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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 offic

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.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  With employers being much fewer, the no-poach stuff, etc. this is a bad solution. Employers have always been more organized and holding more market power than employees.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    No-poach stuff? There are literally millions of companies that allow remote work, are they all part of the no-poach cartel?
    - abz10 5y ago
      Some tech jobs are only available in a handful of companies that were a part of the cartel. Some of us took the bet that a big investment in education in one of these specialties would pay off. The cartel effectively suppressed the pay off. Now these companies are complaining that the supply of specialists has dried up.
      - chaostheory 5y ago
        With recent limits on H1B, those companies aren’t wrong to say that the supply has dried up. That said, it means we have more leverage when it comes to remote work. If it means changing companies, so be it.
        abz10 5y ago
        US companies are now being hoisted by their own petard. There are not that many exploitable smart people left, even internationally. In my applied research niche they already hired internationally and the ability was rare, being high functioning autistic was basically a prerequisite. Supply dried up because these people have better options now; start ups, finance, crypto, independent scientists, more promising companies in their home countries. It’s much easier for me to change companies than for companies to change. I’ve been remote for 7 years and will retire long before going back to an office.
h4waii 5y ago
Well said, I do want to point out that some of those who want to go back "to be surrounded by their coworkers" might be missing the fact that those who don't want to back might be because they don't want to be surrounded by their coworkers; they want to be surrounded by people they choose to have relationships with, not ones foisted upon them.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yes. I am a young single guy who is not really a fan of the office. A lot of that is simply that have already filled all my available relationship time. Adding new people requires removing other people or reducing my productivity to make more time available.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    “Filled your relationship time”? What are you expecting these coworker relationships to be? Dates? They’re coworkers. I’ve rarely interacted with coworkers outside of work. Also, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem socializing if you’re going around humblebragging about how you’ve optimized your work and personal time for peak employee performance.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I am defining “relationship” more broadly to encompass all my human (and dog in my case) relationships. I am not humblebragging about optimization. I have 24 hours in a day. They are generally all spoken for, meaning that for something to go in, something else must go out.
      - jonathankoren 5y ago
        You said you were young, so let this old person give you some advice. If you think interacting with coworkers is opposed to being a productive employee, you’re gravely mistaken. Also if you think you need to optimally schedule every day to maximize work, you need to rethink your life.
notpachet 5y ago
> Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. Agreed. Most of the issues that you highlighted that cause employees to prefer being in-office (loneliness, children and other distractions at home, work/life balance) are not attributable to being remote per se. Exacerbated by it, sure. But we should probably be addressing those problems head-on in a more intentional way. For instance, I've seen a lot of younger devs opining about wanting to go back to the office to reinvigorate their sense of social participation. But I'm not sure that's something we should be encouraging. (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned.) Compared to cultivating friendships outside of the office, socializing at work is empty calories.
- goalieca 5y ago
  > (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned I’m not an old fart but I’m on my way. I find is brilliant to talk about house repairs and kids and vacation tips with my colleagues. It really brings some chill to an otherwise chaotic day in an absolutely volatile industry.
  - notpachet 5y ago
    To be clear, I'm not saying you can't socialize with coworkers; I enjoy that, too. It just shouldn't be someone's only source of nourishment.
  - nucleardog 5y ago
    I still do this remote. I meet with my team once a day for 15-20 mins, and once a week for a full hour. I meet with each of the team leads once a week for a half hour. I meet with my boss once a week for an hour. This is important for a few reasons: 1. Keeping coordinated with work. We get that out of the way first. 2. Replacing the work-type water cooler conversation. There’s a lot of problems, random thoughts and questions, etc that may never rise to the level of scheduling an actual meeting but are valuable to resolve. The meeting is already there and the time is already spent, so the barrier and cost to bringing these up are nil. This has led to a lot of improvements and moving things forward in a way they wouldn’t have been otherwise. 3. Personal connection. Once we’ve got the work sorted out, just hang out and chat for a few minutes about all the things you’ve mentioned. I spend like 5-6 hours a week on meetings like this, just beginning/end of day so it’s not a interruption to anyone and everyone I’ve asked finds these meetings valuable. We’ve had to onboard a lot of people since we went remote and I’ve developed good working and personal relationships with many of them. And I still get the chance to ramble about home repairs and kids.
sugarpile 5y ago
While I truly do appreciate the cooperative tone, as someone who never intends to set foot in an office again except by choice (outside of onboarding), I think this is a rare event that has reduced the power asymmetry and should be taken advantage of. How do we make execs more comfortable? Simple, we make it so they have no choice to be uncomfortable with. Allow full remote or lose a significant portion of your workforce in the middle of a hiring crunch with already existing insane hiring demand. This may not play at Apple, for example, but it’s what I’ve already seen play out at my company (including for me specifically) and I see no reason it wouldn’t work at any non-FANG. It’s not a bluff or bluster, I’d leave if my company doubled down on forcing people back on a hybrid schedule and truthfully I may leave anyway over frustration with their initial attempts to do so despite exempting me and others. My team and office is in a very precarious position with two of our best engineers having left over the initial attempts to force hybrid. I truly think if it was forced again my the fallout may be fatal for my team.
- ekster 5y ago
  I left a C level position over going back into the office even 2 days a week. There were plenty of options to go to an all remote company - I had three offers before choosing where I would go. There are just a ton of permanently remote jobs out there at the moment.
- bsder 5y ago
  > While I truly do appreciate the cooperative tone, as someone who never intends to set foot in an office again except by choice (outside of onboarding), I think this is a rare event that has reduced the power asymmetry and should be taken advantage of. Why do you assume that this won't result in you being replaced? Sure, employers are paying a premium for remote work for the moment. That's a great demand right now and you absolutely should take advantage of that. Supply will adjust to compensate--developers willing to take less are flocking into the system. Companies are adjusting to be able to deal with workers not in their local jurisdictions. Once that shakes out (and it will happen quicker than you think)--why shouldn't I lay off your expensive salary? If you can be completely remote, what value do you bring over someone else completely remote who is a bit cheaper? This is the classic race to the bottom problem. Apparently programmers learned nothing from outsourcing. Management doesn't really care about how good you are. Most programmers aren't geniuses working on world shattering problems. They're doing the same thing that a thousand other programmers have done before. The only people likely to survive this well are, in fact, the people who have a genuine need to be in the office.
