COVID specific issue? Even during COVID I've kept in touch with a group of friends, albeit smaller. I still have the chance to go get a coffee or head to the gym, but I get to decide what those interactions are now.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• aeternum 5y ago
  It's easy to deride middle management especially when they try to micromanage by requiring people to be in-office or via other forms of surveillance. However measuring productivity / output is an really tough problem. If you're a manager, how do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought? Especially with software, estimation is notoriously inaccurate. I think one of the only methods is competition. Was another company or team able to deliver the same feature with less resource expenditure?
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > If you're a manager, how do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working.... It's sort of strange that we even take this point of view: that somehow human output is to be measured in the way a machine's output is measured or the efficiency of a light bulb. But that opens up a whole can of worms....
    • zug_zug 5y ago
      Well so the basic idea is this: Either we can A) evaluate/measure engineers' output (e.g. commits/tickets), and promote/hire/fire based on whether they do enough of it per/day ("meritocratic"?) B) Just plop engineers in chairs, and peer over their shoulder to make sure they aren't on reddit all day, and then trust that however long it took them to build the thing was reasonable. A is really hard, it was the false-promise of agile. But in a remote culture, you either have to do A or install screen-monitoring software on your engineers to do B (or just hope/pray). Of course perhaps there's another option, like a technical manager who reviews the volume/quantity of PRs and assesses based on that, but seems rare.
      • autarch 5y ago
        I'm a "middle manager" managing a team of 3 right now, and my team has been all remote since I started in this role 4+ years ago. I have over 20 years of software dev experience and I still contribute to our code base. It's pretty easy for me to listen to my team's daily updates at our standups and figure out how they're doing without A or B. If something's taker longer than our estimate and they explain why, it's not hard to tell if they're making this up (FWIW, no one who works on this team has ever done that). And yeah, sometimes their productivity dips because they're tired, distracted by non-work stuff, or they just find this particular piece of work uninspiring. That's ok, no one operates at top productivity all the time. But all of this just highlights the fact that if you want a manager of a development team to be able to evaluate team members' performance, that person needs to understand the job that those team members are doing.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  My fear is that the author is 100% correct but that what will go away in the near future isn't the office itself, but full-time salaries.
  • munk-a 5y ago
    I've always found it weird that working a salaried position means you've got to have your butt in a chair 9-5 regardless of anything else going on - but you also need to be on hand to fix problems at 10PM without any compensation earned. It might honestly be nice if we transitioned professional work to hourly compensation - I think that would strongly reinforce the bounds of what you, the employee, owe the company and what compensation you should earn in exchange.
    • handrous 5y ago
      If a shift to hourly happens, I suspect we're going to see reluctance from a lot of businesses to pay actually-equivalent hourly rates, which will give them sticker shock ("$200/hr!? I was only paying about $100/hr before with salaries!" Right, but your workers were only spending an average of half their time on stuff that will count as hourly-billable work—numbers exaggerated for ease of calculation, but that's the reaction I expect, in general), coupled with a lot of newbies willing to take those too-low rates because they haven't done the math, and think the rates look high, especially if we're talking (as we most likely are) contract-type work without any kind of benefits. IOW I expect a reduction in total effective comp for the sector, at least for the first few years, if that shift is widespread.
    • pnutjam 5y ago
      I push back on that and comp the time. I wish there was better regulation around comp time.
      • munk-a 5y ago
        At least in BC (and this is almost certainly illegal) a coworker of mine was once working for Telus and was denied the ability to take vacation in November and December due to it being a rush season - but was then also denied a request to have their unused vacation time either paid out or carried over. Neither of these halves are illegal on their own - together they're almost certainly illegal but damnit if labour laws aren't as clear as mud.
• hprotagonist 5y ago
  It's a fundamental debate about the nature of pay and work. Do you think you are paying $X/year to achieve Y goals? Or, do you think you are paying $x/hour to put an ass in a chair? Which one you pick seems to decide how you feel about flex time, remote work, ... .
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  The real issue at hand is that businesses do not like getting played the same way they've been playing employees for a long time. If I get my work done in 50% of the time I don't get to take any time off, and the "quota" moves up without moving up my pay (or at least not proportionately) . However if I'm late on my work there certainly will be "overtime" ... So which is it? Is it that I am paid for a certain quantity of work however long it takes, or that I'm paid for however much i can accomplish in a certain amount of time? (and during certain hours I might add...) They're contradictory so it cannot be both.
  • mdorazio 5y ago
    It’s neither. Unless you’re 1099/hourly or in sales you get paid to be available to work during a set period of time (generally not specific hours), regardless of how much you accomplish during that time. Keep in mind this works both ways - if you finish your work in 5 hours and spend the next 3 messing around on Reddit or whatever you still get paid for 8. Getting paid for actual hours worked isn’t as much fun as you probably think.
    • bagacrap 5y ago
      messing around on Reddit for 3 hours is a lot less useful than what I'd be doing at home if I had 3 hours to spare
      • maerF0x0 5y ago
        I've taken these spare time gaps to do work like things at work but that have lasting value beyond my work day/week/role. For example I'll read books.
    • standardUser 5y ago
      "if you finish your work in 5 hours and spend the next 3 messing around on Reddit or whatever you still get paid for 8" You say that almost like it's a good thing when it sounds to me like a tragic waste of life that benefits no one.
