15 ms·

You can't lure employees back to the office

136 points by CrankyBear 5y ago

therealbilly 5y ago
Honestly, I think it's best if we have two modes of working. We could have an office mode, where you go in to the office and interact with others for whatever reason. Then we have remote mode (maybe the preferred mode), where we have an office like setup, at home with the appropriate equipment to carry out the company's mission. What do you guys think?
abraxas 5y ago
Could start with not making them such awful places to work by getting rid of those awful open floor plans. Want people back in offices? How about building some rather than having big cattle herd areas where every sound and germ travels for miles in every direction.
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
  It's also important to consider that many people don't have homes that are conducive to working, because there are many other people in the house, or because they don't have the space for a dedicated office, or any other number of reasons. This isn't applicable to everybody obviously, but offices should be able to compete on these fronts.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Provide a coworking space stipend to everyone, obtained with a corporate group rate. It's not "work from home", but rather "work from anywhere."
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      That assumes your town has such coworking facilities. Maybe a safe assumption in cities, but definitely not in all towns nor for people living in more rural areas. And if you're going to commute to a coworking office in the same city that your normal office would be in anyway, it seems a bit pointless. A commute is a commute.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        Whether you have a "coworking facility" or not, if you're simply paid enough money, you can solve the home office problem with it.
        BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        With construction or moving? I'd rather keep my home the way it is, thanks.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Construction, moving, daycare, etc. You can have your preferences but there still exists an amount of compensation at which the average employee's preferences are offset.
  - Guest42 5y ago
    My experiences in offices have generally involved being surrounded by many people who talk rather consistently. When coupled with surprise meetings that don’t pertain directly to my projects and the inability to multitask, I think that the home office is a net positive.
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      Yes well, open office plans and cubicles are awful, no argument there. But a real office with a door can be attractive relative to the situation many people have at home.
      - decafninja 5y ago
        The odds that employers will offer employees below the executive or managerial level private or even semi-private offices is extremely low. Personally, I think the odds of such a thing happening are lower than WFH becoming mainstream.
        BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        I guess I got lucky then.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Speaking for myself, I haven't had an office with a door for a decade now. And if you go back to the top of my white collar career (that is, jobs done from an office (or notably, a warehouse)), I've had a door twice. Ironically enough, I do have a door at home.
        dragonsky 5y ago
        The last office with a door I had was in the old morgue of the hospital we supported. Was actually a pretty good location once you got used to the funky smells. Quiet, cool, dark and nobody came knocking on the door asking for us to fix there computers.
      - 5y ago
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    >many people don't have homes that are conducive to working That's because (up until this shift) they have been forced to live in close proximity to offices. For the price of a downtown apartment, you can live in a suburb or rural area with more space that you could need. The longer this forced shift (pandemic) goes on, the more people will move away from the poor quality of life cities. Once they get the taste of a life without tiny overpriced apartments and time sucking commutes, they will only go back if they are forced - i.e. don't have the skills to easily jump ship.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > open floor plans This is the part where I personally experienced the most friction between the management/lifestyle/trend bubble and "boots on the ground" people/devs. All of a sudden blog posts and news posts popped up that claimed how open space is better, everybody loves it and everyone should be able to look every coworker in the eye and on his monitor, 0 barriers etc. Meanwhile I have yet to meet a coworker in real life that prefers or even likes this trend, personally I hate it. Makes it hard to focus, turns the distractions and noises up to 11 and makes overall for a terrible workplace. It was a major reason to quit my last job, and I am much happier with my current one. Similarly I believe that homeoffice has probably sensitized many people to terrible workplace environments.
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    My best workplaces have always been open offices with high quality coworkers!
    - falcolas 5y ago
      And mine have been closed offices with high quality co-workers. Followed by closed office with OK co-workers. I don't think it's the floor plan.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    > Meanwhile I have yet to meet a coworker in real life that prefers or even likes this trend, personally I hate it. I just don't believe this. I would say a good 2/3rd of employee's at every job I've worked at preferred the open floor plan. The only way I could possibly see not a single, not even one, person you've worked with preferring it is if you front run the conversation with such a vicious condemnation of it that they didn't feel comfortable sharing with you. > Similarly I believe that homeoffice has probably sensitized many people to terrible workplace environments. I'll take a guess that you have extra space and no kids or some combination? The feedback I've seen is the exact opposite with people realizing how poorly their home setup is and how little ability they have to make better.
    - 5y ago
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Nearly all of my short term resistance is because of the environment temperature and low quality of drinking water (bad tasting mineral water and often contaminated by plastic bottles).
Guest42 5y ago
Also a positive in that it reduces highway traffic.
soared 5y ago
The title of the article doesn’t really match the content. The article says 34% of workers want to go into the office 3-5 days a week. So very clearly you can lure employees back.. because some of them do want to go back. The article has stats about what we’re all assuming, namely employees want wfh and employers don’t. But in no way does it attempt to answer/justify the thought provoking question asked in the title. How would I be lured back into the office? As a late 20s male in the USA I mostly miss the social aspect of work. I always had friends at work (despite what the grumpy people says about coworkers being friends), and I miss that. I left a job four years ago and still hang out all the time with those old coworkers. I’d also like to not be held to specific hours or days. Breakfast and lunch would lure me in, along with high quality coffee. I don’t mind open floor plans, but do know most people don’t like them.
- sharadov 5y ago
  I miss the social aspect of work, as someone who took a remote job about 4.5 yrs back, I don't think most people who have only experienced it as a side effect of covid - realize how important it is for mental sanity. Yes, I like being at home too, but I would prefer hybrid, with no more than 1 to 2 days of working in the office.
  - rabuse 5y ago
    This is what weekends are for though. I've been remote pretty much my entire life, and still socialize a ton.
    - dv_dt 5y ago