bradleyjg 5y ago
I certainly don’t have all the answers, but a few observations: 1) Starting remote seems tougher than going remote. It’s a bit rough on families but maybe an extended in person onboarding trip is a good compromise. 2) Face to face connections have to be renewed every once in a while. Co-location trips are going to become a cost of being remote, I think. 3) Some people come across badly over video. Not sure if there’s some kind a training and/or technological answer but it’s a problem and if it can’t be solved those people are not going to thrive remote even if everything else lines up. 4) All other things being equal the relationship is always going to be more transactional for remote workers. It’s just human nature to feel closer to people you regularly bump into and eat meals with. That’s not necessarily a horrible thing in an industry that blurs the line between work and life, but it does mean you need to be on the top of your game in terms of being productive and making sure people know it.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I started a job remotely. A lot of the problems with remote onboarding to me were because of broken things that conversations could quickly fix, making fixing it properly too onerous. For example, when I was setting up my local environment I needed a token. What token? Not specified. So I had to ask someone else and wait for a reply. It turns out I could have gotten the token myself. In a prior job, I needed at least 10 instructions from senior developers on setting up my local environment as the readme was very out of date. It caused a lot of problems for the next guy coming on board.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    That’s the kind of thing that can and should be fixed by every person that gets onboarded updating the onboarding docs. The thing I find more problematic with remote onboarding followed by remote work is that there’s no relationship building. There needs to be some play in the joints for a team to work. Getting to know teammates as real people, and not just an image on a screen and some IM messages, makes it more likely you will give them the benefit of the doubt.
pm90 5y ago
I don’t see why those that want to work remotely need to suppress their needs for those that do not. It’s one thing to have the freedom to choose the option you’re comfortable with, but to force it on those unwilling to so doesn’t seem right. You’re right that it won’t be the same. We’re past the point where everyone being in the office was the unquestioned norm because we never really tried mass remote work on a large scale. But we have now, and it worked just fine. Companies and employees need to figure out solutions that don’t involve forcing people to do something they don’t like just to “get back to where we were”.
- cdrini 5y ago
  Seems like the comment was asking for some solutions. It didn't propose going back to where things were.
  - pm90 5y ago
    Ah, apologies I missed that. I guess what I want to stress is that forcing everyone to return to the office should not be considered a valid option.
gz5 5y ago
Exactly - different strokes for different folks. Therefore, there is no one size fits all approach. The same was true before the pandemic - 100% in office was not ideal for everyone. Mature in-office companies - generally larger companies with established business models and median employee tenures of 5+ years - have it the most difficult. Some may have rapidly adjusted during the pandemic. But other in-office companies will not adapt so quickly - people were hired into a certain culture, got used to it, build core processes, systems, workstyles etc. Even if in-office wasn't ideal for them, and it wouldn't have been for all of them, it is ingrained. For those companies, if they choose to go hybrid or remote now because they feel it makes more sense long term, they still may have a multi-year adjustment, and that may include losing some people and gaining others. So, if you are one of those companies, this may represent a massive refactoring type decision and the complex systems between people and processes can be difficult to refactor. Would love to hear from folks at these types of companies (we have always been remote-first so can't really put ourselves in their shoes) who are successfully pulling off that refactoring.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
What I think you've hit on brilliantly here, that a lot of companies seem to be having trouble implementing, is there is no one size fits all policy. This is an incredibly difficult thing for management to implement and write policy for. Now, if you look at my previous posts, I'm known to have made fun of a bloated middle management structure cough once or twice, but in this very specific case, it might actually be able to be used to the benefit of the employees. Using that middle management to reach out, communicate and facilitate the needs and wants while the infrastructure is in place can make a truly hybrid structure work for everyone and review based on work performed, not time in office (like it should be, anyway - though generally is).
trunnell 5y ago
There's wisdom in this comment. But note that the dynamics of the conversation are a function of company culture. "Make execs comfortable" is a reflection of culture. Another path is to simply hold leaders accountable for output rather than working style. After all, is it acceptable for a team to under-deliver if they worked hard & worked in the office? Usually not. Working in the office is not sufficient to produce the right output. If you hold leaders accountable for output, you can then let them decide how their team will work. It's way easier to solve this problem in a discussion among 5 team members than in a written policy for 500 or 5000. One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder. When everyone is remote all communication must be available remotely (and typically written). When everyone is in the office, it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat. But impromptu chats leave out the people who aren't there - that's why half local and half remote is harder.
- geodel 5y ago
  Yes, you are right in holding leaders accountable. But I feel in my experience leadership has mafia like power over employees. IN this situation what's theirs is theirs but what's mine is always up for negotiation. > One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder. While this maybe true for best outcomes. IMO even flexible work policy is better for people like me who are stuck in hellish commutes 5 days a week. 2-3 days in office is similar outcome and avoiding 3 hr /day commute times for couple of days a week. > it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat. This used to be true for me also 5-7 years back. However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects" and what's left is sufficient for a webex call. Also in my case team is distributed and of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers to have face to face collaboration. But nonetheless commute is mandatory. So the rule seems collaborate with remote co-workers but only from office.
  - trunnell 5y ago
    Agreed, I've seen a hybrid schedule work well, where a team chooses which days they will all be in the office. > However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects" Honestly that sounds terrible. > of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers... Maybe look around for better company to work for. There are great teams out there.
cratermoon 5y ago
I'd happily go back to working in the office. If I had an actual office, not a 4-foot wide folding table that's part of a line of eight of them in 12 rows in a room the size of a basketball court. I haven't had an "office" to go to work in since 2000. I've shared spaces with anywhere from three to all of my co-workers. "Recent research shows that such offices result in 73 per cent less face-to-face interaction, and a 67 per cent increase in email interaction" https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959
- trunnell 5y ago
