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Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work

175 points by Engineering-MD 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago
I recommend unionizing (a federally protected activity) to enable negotiating for benefits (including remote work) collectively. This presidential administration is already gunning for Big Tech, strike while the iron is hot (for more robust worker rights). You can be well compensated and still demand a seat at the corporate table as a stakeholder in a business.
- New_California 5y ago
  Unions are cancer on private companies and should be abolished.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post like this - it breaks the site guideline against name-calling (which applies also to arguments) and generally goes against the desired culture of the site, which is curious conversation. Of course you can still have your views; you just need to post about them in the key of curiosity. That includes, btw, respect for the opposite point of view, since curiosity is somewhere short of certainty. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      > That includes, btw, respect for the opposite point of view, since curiosity is somewhere short of certainty. Noted! I will endeavor to be more curious and less certain.
      - dang 5y ago
        Me too.
  - Engineering-MD 5y ago
    Unions are a counter balance to private companies. They have found demand for labour, and form a group to gain a local monopoly of labour, and use that to gain influence. It is capitalism applied to labour and to me seems poetically perfect opposite force to private companies.
  - InvaderFizz 5y ago
    While I emphasize with your feeling on unions, having seen first hand how they operate, your tact is not convincing anyone and is just virtue signaling. The thing that I never see addressed with unions is what they are and what they do. The easiest way to look at unions is thus: Unions exist for the explicit purpose of enriching their members(not necessarily all equally), at the expense of all others. I have two issues with unions: 1. They have been given this deity status as an unassailable good thing. 2. Federal Union laws that force employers to fire the employees they hired to work during the strike, even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike are the ones they have to bring back. Want to bargain as a group? Sure, more power to you. But either side should have the option of walking away and severing all ties. The union can do this, the employer is held hostage by federal labor law.
    - sgift 5y ago
      > even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike These things are crimes, so I don't see how they have to hire back someone who is in prison. Or do you mean "people who I think did these things but cannot proof"?
- refurb 5y ago
  If you’re a high performing employee a union will just hurt you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- __turbobrew__ 5y ago
  I don’t need a union. I tell my employer “either I work remotely or I am gone to one of the ten job solicitations I get a week”. Tech workers have enormous individual leverage and there are so many job opportunities out there — the power is already in your hands. Be a part of the market change by putting your money where your mouth is and moving to more adaptive companies if your company fails to adapt.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    That doesn’t fix the employer abuse or poor treatment, it just makes it someone else’s problem, ruining the next human who comes along. Lets prevent the ruining or suffering of our fellow humans.
    - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
      It makes it the exec’s problem because all of their competent workers left and they can’t attract new talent.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        The suffering can persist longer than it takes for the market to reach equilibrium and/or improve. Market forces alone are insufficient, as capitalism in general has demonstrated time and time again.
        __turbobrew__ 5y ago
        unions are necessary when there is a power imbalance between workers and corporations. There is currently not a power imbalance between tech workers and corporations so unions are not necessary for tech workers. For other professions where workers have a low amount of power I believe that unions "are good", but for tech I think it is unnecessary. If you are a competent tech worker you have the choice of 100's of potential places to work.
hourislate 5y ago
They built billion dollar campuses that sit almost empty and the attitude now is by God we are going to fill them even if it means all our employees have to die from Corona. It all started with open offices to create less privacy and more surveillance under the guise of collaboration. Then they hired as many H1B's as they possibly could so they can work them like slaves while paying them less because fuck Americans, they don't have the skills. I hope this war burns them down. Fuck them and their bullshit "we need you here so you can collaborate", I'm not a fucking retard and can collaborate just fine from home. Any in office work should be 100% optional and up to the employee.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  You're not wrong about the class war but please don't use the term "r.t.rd".
vhold 5y ago
I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to spend money into those rental or real estate markets.
- todd3834 5y ago
  This is an interesting angle I hadn’t considered but I think their net worth is likely pretty diversified. If not then weighted on stocks over real estate.
- doopy1 5y ago
  I think it's that the companies themselves own expensive real estate, campuses, etc.... not necessarily the leadership.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    It's probably, to some degree, a mixture of both. Rarely ever do decision makers not factor their own interests into their decision making process or skew/distort the situation to their advantage in some way so it's not as clearly linked to their self-interest.
- rocketpastsix 5y ago
  Or renting very expensive office space in various cities that have harsh terms for breaking said lease.
- sdevonoes 5y ago
  Can't they just sell real estate? I mean, remote working is not a thing for the vast majority of jobs out there, so office space is still a valuable asset. So if you are in IT and have offices that are not going to be used (because your employees want to work from home) then just sell/rent it to other companies in which their employees cannot work from home.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
noir_lord 5y ago
Company I work for is remote-only and has been for years. Since they already had that in place the pandemic didn't really hit them from an organisational point of view. The reason I was so interested in the job (other than the fact the work is interesting) was because they where remote-only before pandemic - so there was no risk of "right, it's over, everyone back in the building". I'm not sure what someone would have to offer me at this point to get me back in an office tbh. Working how you want, with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer. Of course there are challenges to working remotely but on balance they are no worse (or somewhat better) than working on site.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer. I had an earlier comment on how those against WFH might change their mind if they had a good chair. It might work in reverse too. The office might be far less annoying to people if they had a budget for equipment or at least got high quality equipment.
  - bobmaxup 5y ago
    Private offices might be another worthwhile incentive
  - lanstin 5y ago
    And a window where you can see hummingbirds and crows and toddlers. And get some fresh air.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I kept hearing birds during the remote period. So much chirping that I never really realized existed.
  - eropple 5y ago
    YMMV, but I've never not had reasonably high-quality equipment in an office. When one startup went under, I bought my set of it and now it is in my home office. It is a significant contributing factor to really, really wanting to work remotely now, because there isn't a lot of "up" for me on that front. Also, I have a porch ten steps from my desk.
todd3834 5y ago
I’ve been part of a lot of these conversations and it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. The trick is how to please everyone. It is easy to say, let those who want to come back come and those who don’t stay home. However those that want to go back say it is because they want to be surrounded by their coworkers. Having gone back to the office voluntarily for a day recently I can confirm that going back while the majority of the team is remote is not the same. Things seem to be hardest for younger single employees who don’t always have great work from home environments and are also sometimes lonely. Also, some of my coworkers with kids are having a hard time being productive with pressures from kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries. Then there are people who can’t manage the work life balance and relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over. Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver. I’ve seen this so many times after an org change, architectural change or anything that will give someone an excuse for failing to preform. These people may or may not like their new freedom but they do like their paycheck and will use any excuse for their poor performance. Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. I personally love working remote and would never go back to mandatory days in the office if I didn’t have to. I think the trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once. It is so much easier to just say “make things go back to where they were” so their jobs can be less complicated. People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work. In a public company it is one more unknown to juggle when they have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits. So let’s start proposing solutions and promoting them. How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal? That’s how we make this work for everyone.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  If an employer wants their workers to work in the office, they should work in the office. Workers who want to work remote can find employers who are ok with remote work. It isn't like there is a shortage of companies that allow remote work.
mychannel 5y ago
Semiconductor shortages: chipmakers unite amid historic crisis https://sirelonmusk.com/semiconductor-shortage-in-full-swing-chip-makers-unite-amid-historic-crisis/ https://sirelonmusk.com/semiconductor-shortage-in-full-swing...
sharken 5y ago
Besides this war between companies and tech companies, I'm glad that I live in a part of the world where vaccine mandates are not happening.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > I'm glad that I live in a part of the world where vaccine mandates are not happening. Haven't heard this sentiment much. So I'm curious what's problematic about such vaccine mandates?
  - sharken 5y ago
    A vaccine mandate should not be mandated by corporations, instead it should happen on a country level if necessary. To me it's a slippery slope to allow corporations to mandate what happens to our own body.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      The corporation isn’t mandating what happens to your body any more than the government is (as long as there isn’t forced injections). They’re simply choosing not to associate with un vaccinated people. This is first amendment from both sides all the way. It’s literally no different from not wanting to employ people that don’t have a driver’s license, or some credential, or are convicted of crimes.
      - sharken 5y ago
        So i must agree to disagree then, none of the examples mentioned require you to make changes to your body.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        Then you need to read it again. No one is making you make changes to your body. You are always free to go somewhere else. Come on. If vaccines are ao offensive, why do you want to work for someone that only wants people that are vaccinated around them? Take some responsibility for your life choices instead crying, “Woe is me!” No one owes you a job, nor do you owe any employer your labor. Walk if you don’t like it. Finally, if you think employers and body modification is some recent bridge too far, perhaps you should google tattoos, hair styles, facial hair, and piercings in the workplace.
compumike 5y ago