      Yup - create a better work life balance. Work is not a substitute for a social life. Work less & socialize after hours and on weekends.
      - sharadov 5y ago
        I have plenty of work -life balance, but I also moved while I was remote and it's hard to make friends in a new place. I made a bunch of friends at previous work places and if I had not moved - I would be hanging out with them.
mkl95 5y ago
I will happily go back to the office for a life changing raise.
- lovedaddy 5y ago
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    It reads more to me that the terms that the world is giving have improved, so the companies have to respond- it should and does go both ways with leverage.
- decafninja 5y ago
  This is pretty much what happened to me. New company is not friendly to WFH except for the occasional day here and there, but my compensation has quadrupled. I am not complaining.
  - sharkster711 5y ago
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  It would have to be enough to allow me to retire soon, which would probably not be in their interest. So remote full time it is!
akudha 5y ago
If everyone (whenever possible, obviously a trucker or a nurse can't work from home) worked from home, imagine how much better off we would all be - traffic would be less, people would eat home cooked food, less stress, less office politics, no need to pay for office space/coffee/electricity (even toilet paper) ... on and on and on. If I were running a software company, I'd calculate all these savings and pass it on to my employees and retain talent. I guess the only people who don't like remote is middle management, their career depends on dumb meetings and other such meaningless things. At home, at least we can mute ourselves and do something useful.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Take it a step further. No need to live on top of one another (unless you like that), no need to live in an unpleasant climate, no need to tolerate local politics you don’t like, etc. An explosion in human freedom.
  - machiaweliczny 5y ago
    Just make it so it's easy to employ people cross borders and you are trillionere.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      …and on the hit lists of high-tax nations…
  - akudha 5y ago
    Yup, if only we can work from anywhere... I am flat out refusing non-remote jobs (I was remote even before covid) even though I am just an average engineer. One recruiter argued with me - she was like "remote workers should be paid less", lol. In my opinion, remote workers should be paid more, as companies aren't spending on their office space, electricity etc. If our species survives for another 100 or more years, future generations will look at our cubicles and laugh. There is absolutely no reason for digital workers to go to office (with very few exceptions). The one (only?) good thing that came out of COVID is people are realizing a lot of bullshit they have been fed all these years about work and are pushing back, though slowly - one of them being remote working.
baron816 5y ago
I don't know if this would work, but Google, FB, Apple, et al should try to build out live/work communities. Yeah, kind of like a company town. The best part of college is the college campus. I don't know why companies don't want to try to replicate that. It would definitely be more appealing to younger employees, and I be it would get them to stick around much longer. Imagine being able to walk to work, and having most of your coworkers live close by as well. The social bonds you would form with people would be much stronger. And moving to that campus to start at the company would be less scary knowing that you'd quickly get to know and build good relationships with coworkers/neighbors. Yeah, it would mean earning more money might not actually get you a nicer living arrangement, since you might not have many choices and pretty much everything would be provided for you. I guess you'd want to try to figure out the correct mixture (maybe 40% on campus 60% off).
- ptmcc 5y ago
  Sounds absolutely dreadful
- sharkster711 5y ago
  Most people in the US want to own the house they live in, and most would also want to not move when they move jobs. I think the campus idea would only appeal to younger folks. I'd also not like the idea that my life revolves around work - and this sounds exactly like that.
  - baron816 5y ago
    Ok, I didn't say it should be mandatory. A lot of people also don't care about owning a house (at least right now). A lot of people care about forming good relationships, but don't have good ways to do so.
- lancebeet 5y ago
  What about people's spouses or significant others?
  - baron816 5y ago
tuckerpo 5y ago
I'd come to the office on a daily basis if companies began subsidizing my commute. I used to spend nearly 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, uncompensated, to get to/from the office. That's a _very_ large % of my life doing absolutely nothing of value to anyone, pumping emissions into the air.
- decafninja 5y ago
  This, though it's public transit for me. Absolute waste of 2-3+ hours every day commuting to and from Manhattan. Multiply that by the number of my fellow Manhattan commuters* and that is a gargantuan waste of collective time for everybody. * (I've observed the vast majority of people that work in Manhattan do not live in Manhattan)
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    Are the passes not atleast tax subsidized? One of the perks I miss from the office was the commuter pass. In Tokyo it was provided from the company, you said what your home station was and where your work was, bought the pass at the station, and were reimbursed. Every single station in between was essentially free to go to and you got the discounted rates to other stations. It was pretty great when I worked in a Roppongi office my last year for going out on the weekends. In Chicago it's a benefit of being able to pay before taxes so there's a slight discount, not as great but the passes here open up the entire system. When you're commuting it makes no sense to not to have the pass, so all your errands and weekend travel is covered.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      Yup, the passes are tax subsidized. The subsidy doesn't make up for the sheer amount of misery those commuting hours cause though. I would gladly offer to work 4 additional hours per day if it meant I could avoid the commute.
- davidgerard 5y ago
  In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meetings have their place, and some teams do better in the office, that's fine. So we renovated the space as largely for meetings of various sizes. So when techies were called into our shiny new meetings-office (which is very nice, actually - happy to come in ... maybe every couple of months), they were immediately asking "so commute time is work time, right?" and "who's paying for my train ticket?" The UK has absolutely proven that work from home is just fine and companies can still do super-well. The big push over here for going back to the office is not from the companies - it's from commercial landlords, putting puff pieces in the newspapers. The actual companies can do arithmetic just fine, and realise that offices on the scale they were are just a losing proposition.
ericmcer 5y ago
Hundreds of people commuting from all over to gather at some gigantic corporate center everyday should be a thing of the past. It was bad for workers, bad for the environment, bad for neighborhoods/housing, and a bunch of overhead for the company to deal with. That said collaboration and socialization are a great part of working. My dream is satellite offices, it would be cheap to have 10-20 5000 square foot offices spread throughout the bay area instead of one giant 50000sf mega office in the heart of downtown San Francisco.
- SomewhatLikely 5y ago
  And if the team members don't live near that satellite what then? Centralized offices at least minimize the expected commute for workers randomly scattered around the metro. Satellite offices could lead to even longer commute times.
  - ericmcer 5y ago