  "Private offices with doors that close" - that's the standard at Fog Creek Software, the company behind Stack Overflow, Trello, and other great products. Microsoft also provides offices (or at least used to). These companies might be on to something. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-... An opposing perspective: note that the cost for private offices is very high vs. cubes. Assuming Class A space in a premium location is around $85/sq.ft. per month [1]: 6' x 6' cube: 36 sq.ft. * $85 = $3,060/mo 8' x 10' office: 80 sq.ft. * $85 = $6,800/mo 10' x 12' office: 120 sq.ft. * $85 = $10,200/mo What would most people choose: upgrade from cube to desk, or add $3,500/mo to their paycheck? [1]: rental rate chart at https://www.squarefoot.com/office-space/ca/san-francisco https://www.squarefoot.com/office-space/ca/san-francisco
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    Your employer might get some, all, or even more than the $3,500 differential back through increased productivity, less churn, etc.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    Why are you assuming employees are currently getting the cost savings from cubicles?
  - 3gg 5y ago
    Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure about the conclusion. Why do you think the company would reimburse you for $3500/mo for freeing up office space or using less of it? A company basically pays you for your cost of living. That's why pay is high in the Bay Area or NY, and why you take a massive pay cut when you move out. If you choose to work remotely or sign up for shitty work conditions, they are not going to reimburse any of the costs you just saved them.
lottaFLOPS 5y ago
I really appreciated how this captures the varied perspectives on remote vs. in-office work in a nuanced way. I also think you hit the nail on the head in explaining the incentives and default behavior we’ve seen from executives. Before the pandemic, I heard the same explanation for open office plans, despite intense dislike from many: “well, around 50% don’t like this, but we can’t please everyone.” The only solution I can think of is not mandating a single solution. Allowing individuals/teams to choose what works best for them is more complicated and risky, but also offers the greatest potential. I’m not sure there’s a way to make execs feel more comfortable with this approach though. It is risky, and it requires a lot of trust. I’m hopeful as more companies take the leap to flexible remote policies, the results will speak for themselves. If the fears among the more conservative/risk-averse execs aren’t realized, opinions may soften. At the same time, I’m expecting there will be enough anecdotes to serve as “evidence” for any staunchly-held perspective.
lcam84 5y ago
You don't need to work from home we can find/create spaces near your with like minded people in your community. Productivity is not the main reason big tech want people back to cubicles. They need to justify the spaceship shaped offices they built and also they need keep our consumption high. As describe in this post that's also trending on HN [0], the best way to do this is to remove spare time on our lives (ex: long commutes). https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/ https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already...
animanoir 5y ago
I find astonishing that some people want to go back into the cage.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Agreed. Stockholm syndrome?
- 3gg 5y ago
  They are ready to rumble.
- closeparen 5y ago
  I find it astonishing that people think sitting in their own homes all week is reasonable behavior for an adult, let alone a behavior that others should accommodate.
  - animanoir 5y ago
    But I don't sit all week; I work, I work out, I read, I'm with my family, sometimes we go to the park. Going to an office destroys times like these.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    That’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be your home. You could be at the park or outdoor restaurant. If you’re lucky enough, it could be your backyard. The freedom to choose where you work is nice.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  I've been going back to the office 3 days a week and am loving it. I find it much easier to get into deep work, put in longer days, and maximizing my productivity. The two wfh days become almost half days due to banked up hours while in the office.
acituan 5y ago
> it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. Do you mean the majority? Because that is not true. The percentage of employees that want to go back and that doesn't want to go back are both significant and comparable. The question, as you say, is how to make everyone happy, but the meta-question is, does everyone really need to be happy? A hybrid solution makes the "officer"s partially happy but non-"officer"s completely unhappy. A flexible solution makes officers happy and at advantage, but non-officers at a career disadvantage for being deprived of, among other good things, also all the schmoozing, self-marketing etc that takes place. Also the breakdown of the "employees" is important. Not just execs but also mid-managers seem to be particularly unhappy with current setup because having the self-organizing IC to IC interactions reduced, managers' organization and coordination skills have been put under serious test. I am not saying only bad managers want RTO, but their shortcomings do get foregrounded more. > Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver. I think this is another problem of the managers' performance. Now it is up to their capabilities to steer up or weed out those chronic scape-goaters. Also I think it is very important to operationalize the term "under-performer". There is a reason for having performance tiers and their proportionate rewards; anyone who is not operating at full-performance can be considered an under-performer, but that is OK and the employee's choice unless they are in the lowest tier. That's what most ICs have been wising up to; it is easier to not cave into the peer pressure of an office environment to feel you always have to perform at top. You can totally pick a tier and have a proportionate work performance in comparison to your life performance, i.e. your other life goals. For the first time in a while a great majority of employees got a feel of what is to be not living for work. I mean, this is not even just tech, eg. restaurant workers have been quitting disproportionately, due to many things, but also for realizing they just don't need to put up with the unnecessary pressure and rude clients. > The trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once... People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work... How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? That is literally their job to handle and steer the ship under ambiguous conditions. I absolutely don't think it is anyone's but their burden to find a working solution. If they find it too stressful, they can quit, or take comfort in their exec salaries.
- 5y ago
adjkant 5y ago
I've very much liked what my company/team/office is doing so far: 1. No hard rules on when to be in the office, simply that you must be close enough to make it into the office when you need to. 2. All meetings are remote first unless everyone is in the office (protects disadvantaging people who don't choose to come in) 3. A slack channel for people to coordinate when they will be in the office. This is big as it means that people can group together when they want to socialize easily, so it's 20 people in on one day vs 4 diff people in a day in a week. I've seen team coordinate this as well, often with social activities after. 4. Cross-team social events that encourage people to go into the office without having any professional consequences when you don't come in. In person hackathons, a many game long Catan tournament, etc. I think there's much more to sort out, but generally this seems to have few complaints. Everyone gives up a little here, but it is very flexible. Some examples: - The people who want to be in for social reasons can be - Those who work better in an office / separation from home can come in whenever they want - Have a new hire? Everyone can try to come in for the first week to help onboard and get to know people, then go back to mainly remote. - The people who want full remote get most of what they want and don't get professionally disadvantaged by not being in the literal room. The only downside is having to be near an office, but they can easily do a few weeks working from completely remote location X still. I think many full remote people who want to get out of major cities will have qualms with the last one, but I think those people are looking for fully remote companies without any hybrid model. I'm all for that existing and becoming more popular, but I think we have to realize that the hybrid model simply can't fully accommodate these people, and the answer is to split our models. One open question then is can you split that model at a team/org level, or does it have to be at the company level?
