7 ms·

In my company the only ones that want to go back to the office are those engineers and managers that spend most of their day just walking around, talking to eve

• yobbo 5y ago
  > Just the people that have nothing to show at the end of the quarter. These positions are part of the incentive system: "if you're loyal and work hard, you might one day get a job like that." For most people, being able to lord over others is very seductive and motivating. The managers just want to continue to experience what they construe as their "reward" for loyal careers.
• tchvil 5y ago
  One programming teacher told me 20 years ago: "you think your technical skills will make you advance your career, wrong, it is your interpersonal ones that will do". I'm not very good at it, but since then I try to work on both sides.
  • rxhernandez 5y ago
    On my second job, I made 2.5x what I made at my first engineering job (which ended 3.5 years ago). At my 3rd job I jumped my salary by 10s of thousands of dollars over what I was making at my 2nd job. At my 4th job, I now make 8x my first job. I am now consulting (with way too many clients) and have the choice of making six figures by working less than 4 months a year. Technical skills almost solely put me in the 1%. Although, I am sure that if I stayed at my 1st job I would have gone nowhere due to my lacking interpersonal skills. I also sincerely doubt that I would have made millions if I had mediocre technical skills and mediocre interpersonal skills instead of my pretty good technical skills and subpar interpersonal skills.
    • jhatemyjob 5y ago
      To me it seems your interpersonal skills helped you find and secure your 8x job.
    • dna_polymerase 5y ago
      I guess your communication and people skills aren't too bad if you are in consulting now. Technical skill sure got you there but if you wouldn't be able to communicate them properly there is just no way you'd still be on the job.
    • tchalla 5y ago
      > Technical skills almost solely put me in the 1%. What percentile would you rate your technical skills?
      • rxhernandez 5y ago
        I wish I knew. Besides generic praise (like saying I'm a rockstar at my job) a few of my managers said that they loved how they could drop me into a situation with little to no information and have me come out successful. Other than that I really don't know how to measure myself. Sometimes I've pulled off things that other engineers said (to the product manager) were impossible; a couple times I've had humiliating failures that still make me sad to think about; most of the time I get my work done.
    • buran77 5y ago
      Interpersonal skills are like salt in your food. It makes the food better, and sometimes it may cover up some imperfections. Sure, some absolutely bland food will be better to eat than a pile of salt but thinking it has to be one or the other is not the right approach. For full time employees going through a career with no interpersonal skills is very hard, they stick around with the same bunch of coworkers for a lot longer than consultants. If your technical skills are top notch and you lack interpersonal skills, doing consultancy not only makes more sense financially, it's also much easier.
  • AmericanChopper 5y ago
    People tend to think this is some form of injustice, but the real reason is that most people work as part of a team, and your ability to deliver value as a team member is constrained by you ability to work as a team member. The anecdote I have for my office is the complete opposite of the parents comments anecdote. The least productive members stayed at home as much as possible, and the most productive ones are in the office every day (because they all know that collaborative work is so much more efficient in person).
    • thevagrant 5y ago
      It may depend on the company and the team. In the office I get asked questions or interrupted frequently. I enjoy talking to colleagues and it seems productive. However the bulk of my important work is done alone in longer uninterrupted blocks of time (at home). If I'm forced into an office then unless the team around me is really good/organised, I end up working at home at night to get those uninterrupted blocks of time. My wellbeing long term suffers. Collaborating with others works as well for me over a video call as it does in person. Further, the hours I save commuting to the office I can use to solve or collaborate on something else. Most people I've talked to concerned about those not being in the office appear to think those out of office are on holiday. If a manager is worried their remote staff are not on task, why not give them a call?
      • AmericanChopper 5y ago
        > Collaborating with others works as well for me over a video call as it does in person. This is just fundamentally untrue. Depending on your office culture, processes, personalities of the people involved, and any number of other things… it can be _good enough_. But you are always going to make compromises to communication and collaboration by all working in completely different locations. I think this is one of the reasons everybody gets so frustrated by the WFH discussion. Sure there’s lots of reasons why the WFH experience can be better for the worker, but most of the discussion on the topic is so completely dishonest. The detractors will grossly exaggerate the downsides, and then comments like this refuse to even acknowledge that compromises are being made.
• playcache 5y ago
  It does heavily slant towards managers. Their perceived value is often build around knowing and reporting up on what others are doing. Remote work really shook the tree and exposed this.