    How? They could have a largish satellite in the city itself as well… I don’t really see how having more offices distributed throughout the area would lead to longer commutes. They could even scale up/down areas based on popularity.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      What is the point of a bunch of satellite offices if co-workers are fragmented among offices with others even further away? At that point might as well give people co-working space subsidies.
- reustle 5y ago
  Local smaller coworking spaces could be a good middle ground
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    Before the pandemic I was thinking it could be nice if neighborhoods were redesigned so that they were like a grid that surround a neighborhood co-working space and park, and have some commercial food options at the corners (so each corner serves four neighborhoods). Commute would be like 3-5 minutes at most, easily biked, also easily go home at lunchtime or reach multiple food options within a 3 minute drive, even more with a 5 minute drive, etc. Spent a few minutes and made an image of what I was thinking: https://imgur.com/gallery/3ybeBDE https://imgur.com/gallery/3ybeBDE
arcade79 5y ago
The main reason I miss the office: Meeting my workmates regularly. I want the ability to go to the office most days, while having the opportunity to take a couple of days a week from home. If it wasn't for open floor plans, I'd prefer to go to the office every day.
- FredPret 5y ago
  I’m the opposite. Even though I’m an extrovert and love people, I so excited to never have to meet a colleague in person again.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    That seems... extreme. I'm fully remote but I love getting together with peers (both co-workers and otherwise), quite a few of whom are genuine personal friends to greater or lesser degrees, at occasional company meetings and at events.
    - bluepizza 5y ago
      Both you seem… normal. Neither positions are unreasonable. Consider that OP’s personality could be very different from yours - maybe they have a very strong and closed circle of established friendships, or a preference to keep the personal life unattached from the professional life. Who knows! But it’s not extreme.
      - bradlys 5y ago
        Being excited to never meet a colleague in person again is definitely an extreme. It is 100% abnormal. Please don’t act like someone who claims to be extroverted but suddenly is like - “yeah, my colleagues? Fuck those dudes. I hope I never see them in person! Thank baby Jesus!” Short of working at only toxic companies - this is really abnormal behavior. No one I know who is extroverted, isn’t live or die by FIRE, and works with good people wants to be WFH forever and never see a colleague in person again. “Ah, yeah, I spend 40+ hours a week with these people and they’re great people and I love people but fuuuuuuck them.” Nope - doesn’t add up. Try again!
nostrebored 5y ago
I dramatically prefer (open, loud, busy) offices and they have always been more productive in my experience. I go to a WeWork alone just to simulate the ecosystem. Among people who I bucket into the top 15% of people I have worked with wfh preference has been right down the middle. Among the bottom 15% it’s been exclusively wfh preference.
- papandada 5y ago
  Do you allow for the possibility that you, as someone who prefers loud and busy offices and feels more productive in such, might have a blind spot in how you "measure" coworkers?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    In the same way most people on reddit and hackernews preach working completely from home. It's a spectrum and everyone needs a different approach. I think the hybrid approach fits everyone with minimal disruption to each person's preferences.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Well, it doesn't suit the preferences of someone who wants "their team" back in the office most days. And it may also not suit the remotee whose team decides that if they're not back in the office just screw them. But ultimately people who can do so will just have to find situations that work for them.
      - smugglerFlynn 5y ago
        > it may also not suit the remotee whose team decides that if they're not back in the office just screw them that does not sound like a ‘team’ at all
        ghaff 5y ago
        I didn't say it was a fully functional team but if a group of people decide that the person who refuses to come into the office is more trouble than they're worth, it's at least somewhat understandable from their perspective.
bennysomething 5y ago
Went back to office for a half day recently. Hated it. It feels barbaric .
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  It really does. For me it feels like some relic of a past I have no desire to return to.
kozikow 5y ago
Working in the software company management, I think 100% remote is not great either. We developed a policy that Mondays are required, Wednesday are encouraged, rest is work from home. We have some fully-remote employees. When there was a long period of 100% remote during Covid, there were some issues: - Spontaneous interactions: Someone complaining over the lunch about issues with some library, just as a small talk. Someone else says, "hey, have you tried X instead?". Someone joking about product feature that actually ends up being a good idea. Ask for some feedback on what you're working. Discuss some issues over the lunch. In remote-only setting, everything requires setting up a meeting. That often formalizes everything, and less things end up being discussed. - Morale : Working with everyone in the office is somehow good for team building. Maybe Morale was lower just because Covid was bad for everyone, but most people would admit they experienced it. - Developing team connections: If you know someone in person, it feels easier to ask them for help, etc. Some ideas posted online, like shared board game via zoom is really far away from in-person interactions. - Some people are quite good at focusing at home. It varies person by person. We have some people, who are great at fully remote work. In my case, when I am at work, I am working. When I am at home, I much often end up doing stuff like reading HN. I am not saying it's not possible to work around those somehow. We tried several ideas posted online, in some books like REMOTE: Office Not Required, but it didn't work for us.
- loco5niner 5y ago
  > Maybe Morale was lower just because Covid was bad for everyone Not for me. Best 2 years of my life. No commute, no (horrible) office. More time with family and new babies.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree with you and would push that point a little further to say that social interaction at work is necessary for a subset of humans. I know it is for me and I love having at least 1 or 2 days of social interaction that I don't even get hanging with my family.
  - kozikow 5y ago
    We had one guy, who completely isolated himself from the world for 6 months during Covid. Total 0 interaction - he even ordered groceries online and he would wait a few days before unpacking them. Before Covid he was great. During the isolation he developed mental health issues. We tried to help, offered paid sick leave for a while, but eventually we couldn't help. He is unemployed for last few months. I meet with him sometimes, but he is still unfit to work. I can't think of something I could do now.
joelbondurant 5y ago
thrower123 5y ago
If you go to the office nowadays, it's more quiet than a tomb. So it's actually not that bad.
SomewhatLikely 5y ago
As someone who has spent 4.5 of the last 7 years working from home I'm tired of spending 23+ hour days inside my house. Even one day a week in office meaningfully interacting with others would help my mood.
- michaelcampbell 5y ago
  Why not propose a day out with coworkers at a coworking space? Compared to a lease, it's basis points on the dollar.
- bidivia 5y ago