• munk-a 5y ago
  I, as much or more than most, fervently agree that companies don't own us - we exchange work for pay and that is a relationship that works best if respect flows both ways which, recently, has been declining. That all said - most of this article is just a rant about how terrible middle managers are and I feel where that's coming from but it's not an absolute. Management can be extremely strong at shielding you from unnecessary distractions and silliness when it's done well. There is real value in middle managers and, since transitioning to remote work, my manager and their manager have both been working hard to ensure that devs are able to stay as productive as they were while also striving to protect and defend personal time. I totally sympathize with people that have worked under space-occupiers and from what I've seen it's utterly miserable - but staying full remote doesn't mean a flat company structure is suddenly optimal for every workplace.
  • xemdetia 5y ago
    I agree that even middling quality middle managers provide plenty of value, but there definitely is a class of manager that does not know how to engage with all of their employee charges and make them effective. Most of the egregious side hustle situations I've run into have come from particular employees that felt they were so close to the chopping block that it didn't matter anyway, as they felt abandoned by their management chain either perceived or in fact. Most others have at least been respectful that the full time salary = time priority and because of that and reasonable task management it became not a problem.
  • rodgerd 5y ago
    > Management can be extremely strong at shielding you from unnecessary distractions and silliness when it's done well. It is unfortunate that a good manager, not unlike a good sysadmin, is invisible; you never realise how much of a shit umbrella they are.
    • munk-a 5y ago
      This is why, one on ones are great but you should also occasionally meet your manager and talk with them in a less formal setting. If you're out at dinner celebrating a new project release (especially if the drinks are flowing) - then you'll hear about all the shit they're keeping off your back.
• leros 5y ago
  One of the interesting things that happened at my company is that productivity instantly doubled when we started working remotely. The reality at my company is that people are only getting 20 hours or so of work done in the office - the rest is socialization, pointless meetings, lunches, or trying to look busy. When we went home for lockdown and kept working 40 hour weeks, not only did productive output double, but everyone burned out in a few weeks. In my opinion, the reality of working from home is that 20-30 hour work weeks need to be acceptable and we should use the rest of our time on non-working things, just like we did in the office, but now that time can be more meaningful to us.
  • thenewwazoo 5y ago
    Did it really double, or did boundaries erode? My company has been very clear in that they are measuring our productivity and also our working hours. Managers are being instructed to be very clear about establishing work/life boundaries (with the specifics being based on individual need). We similarly saw an increase in productivity, but the increase was far smaller once normalized for hours worked.
    • TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Productivity at my workplace went significantly up (and stayed up), but management has been clear that personal time is sacred, and I hardly ever see anyone on slack after work hours. Honestly, the biggest impediments to productivity at my workplace have nothing to do with where we work and everything to do with management style (heavy-handed Agile/Scrum, micromanagement, the works).
    • idrios 5y ago
      I'm surprised this perspective is not made more often. It's now much easier to work past 5 or 6pm or whenever you would normally end. Needing to return home to your family is no longer an excuse to stop working because you can be with your family while at work. All it takes is one developer on your team working evenings or weekends for the other developers to feel like they need to be working late too. There's also the fact that managers right now are more concerned about whether their team is working enough, rather than being concerned about their team working too much.
• jedberg 5y ago
  The whole idea of a salary is relatively new, since the industrial revolution. There were examples from earlier, but for the most part, everyone was what would now be a contractor. You'd negotiate to do a project for a set fee, or you'd negotiate to do whatever the boss needs at an hourly or daily wage for however long the boss needed you. The tradeoff was stability for flexibility. People at the low end of the wage spectrum accepted lower daily wages for the stability of employment, and then the trend moved upwards. It looks like the trend is now reversing at the highest salary levels. Most people now realize that having a salaried job isn't all that much more stable than being a contractor (in the US) with at-will employment in 49 states. I can definitely see a future where more software engineers are paid per project instead of a salary. And maybe some companies will continually hire certain people that they like over and over again.
  • macintux 5y ago
    I think that hinges so heavily on healthcare that it’s hard to predict whether gig employment will suffice for more people.
    • jedberg 5y ago
      Yes, agreed. A public option would help. But for example, I pay for my own insurance. There are programs now where you can pay for your own insurance with pretax dollars, so my contracting rate just accounts for this. Since it's likely that high pay software engineers will be the first to go, they are also the most likely to be able to absorb that cost and risk, even without a public option.
  • akiselev 5y ago
    That's an incredibly broad generalization to draw over several thousand years of human history. I'd argue since at least ancient Rome the predominant model for societies has been the clientela patronage model [1] and its feudal derivatives. The employment model is a formalization of that relationship that sets up basic "serf rights" that were otherwise open to horrendous abuse before. The contractors of yore were mercenaries - they were usually paid more than the soldiers in standing armies (sound familiar?). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome
• theshadowknows 5y ago
  I worry that leadership will decide that, since lots of people are working remotely anyway, they can hire agencies for less than FTEs and cut costs even further.