It seems to me that to have any hope in this "war" (a bit extreme, IMO, because I believe flexibility serves management and companies too), we need greater transparency about both the policies of what degrees of workplace flexibility are officially permitted, as well as the reality of how much people are able to take advantage of that flexibility in practice. To that end, as a side project I was hacking on https://wlblist.com/surveys/aa74ed35-d51e-4d23-991d-6049e0baca62/results https://wlblist.com/surveys/aa74ed35-d51e-4d23-991d-6049e0ba... earlier this year (think the awesomeness of Levels.fyi but for non-compensation data). Never got much traction, but I still believe that collectively, we can influence the future of work if we collaborate in some form to freely and anonymously share information about the degrees of workplace flexibility that each employer offers.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I came out of retirement last fall for a while to work at an AI startup. One of the really nice things about the all-remote setup was randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week. Given that I had a lot of samples (N ~= 50) of co-workers opinions on remote vs. in office work, I feel comfortable making a generalization: young single people mostly wanted to go back to the office while people in relationships and kids at home (especially young children) really liked the flexibility and extra family time that remote work affords.
- eplanit 5y ago
  "randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week" Really? As in you and someone else are each assigned a meeting with each other on Zoom (or whatever) at a given time? Would your co-workers not socialize, otherwise? It sounds like it was a positive experience for you, which is great.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    The number of people on the Zoom virtual coffees were nominally 5 people, but in practice, 2 to 4 people were able to attend on average. Yes, I did enjoy this a lot. Off topic, but when I retired (again) after this gig, I re-started offering my free mentoring service (1 hour talk on the phone or Zoom, some people just want to exchange emails) again, and have enjoyed helping people.
- jdhn 5y ago
  >young single people mostly wanted to go back to the office I realize that this is an anecdote, but as a young(ish) single person, this doesn't match up with my experience at all. Half our team is out of state, and I've never heard anybody express a desire to come in state to work at the office.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    I understand. In my case most employees were in Columbus Ohio, and they had nice offices and facilities.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Given how things are going at my company, I am not sure that hybrid can work all that well. It really just seems like remote work, but half the time you must work from an open office and hear everyone else's meetings, as many teams are spread all over the country anyway as nobody hired with location in mind during COVID. Seems like the solution may just be a great realignment of employees. Companies can pick a side and people can move accordingly. This industry doesn't care about tenure or retaining codebase experience anyway.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
If a company isn't allowing remote work, they're voluntarily cutting themselves off from a large portion of the available labor pool. That's their choice, but they can never again complain about a shortage of talent. Which should affect their ability to participate in work visa programs, for example.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  This cuts both ways: people from wealthy countries with high cost of living can never complain about competition from people who will be happy to take 1/4 of their salary to do the same job.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    The only solution for this is organized labor activism. At an individual level, everybody wants to be outsourced to but not outsourced from and nobody can prevent this at an individual level.
  - sgift 5y ago
    It's not like companies tried that before with outsourcing. It didn't work quite as well as hiring someone who lives in another city in the same country.
    - hn_99 5y ago
      I'm very curious about this, why doesn't it work? I can understand it may be hard for smaller companies to add an entirely new location since it would change team dynamics. But for large corps already having teams across regions, why wouldn't the concentration shift heavily towards lower cost regions?
axpy906 5y ago
Personally, I don’t consider an employer if remote is not an option. It gives you a view into how their management thinks about work and that’s important for not just getting things done but long term development. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
toptal 5y ago
I’ve written about this extensively https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/remote-not-re-moat https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/remote-not-re... The problem is they built campuses and feel stupid about devaluing them. Combine that with a backwards mindset and, for most companies, the situation becomes clear. It’s really that simple.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  You mean executives didn't need to build giant monuments to themselves they can sit in and command from upon high down for whatever idea they justified it with to attract talent and they only needed to, I don't know, compensate people adequately with reasonable work life balance to retain people, perhaps with a mixture of interesting work to attract some types of talent?
- dntrkv 5y ago
  There is no way any of the FANG companies care about keeping their campuses occupied for the sole purpose of justifying their costs. If remote work resulted in happier employees and by extension more productive employees that trade-off would be a no-brainer. The real reason is they genuinely think in-person benefits outweigh remote benefits for most employees. The internal employee surveys show this to be the case. Most employees want the hybrid model. HN is a bubble.
cyb_ 5y ago
"There is no apparent justification for resisting remote work besides a sort of management control-freak insecurity, proponents argue." This seems naive, disingenuous, or just lazy reporting. In my experience, neither "management" nor "workers" are monolithic blocks. Some are in favor of more WFH, some not. Most people I work with want to return to the office or are indifferent. Reasons cited include, too many distractions at home (kids/family), work/life structure (more below), team social interaction, improved face to face collaboration & mentoring (new hires), office perks, and so on. Not everyone has the discipline, independence, and communication skills necessary to be successful at WFH. In my experience, WFH is especially challenging for many early career individuals. We should be realistic about human nature and organizational dynamics. There are significant down sides to teams if some people are in person and some are remote. The remote people will inevitably miss out on many in person / adhoc conversations. Having less information than peers can hurt job performance. This leads to people feeling like second class employees in the long run. We saw the same thing with remote employees pre COVID. I say all this as someone who is generally in favor of WFH. Remote teams need to work & communicate differently from in person teams to be successful. For example, we spend a lot more time on written communication (docs, emails, chat, etc) compared to in-person adhoc desk/whiteboard conversations. I think the more reasonable organizational approach is to have fully remote teams and fully in person teams. This enables everyone to get roughly what they want/need. Team processes and expectations can be tailored to the team's situation. The big question then becomes, how do companies refactor large orgs into remote and in person teams? My guess is that it's going to involve a lot of team changes and disruption to the org. This is likely why sr. managers are trying to make the transition in a slow, controlled way.
diego_moita 5y ago
Media playing stupid "war" stories again. They only like click bait stories that sell news, not stories that tell the whole picture. There are millions of small variations in this "war", to the point that it is not even a war, but markets being creative in their own way. There are the startups in high paying areas that hire remotes for a fraction of the salary they'd have to pay locally. There are the people with skills extremely rare that can demand remote only. There are the contract workers or consultants in one area of expertise. If, from the start you say no to FAANG and Microsoft you'll find lower salaries but a lot more in interesting opportunities. I work remote for a startup in Europe. The salary is not Berlin/Zurich/Paris high but allows me to live like a king in the Canadian Prairies. Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement. And also I can truly make a difference in the company. Couldn't be happier.
- hiq 5y ago
  > The salary is not Berlin/Zurich/Paris high This makes it sound like these 3 are somewhat equivalent in terms of compensation in terms of salary, but to be clear, they're really not, as a quick look at levels.fyi indicates. > Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement. I've been reading a bit about personal finances lately, and I realized that being able to save x% only tells you part of the story. More precisely, the comparison between two places in terms of saving rates are only relevant if the only two scenarios are to remain in one place or the other indefinitely. Let's say you want to retire in Berlin eventually, you might be better off saving 10% working in SV than saving 40% working in Paris. If you're flexible about where you'll retire, you should maximize the nominal amount you're saving.
beckman466 5y ago
"I believe this narrative is being funded by the commercial real spectate industry. They are absolutely fucked. Like Wile E Coyote running over a cliff, they are desperate to not look down. In December 2019, I asked some guys in wealth management, what’s a hot tip, and they were all about Commercial Real Estate, it never goes down! I laughed, but then wondered, what would make it go down? Anyway, that question is now answered. I’ve been working with a company that have done studies on remote work, at the beginning 4% of employees wanted to work from the office 100% of the time. 6 months later it was 2%." Source: @dade_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992011
- izacus 5y ago
  So who's funding this ArsTechnica WFH narrative then? Who's the evil overlord trying to benefit driving this "war" narrative when there's so many open WFH positions?
ttul 5y ago
I say: where is the data? I have not seen data suggesting that fully remote teams are more or less productive than in-office teams. How are big company executives making this enormous decision in a rational manner?
bmat 5y ago
If you work at one of these companies and are frustrated by the decision to return to the office, I encourage you to seriously consider leaving to pursue a remote-first career. Not only to send a message, but also because there are many great remote opportunities out there right now. Ironically I had this battle with Google pre-COVID back in 2019. I was worn down by my commute and itching for a change of environment, but I liked my team and my project. I figured I’d push for full remote since the sell seemed obvious: either I stop working for you and you get zero value from me, or you let me work remotely and you continue to get value from me (more value, I argued). I put forth a list of concessions to address their concerns (I’ll commit to stable online hours, I’ll create a virtual desk in the form of an always-on voice or video call, I’ll forfeit remote if my performance rating is anything below “exceeds expectations”). After weeks of back and forth meetings, the final response was: we can’t give you full remote because then everyone will want it. How about 3 days in 2 days out? I left a month later, did some traveling, then started working as a remote freelancer. Despite no free food, no benefits, no in-office massages, I have zero regrets. It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my overall well-being. And most recently I took a full-time position at a fully remote company (as in no offices at all) with better comp and benefits than what I had at Google. The more we actually leave to pursue remote, the more these opportunities will arise.
- lukevp 5y ago
  DM me if your company is hiring! I’m happy where I’m at (I left my previous workplace for the same reasons as you mentioned, and now work fully-remotely), but I’m always open to new opportunities. My current company is not fully-remote; my team is, but others are hybrid.
  - bmat 5y ago
    Sent you an email!
- bradlys 5y ago
  > And most recently I took a full-time position at a fully remote company (as in no offices at all) with better comp and benefits than what I had at Google. Really? What company pays more than Google and is full remote like that? I’m not saying that they don’t exist but the $400k bar is hard for most remote companies to swallow.
markus_zhang 5y ago
I think it really depends. I for one prefer going back to the office, with a small twist that I wish it was just me who is in the office. Being alone in the whole floor gives me focus and productivity, plus the office has an almost unlimited supply of soft drink and bubbled water :D I'm actually wondering if there is a way to rent a sealed medium size office space (think something around 10-15 m2) with high-speed internet, table, chair and a refrigrator with a moderate fee. I absolutely hate open spaces. For God's sake if it's open why not I go to a Starbuck? It's just a few bucks a day!
jacquesm 5y ago