  As someone who has spent more than 10 years working remotely I don't understand what you are talking about. When I was working away I spent two hours everyday on my car commuting breathing the toxic air of traffic jams of big cities. That exhausted me and was very expensive in time, energy and money. I can interact with humans I love on my own terms now much more time than that every day. I can do exercise outside for an hour on the Wild, a luxury impossible before. Are you an adult or a child? Are you a slave or a serf? It looks like you have some kind of education that make you powerless when nobody tells you what to do every second. That even in your own house you are not the master, but someone else is. I recommend the first thing you do is work on your mindset: You are the master of your life and can take ownership and responsibility for it.
  - WheatM 5y ago
- WheatM 5y ago
- DerArzt 5y ago
  Is there something stopping you from going to a coffee shop or co-working space?
  - AceyMan 5y ago
codegeek 5y ago
Here we go with the whole "100% remote or nothing" thing. There are plenty of reasons why it cannot work: - Entry Level employees who have never worked remote and need a lot of training/guidance. Their chance of failure goes up significantly if they have to wfh. - Some people prefer to work from office as their home situation is not conducive for remote work. Lot of young people or even families literally live in shitty/tiny apartments where they hardly have space for desk. - Some people just prefer to work from dedicated office even though they CAN work from home (I am one of those). Social animals. Whatever you wanna call them. I love interacting with my team, co workers etc. - Some people actually enjoy a reasonable commute on a train/subway/bike etc. Yes, shocking right ? It allows them to get out of their house, get fresh air and take their minds off their house a little. I keep saying this and will say it. This is not a binary thing. The best option is Hybrid where it should be a combination and people should have flexibility. Keyword is flexibility. I am however getting tired of this "100% remote is the future blah blah" crowd.
- decafninja 5y ago
  The problem is that when offering flexibility, the WFO person is dependent on at least the majority of coworkers also being (forced?) to WFO to derive the often touted benefits of WFO. Meanwhile the WFH person is not dependent on their coworkers being WFO or WFH. What happens to the WFO person when a company/team offers the flexibility to WFH or WFO, but the majority of the team choose to WFH?
  - codegeek 5y ago
    Depends if it is 100% WFH or hybrid ? Regardless though, unless you literally are the only person in office, I don't see that as an issue.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      The advantage of the office is that I can go over and talk to people as needed without going through the process of scheduling a call. While I of course do my best to not bother others too often, I can usually glance at someone's desk to get a sense of how "in the zone" they are, and most discussions are mutually beneficial. Having one other person in the office is great when they are also the one person I need to talk to, and pretty useless otherwise. Having 50% of people are in the office is useful around 50% of the time, and so on. And then there are meetings. IMO, meetings suck if even one person is remote, because we basically all have to gather around the camera instead of sitting around a table and facing each other like normal human beings. This might be better at big companies that can afford fancy conference room camera setups; I wouldn't know.
donkey-hotei 5y ago
Unless there is... free food ? That's how I was lured.. However, I also live a very short bike ride away from the office.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Zanneth 5y ago
One of the problems I noticed with people citing productivity statistics is that they always come from surveys of employees who are evaluating themselves. I don't know how many people are being completely honest about their own productivity when the remote work benefits are mostly aligned with their personal goals and not necessarily the company's. Maybe there is a reason why so many more people in leadership positions are willing to return to the office compared to lower-ranking employees. They see a serious problem with productivity that doesn't show up in self-oriented surveys.
- decafninja 5y ago
  People in leadership positions - especially in more conservative and traditional companies/industries - often derive their status and sense of worth (both personal and on the job) by exerting and enforcing control on their underlings. So of course they prefer the environment where they can do just that - working from the office.
mr_tristan 5y ago
I will never go back to a team that's even partially "colocated" because I've found, that when the team gets async right, it's enormously annoying to go back. But, as someone who has experienced full time work in a couple of different places, let me start by saying it is hard to get right. A ton of process has been built up in a sync world, like, most of your agile process recommendations. So you have to approach async with a constant experimentation, and question all the "best practices" of the past. A few observations that work well: 1. Slack workflows are your friends for stuff like status checks, or cross-team communication. 2. Have meetings regularly (like, daily), but, have a clear agenda. If you ever have a meeting that's a "round robin" sort of thing, that's a giant red flag for me. Every time I've gotten people used to a daily Slack thread for "my status" it's gone really well. And any other meeting it just makes it better to offload that kind of thing. At the same time, meetings are useful, if they have a good agenda. Managing a regular meeting agenda is tricky. What I've found that works well is to have some kind of kanban-like tool where anyone can propose a topic. Then you just go through any of the open topics until you're out of time. We usually pair the kanban board with a meeting notes document that we can cross link to for each topic. Then, any follow ups or whatever can just be tracked. If you smooth out the communication like this, a lot of the interpersonal connnections, morale and spontaneous interaction problems get fixed. The dynamic will never be like having everyone together, but, I've noticed that the meetings I attend are actually useful. Which is 99% of the reason I will never, ever, join a company that wants me physically located again. What's still not clear to me is exactly how to build broader cross-team connections. I suspect the right way to do this is to actually just move teams every 12-24 months.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > What's still not clear to me is exactly how to build broader cross-team connections. I suspect the right way to do this is to actually just move teams every 12-24 months. This is probably gonna be the biggest issue with fully-remote/WFH setups. Like small team communication can definitely work (even better, sometimes), but it's really really hard to meet people organically in a remote/WFH setup, which leads to a decrease in weak ties, which tend to be the most useful in retaining company culture and forging bonds that make things happen.
deet 5y ago