- closeparen 5y ago
  The return on investment in physical presence is conversations that aren’t mediated by Zoom. If you’re going to have a rule of using Zoom anyway, there’s no point.
  - adjkant 5y ago
    I think you're significantly underestimating the value of many other aspects: - Things that happen outside of meetings, which are what the remote-video rule is for, not everything categorically. e.g. debugging together when in, white-boarding, the quick desk visit, etc. As I said, teams can (and do) coordinate to come in on the same day - Socially, the return being happier workers, better teamwork to fall back on when you're remote, etc. - The people who do not have a good home office setup for many various reasons that affect both young and old. There are countless benefits, there's no magical "this is the reason to be in the office" that you can reduce to. The "video conferencing by default" rule is the tradeoff for not disadvantaging people who want to retain their less frequent office time schedule of the pandemic.
3gg 5y ago
> 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? Looks like you work for a relatively good company. Others have, for example, threatened with dropping health insurance unless the workers come back -- yes, in the middle of a pandemic. I am not sure those execs care about how you make them feel. Therefore, my answer to your question, is to organize and fight back. It's a class struggle, not a happy conversation.
- srswtf123 5y ago
  Agreed, this is the struggle. Look at whats being asked here, its frankly absurd: How do we make our execs feel more comfortable ... How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry ... Some of the corporations I've worked, the execs seemed to absolutely revel in their ability to make their employees uncomfortable and worried. I give not one whit to their comfort and worries so long as they act like sociopaths or worse. This class of people hasn't had to worry in a generation. Hasn't been uncomfortable in decades. So the pandemic reveals the charade, and we're just supposed to all agree that is isn't a charade and go back to acting like good human resources? We have been so overworked, for so long, that we get a long moment to rest -- the pandemic -- and realize the culture, the society, its just awful. What have these stewards of the economy given us, and guided us toward? Empty lives, endless work, a seemingly dying ecosystem, endless consumption, pointless entertainment. This isn't class struggle, its class war. A war the lower class is clearly already losing.
  - 3gg 5y ago
    I am with you 200%. Just giving the original poster the benefit of doubt. I think the post makes the mistake of assuming that we are one equal footing with corporate execs and that this is, somehow, a conversation. But let's just give them room to expand on their thoughts.
Buttons840 5y ago
> 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. I agree this is a reality and has to be considered. But we need to acknowledge that this is people's personal problems coming into the workplace. If there is going to be a compromise, at some point I'm going to at least want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason I can no longer interact with my new born baby a few time throughout the day, and will thus spend significantly less time with them during this brief phase of their life. I also want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason my risk of early death in a car accident are greatly increased. Otherwise, I'm going to feel that any "compromise" is forced. It's a hard problem.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Bob's personal problems are the reason I can no longer interact with my new born baby a few time throughout the day If you don't get paid family leave for several months in that situation, that's not your co-worker's fault. That's how it's supposed to work.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    It's just an example. The point is a co-workers is dealing with his personal problems by forcing other people to do things they would rather not.
r00f 5y ago
Don't you find it selfish that someone is forced to start commuting to office again, only because somebody wanted to be surrounded by coworkers? I've been fully remote since 2010, and I would be completely frustrated if I was told "You need to sit at the office now, because John is feeling different in half-empty office"
- closeparen 5y ago
  I find it selfish that someone expects me to treat them like a teammate when they can’t be bothered to show up.
  - youeseh 5y ago
    What does "show up" mean when the technology allows you to "show up", and fulfill all of a job's requirements remotely?
    - closeparen 5y ago
      What does “team” mean when the technology allows you to build perfectly good software by exchanging short, on-topic, asynchronous messages with a rotating cast of anonymous strangers? I don’t think it’s necessary to be physically present to build software, but if you do go remote, go all the way. Trying to build a sense of camaraderie over Zoom is a tragic farce.
      - youeseh 5y ago
        My team is distributed around the US. A number of people joined after the pandemic started, which forced the firm to go from fully in-house to fully-remote overnight. Our experience is that a team that works together to solve problems builds camaraderie. The tools and tech are all there and very easy and affordable. A few weeks ago we met up for lunch after being away from each other for over a year. Nothing about our meeting gave us the impression that we'd grown apart from working remotely. Of course, the size of your investment and your returns may vary.
- 5y ago
caskstrength 5y ago
This looks like balanced and well articulated position. Would be nice if executives of big companies stop being hypocrites and provided such explanations to their employees instead of "bUt mUh cOllAbOrAtIvE cUltUrE!!1" and "performance gotten approximately 3 billion times worse since WFH started".
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Give management a new role: ‘make the office worth going to’ e.g. no meetings in dusty conference rooms that could be done remote, instead, actual interactive events that are occasional but useful for relationship building and collaboration. The future of going in 5 days a week is gone, the pandemic and the internet killed that. When you do get the team to go in, make it worth it.
edem 5y ago
> they want to be surrounded by their coworkers Oh, I see. And I want to be surrounded by family and friends. Coworkers are....well, coworkers. > going back while the majority of the team is remote is not the same Going back while I don't want to go back is not only not the same, it is __completely different__ > kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries Now, this is the problem of the worker. Just because person X can't reason with their family shouldn't mean that __I__ have to go into an office. > relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over This makes absolutely no sense. If they want a commute they can go to a coworking space. Commute itself is the reason why I __will never__ go to an office again. I'm not gonna waste a minute on something I'm not getting paid for. > How do we make our execs feel more comfortable Why would I want that? There are many more employees than execs. Why wouldn't we want to focus on making the employees comfortable so that they can perform well? > no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal What does this even mean?
samstave 5y ago
Another option is to allow either 2-days home, 3-in office... or 3-days home and 2-days in... but maybe make it so that only wednesday is the only day where everyone has to be in office.... However - how many people have moved away from a commutable distance during the 1 year WFH period?