"Gansch het raderwerk staat stil, als uw machtige arm het wil" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Raderwerkstil.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Raderwer... Translated: "All the gearworks grind to a halt if your powerful arm commands it so".
indymike 5y ago
When it comes to work from home vs. go back to the office, the question for leadership is, "Is it working now?" For some, you have to work at a specific location. This is what it is. If work from home works, you have an opportunity to hire some great people that less flexible employers are going to shed. You also can start reducing the costs - offices are very expensive compared to a reasonable work from home allowance. If it's not working, then it's time to go back to the office and hope you can out compete your competitors. Your competition will be hiring away anyone not happy with the office environment, who wants to move or hates their commute. Your competitors will have lower costs because as they eliminate a huge chunk of office costs, you'll be making rent and utility payments. This is a Pareto level advantage.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I personally believe that executives get an ego boost from physically seeing people in an office working. Given the productive year tech has been being full remote, and the active threat by a large chunk of the work force to quit if the execs try and make us return, one can only conclude that the execs are motivated by something else other than business need.
llamataboot 5y ago
I'd love to work in an office most days a week. I enjoy the people, I think it helps with work/life boundaries and distractions. Especially if it was flexible. But it would have to be an actual office. Like with a door. And room for a photo of my wife or two. Maybe a silly LED project. If my choice is having to be somewhere at a certain time with absolutely no privacy, sometimes not even the ability to set stuff up and leave it, or WFH, it's WFH every time. Maybe now that those of us that don't want to be in an office at all will be at home, those of that want to go in can take over the empty space and get actual personal space again instead of cafeteria tables with a row of monitors on them....
ekster 5y ago
The companies are going to lose. There are too many good companies offering flexibility now.
- telxos 5y ago
  Been back full time for 3 weeks by choice instead of being remote as people trickle in. I think when people start going back we will quickly see that most aspects of the office are actually worse. I am a hard worker but I am also social and with just a few people back I end up wasting at least 1 hour talking about non-work related things. This isn't even an open floor plan. If you are going back to an open floor plan, forget about it. Things will be so obviously less productive. I am enjoying going into the office but I also know this time is limited. At some point in the future going into the office is going to be a perk with remote standard. Bet your ass on that. You don't even have to bring in the cost savings but the cost savings will be the knockout punch.
mkl95 5y ago
Is it really a war when employees can simply switch to a remote job? It sounds like those CEOs may have failed big time when they decided to invest some millions in gargantuan open offices.
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
Waiting for some company to build a campus including accommodation and offices where you can live and work in whatever way suits you, and when in-person is required, people just wander over to the common area.
bravetraveler 5y ago
My employer is refusing to take a stance Leaving up giving a yes/no on what WFH will look like contingent based on how the pandemic unfolds The problem? People (myself included) have mentioned we're walking if office work becomes required Why? We were already doing WFH before the pandemic; this isn't a chance to renegotiate that
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
Working remotely turned out to be the perk I never knew I wanted. I get back 3-4 hours a day that I would spend commuting, I have much better options for food at home, I get to see a lot more of my wife then I used to. And it makes sense - all of the infrastructure I work with is in the cloud, I haven’t had to roll out a crash cart in a data center in a decade. Almost everyone I work with is overseas, I don’t need to be in the office to have a zoom meeting with them. I’m very tempted to relocate someplace like Virginia which is absolutely beautiful but I would have not considered before because there isn’t much for me to do there professionally (I had to look up what “rockwool” was). The only thing that worries me is that if I relocate myself and the work-from-home movement fizzles out or someone decides I need a salary reduction because I live in a less expensive area then I’m stuck.
- edem 5y ago
  You can move there without telling anyone. For example I live in the same house on paper where I was living 16 years ago. No one cares and no one will go and check if you live there. I'm pretty sure you can make this work.
cbushko 5y ago
My company is staying fully remote with 'hub-offices' for those who want to get together. I plan to stay working from home even though the office is an 8 minute commute. I like my co-workers but I just want to work on my craft and build things. Commuting and hanging out at the coffee machine wastes time that I could be doing things. My company is also experimenting with a 36 hour work week based on the Icelandic Study. As per the study, in order to maintain productivity, organizations need to clean up their processes. Specifically targeted meetings, more documentation and less interruptions. I am sure my coworkers will also be more productive just to keep the shorter work week - I know I will. 8 hours in an office != productivity. Quiet time and the ability to do deep work = productivity. I wish more managers and execs understood this. For my own productivity, the company that I am looking at for inspiration is Hashicorp. https://works.hashicorp.com/ https://works.hashicorp.com/ looks to be one of the best documents on how to do remote work. If anything, it is all well thought out.
elzbardico 5y ago
Lots of middle managers entire existence depend on carefully built fictions of usefulness and politics that are hard to manufacture outside of a office.
edem 5y ago
There is a *much* worse trend than trying to force office time: forcing non-stop pair programming. It is not only counter-productive, but also extremely tiring for many people. I'm pretty sure that the rationale behind it is that installing human spyware is less controversial than installing software spyware on the employees' computers to monitor remote workers.
didibus 5y ago
I work at one of those, and the word "at war" is a massive hyperbole. There's discussions and evaluation of if and how to best offer this new benefit with pleasing everyone and not hampering the actual work. There's questions of tax legalities, of budgeting for offices, and things like that that are also being considered.
cheshire137 5y ago
It feels so old fashioned to ban remote work.
jdhn 5y ago
I don't think this will be limited just to tech companies. Personally, after looking over our reopening plans, I don't think I'm going to be going in unless forced to. Why should I drive into the office, wear an uncomfortable mask for 8 hours, and have to deal with the ridiculous cleaning requirements when I can just commute from my bedroom to my kitchen to my home office (OK, my living room) and not deal with masks or a commute?
jonathankoren 5y ago
I think one of the underreported dynamics of this push to return to the office is that the biggest companies in Silicon Valley just BILLIONS on buildings. Buildings that are now empty, and soon to be filled by people that don’t want to be there. Apple Park $5 billion[0] Google over $7 billion nationwide ($1 billion in Mountain View alone)[1][2] Facebook $300 million on MPK 21, a billion on real estate in general.[3] And these are just some of the marquee players. If workers don’t return to the office, these executives just wasted $13 billion collectively. Well, we can’t have that! Force the plebes back into their boxes. we’re living Cook’s, Pichai’s and Zuck’s a sunk cost fallacy. [0] https://manofmany.com/living/architecture/inside-apples-insane-5-billion-apple-park-headquarters https://manofmany.com/living/architecture/inside-apples-insa... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/google-spends-1-billion-on-property-in-mountain-view.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/google-spends-1-billion-on-p... [2] https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/18/google-launches-billion-dollar-california-property-investment-plan-for-2021 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/18/google-launches-bill... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/facebook-new-campus-has-redwood-forest-rooftop-garden.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/facebook-new-campus-has-redw...
cblconfederate 5y ago
What really baffles me is that this remote work thing has been possible under similar terms for more than 10-15 years yet ppl kept going in the office, even the smartest of them. Why?
failwhaleshark 5y ago
"Butt in seat" mentality doesn't scale since it ruin morale.
akagusu 5y ago
This conversation is not about remote work but wage reduction. Before the pandemic, companies had employed remote workers and paid them based on business value, but now they want to pay us based on the location we live. They are creating a narrative that they pay us based on the cost of living, but it's just an excuse to reduce our salary. They are forcing us to go back to offices because corporate executives are elitists control freaks that think remote work is a privilege workers should not have. They are putting pressure on this question because they know the majority of developers would prefer to stay remote and they will put pressure on us until we accept the wage reduction. But I tell you we should not accept this. The media always says there is a shortage of qualified workers in the tech industry so we, as employees in the tech industry, are qualified workers and since there is a shortage of us, we have the power to impose our conditions. I want remote work with full salary and I think you too. What do corporations fear? Unions. They fear unions so badly that they are willing to pay lots of money to union bursting firms. So I say you we should unionize, we should combine our power to fight this devilish attempt to reduce our salaries.
- marenkay 5y ago
  Companies should not be allowed to pay you less for remote work, since you shoulder the costs of work for office, energy, etc. Why should employees pay for saving money for the company?
France_is_bacon 5y ago
People don't understand how companies work, and the real hidden agendas that drive all decisions about employees. In addition to remote work, some here have commented about private offices vs cubicles or open desks without even cubicle walls. Obviously, it is much cheaper to give someone a desk in an open space, with zero extra costs. The cost savings then can to to giving the CEO an ultra expensive office. I've read some can get up over a million dollars, with gold faucets in their private bathrooms, rare Italian marble credenza tops and all furniture made of rare mahogany wood, and the like. For example, a Pininfarina Aresline Xten office chair costs $1,500,000. John Thain, Merrill Lynch’s CEO, spent approximately $1.22 million to upgrade his office. Goldman Sachs' retiring Lloyd Blankfein spent top dollar to build its soon-to-be retiring chief executive a new office as he transitions to an advisor for the firm - exact numbers are not known but it is over $500,000. Many other peoples' offices had to be moved for the ex-CEO, in order for Blankenfein to get a coveted view of the Hudson River. This is essentially the same exact reason why CEOs want people to work in the offices. For both, it is personal vanity. When the CEO brings people into the office - personal friends, family, clients - the CEO wants to show off how great he is. Vanity. "Look at me, look at how important I am with my own expensive office that costs $528,000." In the same way, the only reason the CEO wants people at the offices is for his vanity. It is more impressive for the CEO to bring his friends to an office where there are thousands of workers, all reporting to the great big important man. Oh, he is so important. How impressive is the CEO if there's only a barebone skeleton crew of 8 people? Peoples' vanity is limitless, and they will literally tank a company rather than give up on their vanity. People think that CEOs are attached to the bottom line, to maximize shareholder value, but they are not. It's all tied to their vanity. No, this is not the case for all CEOs, of course, but probably is for a good 84.827% of them, as shown by France Is Bacon polling company.
tomerbd 5y ago
Working from home is the best thing ever that happened to my focus, productivity, dishwasher (while waiting for some build)
dekervin 5y ago
I don't understand why discussions on remote work don't start and end with the evaluation of its effect on greenhouse gases emissions. In 2021. With 1.5°C expected increase of global temperature by 2030.