I’m a manager at a FAANG company—-resigning in a few weeks!—-and I previously small startup that was distributed (though we had an office too). So I’ve seen the good and bad of both remote work and in-person offices, and at opposite ends of the company size scale. I’ll possibly start another company at some point, and here’s a remote work policy I’ve thinking about: - Employees live wherever they want - People need to commit to being reachable a certain number of hours per day, overlapping with a selected USA time zone - Company maintains an office in an accessible-but-affordable location capable of housing the entire company at one time - Require in-person attendance for one week every X weeks — where X might be small early in the company’s life (like 4, so one week/month) when iteration must be fast and X might be higher (like one week every 6, 8 or 12 weeks) in later stages. - The in-person attendance week would be for the whole company, and everyone would be there at the same time. The selected week would be announced with sufficient advance notice so people can plan their lives - Provide limited in-office perks, instead focusing on wellbeing subsidies for gyms, outdoor activities, and other self-care, etc that can be used anywhere - Provide a per-day stipend to *every employee in the company* for each day that the whole company is required to be in office. For example if in a month there are 5 “in office days”, maybe everyone gets $100-150/day = $500-750 added to their pay check. No expensing for the travel beyond the stipend - No location-based pay adjustments, just market rate for remote roles (including attractive to Bay Area/NYC talent) Reasoning: - Work that gets done is the important measure. How it gets done is the employee's choice. - The stipend aligns company incentives with employee incentives -- more days in office costs the company more - Try to not favor either local or remote employees with pay, perks, etc - Reason for stipend instead of expensing: level the playing field for location; if an employee wants to live close to the office and save the money, that’s their choice. If they want to live in a hard-to-get-to location but pay more for travel, that’s also their choice. This is based on my beliefs that: - Full in-office is too limiting — we all know that much work can be done from home much of the time, people want to live in different places, etc. I certainly enjoy the flexibility myself - Fully remote all the time does reduce iteration speed and collaboration that’s crucial for innovation (especially in an early stage company). There’s still no substitute for a whiteboarding session. It also does reduce social bonding, team culture, etc. But that doesn't mean it needs to be every day. Periodic in-person sessions followed by a few weeks to "get stuff done" seems to balance the objectives. - The “Hybrid” plans many companies propose (a few times in office per week) don’t make sense. They still force people to live near a particular office, within commuting distance, and with a routine that mostly looks like a full in-office one. And even if the days are synchronized, these policies still seem more like “butts in seats” pseudo-management than actively trying to promote collaboration with an intentional goal of getting stuff done I'm still thinking on this; any feedback would be welcome
uptownfunk 5y ago
My perfect solution, 2-3 days in office every 2-3 weeks and no more slack.
dathinab 5y ago
> You can't lure employees back to the office a) You don't need to because for a lot of work office isn't necessary, but you have to approach many things very different in a remote only/first context on the long term. (Like don't think replacing in-person meetings with digital ones is all what is needed.) b) You don't need to as long as your office has good conditions part of them will come back. Which can be "good enough" for quite many use cases where you sometimes need people in place. Home office is not all flowers, and weather it's better or worse depends on many individual factors. The spectrum is so wide that for some people staying at home is a major health risk while for others going to work is. And I'm speaking about a situation where both places have reasonable good working conditions. (Home-office only is good for people in a well working relation ship with many social contact and a stable life and mind. It can be outright poisonous for people with chronic depression which life alone and are social rather isolated. To name one example.)
thunderbong 5y ago
I've commented on this earlier [0] > I think there is a particular aspect of social interaction that gets fulfilled at work. Talking about some small things, not for too long. Meeting people face to face whom you've enjoyed working with. Sharing work related anecdotes. These have a special place which don't quite get fulfilled elsewhere. And all the while having a clear line which doesn't get crossed is a relief and one which we take for granted. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29434272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29434272
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  My company introduced minimum 2 days in the office, the rest is up to us. Perfect.
smugglerFlynn 5y ago
I predict that most people will just switch from badly designed office work to badly designed remote/hybrid. Remote work is not a silver bullet that magically waives all the workspace problems away. It is much harder to do right, both in terms of productivity, and in terms of keeping people motivated and mentally healthy. My experience with badly designed remote: - it may improve personal productivity, but decreases team productivity - it decreases transparency across the org - it reduces personal connections inside of a team - it reduces touch points between different teams - any problems with personal performance are now very tricky to ‘debug’ and solve Unless your org invests heavily to redesign all work processes in a proper way that fits remote or hybrid work, unless your managers are good enough to self-adjust their work habits, you might as well end up spending all these ‘personal extra hours’ talking to a mental health professionals and actively avoiding burnout. You may even find yourself working more and doing overtimes to keep up because overall productivity of your org has plummeted (despite “self reported productivity gains” that all these articles preach).
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I think we should have teams where everyone is expected to work from the office, and those teams should hire people who are talented at working from the office, and we should also have teams where everyone is expected to work from home, and those teams should hire people who are talented at working from home. This seems to be controversial, and I don't quite understand why. It takes all sorts to make the world, but there is such a thing as culture fit. No, I don't necessarily think people should be able to switch where they work and keep their current job at the same time. Office work is pointless unless you also have team members in the office—the more the better—and frankly home work is less-than-ideal if everyone else is sitting in an office together. Figure out which you prefer, then apply for jobs accordingly, just like anything else in life.
flyingchipmann 5y ago
You can, if the pros outweighs cons. Why not?
geodel 5y ago
I think one detail that is not covered often in pro/against in-office or remote work is nature of work has changed quite a bit for typical IT worker. It is vastly more standardized and in-person discussions are not more insightful than webex/zoom calls. All this seems to have happened over last decade so it is not a pandemic thing. In my case a lot of good technical work I have seen/done during 2005-2015 is now replaced with commercial/OSS assembly which requires a lot less design/architecture work. Now for businesses it maybe absolutely delightful or reasonable change. But for me this new model where every little thing is broken into 50 JIRA tickets, office now seems extraneous. So WFH saves me few hours per day, help me take care of my unwell kid and avoid general dreariness of office environment. All good things that I remember from past about office like great discussions, watercooler talks, discussions with managers about upcoming projects and so on does not happen nowadays. Work flows through project management tools. By the time it reaches me interesting parts are taken care of and all that is left if marking JIRA complete and filling timesheets against it.
themusicgod1 5y ago
Step #1: End the pandemic. Then we'll talk
el_don_almighty 5y ago
WFH is ONE workplace compensation claim away from ending at your company. - HR exists to mitigate legal risks to the company - The company cannot manage health and safety risks at your home - HR is going to insist that WFH ends with implementation of the OSHA vaccine mandate - The lawyers are coming to destroy your WFH comfy slippers and sweatpants
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
I could be lured back to WFO by an extra $30k a year commuting bonus and a private office with a door that closes. Seems laughably far-fetched in today's world.