  • carlmr 5y ago
    How did remote work expose that managers are managing people? The issue I see exposed is rather the top-heaviness of many modern companies where there are too many managers and too few people that do actual work. If you're a manager and doing low level work you're doing it wrong. Your role is to remove the interpersonal roadblocks, get people to pull in the same direction, inspire with your vision, hire the right people, and fire the people that don't fit. A manager doing these things properly has value. But that manager has to manage enough people to make these efficiency gains worth more than the manager's salary.
    • simonh 5y ago
      I'd say another role of a manager is protecting the team from external interference and time-draining activities. You don't get to see that side of it as a team member, or shouldn't if your manager is doing a good job.
      • cycomanic 5y ago
        So much this! Unfortunately instead of keeping unnecessary work away from their team many managers instead delegate the work they don't like to do to their team. Thus they essentially decrease the productivity of their team. Being a good manager is actually a thankless job, because you have to deal with all the crappy stuff, like keeping office politics in check, shield your team from budget and bikeshedding discussions, order equipment etc to keep your team productive etc..
• veltas 5y ago
  That's not my experience. I've seen the more productive engineers prefer WFH and not WFH. I didn't really notice a correlation in my office.
• thefz 5y ago
  I observed the same thing here. Sadly, some people's only friends are at work and they have not much social interaction outside of it.
• ohhnoodont 5y ago
  This may just be my experience as a young person in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, but it's very common for office life and social life to be highly intertwined. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Many of us moved here and joined competitive, demanding companies. People bond in these situations. I really look forward to being back in the office and having a significant part of my social life return. Don't worry we still ship plenty.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    > I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. It's not a bad thing per se. The problem is that it seems in some places there's no alternative
  • brailsafe 5y ago
    It is a bad thing, for the reason you just eluded to. Your work goes away for any reason, and so does your social life. This is why many of my friends haven't made any real friends since highschool
    • bradlys 5y ago
      I mean, nothing is stopping you from making friends outside of work too though. It’s just another avenue for socializing. WFH though means that socializing is likely completely off the table. Fine if you’re not into it - sucks a lot if you are. I really miss lunches with my coworkers. It was almost always the highlight of my day - if I didn’t do anything else after work.
      • brailsafe 5y ago
        Often times the feeling of pseudo-social life and working too much are some of the things stopping you from doing this. Then maybe a pandemic happens and you realize that all those people were doing the exact same thing, and there's no neutral substance to your friendship. For this reason, I always recommend meeting the friends of people at work. They're relatively neutral, and you only rely on your work connections as a jumping off point. WFH means you can do other shit more easily because you have more time available to go to the gym, cafe, walking around, party etc.. Not to say that friends made at work cannot be friends, but all it takes is a trivial severance of that to reveal how close that connection was.
• orangepanda 5y ago
  > I go to work to work, ship stuff, grow my career, learn and earn money. I prefer an office for the same reasons - separating my work life from everything else. Out the door by 5pm. An emergency in the middle of the night? Nothing I can do about that. Everyone else prefers working from home? Great; less noise!
• itsmefaz 5y ago
  Not true at all. When you evaluate opportunity you are evaluating the people. Your success depends not only on your abilities but also on the abilities of your network. The unproductive ones that invite for coffee, make jokes also have successful careers as they are perceived to be - friendly, high in openness, and high in consciousness. Now, I'm skeptical of your claim that these people are unproductive, not sure whether such an individual would survive a highly competitive environment. I could argue that they are productive enough to have time not just for work but also to engage in things outside of them. I'm that type of person, my career growth has improved tremendously due to this ability of mine though it is natural for me to engage with people in my workplace. I am the guy people come to build XFN features and products because everyone knows me and I don't come off as a threat. This is a huge plus in large-scale enterprises where each BU works as a startup of its own and collaborating with them becomes a hassle.
• mesaframe 5y ago
  Nice superiority complex you got there. Why don't you admit you are poor at socializing.
  • Bancakes 5y ago
    Are you an engineer? Do you work for a living?
• baud147258 5y ago
  for the engineers that I've seen going back to the office (where I work right now, we have the choice of WFH or not, as we wish), I've not seen any correlation. Though I haven't seen any managers coming back, I guess they're happy managing things remotely
• itronitron 5y ago
  My wife has made the same observation in her own workplace and refers to these people as 'the wanderers', although judging by their impact on productive output they should probably be identified as intruders.
• moss2 5y ago
  It sucks to read this because I feel targeted. I can not get any coding done at home and am 10x more productive if I have people around me working on the same project. I need to see the face of another person or I just go limp and become unmotivated. People work differently and I think that an employer should accommodate as many types of work environments as possible. There should be a choice between remote or in-office and neither choice should be seen as better or worse.
  • mvanbaak 5y ago
    If you have the need to 'be together' why not utilize video calls etc?