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.

Ericson2314 5y ago
With employers being much fewer, the no-poach stuff, etc. this is a bad solution. Employers have always been more organized and holding more market power than employees.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  No-poach stuff? There are literally millions of companies that allow remote work, are they all part of the no-poach cartel?
  - abz10 5y ago
    Some tech jobs are only available in a handful of companies that were a part of the cartel. Some of us took the bet that a big investment in education in one of these specialties would pay off. The cartel effectively suppressed the pay off. Now these companies are complaining that the supply of specialists has dried up.
    - chaostheory 5y ago
      With recent limits on H1B, those companies aren’t wrong to say that the supply has dried up. That said, it means we have more leverage when it comes to remote work. If it means changing companies, so be it.
      - abz10 5y ago
        US companies are now being hoisted by their own petard. There are not that many exploitable smart people left, even internationally. In my applied research niche they already hired internationally and the ability was rare, being high functioning autistic was basically a prerequisite. Supply dried up because these people have better options now; start ups, finance, crypto, independent scientists, more promising companies in their home countries. It’s much easier for me to change companies than for companies to change. I’ve been remote for 7 years and will retire long before going back to an office.

h4waii 5y ago

Well said, I do want to point out that some of those who want to go back "to be surrounded by their coworkers" might be missing the fact that those who don't want to back might be because they don't want to be surrounded by their coworkers; they want to be surrounded by people they choose to have relationships with, not ones foisted upon them.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Yes. I am a young single guy who is not really a fan of the office. A lot of that is simply that have already filled all my available relationship time. Adding new people requires removing other people or reducing my productivity to make more time available.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  “Filled your relationship time”? What are you expecting these coworker relationships to be? Dates? They’re coworkers. I’ve rarely interacted with coworkers outside of work. Also, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem socializing if you’re going around humblebragging about how you’ve optimized your work and personal time for peak employee performance.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I am defining “relationship” more broadly to encompass all my human (and dog in my case) relationships. I am not humblebragging about optimization. I have 24 hours in a day. They are generally all spoken for, meaning that for something to go in, something else must go out.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      You said you were young, so let this old person give you some advice. If you think interacting with coworkers is opposed to being a productive employee, you’re gravely mistaken. Also if you think you need to optimally schedule every day to maximize work, you need to rethink your life.

notpachet 5y ago

> Many of these problems seem solvable without forcing employees who want to work remote to come in. Agreed. Most of the issues that you highlighted that cause employees to prefer being in-office (loneliness, children and other distractions at home, work/life balance) are not attributable to being remote per se. Exacerbated by it, sure. But we should probably be addressing those problems head-on in a more intentional way. For instance, I've seen a lot of younger devs opining about wanting to go back to the office to reinvigorate their sense of social participation. But I'm not sure that's something we should be encouraging. (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned.) Compared to cultivating friendships outside of the office, socializing at work is empty calories.

goalieca 5y ago
> (It actually runs counter to the work/life balance problem you mentioned I’m not an old fart but I’m on my way. I find is brilliant to talk about house repairs and kids and vacation tips with my colleagues. It really brings some chill to an otherwise chaotic day in an absolutely volatile industry.
- notpachet 5y ago
  To be clear, I'm not saying you can't socialize with coworkers; I enjoy that, too. It just shouldn't be someone's only source of nourishment.
- nucleardog 5y ago
  I still do this remote. I meet with my team once a day for 15-20 mins, and once a week for a full hour. I meet with each of the team leads once a week for a half hour. I meet with my boss once a week for an hour. This is important for a few reasons: 1. Keeping coordinated with work. We get that out of the way first. 2. Replacing the work-type water cooler conversation. There’s a lot of problems, random thoughts and questions, etc that may never rise to the level of scheduling an actual meeting but are valuable to resolve. The meeting is already there and the time is already spent, so the barrier and cost to bringing these up are nil. This has led to a lot of improvements and moving things forward in a way they wouldn’t have been otherwise. 3. Personal connection. Once we’ve got the work sorted out, just hang out and chat for a few minutes about all the things you’ve mentioned. I spend like 5-6 hours a week on meetings like this, just beginning/end of day so it’s not a interruption to anyone and everyone I’ve asked finds these meetings valuable. We’ve had to onboard a lot of people since we went remote and I’ve developed good working and personal relationships with many of them. And I still get the chance to ramble about home repairs and kids.

sugarpile 5y ago

While I truly do appreciate the cooperative tone, as someone who never intends to set foot in an office again except by choice (outside of onboarding), I think this is a rare event that has reduced the power asymmetry and should be taken advantage of. How do we make execs more comfortable? Simple, we make it so they have no choice to be uncomfortable with. Allow full remote or lose a significant portion of your workforce in the middle of a hiring crunch with already existing insane hiring demand. This may not play at Apple, for example, but it’s what I’ve already seen play out at my company (including for me specifically) and I see no reason it wouldn’t work at any non-FANG. It’s not a bluff or bluster, I’d leave if my company doubled down on forcing people back on a hybrid schedule and truthfully I may leave anyway over frustration with their initial attempts to do so despite exempting me and others. My team and office is in a very precarious position with two of our best engineers having left over the initial attempts to force hybrid. I truly think if it was forced again my the fallout may be fatal for my team.

ekster 5y ago
I left a C level position over going back into the office even 2 days a week. There were plenty of options to go to an all remote company - I had three offers before choosing where I would go. There are just a ton of permanently remote jobs out there at the moment.
bsder 5y ago
> While I truly do appreciate the cooperative tone, as someone who never intends to set foot in an office again except by choice (outside of onboarding), I think this is a rare event that has reduced the power asymmetry and should be taken advantage of. Why do you assume that this won't result in you being replaced? Sure, employers are paying a premium for remote work for the moment. That's a great demand right now and you absolutely should take advantage of that. Supply will adjust to compensate--developers willing to take less are flocking into the system. Companies are adjusting to be able to deal with workers not in their local jurisdictions. Once that shakes out (and it will happen quicker than you think)--why shouldn't I lay off your expensive salary? If you can be completely remote, what value do you bring over someone else completely remote who is a bit cheaper? This is the classic race to the bottom problem. Apparently programmers learned nothing from outsourcing. Management doesn't really care about how good you are. Most programmers aren't geniuses working on world shattering problems. They're doing the same thing that a thousand other programmers have done before. The only people likely to survive this well are, in fact, the people who have a genuine need to be in the office.

bradleyjg 5y ago

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but a few observations: 1) Starting remote seems tougher than going remote. It’s a bit rough on families but maybe an extended in person onboarding trip is a good compromise. 2) Face to face connections have to be renewed every once in a while. Co-location trips are going to become a cost of being remote, I think. 3) Some people come across badly over video. Not sure if there’s some kind a training and/or technological answer but it’s a problem and if it can’t be solved those people are not going to thrive remote even if everything else lines up. 4) All other things being equal the relationship is always going to be more transactional for remote workers. It’s just human nature to feel closer to people you regularly bump into and eat meals with. That’s not necessarily a horrible thing in an industry that blurs the line between work and life, but it does mean you need to be on the top of your game in terms of being productive and making sure people know it.