136 points by CrankyBear 5y ago

Honestly, I think it's best if we have two modes of working. We could have an office mode, where you go in to the office and interact with others for whatever reason. Then we have remote mode (maybe the preferred mode), where we have an office like setup, at home with the appropriate equipment to carry out the company's mission. What do you guys think?

abraxas 5y ago

Could start with not making them such awful places to work by getting rid of those awful open floor plans. Want people back in offices? How about building some rather than having big cattle herd areas where every sound and germ travels for miles in every direction.

BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
It's also important to consider that many people don't have homes that are conducive to working, because there are many other people in the house, or because they don't have the space for a dedicated office, or any other number of reasons. This isn't applicable to everybody obviously, but offices should be able to compete on these fronts.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Provide a coworking space stipend to everyone, obtained with a corporate group rate. It's not "work from home", but rather "work from anywhere."
  - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
    That assumes your town has such coworking facilities. Maybe a safe assumption in cities, but definitely not in all towns nor for people living in more rural areas. And if you're going to commute to a coworking office in the same city that your normal office would be in anyway, it seems a bit pointless. A commute is a commute.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      Whether you have a "coworking facility" or not, if you're simply paid enough money, you can solve the home office problem with it.
      - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        With construction or moving? I'd rather keep my home the way it is, thanks.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Construction, moving, daycare, etc. You can have your preferences but there still exists an amount of compensation at which the average employee's preferences are offset.
- Guest42 5y ago
  My experiences in offices have generally involved being surrounded by many people who talk rather consistently. When coupled with surprise meetings that don’t pertain directly to my projects and the inability to multitask, I think that the home office is a net positive.
  - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
    Yes well, open office plans and cubicles are awful, no argument there. But a real office with a door can be attractive relative to the situation many people have at home.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      The odds that employers will offer employees below the executive or managerial level private or even semi-private offices is extremely low. Personally, I think the odds of such a thing happening are lower than WFH becoming mainstream.
      - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        I guess I got lucky then.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Speaking for myself, I haven't had an office with a door for a decade now. And if you go back to the top of my white collar career (that is, jobs done from an office (or notably, a warehouse)), I've had a door twice. Ironically enough, I do have a door at home.
      - dragonsky 5y ago
        The last office with a door I had was in the old morgue of the hospital we supported. Was actually a pretty good location once you got used to the funky smells. Quiet, cool, dark and nobody came knocking on the door asking for us to fix there computers.
    - 5y ago
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  >many people don't have homes that are conducive to working That's because (up until this shift) they have been forced to live in close proximity to offices. For the price of a downtown apartment, you can live in a suburb or rural area with more space that you could need. The longer this forced shift (pandemic) goes on, the more people will move away from the poor quality of life cities. Once they get the taste of a life without tiny overpriced apartments and time sucking commutes, they will only go back if they are forced - i.e. don't have the skills to easily jump ship.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> open floor plans This is the part where I personally experienced the most friction between the management/lifestyle/trend bubble and "boots on the ground" people/devs. All of a sudden blog posts and news posts popped up that claimed how open space is better, everybody loves it and everyone should be able to look every coworker in the eye and on his monitor, 0 barriers etc. Meanwhile I have yet to meet a coworker in real life that prefers or even likes this trend, personally I hate it. Makes it hard to focus, turns the distractions and noises up to 11 and makes overall for a terrible workplace. It was a major reason to quit my last job, and I am much happier with my current one. Similarly I believe that homeoffice has probably sensitized many people to terrible workplace environments.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  My best workplaces have always been open offices with high quality coworkers!
  - falcolas 5y ago
    And mine have been closed offices with high quality co-workers. Followed by closed office with OK co-workers. I don't think it's the floor plan.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  > Meanwhile I have yet to meet a coworker in real life that prefers or even likes this trend, personally I hate it. I just don't believe this. I would say a good 2/3rd of employee's at every job I've worked at preferred the open floor plan. The only way I could possibly see not a single, not even one, person you've worked with preferring it is if you front run the conversation with such a vicious condemnation of it that they didn't feel comfortable sharing with you. > Similarly I believe that homeoffice has probably sensitized many people to terrible workplace environments. I'll take a guess that you have extra space and no kids or some combination? The feedback I've seen is the exact opposite with people realizing how poorly their home setup is and how little ability they have to make better.
  - 5y ago
marcosdumay 5y ago
Nearly all of my short term resistance is because of the environment temperature and low quality of drinking water (bad tasting mineral water and often contaminated by plastic bottles).

Guest42 5y ago

Also a positive in that it reduces highway traffic.

soared 5y ago

The title of the article doesn’t really match the content. The article says 34% of workers want to go into the office 3-5 days a week. So very clearly you can lure employees back.. because some of them do want to go back. The article has stats about what we’re all assuming, namely employees want wfh and employers don’t. But in no way does it attempt to answer/justify the thought provoking question asked in the title. How would I be lured back into the office? As a late 20s male in the USA I mostly miss the social aspect of work. I always had friends at work (despite what the grumpy people says about coworkers being friends), and I miss that. I left a job four years ago and still hang out all the time with those old coworkers. I’d also like to not be held to specific hours or days. Breakfast and lunch would lure me in, along with high quality coffee. I don’t mind open floor plans, but do know most people don’t like them.

sharadov 5y ago
I miss the social aspect of work, as someone who took a remote job about 4.5 yrs back, I don't think most people who have only experienced it as a side effect of covid - realize how important it is for mental sanity. Yes, I like being at home too, but I would prefer hybrid, with no more than 1 to 2 days of working in the office.
- rabuse 5y ago
  This is what weekends are for though. I've been remote pretty much my entire life, and still socialize a ton.
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    Yup - create a better work life balance. Work is not a substitute for a social life. Work less & socialize after hours and on weekends.
    - sharadov 5y ago
      I have plenty of work -life balance, but I also moved while I was remote and it's hard to make friends in a new place. I made a bunch of friends at previous work places and if I had not moved - I would be hanging out with them.

mkl95 5y ago

I will happily go back to the office for a life changing raise.

lovedaddy 5y ago
- mrkstu 5y ago
  It reads more to me that the terms that the world is giving have improved, so the companies have to respond- it should and does go both ways with leverage.
decafninja 5y ago
This is pretty much what happened to me. New company is not friendly to WFH except for the occasional day here and there, but my compensation has quadrupled. I am not complaining.
- sharkster711 5y ago
notreallyserio 5y ago
It would have to be enough to allow me to retire soon, which would probably not be in their interest. So remote full time it is!

akudha 5y ago

If everyone (whenever possible, obviously a trucker or a nurse can't work from home) worked from home, imagine how much better off we would all be - traffic would be less, people would eat home cooked food, less stress, less office politics, no need to pay for office space/coffee/electricity (even toilet paper) ... on and on and on. If I were running a software company, I'd calculate all these savings and pass it on to my employees and retain talent. I guess the only people who don't like remote is middle management, their career depends on dumb meetings and other such meaningless things. At home, at least we can mute ourselves and do something useful.