I recommend unionizing (a federally protected activity) to enable negotiating for benefits (including remote work) collectively. This presidential administration is already gunning for Big Tech, strike while the iron is hot (for more robust worker rights). You can be well compensated and still demand a seat at the corporate table as a stakeholder in a business.

New_California 5y ago
Unions are cancer on private companies and should be abolished.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post like this - it breaks the site guideline against name-calling (which applies also to arguments) and generally goes against the desired culture of the site, which is curious conversation. Of course you can still have your views; you just need to post about them in the key of curiosity. That includes, btw, respect for the opposite point of view, since curiosity is somewhere short of certainty. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    > That includes, btw, respect for the opposite point of view, since curiosity is somewhere short of certainty. Noted! I will endeavor to be more curious and less certain.
    - dang 5y ago
      Me too.
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Unions are a counter balance to private companies. They have found demand for labour, and form a group to gain a local monopoly of labour, and use that to gain influence. It is capitalism applied to labour and to me seems poetically perfect opposite force to private companies.
- InvaderFizz 5y ago
  While I emphasize with your feeling on unions, having seen first hand how they operate, your tact is not convincing anyone and is just virtue signaling. The thing that I never see addressed with unions is what they are and what they do. The easiest way to look at unions is thus: Unions exist for the explicit purpose of enriching their members(not necessarily all equally), at the expense of all others. I have two issues with unions: 1. They have been given this deity status as an unassailable good thing. 2. Federal Union laws that force employers to fire the employees they hired to work during the strike, even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike are the ones they have to bring back. Want to bargain as a group? Sure, more power to you. But either side should have the option of walking away and severing all ties. The union can do this, the employer is held hostage by federal labor law.
  - sgift 5y ago
    > even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike These things are crimes, so I don't see how they have to hire back someone who is in prison. Or do you mean "people who I think did these things but cannot proof"?
refurb 5y ago
If you’re a high performing employee a union will just hurt you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
I don’t need a union. I tell my employer “either I work remotely or I am gone to one of the ten job solicitations I get a week”. Tech workers have enormous individual leverage and there are so many job opportunities out there — the power is already in your hands. Be a part of the market change by putting your money where your mouth is and moving to more adaptive companies if your company fails to adapt.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  That doesn’t fix the employer abuse or poor treatment, it just makes it someone else’s problem, ruining the next human who comes along. Lets prevent the ruining or suffering of our fellow humans.
  - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
    It makes it the exec’s problem because all of their competent workers left and they can’t attract new talent.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      The suffering can persist longer than it takes for the market to reach equilibrium and/or improve. Market forces alone are insufficient, as capitalism in general has demonstrated time and time again.
      - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
        unions are necessary when there is a power imbalance between workers and corporations. There is currently not a power imbalance between tech workers and corporations so unions are not necessary for tech workers. For other professions where workers have a low amount of power I believe that unions "are good", but for tech I think it is unnecessary. If you are a competent tech worker you have the choice of 100's of potential places to work.