    • cehrlich 5y ago
      It's not the same.
      • mvanbaak 5y ago
        Sorry, but I once moved over 8000km away from the office. Some tinkering with lego to have a robot with an ipod touch and a permanent facetime feed is close to be the same. I could 'walk around' and talk to ppl as much as I wanted. In the end, the whole walking around was a gimmick and 99.9999% of the time it was not used. But yeah, while you cannot smell your coworkers, you can have the same convo's etc. Just have everyone when they start working enter the video chat. It's not the same if you make it not the same.
  • momirlan 5y ago
    Do not feel targeted. We are all different, and what works for some doesn't for other. I feel better having people around and missed a lot of that interaction initially. After 1 year remote i hate people and love being alone at my desk. I also have no social life outside family. Something is not right.
• isatty 5y ago
  I can’t believe such over generalized garbage is upvoted on HN. Everyone’s job is different, everyone is different. There are productive engineers who are introverts and there are productive engineers who are extroverts. Making jokes in the office and having conversations does not take time away from doing good work - no dev is productive 100% of the time. Humans are social animals, and working _with_ someone is important. I don’t care if that interaction is over chat or in person but this idea that people are productive in isolation needs to die. This is especially applicable to new hires. The most productive engineers you talked about have habits and work they do that cannot be taught over chat or VC. It just doesn’t work that way.
  • chii 5y ago
    > everyone is different. and yet, you assert > Humans are social animals, and working _with_ someone is important. The most productive engineers are all different. But empirical evidence has suggested that those who are _the most productive_, such as people like Carmack, are productive in isolation (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726 about his programming vacations). Of course, i don't deny there are productive engineers who do their most productive work in a group setting. But i would also not want anyone to assert that social interaction is required for it.
    • baby 5y ago
      That’s awesome to read. I remember taking half a week before going to black hat in las vegas, and staying alone is some off the strip hotel. The amount of work I would crush was absurd, managed to finish a bunch of projects. I really miss these opportunities to spend a week somewhere else alone to have time to focus on what I want.
  • Mordisquitos 5y ago
    > Everyone’s job is different, everyone is different. There are productive engineers who are introverts and there are productive engineers who are extroverts. Making jokes in the office and having conversations does not take time away from doing good work - no dev is productive 100% of the time. I would go even further than that in your criticism of the overgeneralisation: there are engineers who are introverts and want to go back to the office. I'm sure this is very dependant on the local or office culture, but introverts can very much miss social contact in the office as well.
• schwartzworld 5y ago
  > The most productive engineers ... are the remote I was way more productive in the office. Home is too fun and distracting. The sounds and vibe of the office have work associations in my brain. > Problem is when people mix the office with their entire social Life. You sound like a joy to work with. What's wrong with making friends at work? I have other friends (although age makes meeting new people harder) but work friends tend to be techie people who are interested in similar topics to me. My wife's eyes glaze over when I start talking about the finer points of my job. It's nice being around other technical people for a few hours a day.
  • baby 5y ago
    > The sounds and vibe of the office have work associations in my brain. You’ll find that once you’re not used to that anymore, reaclimating to it will be a nightmare (and very stressful)
    • TotempaaltJ 5y ago
      I found that no, that's not the case at all. I'm very relaxed now that I'm finally back in an office. I was very stressed working from home.
      • baby 5y ago
        I guess you have a gift!
    • cebert 5y ago
      From my experience it’s best to keep coworkers and friends in separate circles. Most of your coworkers aren’t truly your friends and have their own personal motives. You compete against them during performance reviews and promotions. It’s difficult to determine if you can trust or confide in any coworkers. Stick with true friends you can confide in and have healthy relationships with.
      • schwartzworld 5y ago
• 45ure 5y ago
  >In my company the only ones that want to go back to the office are those engineers and managers that spend most of their day just walking around, talking to everyone about non important stuff, inviting you to have a coffee, and making jokes until 5pm. Just the people that have nothing to show at the end of the quarter. This is more applicable to managers, who have a lot to lose and might feel compelled to protect their dubious skills/roles/responsibilities, which are now being eroded and automated by 'Bossware'. https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secretive-bossware-tracking-workers https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secret...
• prehensile 5y ago
  I have a counter-example for you. Most of the people who are most keen to get back to the office in my company, and a few others that I know about, (majority engineers, certainly all knowledge workers) are the people who are struggling to work from home. Maybe they’re young and/or in tiny or otherwise non-ideal apartments or houseshares, maybe they live with a partner or kids and finding the space for everyone to do their thing is difficult. Being able to WFH comfortably is not a luxury everyone has.