FredPret 5y ago
Take it a step further. No need to live on top of one another (unless you like that), no need to live in an unpleasant climate, no need to tolerate local politics you don’t like, etc. An explosion in human freedom.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  Just make it so it's easy to employ people cross borders and you are trillionere.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    …and on the hit lists of high-tax nations…
- akudha 5y ago
  Yup, if only we can work from anywhere... I am flat out refusing non-remote jobs (I was remote even before covid) even though I am just an average engineer. One recruiter argued with me - she was like "remote workers should be paid less", lol. In my opinion, remote workers should be paid more, as companies aren't spending on their office space, electricity etc. If our species survives for another 100 or more years, future generations will look at our cubicles and laugh. There is absolutely no reason for digital workers to go to office (with very few exceptions). The one (only?) good thing that came out of COVID is people are realizing a lot of bullshit they have been fed all these years about work and are pushing back, though slowly - one of them being remote working.

baron816 5y ago

I don't know if this would work, but Google, FB, Apple, et al should try to build out live/work communities. Yeah, kind of like a company town. The best part of college is the college campus. I don't know why companies don't want to try to replicate that. It would definitely be more appealing to younger employees, and I be it would get them to stick around much longer. Imagine being able to walk to work, and having most of your coworkers live close by as well. The social bonds you would form with people would be much stronger. And moving to that campus to start at the company would be less scary knowing that you'd quickly get to know and build good relationships with coworkers/neighbors. Yeah, it would mean earning more money might not actually get you a nicer living arrangement, since you might not have many choices and pretty much everything would be provided for you. I guess you'd want to try to figure out the correct mixture (maybe 40% on campus 60% off).

ptmcc 5y ago
Sounds absolutely dreadful
sharkster711 5y ago
Most people in the US want to own the house they live in, and most would also want to not move when they move jobs. I think the campus idea would only appeal to younger folks. I'd also not like the idea that my life revolves around work - and this sounds exactly like that.
- baron816 5y ago
  Ok, I didn't say it should be mandatory. A lot of people also don't care about owning a house (at least right now). A lot of people care about forming good relationships, but don't have good ways to do so.
lancebeet 5y ago
What about people's spouses or significant others?
- baron816 5y ago

tuckerpo 5y ago

I'd come to the office on a daily basis if companies began subsidizing my commute. I used to spend nearly 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, uncompensated, to get to/from the office. That's a _very_ large % of my life doing absolutely nothing of value to anyone, pumping emissions into the air.

decafninja 5y ago
This, though it's public transit for me. Absolute waste of 2-3+ hours every day commuting to and from Manhattan. Multiply that by the number of my fellow Manhattan commuters* and that is a gargantuan waste of collective time for everybody. * (I've observed the vast majority of people that work in Manhattan do not live in Manhattan)
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Are the passes not atleast tax subsidized? One of the perks I miss from the office was the commuter pass. In Tokyo it was provided from the company, you said what your home station was and where your work was, bought the pass at the station, and were reimbursed. Every single station in between was essentially free to go to and you got the discounted rates to other stations. It was pretty great when I worked in a Roppongi office my last year for going out on the weekends. In Chicago it's a benefit of being able to pay before taxes so there's a slight discount, not as great but the passes here open up the entire system. When you're commuting it makes no sense to not to have the pass, so all your errands and weekend travel is covered.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    Yup, the passes are tax subsidized. The subsidy doesn't make up for the sheer amount of misery those commuting hours cause though. I would gladly offer to work 4 additional hours per day if it meant I could avoid the commute.
davidgerard 5y ago
In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meetings have their place, and some teams do better in the office, that's fine. So we renovated the space as largely for meetings of various sizes. So when techies were called into our shiny new meetings-office (which is very nice, actually - happy to come in ... maybe every couple of months), they were immediately asking "so commute time is work time, right?" and "who's paying for my train ticket?" The UK has absolutely proven that work from home is just fine and companies can still do super-well. The big push over here for going back to the office is not from the companies - it's from commercial landlords, putting puff pieces in the newspapers. The actual companies can do arithmetic just fine, and realise that offices on the scale they were are just a losing proposition.

ericmcer 5y ago

Hundreds of people commuting from all over to gather at some gigantic corporate center everyday should be a thing of the past. It was bad for workers, bad for the environment, bad for neighborhoods/housing, and a bunch of overhead for the company to deal with. That said collaboration and socialization are a great part of working. My dream is satellite offices, it would be cheap to have 10-20 5000 square foot offices spread throughout the bay area instead of one giant 50000sf mega office in the heart of downtown San Francisco.

SomewhatLikely 5y ago
And if the team members don't live near that satellite what then? Centralized offices at least minimize the expected commute for workers randomly scattered around the metro. Satellite offices could lead to even longer commute times.
- ericmcer 5y ago
  How? They could have a largish satellite in the city itself as well… I don’t really see how having more offices distributed throughout the area would lead to longer commutes. They could even scale up/down areas based on popularity.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    What is the point of a bunch of satellite offices if co-workers are fragmented among offices with others even further away? At that point might as well give people co-working space subsidies.
reustle 5y ago
Local smaller coworking spaces could be a good middle ground
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Before the pandemic I was thinking it could be nice if neighborhoods were redesigned so that they were like a grid that surround a neighborhood co-working space and park, and have some commercial food options at the corners (so each corner serves four neighborhoods). Commute would be like 3-5 minutes at most, easily biked, also easily go home at lunchtime or reach multiple food options within a 3 minute drive, even more with a 5 minute drive, etc. Spent a few minutes and made an image of what I was thinking: https://imgur.com/gallery/3ybeBDE https://imgur.com/gallery/3ybeBDE

arcade79 5y ago

The main reason I miss the office: Meeting my workmates regularly. I want the ability to go to the office most days, while having the opportunity to take a couple of days a week from home. If it wasn't for open floor plans, I'd prefer to go to the office every day.