hourislate 5y ago

They built billion dollar campuses that sit almost empty and the attitude now is by God we are going to fill them even if it means all our employees have to die from Corona. It all started with open offices to create less privacy and more surveillance under the guise of collaboration. Then they hired as many H1B's as they possibly could so they can work them like slaves while paying them less because fuck Americans, they don't have the skills. I hope this war burns them down. Fuck them and their bullshit "we need you here so you can collaborate", I'm not a fucking retard and can collaborate just fine from home. Any in office work should be 100% optional and up to the employee.

bigbillheck 5y ago
You're not wrong about the class war but please don't use the term "r.t.rd".

vhold 5y ago

I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to spend money into those rental or real estate markets.

todd3834 5y ago
This is an interesting angle I hadn’t considered but I think their net worth is likely pretty diversified. If not then weighted on stocks over real estate.
doopy1 5y ago
I think it's that the companies themselves own expensive real estate, campuses, etc.... not necessarily the leadership.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  It's probably, to some degree, a mixture of both. Rarely ever do decision makers not factor their own interests into their decision making process or skew/distort the situation to their advantage in some way so it's not as clearly linked to their self-interest.
rocketpastsix 5y ago
Or renting very expensive office space in various cities that have harsh terms for breaking said lease.
sdevonoes 5y ago
Can't they just sell real estate? I mean, remote working is not a thing for the vast majority of jobs out there, so office space is still a valuable asset. So if you are in IT and have offices that are not going to be used (because your employees want to work from home) then just sell/rent it to other companies in which their employees cannot work from home.
- bamboozled 5y ago

noir_lord 5y ago

Company I work for is remote-only and has been for years. Since they already had that in place the pandemic didn't really hit them from an organisational point of view. The reason I was so interested in the job (other than the fact the work is interesting) was because they where remote-only before pandemic - so there was no risk of "right, it's over, everyone back in the building". I'm not sure what someone would have to offer me at this point to get me back in an office tbh. Working how you want, with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer. Of course there are challenges to working remotely but on balance they are no worse (or somewhat better) than working on site.

MattGaiser 5y ago
> with everything setup how you want is just a no-brainer. I had an earlier comment on how those against WFH might change their mind if they had a good chair. It might work in reverse too. The office might be far less annoying to people if they had a budget for equipment or at least got high quality equipment.
- bobmaxup 5y ago
  Private offices might be another worthwhile incentive
- lanstin 5y ago
  And a window where you can see hummingbirds and crows and toddlers. And get some fresh air.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I kept hearing birds during the remote period. So much chirping that I never really realized existed.
- eropple 5y ago
  YMMV, but I've never not had reasonably high-quality equipment in an office. When one startup went under, I bought my set of it and now it is in my home office. It is a significant contributing factor to really, really wanting to work remotely now, because there isn't a lot of "up" for me on that front. Also, I have a porch ten steps from my desk.

todd3834 5y ago

I’ve been part of a lot of these conversations and it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. The trick is how to please everyone. It is easy to say, let those who want to come back come and those who don’t stay home. However those that want to go back say it is because they want to be surrounded by their coworkers. Having gone back to the office voluntarily for a day recently I can confirm that going back while the majority of the team is remote is not the same. Things seem to be hardest for younger single employees who don’t always have great work from home environments and are also sometimes lonely. Also, some of my coworkers with kids are having a hard time being productive with pressures from kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries. Then there are people who can’t manage the work life balance and relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over. Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver. I’ve seen this so many times after an org change, architectural change or anything that will give someone an excuse for failing to preform. These people may or may not like their new freedom but they do like their paycheck and will use any excuse for their poor performance. Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. I personally love working remote and would never go back to mandatory days in the office if I didn’t have to. I think the trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once. It is so much easier to just say “make things go back to where they were” so their jobs can be less complicated. People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work. In a public company it is one more unknown to juggle when they have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits. So let’s start proposing solutions and promoting them. How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal? That’s how we make this work for everyone.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
If an employer wants their workers to work in the office, they should work in the office. Workers who want to work remote can find employers who are ok with remote work. It isn't like there is a shortage of companies that allow remote work.

mychannel 5y ago

Semiconductor shortages: chipmakers unite amid historic crisis https://sirelonmusk.com/semiconductor-shortage-in-full-swing-chip-makers-unite-amid-historic-crisis/ https://sirelonmusk.com/semiconductor-shortage-in-full-swing...