• Animats 5y ago
  How to manage work-from-home will probably be figured out, but you won't like it.[1] [1] https://www.teramind.co/ https://www.teramind.co/
  • handrous 5y ago
    I'm quite confident this is what any kind of WFH arrangement is going to look like for most people, in the near future. Some segment of the Tech Elect will not have to suffer it, but most people will, including programmers (most of whom aren't in FAANG or fancy start-ups or finance, and hell, some of those might resort to this kind of thing, too).
    • reidjs 5y ago
      I think it’s inevitable. If the software naively measures keystrokes or idle time, there are obvious ways to trick it. Unfortunately less technologically adept employees might not be able to circumvent it
    • bart_spoon 5y ago
      Whose to say this is solely applicable to WFH? Given the numerous anecdotes about how much time is spent at work socializing, I don't see how companies use this to monitor remote employees, but don't start utilizing this for those coming into an office.
  • edem 5y ago
    I think programmers need to unionize and reject this nonsense.
• endymi0n 5y ago
  So yes, as a "boss", the work-from-home future is definitely and absolutely destroying my brain, but I think the whole discussion around control in the article completely misses my point. I couldn't care less about control and never cared about seat-in-the-ass time before. But as an engineer become manager, I can absolutely feel both sides here: While everything development is massively more chill remote (no interruptions and hey, just go fill your dishwasher while stuff compiles), everything about managing remotely completely sucks for me. Videocalls. Whiteboarding. Interviewing. Strategic work. Reading emotions and connecting to people. What was a matter of just getting six people in a war room for a week and getting that hard problem done now takes eternities and every meeting is an energy hog. Honestly, I really enjoyed being a leader for a technology organization, but right now, I absolutely hate it. There seem to be others who cope better, but it's certainly not for me. I'm pretty curious on how all of this will turn out.
  • extr 5y ago
    Agreed. I think people don't realize how much WFH sucks for people who are not ICs (or don't care). Pre-pandemic, I was pointing my career in a management direction. I enjoyed both development work and managing and they both took advantage of different skill sets. However, in my mind, management had more upside in the long run, and if I was going to be going into an office every day anyway, might as well keep at it. So at the start of the pandemic I was doing remote management of a technical team. And all those negatives you mention started to add up. In the last few months I got a different job as a senior developer to take advantage of the unbelievable W/L balance of permanent WFH. I decided "being a developer remotely" >> "being a manager in the office" >> "being a developer in the office" >> "being a manager remotely". On the other hand for my partner who is non-technical and squarely in management, WFH is an endless nightmare of virtual meetings with no breaks. Hard to read people, hard to get people engaged, nonstop pings preventing what little focus time she has left. She wants to get back to an office ASAP, and I don't blame her.
    • cyberlurker 5y ago
      Why would those pings stop in office?
• SunlightEdge 5y ago
  At the moment one big reason remote work looks very attractive because 9-5 is still seen as the norm. I'm all for remote work and think its superior in pretty much every dimension you measure workers on. Having said that in a world where remote working is seen as the norm I do wonder how I will feel. I can see more and more technology being introduced to monitor staff at home for example. And the competition for jobs might spike. Personally I think I'll be ok. Here's hoping I can never go back to an office. But yeah I wonder if I'll still feel the same in a few years...
  • EMM_386 5y ago
    > And the competition for jobs might spike. And salaries may drop precipitously if you are in one of the higher paid countries, because you are now competing with people who may be equally as qualified as you but can make WAY less and afford a very comfortable standard of living anywhere in the world. Even within countries. Why may San Fran salaries when you just found someone in Fargo, SD that can do the same job and would prefer to stay there. I realize companies are discussing keeping Silicon Valley salaries wherever their employees choose to live, but that can't last. You could pack up and move to another country and live like an absolute king.
    • bsder 5y ago
      > I realize companies are discussing keeping Silicon Valley salaries wherever their employees choose to live, but that can't last. 1) Now that managers have realized that the programmers don't need to be in Silly Valley, the next realization is that they can hire outside Silly Valley and pay less. There are a whole lot of people in cities like Pittsburgh who will be happy to get 10% less than Silly Valley to get a remote job. And then 10% less than that to get a remote job. Lather, rinse, repeat until salraies are at the cost of living for the area. 2) Once they do that, they will realize that they can lay off almost everybody with a high salary for no net loss. If you're just a programmer, life is about to get bad. Hope you banked money while you had it.
      • matwood 5y ago
• syndacks 5y ago
  Hi, I started reading your article and then stopped because I didn't know what it was about. Consider leading with a more coherent argument in the first two paragraphs.
  • vinceguidry 5y ago
    I really wish Hacker News would stop being the place for people to share this kind of feedback. There's a comment section on the article itself.
• Bendy 5y ago
  I agree with the article but I am nonetheless pessimistic. I do think remote work will stay, the relentless force of capital is now on its side, but I’m afraid that’s only because even in a remote work paradigm the “managers” will still discover new ways to control, abuse and enjoy their employees.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• lopatin 5y ago
  TLDR: Middle managers are scum. “If you disagree you are part of the problem”. Remote work makes it harder to satisfy their need to control you. And that’s why corporations want you back in the office. Am I missing anything?
  • maliker 5y ago
    I agree. I read: "Middle managers are often graded on the work of their team, which means that they are actively incentivized to steal work and do little of their own." Seems like they would be incentivized to help their team perform and keep them happy (so they don't quit). I image this person would learn a lot from being a middle manager.
