4 ms·

As a hiring manager, a lot of candidates I’ve been talking to lately have been telling me they are looking for a new job in part because their company has decid

As a hiring manager, a lot of candidates I’ve been talking to lately have been telling me they are looking for a new job in part because their company has decided to stay all-remote and they hate it. The first thing they want to know is if we have an office and/or will open one soon. People just have different preferences. I think what we’re seeing right now is a significant expansion of remote roles. Previously if you worked remote, chances are it was a lesser job than you could get in the big tech hubs. Now the quality and quantity of remote work jobs has significantly increased. As a result, there will be a big shuffle as a lot of people who previously would have preferred remote but couldn’t find an actual remote job they wanted soak up the new opportunities. As for the space they leave behind, there are some people who have been hungry for a taste of Silicon Valley in-office life who will happily take those jobs, as well as TONS of tech workers already settled in the Bay Area but working at smaller companies who might jump at a chance to move into FAANG. The question is just one of supply, demand, and market-clearing prices. If FAANG collectively decide they want everyone back in the office and after all the turnover they struggle to replace the people they lost, then they’ll have to raise pay to compensate. But they have plenty of room to raise pay further if needed, so there’s no real reason to think they can’t fill up those roles. The bigger impact is on startup formation and any other smaller business that doesn’t have the budget room to compete. I think that is increasingly being priced out of the Bay Area, almost exclusively because of housing shortage, which does not bode well for the long-term. But we’ll see. As to your point on the cultural and institutional knowledge impacts of said turnover… I know it sounds crazy but I don’t think they care. So long as you can survive the turnover, it’s often easier, faster, and less impactful to just “rip off the bandaid.” When you try to drag out a transition you end up with a lot of people unhappy and grumbling internally, but who don’t leave yet. Those people kill morale, and letting them go is often one of the best things that can happen to the team’s productivity. So yeah, it hurts, but if you know that you’re going to lose a survivable percentage of your team due to some policy change, it’s often better to just get it over with quickly than to let it drag out. You see this all the time with companies offering enhanced severance packages, exit bonuses etc. when they need to make a big change.

dahfizz 5y ago
> People just have different preferences. I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_ superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their employees to come into the office.
- sjm 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is arguing that WFH is "_obviously_ superior" for everyone, but there are clearly companies who are angling to push all of their employees back into the office (and back to the Bay Area specifically), and this isn't going to work for all of their employees, especially given the new competitiveness with other larger tech companies offering much more flexibility. From what I've seen, people aren't advocating for strict fully-remote work, but rather flexibility for teams within larger companies to decide what works for them and what remote hiring policies makes sense within those teams, rather than having strict guidelines passed down from executives indiscriminately.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  There's a bias towards tech company and startups here. Those are concentrated in places like the Bay Area, NYC Metro, Boston Metro, Atlanta Metro, DC Metro, etc. Those places are all commuting hellscapes, so there's almost no scenario where you wouldn't do WFH if you could. My dad did the Queens-Manhattan bus/subway/express subway/walk treadmill for most of his career -- not fun. I live in a small city with a 6 minute commute, my preference for WFH varies by weather (I mostly work outside) and whether my wife blocks my car in the driveway. Overall, I like both -- WFH has advantages for focused tasks, but I tend to work longer hours. Interacting with colleagues in person is much more productive in an office setting, and it's easier on my family. It's tough for my 8 year old to not be able to talk to dad when he gets home from school.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    The ability to choose, on a daily basis and on the needs of your work and coworkers, whether to work from home or the office is, in my experience, far and away the best possible arrangement. Even when my commute was 2 hours each way, I still chose to go into the office once every week or two (and worked from home the rest of the time).

dahfizz 5y ago

> People just have different preferences. I'm always surprised how HN treats WFH as _obviously_ superior and desirable in every way, to the point where OP is claiming these mega corps may collapse if they ask their employees to come into the office.

sjm 5y ago
I don't think anyone is arguing that WFH is "_obviously_ superior" for everyone, but there are clearly companies who are angling to push all of their employees back into the office (and back to the Bay Area specifically), and this isn't going to work for all of their employees, especially given the new competitiveness with other larger tech companies offering much more flexibility. From what I've seen, people aren't advocating for strict fully-remote work, but rather flexibility for teams within larger companies to decide what works for them and what remote hiring policies makes sense within those teams, rather than having strict guidelines passed down from executives indiscriminately.
Spooky23 5y ago
There's a bias towards tech company and startups here. Those are concentrated in places like the Bay Area, NYC Metro, Boston Metro, Atlanta Metro, DC Metro, etc. Those places are all commuting hellscapes, so there's almost no scenario where you wouldn't do WFH if you could. My dad did the Queens-Manhattan bus/subway/express subway/walk treadmill for most of his career -- not fun. I live in a small city with a 6 minute commute, my preference for WFH varies by weather (I mostly work outside) and whether my wife blocks my car in the driveway. Overall, I like both -- WFH has advantages for focused tasks, but I tend to work longer hours. Interacting with colleagues in person is much more productive in an office setting, and it's easier on my family. It's tough for my 8 year old to not be able to talk to dad when he gets home from school.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  The ability to choose, on a daily basis and on the needs of your work and coworkers, whether to work from home or the office is, in my experience, far and away the best possible arrangement. Even when my commute was 2 hours each way, I still chose to go into the office once every week or two (and worked from home the rest of the time).