MattGaiser 5y ago
I started a job remotely. A lot of the problems with remote onboarding to me were because of broken things that conversations could quickly fix, making fixing it properly too onerous. For example, when I was setting up my local environment I needed a token. What token? Not specified. So I had to ask someone else and wait for a reply. It turns out I could have gotten the token myself. In a prior job, I needed at least 10 instructions from senior developers on setting up my local environment as the readme was very out of date. It caused a lot of problems for the next guy coming on board.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  That’s the kind of thing that can and should be fixed by every person that gets onboarded updating the onboarding docs. The thing I find more problematic with remote onboarding followed by remote work is that there’s no relationship building. There needs to be some play in the joints for a team to work. Getting to know teammates as real people, and not just an image on a screen and some IM messages, makes it more likely you will give them the benefit of the doubt.

pm90 5y ago

I don’t see why those that want to work remotely need to suppress their needs for those that do not. It’s one thing to have the freedom to choose the option you’re comfortable with, but to force it on those unwilling to so doesn’t seem right. You’re right that it won’t be the same. We’re past the point where everyone being in the office was the unquestioned norm because we never really tried mass remote work on a large scale. But we have now, and it worked just fine. Companies and employees need to figure out solutions that don’t involve forcing people to do something they don’t like just to “get back to where we were”.

cdrini 5y ago
Seems like the comment was asking for some solutions. It didn't propose going back to where things were.
- pm90 5y ago
  Ah, apologies I missed that. I guess what I want to stress is that forcing everyone to return to the office should not be considered a valid option.

gz5 5y ago

Exactly - different strokes for different folks. Therefore, there is no one size fits all approach. The same was true before the pandemic - 100% in office was not ideal for everyone. Mature in-office companies - generally larger companies with established business models and median employee tenures of 5+ years - have it the most difficult. Some may have rapidly adjusted during the pandemic. But other in-office companies will not adapt so quickly - people were hired into a certain culture, got used to it, build core processes, systems, workstyles etc. Even if in-office wasn't ideal for them, and it wouldn't have been for all of them, it is ingrained. For those companies, if they choose to go hybrid or remote now because they feel it makes more sense long term, they still may have a multi-year adjustment, and that may include losing some people and gaining others. So, if you are one of those companies, this may represent a massive refactoring type decision and the complex systems between people and processes can be difficult to refactor. Would love to hear from folks at these types of companies (we have always been remote-first so can't really put ourselves in their shoes) who are successfully pulling off that refactoring.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago

What I think you've hit on brilliantly here, that a lot of companies seem to be having trouble implementing, is there is no one size fits all policy. This is an incredibly difficult thing for management to implement and write policy for. Now, if you look at my previous posts, I'm known to have made fun of a bloated middle management structure cough once or twice, but in this very specific case, it might actually be able to be used to the benefit of the employees. Using that middle management to reach out, communicate and facilitate the needs and wants while the infrastructure is in place can make a truly hybrid structure work for everyone and review based on work performed, not time in office (like it should be, anyway - though generally is).

trunnell 5y ago

There's wisdom in this comment. But note that the dynamics of the conversation are a function of company culture. "Make execs comfortable" is a reflection of culture. Another path is to simply hold leaders accountable for output rather than working style. After all, is it acceptable for a team to under-deliver if they worked hard & worked in the office? Usually not. Working in the office is not sufficient to produce the right output. If you hold leaders accountable for output, you can then let them decide how their team will work. It's way easier to solve this problem in a discussion among 5 team members than in a written policy for 500 or 5000. One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder. When everyone is remote all communication must be available remotely (and typically written). When everyone is in the office, it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat. But impromptu chats leave out the people who aren't there - that's why half local and half remote is harder.

geodel 5y ago
Yes, you are right in holding leaders accountable. But I feel in my experience leadership has mafia like power over employees. IN this situation what's theirs is theirs but what's mine is always up for negotiation. > One last tip: collaborating is much easier when a team is 100% remote or 100% in the office, but split is much harder. While this maybe true for best outcomes. IMO even flexible work policy is better for people like me who are stuck in hellish commutes 5 days a week. 2-3 days in office is similar outcome and avoiding 3 hr /day commute times for couple of days a week. > it's easy to swivel the chairs around for a quick impromptu chat. This used to be true for me also 5-7 years back. However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects" and what's left is sufficient for a webex call. Also in my case team is distributed and of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers to have face to face collaboration. But nonetheless commute is mandatory. So the rule seems collaborate with remote co-workers but only from office.
- trunnell 5y ago
  Agreed, I've seen a hybrid schedule work well, where a team chooses which days they will all be in the office. > However lately all important tech decisions comes from "enterprise architects" Honestly that sounds terrible. > of course travel is not approved for lowly engineers... Maybe look around for better company to work for. There are great teams out there.