    • yunohn 5y ago
      You mention a best case scenario for middle management, while the article discusses a more worst case one. As always, reality is someone in between. Though in my experience, there’s usually more toxic middle managers.
    • davidgerard 5y ago
      The author is a business owner with employees.
• splistud 5y ago
  I don't get the feeling that people fully appreciate the gravity of 'my team is more productive now that we work at home'. That means your team does not need to be a team. The work is mostly commoditized and completely outsourceable, in whole or in part.
  • CoastalCoder 5y ago
    It sounds like you're saying a group of collaborating persons is only a "team" if they're physically colocated.
• juancn 5y ago
  The mistake is thinking about hours instead of output. The notion of full-time comes from the factory model, where your output is a function of the time you spend working. For knowledge work, we have known this is not the case for a very long time. Peter Drucker has written rivers of ink about the subject. The most valuable knowledge work, many times happen in the unlikeliest of places: the shower, working out, on a walk, watching tv, etc. Solutions to problems come when they do, not when you want them to. The main thing that happens at the office is the busy work.
  • granshaw 5y ago
    Similar to value based billing in the consulting world I wonder if we’ll see a future where everyone will be contractors paid by value delivered, and companies compete to keep different people on retainer for capacity. Fun to ponder about
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      My problem with value based pricing is that so much of my time is blocked from producing value by management actions. I would be peeved to be judged on one thing and then have my time spent on anything diverting from that.
    • throwaway_25434 5y ago
      It seems very unlikely that this would lead to value based pricing. On the contrary: with async WFH + everyone-a-contrator, the supply of work will become much more homogeneous and undifferentiated, which will lead to commoditization. Doesn’t mean prices will converge to minimum wage! But bargaining power will shift in favor of the buyer (i.e. the businesses)
    • 1270018080 5y ago
      The problem is trying to accurately quantify value. If there is a metric, it will be gamed.
• CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > Now, someone insufferable will read this and say “NOT ALL MIDDLE MANAGERS,” and let me tell you, if you’re thinking that, you are probably part of the problem. Clever. Take the obvious objection--that this is all based on stereotyping of the role and, frankly, cynical assumptions about the way management is or can be structured--and then just turn it into another symptom of management dysfunction! How very tautological: Before you tell me I'm wrong, let me tell you you're wrong for telling me I'm wrong. And yes, I'm a manager. And no, I never spent time '[walking] the floors, “[keeping] an eye on people” and, in meetings, “[speaking] for the group.”'' because I have far far more important things to do, like helping my staff understand the corporate vision so they can make good, independent decisions; helping solve problems for my staff when they come to me with issues; working with our sales team to manage customer expectations and negotiate on projects and solutions; managing the expectations of senior management based on the information I'm getting from my staff. And the list goes on and on. But, who am I to say. I'm just a middle manager who is, I'm sure, just part of the problem...
  • ectopod 5y ago
    Clever. Completely avoid the question. As an excellent middle manager, is having your staff working from home a problem for you? If so, why?
    • CarelessExpert 5y ago
      Not at all. Why would it be? I have a regular weekly 1:1 with each staff member (a while back I proposed making them bi-weekly but alas they insisted on maintaining this cadence... it's a lot more work for me, but it's what they need) to see how they're individually doing and to make sure they have what they need. We also have a regular team checkin to update on overall company status, discuss issues, etc. Through those mechanisms plus regular communication over Slack, email, ad hoc calls, etc, we stay connected and aligned. Meanwhile, I stay in contact with my management colleagues so we're in sync laterally and all pulling in the same direction. This isn't rocket science. It's not even that difficult. You just have to be a bit more intentional about staying in touch and connected with folks. If anything it reinforces for me how important effective middle management is, as done well, it serves as vital glue to keep a remote workforce connected. Now, I'm not gonna lie, when we first went full remote I was concerned that the 1:1's would be less effective, simply due to lack of body language, etc. But I'll freely admit I was wrong on that point. In fact, we hired and onboarded a new senior staff member during the pandemic and it went as well as any previous onboarding we've done. Though it's a bit strange realizing I've never actually spoken to him in person... At this point I think I'd be comfortable going full remote, maybe with the odd in-person get-together just to celebrate successes and so forth. I suspect the only thing stopping us is some older school senior management who aren't yet comfortable with that idea.
• a-dub 5y ago
  I've always thought it would be interesting to experiment with a 3 day work week where all work is done onsite, no remote access is possible and no after hours access is possible. I bet productivity would double.
• silksowed 5y ago
  this comment thread makes it apparent that WFH, hybrid, in person will become part of recruitment. allow people of all types to self sort
• whiddershins 5y ago
  This article presents such a dark take on the employer employee relationship that I can’t tell if I am truly blessed for the jobs I’ve had, or this person has a distorted view of incentives and motivations. I really can’t tell.
  • haskellandchill 5y ago
    You're truly blessed!
  • grecy 5y ago
    I worked for a very large Telco, and Telcos are the definition of "1960s conservative management style". It was the most management heavy place I could have ever conceived. This article is absolutely, 100% spot on the mark in every possible way. Of course I left that place ASAP!
• itqwertz 5y ago
  I could care less about what happens to my bosses. I’m never going back to an office unless they pay for my gas, mileage, time spent in traffic, office wardrobe, etc. It’s unfortunate for these companies that they were so reluctant previously to allow anyone but a reverse-schedule off-short worker have the privilege of not having to be in the office. The cat is out of the bag.