sharken 5y ago

Besides this war between companies and tech companies, I'm glad that I live in a part of the world where vaccine mandates are not happening.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> I'm glad that I live in a part of the world where vaccine mandates are not happening. Haven't heard this sentiment much. So I'm curious what's problematic about such vaccine mandates?
- sharken 5y ago
  A vaccine mandate should not be mandated by corporations, instead it should happen on a country level if necessary. To me it's a slippery slope to allow corporations to mandate what happens to our own body.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    The corporation isn’t mandating what happens to your body any more than the government is (as long as there isn’t forced injections). They’re simply choosing not to associate with un vaccinated people. This is first amendment from both sides all the way. It’s literally no different from not wanting to employ people that don’t have a driver’s license, or some credential, or are convicted of crimes.
    - sharken 5y ago
      So i must agree to disagree then, none of the examples mentioned require you to make changes to your body.
      - jonathankoren 5y ago
        Then you need to read it again. No one is making you make changes to your body. You are always free to go somewhere else. Come on. If vaccines are ao offensive, why do you want to work for someone that only wants people that are vaccinated around them? Take some responsibility for your life choices instead crying, “Woe is me!” No one owes you a job, nor do you owe any employer your labor. Walk if you don’t like it. Finally, if you think employers and body modification is some recent bridge too far, perhaps you should google tattoos, hair styles, facial hair, and piercings in the workplace.

compumike 5y ago

It seems to me that to have any hope in this "war" (a bit extreme, IMO, because I believe flexibility serves management and companies too), we need greater transparency about both the policies of what degrees of workplace flexibility are officially permitted, as well as the reality of how much people are able to take advantage of that flexibility in practice. To that end, as a side project I was hacking on https://wlblist.com/surveys/aa74ed35-d51e-4d23-991d-6049e0baca62/results https://wlblist.com/surveys/aa74ed35-d51e-4d23-991d-6049e0ba... earlier this year (think the awesomeness of Levels.fyi but for non-compensation data). Never got much traction, but I still believe that collectively, we can influence the future of work if we collaborate in some form to freely and anonymously share information about the degrees of workplace flexibility that each employer offers.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I came out of retirement last fall for a while to work at an AI startup. One of the really nice things about the all-remote setup was randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week. Given that I had a lot of samples (N ~= 50) of co-workers opinions on remote vs. in office work, I feel comfortable making a generalization: young single people mostly wanted to go back to the office while people in relationships and kids at home (especially young children) really liked the flexibility and extra family time that remote work affords.

eplanit 5y ago
"randomly assigned long virtual coffee breaks every week" Really? As in you and someone else are each assigned a meeting with each other on Zoom (or whatever) at a given time? Would your co-workers not socialize, otherwise? It sounds like it was a positive experience for you, which is great.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  The number of people on the Zoom virtual coffees were nominally 5 people, but in practice, 2 to 4 people were able to attend on average. Yes, I did enjoy this a lot. Off topic, but when I retired (again) after this gig, I re-started offering my free mentoring service (1 hour talk on the phone or Zoom, some people just want to exchange emails) again, and have enjoyed helping people.
jdhn 5y ago
>young single people mostly wanted to go back to the office I realize that this is an anecdote, but as a young(ish) single person, this doesn't match up with my experience at all. Half our team is out of state, and I've never heard anybody express a desire to come in state to work at the office.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I understand. In my case most employees were in Columbus Ohio, and they had nice offices and facilities.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Given how things are going at my company, I am not sure that hybrid can work all that well. It really just seems like remote work, but half the time you must work from an open office and hear everyone else's meetings, as many teams are spread all over the country anyway as nobody hired with location in mind during COVID. Seems like the solution may just be a great realignment of employees. Companies can pick a side and people can move accordingly. This industry doesn't care about tenure or retaining codebase experience anyway.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

If a company isn't allowing remote work, they're voluntarily cutting themselves off from a large portion of the available labor pool. That's their choice, but they can never again complain about a shortage of talent. Which should affect their ability to participate in work visa programs, for example.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
This cuts both ways: people from wealthy countries with high cost of living can never complain about competition from people who will be happy to take 1/4 of their salary to do the same job.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  The only solution for this is organized labor activism. At an individual level, everybody wants to be outsourced to but not outsourced from and nobody can prevent this at an individual level.
- sgift 5y ago
  It's not like companies tried that before with outsourcing. It didn't work quite as well as hiring someone who lives in another city in the same country.
  - hn_99 5y ago
    I'm very curious about this, why doesn't it work? I can understand it may be hard for smaller companies to add an entirely new location since it would change team dynamics. But for large corps already having teams across regions, why wouldn't the concentration shift heavily towards lower cost regions?

axpy906 5y ago

Personally, I don’t consider an employer if remote is not an option. It gives you a view into how their management thinks about work and that’s important for not just getting things done but long term development. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

toptal 5y ago

I’ve written about this extensively https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/remote-not-re-moat https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/remote-not-re... The problem is they built campuses and feel stupid about devaluing them. Combine that with a backwards mindset and, for most companies, the situation becomes clear. It’s really that simple.

Frost1x 5y ago
You mean executives didn't need to build giant monuments to themselves they can sit in and command from upon high down for whatever idea they justified it with to attract talent and they only needed to, I don't know, compensate people adequately with reasonable work life balance to retain people, perhaps with a mixture of interesting work to attract some types of talent?
dntrkv 5y ago
There is no way any of the FANG companies care about keeping their campuses occupied for the sole purpose of justifying their costs. If remote work resulted in happier employees and by extension more productive employees that trade-off would be a no-brainer. The real reason is they genuinely think in-person benefits outweigh remote benefits for most employees. The internal employee surveys show this to be the case. Most employees want the hybrid model. HN is a bubble.

cyb_ 5y ago

"There is no apparent justification for resisting remote work besides a sort of management control-freak insecurity, proponents argue." This seems naive, disingenuous, or just lazy reporting. In my experience, neither "management" nor "workers" are monolithic blocks. Some are in favor of more WFH, some not. Most people I work with want to return to the office or are indifferent. Reasons cited include, too many distractions at home (kids/family), work/life structure (more below), team social interaction, improved face to face collaboration & mentoring (new hires), office perks, and so on. Not everyone has the discipline, independence, and communication skills necessary to be successful at WFH. In my experience, WFH is especially challenging for many early career individuals. We should be realistic about human nature and organizational dynamics. There are significant down sides to teams if some people are in person and some are remote. The remote people will inevitably miss out on many in person / adhoc conversations. Having less information than peers can hurt job performance. This leads to people feeling like second class employees in the long run. We saw the same thing with remote employees pre COVID. I say all this as someone who is generally in favor of WFH. Remote teams need to work & communicate differently from in person teams to be successful. For example, we spend a lot more time on written communication (docs, emails, chat, etc) compared to in-person adhoc desk/whiteboard conversations. I think the more reasonable organizational approach is to have fully remote teams and fully in person teams. This enables everyone to get roughly what they want/need. Team processes and expectations can be tailored to the team's situation. The big question then becomes, how do companies refactor large orgs into remote and in person teams? My guess is that it's going to involve a lot of team changes and disruption to the org. This is likely why sr. managers are trying to make the transition in a slow, controlled way.

