3 ms·
> they are young and relatively inexperienced, and I want them to see how we work, how we solve problems, how their peers communicate and how we think about dif
by acituan 5y ago
> they are young and relatively inexperienced, and I want them to see how we work, how we solve problems, how their peers communicate and how we think about different aspects of the business.
You basically want the seniors' suffer the uncompensated inconveniences of WFO so that the juniors can grow.
> This is every bit as important to the professional growth of our juniors as it is to my new business.
This is not altruism though, juniors' professional growth is important for your business growth.
> if you are able to come in, then come in. If you have kids or other commitments then fine, work from home a couple of days a week.
We know from "unlimited time off" experiments that the game theory of this doesn't play off that way. People will race to bottom yielding to tacit peer and management pressure.
> I know this doesn’t work for all companies, but its not like this policy is poorly considered or arbitrary ... But there are reasons for why we do what we do.
No one is saying it is arbitrary. It works better for management. And management makes the calls. That's the reason.
> I guess my company is going to attract people who prefer this mode of operation
Or lose the talent that prefers to have more agency on their work conditions.
- austhrow743 5y agoPresumably they pay their employees.
- doctor_eval 5y agoYeah and also “work from office” and “mentor juniors” is in the PD and the contract. It’s not like we were being underhanded. If they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t have signed on.
- acituan 5y agoThat's asking for perfect foresight; the job market structure have drastically changed while they are in contract and WFH is now a competitive advantage in the labor market. That results in being shortchanged.
- doctor_eval 5y agoMy company incorporated in December 2020. Mid pandemic. One of the people I’m talking about starts in two weeks. I know this doesn’t fit everyone’s model of WFH utopia, but whatever happened to an assumption of good faith at HN?
- acituan 5y agoDrop the sarcasm, it's annoying and obfuscates the dialogue. WFH employees get paid too, we're talking about the differences between costs of WFH and WFO externalized to the employee, which are not trivial e.g. commute, access to wider and cheaper housing market, all the associated stresses etc.
- doctor_eval 5y agoAs a manager it seems to me that WFH externalises one of the most expensive costs to employees: office space. I think you’re being naive if you think that BigCorps aren’t thinking about how to turn this to their advantage.
- acituan 5y ago> As a manager it seems to me that WFH externalises one of the most expensive costs to employees: office space. I would agree on principle but there is a circularity here. The cost of own housing used as office space is directly related to how expensive the housing was. In Bay Area the marginal cost of a 3rd bedroom could be $XXXk while anywhere else it can easily an order of magnitude less. Then it is not necessarily as the most expensive item anymore. The more office time employers demand, the more spatially concentrated the work force is going to be housed, which will increase the cost of that extra bedroom. Turns out concentrating the work force is also aligned with the sunken real estate investments those BigCorps had undertaken. You can bet as we look higher in the corporate hierarchy, the likelihood of personal real estate investments increase too. So it is a balancing act of those influences vs. the projected attrition rate of the workforce, who mostly did actually like WFH. That's how we landed on the unstable-as-hell equilibrium of hybrid WFH-WFO for now.