  • balfirevic 5y ago
    > I’m never going back to an office unless they pay for my gas, mileage, time spent in traffic, office wardrobe, etc. What's the difference between 150K job that additionally pays for those things and 170K job that doesn't pay for them?
    • FearlessNebula 5y ago
      The time wasted in traffic turns an 8 hour work day into 9 or 10 hours. I would work 8 hour days for $120k. But in order to get me to work 10 hours I would need more like 200. 12 hours I would be demanding 3-500k probably. Time is not fungible.
• deleted 5y ago
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• kgilpin 5y ago
  We want leaders, not managers.
• zmmmmm 5y ago
  This person seems to have a really cynical take on management. The best answer I have to it is that management becomes a fundamental necessity to have productive teams and that applies regardless of remote work vs not. As soon as work scales beyond what a single human can do in complexity and / or size you need multiple humans. Proceeding forward without anybody actually coordinating what those humans are doing turns out to be a disaster for multiple reasons, many of which if this person was subjected to the situation, they would immediately invent an equivalent of a "middle manager" or boss to solve. I actually don't see the need for this decreasing with remote work, in fact I think it might increase.
• gwbas1c 5y ago
  When I worked for Intel 2005-2007, at the beginning they were extremely hybrid friendly. It quickly became apparent that many employees were abusing the system, and not really doing their job. Sometimes, "telecommuting for a week" was codeword for a 2nd week of vacation. There were also rumors of employees running liquor stores while on the clock. IMO, the hybrid model will work best when employers and employees can build mutual trust and quickly rectify when someone remote is slacking off. I suspect it means learning how to identify who needs to work in person, and who's most productive at home.
  • heymijo 5y ago
    IME, if you get enough people together someone is going to abuse the system. If it's an exception, then making a rule is the wrong play. Now again IME, if it's the culture across the board, then that's a leadership problem and likely an organization with no direction. As an outsider looking in, I know Paul Otellini got a lot of good press for his time at Intel even though he passed on making chips for the iPhone and missed mobile completely. So I can't say if Intel during that period fits with my statements above.
  • edem 5y ago
    Slacking has nothing to do with your whereabouts. A person can slack while they are sitting next to you. What you need instead is a way to evaluate performance and take action based on that performance.
• vondur 5y ago
  We've had some big issues with people basically disappearing during this remote work time. And since we are a union shop, we've been basically unable to hold them accountable for it.
  • bingidingi 5y ago
    Is the necessary work still getting done?
    • warkdarrior 5y ago
      Of course not, almost by definition. Projects are scoped based on needs and based on the amount of employees available. I will not sign up to deliver Google Chrome with three employees.
    • vondur 5y ago
      Yes, but the slack has to be picked up by others.
• kokanator 5y ago
  After being told once, "As an executive we expect 100% mindshare," I changed my entire philosophy out of rebellion and it has worked extremely well. 1. NO ONE owns your time, especially your "mindshare". This goes for everyone in the organization. 2. The organization should view time as something they are borrowing you from your real life, your family, your recreation, your mental stability. 3. The organization should invest in your time so there is no arguments from your real life when the organization needs extra effort. 4. Invest interest in your employees external projects as the vast majority of your technical breakthroughs will be informed by those projects. 5. Presence does not equate to productivity. It only equates to physical presence. 6. Invest time in understanding the problems your team finds interesting or challenging. 7. Encourage an environment of collaboration where each employee is excited to help their team members even if it costs them extra hours. 8. Give them back the hours from 7 when you can. 9. Realize your job is to make their job fulfilling and challenging. 10. Don't be an A-hat.
• deleted 5y ago
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• 1270018080 5y ago
  I am pro-permanent wfh, but do we really need to have the exact same discussion 4 times a day on this?
• egypturnash 5y ago
  Bosses love the idea that they capture your time and part of your soul with work - you are theirs, “full-time.” Their intention was not just to hire you for a task within an organization - it was to trap you and your production in the office, and on some level divorce you from your labor while extracting it, in exchange for the “protection” of full-time work that rarely if ever defends you from layoffs or firings, especially in at-will employment states. That’s why Shayne’s statement is so powerful - it is not about work, it is about ownership. How many of y'all working full time signed a contract that says anything you make, on or off the clock, belongs to The Company? How many of y'all noticed that in the contract and tried to negotiate it out, how many who did succeeded in that?
  • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    My current gig were happy to take out that clause (I don't work in California). In general, before accepting an offer you have leverage to push back on this stuff (at least in tech).
• FpUser 5y ago
  Ok some work can not be done remotely. There are also cases when the work can (and should be) remote but the laborer can't (kids, little room etc. etc.) So we set this aside. Other than that finally there is the article that reflects my feelings about the subject. I always thought that this was a "plot" for bosses to "own" you soul and for a sizeable percentage of middle managers to be a parasites who get credits for the things that could and should be done without them. I have my own company and when I need employees (contract workers actually) they always work from their own premises.
• danity 5y ago
  One thing I have disliked about remote work is that more and more meetings are being recorded, and just regular meetings, not presentations and such. I don't recall having my team meetings recorded ever before COVID. It feels like Big Brother is watching, and definitely changes the dynamic of a discussion in a bad way.