diego_moita 5y ago

Media playing stupid "war" stories again. They only like click bait stories that sell news, not stories that tell the whole picture. There are millions of small variations in this "war", to the point that it is not even a war, but markets being creative in their own way. There are the startups in high paying areas that hire remotes for a fraction of the salary they'd have to pay locally. There are the people with skills extremely rare that can demand remote only. There are the contract workers or consultants in one area of expertise. If, from the start you say no to FAANG and Microsoft you'll find lower salaries but a lot more in interesting opportunities. I work remote for a startup in Europe. The salary is not Berlin/Zurich/Paris high but allows me to live like a king in the Canadian Prairies. Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement. And also I can truly make a difference in the company. Couldn't be happier.

hiq 5y ago
> The salary is not Berlin/Zurich/Paris high This makes it sound like these 3 are somewhat equivalent in terms of compensation in terms of salary, but to be clear, they're really not, as a quick look at levels.fyi indicates. > Without effort I can save 40% of it for retirement. I've been reading a bit about personal finances lately, and I realized that being able to save x% only tells you part of the story. More precisely, the comparison between two places in terms of saving rates are only relevant if the only two scenarios are to remain in one place or the other indefinitely. Let's say you want to retire in Berlin eventually, you might be better off saving 10% working in SV than saving 40% working in Paris. If you're flexible about where you'll retire, you should maximize the nominal amount you're saving.

beckman466 5y ago

"I believe this narrative is being funded by the commercial real spectate industry. They are absolutely fucked. Like Wile E Coyote running over a cliff, they are desperate to not look down. In December 2019, I asked some guys in wealth management, what’s a hot tip, and they were all about Commercial Real Estate, it never goes down! I laughed, but then wondered, what would make it go down? Anyway, that question is now answered. I’ve been working with a company that have done studies on remote work, at the beginning 4% of employees wanted to work from the office 100% of the time. 6 months later it was 2%." Source: @dade_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992011

izacus 5y ago
So who's funding this ArsTechnica WFH narrative then? Who's the evil overlord trying to benefit driving this "war" narrative when there's so many open WFH positions?

ttul 5y ago

I say: where is the data? I have not seen data suggesting that fully remote teams are more or less productive than in-office teams. How are big company executives making this enormous decision in a rational manner?

bmat 5y ago

If you work at one of these companies and are frustrated by the decision to return to the office, I encourage you to seriously consider leaving to pursue a remote-first career. Not only to send a message, but also because there are many great remote opportunities out there right now. Ironically I had this battle with Google pre-COVID back in 2019. I was worn down by my commute and itching for a change of environment, but I liked my team and my project. I figured I’d push for full remote since the sell seemed obvious: either I stop working for you and you get zero value from me, or you let me work remotely and you continue to get value from me (more value, I argued). I put forth a list of concessions to address their concerns (I’ll commit to stable online hours, I’ll create a virtual desk in the form of an always-on voice or video call, I’ll forfeit remote if my performance rating is anything below “exceeds expectations”). After weeks of back and forth meetings, the final response was: we can’t give you full remote because then everyone will want it. How about 3 days in 2 days out? I left a month later, did some traveling, then started working as a remote freelancer. Despite no free food, no benefits, no in-office massages, I have zero regrets. It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my overall well-being. And most recently I took a full-time position at a fully remote company (as in no offices at all) with better comp and benefits than what I had at Google. The more we actually leave to pursue remote, the more these opportunities will arise.

lukevp 5y ago
DM me if your company is hiring! I’m happy where I’m at (I left my previous workplace for the same reasons as you mentioned, and now work fully-remotely), but I’m always open to new opportunities. My current company is not fully-remote; my team is, but others are hybrid.
- bmat 5y ago
  Sent you an email!
bradlys 5y ago
> And most recently I took a full-time position at a fully remote company (as in no offices at all) with better comp and benefits than what I had at Google. Really? What company pays more than Google and is full remote like that? I’m not saying that they don’t exist but the $400k bar is hard for most remote companies to swallow.

markus_zhang 5y ago

I think it really depends. I for one prefer going back to the office, with a small twist that I wish it was just me who is in the office. Being alone in the whole floor gives me focus and productivity, plus the office has an almost unlimited supply of soft drink and bubbled water :D I'm actually wondering if there is a way to rent a sealed medium size office space (think something around 10-15 m2) with high-speed internet, table, chair and a refrigrator with a moderate fee. I absolutely hate open spaces. For God's sake if it's open why not I go to a Starbuck? It's just a few bucks a day!

jacquesm 5y ago

"Gansch het raderwerk staat stil, als uw machtige arm het wil" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Raderwerkstil.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Raderwer... Translated: "All the gearworks grind to a halt if your powerful arm commands it so".

indymike 5y ago

When it comes to work from home vs. go back to the office, the question for leadership is, "Is it working now?" For some, you have to work at a specific location. This is what it is. If work from home works, you have an opportunity to hire some great people that less flexible employers are going to shed. You also can start reducing the costs - offices are very expensive compared to a reasonable work from home allowance. If it's not working, then it's time to go back to the office and hope you can out compete your competitors. Your competition will be hiring away anyone not happy with the office environment, who wants to move or hates their commute. Your competitors will have lower costs because as they eliminate a huge chunk of office costs, you'll be making rent and utility payments. This is a Pareto level advantage.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I personally believe that executives get an ego boost from physically seeing people in an office working. Given the productive year tech has been being full remote, and the active threat by a large chunk of the work force to quit if the execs try and make us return, one can only conclude that the execs are motivated by something else other than business need.

llamataboot 5y ago

I'd love to work in an office most days a week. I enjoy the people, I think it helps with work/life boundaries and distractions. Especially if it was flexible. But it would have to be an actual office. Like with a door. And room for a photo of my wife or two. Maybe a silly LED project. If my choice is having to be somewhere at a certain time with absolutely no privacy, sometimes not even the ability to set stuff up and leave it, or WFH, it's WFH every time. Maybe now that those of us that don't want to be in an office at all will be at home, those of that want to go in can take over the empty space and get actual personal space again instead of cafeteria tables with a row of monitors on them....

ekster 5y ago

The companies are going to lose. There are too many good companies offering flexibility now.

telxos 5y ago
Been back full time for 3 weeks by choice instead of being remote as people trickle in. I think when people start going back we will quickly see that most aspects of the office are actually worse. I am a hard worker but I am also social and with just a few people back I end up wasting at least 1 hour talking about non-work related things. This isn't even an open floor plan. If you are going back to an open floor plan, forget about it. Things will be so obviously less productive. I am enjoying going into the office but I also know this time is limited. At some point in the future going into the office is going to be a perk with remote standard. Bet your ass on that. You don't even have to bring in the cost savings but the cost savings will be the knockout punch.

mkl95 5y ago

Is it really a war when employees can simply switch to a remote job? It sounds like those CEOs may have failed big time when they decided to invest some millions in gargantuan open offices.

jacksonkmarley 5y ago

Waiting for some company to build a campus including accommodation and offices where you can live and work in whatever way suits you, and when in-person is required, people just wander over to the common area.

bravetraveler 5y ago

My employer is refusing to take a stance Leaving up giving a yes/no on what WFH will look like contingent based on how the pandemic unfolds The problem? People (myself included) have mentioned we're walking if office work becomes required Why? We were already doing WFH before the pandemic; this isn't a chance to renegotiate that