cratermoon 5y ago

I'd happily go back to working in the office. If I had an actual office, not a 4-foot wide folding table that's part of a line of eight of them in 12 rows in a room the size of a basketball court. I haven't had an "office" to go to work in since 2000. I've shared spaces with anywhere from three to all of my co-workers. "Recent research shows that such offices result in 73 per cent less face-to-face interaction, and a 67 per cent increase in email interaction" https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959

trunnell 5y ago
"Private offices with doors that close" - that's the standard at Fog Creek Software, the company behind Stack Overflow, Trello, and other great products. Microsoft also provides offices (or at least used to). These companies might be on to something. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-... An opposing perspective: note that the cost for private offices is very high vs. cubes. Assuming Class A space in a premium location is around $85/sq.ft. per month [1]: 6' x 6' cube: 36 sq.ft. * $85 = $3,060/mo 8' x 10' office: 80 sq.ft. * $85 = $6,800/mo 10' x 12' office: 120 sq.ft. * $85 = $10,200/mo What would most people choose: upgrade from cube to desk, or add $3,500/mo to their paycheck? [1]: rental rate chart at https://www.squarefoot.com/office-space/ca/san-francisco https://www.squarefoot.com/office-space/ca/san-francisco
- mattkrause 5y ago
  Your employer might get some, all, or even more than the $3,500 differential back through increased productivity, less churn, etc.
- triceratops 5y ago
  Why are you assuming employees are currently getting the cost savings from cubicles?
- 3gg 5y ago
  Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure about the conclusion. Why do you think the company would reimburse you for $3500/mo for freeing up office space or using less of it? A company basically pays you for your cost of living. That's why pay is high in the Bay Area or NY, and why you take a massive pay cut when you move out. If you choose to work remotely or sign up for shitty work conditions, they are not going to reimburse any of the costs you just saved them.

lottaFLOPS 5y ago

I really appreciated how this captures the varied perspectives on remote vs. in-office work in a nuanced way. I also think you hit the nail on the head in explaining the incentives and default behavior we’ve seen from executives. Before the pandemic, I heard the same explanation for open office plans, despite intense dislike from many: “well, around 50% don’t like this, but we can’t please everyone.” The only solution I can think of is not mandating a single solution. Allowing individuals/teams to choose what works best for them is more complicated and risky, but also offers the greatest potential. I’m not sure there’s a way to make execs feel more comfortable with this approach though. It is risky, and it requires a lot of trust. I’m hopeful as more companies take the leap to flexible remote policies, the results will speak for themselves. If the fears among the more conservative/risk-averse execs aren’t realized, opinions may soften. At the same time, I’m expecting there will be enough anecdotes to serve as “evidence” for any staunchly-held perspective.

lcam84 5y ago

You don't need to work from home we can find/create spaces near your with like minded people in your community. Productivity is not the main reason big tech want people back to cubicles. They need to justify the spaceship shaped offices they built and also they need keep our consumption high. As describe in this post that's also trending on HN [0], the best way to do this is to remove spare time on our lives (ex: long commutes). https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/ https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already...

animanoir 5y ago

I find astonishing that some people want to go back into the cage.

CodeGlitch 5y ago
Agreed. Stockholm syndrome?
3gg 5y ago
They are ready to rumble.
closeparen 5y ago
I find it astonishing that people think sitting in their own homes all week is reasonable behavior for an adult, let alone a behavior that others should accommodate.
- animanoir 5y ago
  But I don't sit all week; I work, I work out, I read, I'm with my family, sometimes we go to the park. Going to an office destroys times like these.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  That’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be your home. You could be at the park or outdoor restaurant. If you’re lucky enough, it could be your backyard. The freedom to choose where you work is nice.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway6734 5y ago
I've been going back to the office 3 days a week and am loving it. I find it much easier to get into deep work, put in longer days, and maximizing my productivity. The two wfh days become almost half days due to banked up hours while in the office.

acituan 5y ago

> it is important to note that there is a significant percentage of employees that want to go back to the office. Do you mean the majority? Because that is not true. The percentage of employees that want to go back and that doesn't want to go back are both significant and comparable. The question, as you say, is how to make everyone happy, but the meta-question is, does everyone really need to be happy? A hybrid solution makes the "officer"s partially happy but non-"officer"s completely unhappy. A flexible solution makes officers happy and at advantage, but non-officers at a career disadvantage for being deprived of, among other good things, also all the schmoozing, self-marketing etc that takes place. Also the breakdown of the "employees" is important. Not just execs but also mid-managers seem to be particularly unhappy with current setup because having the self-organizing IC to IC interactions reduced, managers' organization and coordination skills have been put under serious test. I am not saying only bad managers want RTO, but their shortcomings do get foregrounded more. > Finally, there will always be under-performers who are desperately searching for a scape goat when they fail to deliver. I think this is another problem of the managers' performance. Now it is up to their capabilities to steer up or weed out those chronic scape-goaters. Also I think it is very important to operationalize the term "under-performer". There is a reason for having performance tiers and their proportionate rewards; anyone who is not operating at full-performance can be considered an under-performer, but that is OK and the employee's choice unless they are in the lowest tier. That's what most ICs have been wising up to; it is easier to not cave into the peer pressure of an office environment to feel you always have to perform at top. You can totally pick a tier and have a proportionate work performance in comparison to your life performance, i.e. your other life goals. For the first time in a while a great majority of employees got a feel of what is to be not living for work. I mean, this is not even just tech, eg. restaurant workers have been quitting disproportionately, due to many things, but also for realizing they just don't need to put up with the unnecessary pressure and rude clients. > The trick is for executives to wrangle all of these new challenges at once... People haven’t been trained how to make this new world work... How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? That is literally their job to handle and steer the ship under ambiguous conditions. I absolutely don't think it is anyone's but their burden to find a working solution. If they find it too stressful, they can quit, or take comfort in their exec salaries.

5y ago

adjkant 5y ago

I've very much liked what my company/team/office is doing so far: 1. No hard rules on when to be in the office, simply that you must be close enough to make it into the office when you need to. 2. All meetings are remote first unless everyone is in the office (protects disadvantaging people who don't choose to come in) 3. A slack channel for people to coordinate when they will be in the office. This is big as it means that people can group together when they want to socialize easily, so it's 20 people in on one day vs 4 diff people in a day in a week. I've seen team coordinate this as well, often with social activities after. 4. Cross-team social events that encourage people to go into the office without having any professional consequences when you don't come in. In person hackathons, a many game long Catan tournament, etc. I think there's much more to sort out, but generally this seems to have few complaints. Everyone gives up a little here, but it is very flexible. Some examples: - The people who want to be in for social reasons can be - Those who work better in an office / separation from home can come in whenever they want - Have a new hire? Everyone can try to come in for the first week to help onboard and get to know people, then go back to mainly remote. - The people who want full remote get most of what they want and don't get professionally disadvantaged by not being in the literal room. The only downside is having to be near an office, but they can easily do a few weeks working from completely remote location X still. I think many full remote people who want to get out of major cities will have qualms with the last one, but I think those people are looking for fully remote companies without any hybrid model. I'm all for that existing and becoming more popular, but I think we have to realize that the hybrid model simply can't fully accommodate these people, and the answer is to split our models. One open question then is can you split that model at a team/org level, or does it have to be at the company level?