• designer_ta 5y ago
  Throwaway to get this off my soul. In the first week of the pandemic (March 16th to be precise) I was going to give my notice to start a new job. When everyone was quickly sent home in my city, the logistical problem of being in two places at once disappeared. I struggled with conflicting standups for the first week, but eventually I normalized my schedule and just appeared as a busy worker that was hard to book meeting times with. I do enterprise UX design (focusing on regulated industries versus e-comm) so I typically need to be briefed on a problem, conceptualize a solution, then iterate with folks. I found I do about 5 hours of real, hard work per job per week. Attending a zoom meeting isn't hard work, and shouldn't be counted as such. In fact, I do most of my hard work at 10pm once kids are asleep and I can finally think clearly. The most I've hustled was doing three 'full-time' jobs (40/hr per week) concurrently. For 5 weeks I was making the equivalent of $650k per year (120 hours per week @ $100/hr), and honestly it was only hard because some folks wanted the precious 10am zoom slot. The hard work was manageable, and ironically I was more focused and thoughtful because the good habits of one job were brought over to correct the bad habits of another. Research on a UX pattern one week would give me the confidence to recommend a solution to another client that made me stand out as 'having my finger on the pulse of what users want'. If I could be honest with all of the clients, I would have felt better emotionally and perhaps I could suggest some load balancing on user testing and UX patterns. Only one manager wanted his 40 hours of flesh, but most have been happy judging me on my output and positive attitude since I no longer fear being fired... I will just take on another job.
  • briefcomment 5y ago
    Is it feasible for you to contract?
  • edem 5y ago
    > and honestly it was only hard because some folks wanted the precious 10am zoom slot There is a solution for that: work with companies in different timezones. Everybody will get the 10AM slot, and everybody will be happy.
• caymanjim 5y ago
  You're a pretty terrible manager if your metric for employee productivity/utility is butt-in-seat-time. In fact, you're so terrible that you're the problem, not any employee you might be "managing".
• weeboid 5y ago
  Productivity cargo cult will never die. Enterprise is predicated on this; but let's take the obverse of this cynicism: there are jobs, and people in them. This serves its own purpose.
• m23khan 5y ago
  Reading the article, I agree with the Author's sentiment. But the battle is not only for the Management it seems. As as example, if you are stuck working from Home due to pandemic with toddlers at Home and you are unlucky not to have a large house where you can have your total privacy during work hours from the entire family, you will struggle a lot to focus. Also, whether for better or worse, that commute time is often working adult's (who has family) only 'free' and 'personal' time during the weekdays. I took the train and that sweet, sweet hour of no interruption was a bliss - I could browse the internet, listen to music, read tech articles or just chill. Now, I close the laptop and boom - the family is right there...don't get me wrong, I love them but I also love to have my sanity and that healthy separation from my family which the work on site afforded.
  • learc83 5y ago
    Why don’t you sign up for a coworking space, or work from a library, cafe, or similar? Or heck just tell your spouse you need some me time and get out of the house for an hour a day.
    • thedmstdmstdmst 5y ago
      Yeah and heck just tell your infants it's daddy's time now.
      • learc83 5y ago
        So it’s better to put yourself in a position where you are forced to drive an hour to work each day and spend 10 hours away from your infant just to get an hour to yourself? Also this isn’t about your infant, no one is getting work done while watching an infant.
        • thedmstdmstdmst 5y ago
          The parent comment specifically mentioned toddlers being around. So maybe it is about kids? I think you framed the whole thing in such a way I can't get my head around. Why not simply "heck" take the hour you need after your infants asleep or been played with and you you've at least acknowledged your partner?
• jollybean 5y ago
  "Now, someone insufferable will read this and say “NOT ALL MIDDLE MANAGERS,” and let me tell you, if you’re thinking that, you are probably part of the problem. " The author's somewhat cynical take might be an issue here. The 'employee' probably feels just fine at home. But coordinating people across product, p. marketing, ops, dev, hr, finance, sales support, sales ... this is a lot of what makes a company tick. Companies are not collections of automotons doing individual bits of work, the good ones are 'teams' and this dynamic is going to be hard remote. The article is effectively a little too cynical. That said, there are also some side benefits no doubt.
• topkai22 5y ago
  While the article is overly combative and goes off the rails at times I’m glad to see it on the front page of HN. Remote work changes the nature of first line/ middle management and the many of the players that were well suited to the in person way of doing things aren’t going to do as well in a remote forest environment. The author hits one important difference- people who are energized by social interactions won’t get as many of them in a remote first world. Doubly so if they feel rewarded by power dynamics. So the things that pushed them toward management in the first place get taken away, no wonder so many of them want to get back in the office. However, we are going to see more remote first companies and I think we’ll see different management models arise from that. One one hand, I could see a hellscape of technocrats trying to micromanage metrics on people emerging. On the other, I could see a more humane set of managers less interested in power dynamics than in team success. I’ve seen both and we’ll see what becomes a norm and where.