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

Working remotely turned out to be the perk I never knew I wanted. I get back 3-4 hours a day that I would spend commuting, I have much better options for food at home, I get to see a lot more of my wife then I used to. And it makes sense - all of the infrastructure I work with is in the cloud, I haven’t had to roll out a crash cart in a data center in a decade. Almost everyone I work with is overseas, I don’t need to be in the office to have a zoom meeting with them. I’m very tempted to relocate someplace like Virginia which is absolutely beautiful but I would have not considered before because there isn’t much for me to do there professionally (I had to look up what “rockwool” was). The only thing that worries me is that if I relocate myself and the work-from-home movement fizzles out or someone decides I need a salary reduction because I live in a less expensive area then I’m stuck.

edem 5y ago
You can move there without telling anyone. For example I live in the same house on paper where I was living 16 years ago. No one cares and no one will go and check if you live there. I'm pretty sure you can make this work.

cbushko 5y ago

My company is staying fully remote with 'hub-offices' for those who want to get together. I plan to stay working from home even though the office is an 8 minute commute. I like my co-workers but I just want to work on my craft and build things. Commuting and hanging out at the coffee machine wastes time that I could be doing things. My company is also experimenting with a 36 hour work week based on the Icelandic Study. As per the study, in order to maintain productivity, organizations need to clean up their processes. Specifically targeted meetings, more documentation and less interruptions. I am sure my coworkers will also be more productive just to keep the shorter work week - I know I will. 8 hours in an office != productivity. Quiet time and the ability to do deep work = productivity. I wish more managers and execs understood this. For my own productivity, the company that I am looking at for inspiration is Hashicorp. https://works.hashicorp.com/ https://works.hashicorp.com/ looks to be one of the best documents on how to do remote work. If anything, it is all well thought out.

elzbardico 5y ago

Lots of middle managers entire existence depend on carefully built fictions of usefulness and politics that are hard to manufacture outside of a office.

edem 5y ago

There is a *much* worse trend than trying to force office time: forcing non-stop pair programming. It is not only counter-productive, but also extremely tiring for many people. I'm pretty sure that the rationale behind it is that installing human spyware is less controversial than installing software spyware on the employees' computers to monitor remote workers.

didibus 5y ago

I work at one of those, and the word "at war" is a massive hyperbole. There's discussions and evaluation of if and how to best offer this new benefit with pleasing everyone and not hampering the actual work. There's questions of tax legalities, of budgeting for offices, and things like that that are also being considered.

cheshire137 5y ago

It feels so old fashioned to ban remote work.

jdhn 5y ago

I don't think this will be limited just to tech companies. Personally, after looking over our reopening plans, I don't think I'm going to be going in unless forced to. Why should I drive into the office, wear an uncomfortable mask for 8 hours, and have to deal with the ridiculous cleaning requirements when I can just commute from my bedroom to my kitchen to my home office (OK, my living room) and not deal with masks or a commute?

jonathankoren 5y ago

I think one of the underreported dynamics of this push to return to the office is that the biggest companies in Silicon Valley just BILLIONS on buildings. Buildings that are now empty, and soon to be filled by people that don’t want to be there. Apple Park $5 billion[0] Google over $7 billion nationwide ($1 billion in Mountain View alone)[1][2] Facebook $300 million on MPK 21, a billion on real estate in general.[3] And these are just some of the marquee players. If workers don’t return to the office, these executives just wasted $13 billion collectively. Well, we can’t have that! Force the plebes back into their boxes. we’re living Cook’s, Pichai’s and Zuck’s a sunk cost fallacy. [0] https://manofmany.com/living/architecture/inside-apples-insane-5-billion-apple-park-headquarters https://manofmany.com/living/architecture/inside-apples-insa... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/google-spends-1-billion-on-property-in-mountain-view.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/google-spends-1-billion-on-p... [2] https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/18/google-launches-billion-dollar-california-property-investment-plan-for-2021 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/18/google-launches-bill... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/facebook-new-campus-has-redwood-forest-rooftop-garden.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/facebook-new-campus-has-redw...

cblconfederate 5y ago

What really baffles me is that this remote work thing has been possible under similar terms for more than 10-15 years yet ppl kept going in the office, even the smartest of them. Why?

failwhaleshark 5y ago

"Butt in seat" mentality doesn't scale since it ruin morale.

akagusu 5y ago

This conversation is not about remote work but wage reduction. Before the pandemic, companies had employed remote workers and paid them based on business value, but now they want to pay us based on the location we live. They are creating a narrative that they pay us based on the cost of living, but it's just an excuse to reduce our salary. They are forcing us to go back to offices because corporate executives are elitists control freaks that think remote work is a privilege workers should not have. They are putting pressure on this question because they know the majority of developers would prefer to stay remote and they will put pressure on us until we accept the wage reduction. But I tell you we should not accept this. The media always says there is a shortage of qualified workers in the tech industry so we, as employees in the tech industry, are qualified workers and since there is a shortage of us, we have the power to impose our conditions. I want remote work with full salary and I think you too. What do corporations fear? Unions. They fear unions so badly that they are willing to pay lots of money to union bursting firms. So I say you we should unionize, we should combine our power to fight this devilish attempt to reduce our salaries.

marenkay 5y ago
Companies should not be allowed to pay you less for remote work, since you shoulder the costs of work for office, energy, etc. Why should employees pay for saving money for the company?

France_is_bacon 5y ago

People don't understand how companies work, and the real hidden agendas that drive all decisions about employees. In addition to remote work, some here have commented about private offices vs cubicles or open desks without even cubicle walls. Obviously, it is much cheaper to give someone a desk in an open space, with zero extra costs. The cost savings then can to to giving the CEO an ultra expensive office. I've read some can get up over a million dollars, with gold faucets in their private bathrooms, rare Italian marble credenza tops and all furniture made of rare mahogany wood, and the like. For example, a Pininfarina Aresline Xten office chair costs $1,500,000. John Thain, Merrill Lynch’s CEO, spent approximately $1.22 million to upgrade his office. Goldman Sachs' retiring Lloyd Blankfein spent top dollar to build its soon-to-be retiring chief executive a new office as he transitions to an advisor for the firm - exact numbers are not known but it is over $500,000. Many other peoples' offices had to be moved for the ex-CEO, in order for Blankenfein to get a coveted view of the Hudson River. This is essentially the same exact reason why CEOs want people to work in the offices. For both, it is personal vanity. When the CEO brings people into the office - personal friends, family, clients - the CEO wants to show off how great he is. Vanity. "Look at me, look at how important I am with my own expensive office that costs $528,000." In the same way, the only reason the CEO wants people at the offices is for his vanity. It is more impressive for the CEO to bring his friends to an office where there are thousands of workers, all reporting to the great big important man. Oh, he is so important. How impressive is the CEO if there's only a barebone skeleton crew of 8 people? Peoples' vanity is limitless, and they will literally tank a company rather than give up on their vanity. People think that CEOs are attached to the bottom line, to maximize shareholder value, but they are not. It's all tied to their vanity. No, this is not the case for all CEOs, of course, but probably is for a good 84.827% of them, as shown by France Is Bacon polling company.

tomerbd 5y ago

Working from home is the best thing ever that happened to my focus, productivity, dishwasher (while waiting for some build)

dekervin 5y ago

I don't understand why discussions on remote work don't start and end with the evaluation of its effect on greenhouse gases emissions. In 2021. With 1.5°C expected increase of global temperature by 2030.