closeparen 5y ago
The return on investment in physical presence is conversations that aren’t mediated by Zoom. If you’re going to have a rule of using Zoom anyway, there’s no point.
- adjkant 5y ago
  I think you're significantly underestimating the value of many other aspects: - Things that happen outside of meetings, which are what the remote-video rule is for, not everything categorically. e.g. debugging together when in, white-boarding, the quick desk visit, etc. As I said, teams can (and do) coordinate to come in on the same day - Socially, the return being happier workers, better teamwork to fall back on when you're remote, etc. - The people who do not have a good home office setup for many various reasons that affect both young and old. There are countless benefits, there's no magical "this is the reason to be in the office" that you can reduce to. The "video conferencing by default" rule is the tradeoff for not disadvantaging people who want to retain their less frequent office time schedule of the pandemic.

3gg 5y ago

> 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? Looks like you work for a relatively good company. Others have, for example, threatened with dropping health insurance unless the workers come back -- yes, in the middle of a pandemic. I am not sure those execs care about how you make them feel. Therefore, my answer to your question, is to organize and fight back. It's a class struggle, not a happy conversation.

srswtf123 5y ago
Agreed, this is the struggle. Look at whats being asked here, its frankly absurd: How do we make our execs feel more comfortable ... How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry ... Some of the corporations I've worked, the execs seemed to absolutely revel in their ability to make their employees uncomfortable and worried. I give not one whit to their comfort and worries so long as they act like sociopaths or worse. This class of people hasn't had to worry in a generation. Hasn't been uncomfortable in decades. So the pandemic reveals the charade, and we're just supposed to all agree that is isn't a charade and go back to acting like good human resources? We have been so overworked, for so long, that we get a long moment to rest -- the pandemic -- and realize the culture, the society, its just awful. What have these stewards of the economy given us, and guided us toward? Empty lives, endless work, a seemingly dying ecosystem, endless consumption, pointless entertainment. This isn't class struggle, its class war. A war the lower class is clearly already losing.
- 3gg 5y ago
  I am with you 200%. Just giving the original poster the benefit of doubt. I think the post makes the mistake of assuming that we are one equal footing with corporate execs and that this is, somehow, a conversation. But let's just give them room to expand on their thoughts.

Buttons840 5y ago

> 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. I agree this is a reality and has to be considered. But we need to acknowledge that this is people's personal problems coming into the workplace. If there is going to be a compromise, at some point I'm going to at least want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason I can no longer interact with my new born baby a few time throughout the day, and will thus spend significantly less time with them during this brief phase of their life. I also want it acknowledged that Bob's personal problems are the reason my risk of early death in a car accident are greatly increased. Otherwise, I'm going to feel that any "compromise" is forced. It's a hard problem.

perl4ever 5y ago
>Bob's personal problems are the reason I can no longer interact with my new born baby a few time throughout the day If you don't get paid family leave for several months in that situation, that's not your co-worker's fault. That's how it's supposed to work.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  It's just an example. The point is a co-workers is dealing with his personal problems by forcing other people to do things they would rather not.

r00f 5y ago

Don't you find it selfish that someone is forced to start commuting to office again, only because somebody wanted to be surrounded by coworkers? I've been fully remote since 2010, and I would be completely frustrated if I was told "You need to sit at the office now, because John is feeling different in half-empty office"

closeparen 5y ago
I find it selfish that someone expects me to treat them like a teammate when they can’t be bothered to show up.
- youeseh 5y ago
  What does "show up" mean when the technology allows you to "show up", and fulfill all of a job's requirements remotely?
  - closeparen 5y ago
    What does “team” mean when the technology allows you to build perfectly good software by exchanging short, on-topic, asynchronous messages with a rotating cast of anonymous strangers? I don’t think it’s necessary to be physically present to build software, but if you do go remote, go all the way. Trying to build a sense of camaraderie over Zoom is a tragic farce.
    - youeseh 5y ago
      My team is distributed around the US. A number of people joined after the pandemic started, which forced the firm to go from fully in-house to fully-remote overnight. Our experience is that a team that works together to solve problems builds camaraderie. The tools and tech are all there and very easy and affordable. A few weeks ago we met up for lunch after being away from each other for over a year. Nothing about our meeting gave us the impression that we'd grown apart from working remotely. Of course, the size of your investment and your returns may vary.
5y ago

caskstrength 5y ago

This looks like balanced and well articulated position. Would be nice if executives of big companies stop being hypocrites and provided such explanations to their employees instead of "bUt mUh cOllAbOrAtIvE cUltUrE!!1" and "performance gotten approximately 3 billion times worse since WFH started".

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Give management a new role: ‘make the office worth going to’ e.g. no meetings in dusty conference rooms that could be done remote, instead, actual interactive events that are occasional but useful for relationship building and collaboration. The future of going in 5 days a week is gone, the pandemic and the internet killed that. When you do get the team to go in, make it worth it.

edem 5y ago

> they want to be surrounded by their coworkers Oh, I see. And I want to be surrounded by family and friends. Coworkers are....well, coworkers. > going back while the majority of the team is remote is not the same Going back while I don't want to go back is not only not the same, it is __completely different__ > kids or spouses that don’t respect the working from home boundaries Now, this is the problem of the worker. Just because person X can't reason with their family shouldn't mean that __I__ have to go into an office. > relied on a commute to tell their brain the work day is over This makes absolutely no sense. If they want a commute they can go to a coworking space. Commute itself is the reason why I __will never__ go to an office again. I'm not gonna waste a minute on something I'm not getting paid for. > How do we make our execs feel more comfortable Why would I want that? There are many more employees than execs. Why wouldn't we want to focus on making the employees comfortable so that they can perform well? > no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal What does this even mean?

samstave 5y ago

Another option is to allow either 2-days home, 3-in office... or 3-days home and 2-days in... but maybe make it so that only wednesday is the only day where everyone has to be in office.... However - how many people have moved away from a commutable distance during the 1 year WFH period?