• sumanthvepa 5y ago
  I've been working from home for the last nine years, running my own business. All of my contractors and employees work remotely. In one instance, I've yet to meet the person I hired physically (I knew them from a previous job of course -- they are not strangers.) I absolutely love remoote. So much less BS. My employees do their thing and I do mine and we're satisfied at the end of the day if we meet each others expectations. I don't care when, how and where they work or who else they are working for. It took a little bit of planning and setup. We mostly communicate asynchronously. There is no expectation that a slack message will be answered in realtime. Before the pandemic, we used to meetup onece a month for lunch or a day out (no work) just to get to know each other. I am also careful about sharing sensitive information that could hurt the business if misused. I assume that my employees have outside business interests and take the appropriate precautions. But for the most part these are precautions one should take anyway, remote or not. It's a tiny business, so it really doesn't need a lot of control or supervision and I'm happy not to have to supervise if I don't have to. To me having to actively managec (and god forbid -- micromanage) an employee is a red flag -- I hired the wrong person. The article is right the real reason people want their employees to work from the office is control -- ironically a misguided sense of control.
• revskill 5y ago
  That's why the bosses should get familiar with remote working, too. They should experience it first before they feel. Currently they're scared from "nowhere". Instead if they look at the result delivered they will get to know how to improve the situation. Please, remote managing, instead of getting scared.
• jb1991 5y ago
  The fundamental problem in my opinion is that people should not be paid for their time, they should be paid for their actual work output, that’s the secret of productivity —- if you simply pay someone on the clock, whether by the hour or by a salary, you’re inviting them to waste time.
  • TeeMassive 5y ago
    I think this might be good for very small "prototype and forget" kind of jobs which are mostly filled by consultants anyway. But for everything else that requires expertise and skills which are not shared equally given the vastness of the tech world this is just not a good approach IMO.
    • jb1991 5y ago
      I don’t understand why disparities in expertise would have an effect on this? Some people take longer to complete a task, others take less, the task is a value, you pay for the work output. I suppose it’s different situations where people have a stake in the company, like ownership, who are helping to actually steward its direction. But for most of us that’s not really the case.
      • TeeMassive 5y ago
        > I don’t understand why disparities in expertise would have an effect on this? Some people take longer to complete a task, others take less, the task is a value, you pay for the work output. In programming (and in tech in general) the more a developer has experience the more he will be productive by a factor that can go in the hundreds. I can probably could not resolve a off by one error in a nodeJS code base because I know neither node nor js, but a mediocre full time node js dev could easily.
• RantyDave 5y ago
  If you don't come in to the office, your job can be outsourced to India.
  • mac01021 5y ago
    I could be wrong but I think that, once all the Indians who can do what I can do have been employed, there will still be someone left willing to pay me what I make now. Capable software engineers are just that valuable and that few.
  • bart_spoon 5y ago
    Who cares? Outsourcing has been a big stick waved by management to scare employees for decades now, but its had pretty mixed results. The reality is, at least for programmers, there isn't enough local talent to go around. There's plenty to be found overseas, but companies are still clearly hesitant to go after it. There are cultural, language, governmental, and time-based issues that can't be ignored. Perhaps someday we get to a point where companies are willing to ignore all of that and ship everything overseas, but I doubt it, and in the mean time, there is absolutely no reason to not call their bluff.
    • RantyDave 5y ago
      > The reality is, at least for programmers, there isn't enough local talent to go around. Exactly: local talent. Because they want their damn talent to come into the office. And if they refuse to do so, they might as well get non-local talent.
• ashneo76 5y ago
  As long as managers are called 10x employee or force multipliers and treated as a progression for an engineer, this discussion can never be on equal terms
• didibus 5y ago
  I'm going to assume the article was in the context of software development. Doesn't it ignore a large swat of people? What about all the other business partners, operators and users/customers? Generally the managers job is to engage will all these other parties and identify their needs, evaluate if the team can help them with their problems or not, find out what possible solutions could be done and what the cost of it would be, justify if the team should grow or shrink based on what people would like the team to accomplish, and set expectations and priorities for what the team will deliver each quarter/year. At the same time, make sure the team can focus on delivering on those commitments, by both understanding well what the ask is, eliminating blockers they face, and keeping their distractions on tengential things to a minimum. They also need to listen to each individual reports own career aspirations and desire, and see how they can support their growth, as well as evaluate their performance within the team and provide feedback on that regard, while also fighting for those that are exceeding to get promoted or receive raises within the organization. It does mean they don't "do the work" of what is eventually delivered, but it doesn't mean their work wasn't impactful. As a team lead, I'm exposed to that half of the world as I need to support the manager in this process, and I'm also involved in "doing the work". So I feel I can respect both sides, and you'll know when you have a bad manager, because more of that work will fall on the engineers and that'll take away from them "doing the work", and you'll start to feel like the team has no direction, no idea what it should do or where it wants to go, etc. Edit: You'll also see that in companies where the lead engineer ends up doing this due to not having a dedicated manager, they can no longer contribute at what they are good at "design and implementation of software".
• teekert 5y ago
  Just to add another opinion, I work at a large healthcare company and all layers of management have been kind and understanding. They are sending emails about how they go on walks after lunch and tips on separating work and the rest of life. Or how they deal with the kids at home. As for my own work, I don't make the full 40 hours, sometimes I take a shower or quit early when the day is almost over and I can't squeeze any tasks into my last 30 (or 60 ;)) min. But I did the same in the office, I just can focus hard for 40 hrs a week. In office I'd goof off, take long coffee breaks, go on a solitary walk at 15:00 (3PM), promise myself I'd work on the train but read a book in stead... etc. But I have been finding it a lot more easy to call (MS Teams video) colleagues from around the world. It's more normal to do it and to have the cam on. It works great, I'm unifying parts of the company I didn't even know existed. And all that while sitting at home being barely able to walk because of a foot (both feet actually) condition.
• NKosmatos 5y ago
  Exactly this!!! So many truths in this article, for things that we’re going to see changing around us really soon. The software development related jobs are going to see a massive change the following months/years while we transition to a hybrid environment. Managers are afraid that WFH will make them obsolete, but they instead should find new ways to adapt.
• cryptica 5y ago
  It's because most managers are incapable. They want to make sure that employees are spending the time. They don't care about actual production value. This makes no sense in a capitalist society. Of course, that's not the reason why companies hire so many people in the first place. It's all for politics. So why bother to make them work at all in the first place? Why not hire people and give them free money? To be fair, they can hire using a random number generator.
• intended 5y ago
  Ctrl f promotion / bonus - Once the world returns back to normal, people who have more “face time” will grow faster in organizations. (https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters/ https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-showing-your-face-at...) Default brain drift will be exploited by career climbers. It will be one of the most powerful reasons WFH efforts will be weakened.
• troyvit 5y ago
  Statements like this: "The reward system on the corporate ladder has become inextricably attached to a kind of professional abuse - that the only way to rise within a company is to be able to 'take control' of a department and its people." without sources to back them up should not convince anybody. Just because the author is spouting social science of the workplace is no reason to give them carte blanche as far as sources go. Man every time I think about leaving my company I read an article like this and realize how good I must have it. I mean I work in an industry that generally does help the world, but we just don't have to deal with the stuff in this article. Middle management is there to assist, not be cops. The CEO works his ass off because he believes in what he's doing and what he's built. He delegates because he has to. We're embracing remote work as the "new normal" and the bosses are working with those of us in the trenches to find solutions that work for everybody. It's not perfect but it certainly isn't the environment this article describes.
  • johbjo 5y ago
    "The reward system on the corporate ladder has become inextricably attached to a kind of professional abuse - that the only way to rise within a company is to be able to 'take control' of a department and its people." For people who have seen this, no citations are needed. It's like stating "water flows downhill."
    • troyvit 5y ago
      No it's not. It's like looking at the cloudy sky and saying "all sky is gray." I have seen it in other places, but not in the majority of places I've worked.
• marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I think this is the death-knell for old-school management. Which has been coming for a while. Employment used to be a for-life thing. You worked for an organisation your whole life, and climbed the management ladder as your career progressed. The number of people you managed was a sign of your success, and the number of people that the organisation employed was a sign of its success. Management's role was to make everyone work hard, and "working hard" was usually measured by how long people stayed in the office. Now, we work for maybe 2 years for each of a series of different employers. We stay long enough to get some ticks on our resume, then move onwards and upwards. Freelancing/consulting for periods of our careers is normal. But management hasn't really changed or adapted to this - there's still very much a sense that a manager is there to make everyone work hard, and most organisations have no idea how productive their employees (because they measured productivity by how long people were at their desks). So management culture needs to change. For the better, I think. But it's going to be a shock for a lot of people.
• ancient_art 5y ago
  I can't give any insight in my bosses' brain only my own: Working from home opened my eyes. I already hated going to the office because of rude/loud coworkers, an open floor plan, nothing to do in my breaks than to sit at my desk (no nice parks near me) & a 15 mile (30min) drive to work. During my time at home (during my breaks) I was able to do some gardening, visit my mother-in-law and walked our dog. I took me around 2 minutes to get ready to work. All of that on top of being able to concentrate. I actually liked my job and was looking forward to working again. Now that I'm back in the office I just feel out of place. I can't concentrate, I have to talk to people who think they can interrupt me at any time even after politely telling them to get lost. I don't get much stuff done, my productivity dropped to pre-wfh levels. So to all managers/bosses/whatever that insist on everyone being in the office: Fuck you!
• deagle50 5y ago
  I've been WFH for almost 10 years, only going in the office for important meetings. Most of that time I didn't even have a desk. Nobody ever questioned if WFH affected my productivity. I just assumed everyone knew what I knew, that I could get more done from home and minimize stress. I don't remember a single awkward conversation about it. Now it's a daily topic and it's getting tiresome. We'll see if the "back to office" pundits succeed in ruining a good thing.
• bitcuration 5y ago
  It amazed me while companies like bank of America has enforced working from home of all for the last ten years, when facing the "culture war" of office vs home, nobody seems to pay attention what BOA has done and how they did it for a prolonged period of time. Why? because BOA is not as "digital" as startups?
• musicale 5y ago
  > This is a dysfunctional view of work on three levels: > 1. Management is not being good the same thing as being at your job. I'm not sure what that sentence means - perhaps some words were deleted from it?
• musicale 5y ago
  The thing I love about this piece is that it almost gets at the core idea that so many organizational practices sacrifice the organization's nominal purpose (e.g. help the business get work done) in order to reinforce the social hierarchy/pecking order. You see the same thing across many organizations large and small, including schools, hospitals, etc..