FredPret 5y ago
I’m the opposite. Even though I’m an extrovert and love people, I so excited to never have to meet a colleague in person again.
- ghaff 5y ago
  That seems... extreme. I'm fully remote but I love getting together with peers (both co-workers and otherwise), quite a few of whom are genuine personal friends to greater or lesser degrees, at occasional company meetings and at events.
  - bluepizza 5y ago
    Both you seem… normal. Neither positions are unreasonable. Consider that OP’s personality could be very different from yours - maybe they have a very strong and closed circle of established friendships, or a preference to keep the personal life unattached from the professional life. Who knows! But it’s not extreme.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Being excited to never meet a colleague in person again is definitely an extreme. It is 100% abnormal. Please don’t act like someone who claims to be extroverted but suddenly is like - “yeah, my colleagues? Fuck those dudes. I hope I never see them in person! Thank baby Jesus!” Short of working at only toxic companies - this is really abnormal behavior. No one I know who is extroverted, isn’t live or die by FIRE, and works with good people wants to be WFH forever and never see a colleague in person again. “Ah, yeah, I spend 40+ hours a week with these people and they’re great people and I love people but fuuuuuuck them.” Nope - doesn’t add up. Try again!

nostrebored 5y ago

I dramatically prefer (open, loud, busy) offices and they have always been more productive in my experience. I go to a WeWork alone just to simulate the ecosystem. Among people who I bucket into the top 15% of people I have worked with wfh preference has been right down the middle. Among the bottom 15% it’s been exclusively wfh preference.

papandada 5y ago
Do you allow for the possibility that you, as someone who prefers loud and busy offices and feels more productive in such, might have a blind spot in how you "measure" coworkers?
- xeromal 5y ago
  In the same way most people on reddit and hackernews preach working completely from home. It's a spectrum and everyone needs a different approach. I think the hybrid approach fits everyone with minimal disruption to each person's preferences.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Well, it doesn't suit the preferences of someone who wants "their team" back in the office most days. And it may also not suit the remotee whose team decides that if they're not back in the office just screw them. But ultimately people who can do so will just have to find situations that work for them.
    - smugglerFlynn 5y ago
      > it may also not suit the remotee whose team decides that if they're not back in the office just screw them that does not sound like a ‘team’ at all
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I didn't say it was a fully functional team but if a group of people decide that the person who refuses to come into the office is more trouble than they're worth, it's at least somewhat understandable from their perspective.

bennysomething 5y ago

Went back to office for a half day recently. Hated it. It feels barbaric .

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
It really does. For me it feels like some relic of a past I have no desire to return to.

kozikow 5y ago

Working in the software company management, I think 100% remote is not great either. We developed a policy that Mondays are required, Wednesday are encouraged, rest is work from home. We have some fully-remote employees. When there was a long period of 100% remote during Covid, there were some issues: - Spontaneous interactions: Someone complaining over the lunch about issues with some library, just as a small talk. Someone else says, "hey, have you tried X instead?". Someone joking about product feature that actually ends up being a good idea. Ask for some feedback on what you're working. Discuss some issues over the lunch. In remote-only setting, everything requires setting up a meeting. That often formalizes everything, and less things end up being discussed. - Morale : Working with everyone in the office is somehow good for team building. Maybe Morale was lower just because Covid was bad for everyone, but most people would admit they experienced it. - Developing team connections: If you know someone in person, it feels easier to ask them for help, etc. Some ideas posted online, like shared board game via zoom is really far away from in-person interactions. - Some people are quite good at focusing at home. It varies person by person. We have some people, who are great at fully remote work. In my case, when I am at work, I am working. When I am at home, I much often end up doing stuff like reading HN. I am not saying it's not possible to work around those somehow. We tried several ideas posted online, in some books like REMOTE: Office Not Required, but it didn't work for us.

loco5niner 5y ago
> Maybe Morale was lower just because Covid was bad for everyone Not for me. Best 2 years of my life. No commute, no (horrible) office. More time with family and new babies.
xeromal 5y ago
Yeah, I agree with you and would push that point a little further to say that social interaction at work is necessary for a subset of humans. I know it is for me and I love having at least 1 or 2 days of social interaction that I don't even get hanging with my family.
- kozikow 5y ago
  We had one guy, who completely isolated himself from the world for 6 months during Covid. Total 0 interaction - he even ordered groceries online and he would wait a few days before unpacking them. Before Covid he was great. During the isolation he developed mental health issues. We tried to help, offered paid sick leave for a while, but eventually we couldn't help. He is unemployed for last few months. I meet with him sometimes, but he is still unfit to work. I can't think of something I could do now.

joelbondurant 5y ago

thrower123 5y ago

If you go to the office nowadays, it's more quiet than a tomb. So it's actually not that bad.

SomewhatLikely 5y ago

As someone who has spent 4.5 of the last 7 years working from home I'm tired of spending 23+ hour days inside my house. Even one day a week in office meaningfully interacting with others would help my mood.

michaelcampbell 5y ago
Why not propose a day out with coworkers at a coworking space? Compared to a lease, it's basis points on the dollar.
bidivia 5y ago
As someone who has spent more than 10 years working remotely I don't understand what you are talking about. When I was working away I spent two hours everyday on my car commuting breathing the toxic air of traffic jams of big cities. That exhausted me and was very expensive in time, energy and money. I can interact with humans I love on my own terms now much more time than that every day. I can do exercise outside for an hour on the Wild, a luxury impossible before. Are you an adult or a child? Are you a slave or a serf? It looks like you have some kind of education that make you powerless when nobody tells you what to do every second. That even in your own house you are not the master, but someone else is. I recommend the first thing you do is work on your mindset: You are the master of your life and can take ownership and responsibility for it.
- WheatM 5y ago
WheatM 5y ago
DerArzt 5y ago
Is there something stopping you from going to a coffee shop or co-working space?
- AceyMan 5y ago

codegeek 5y ago

Here we go with the whole "100% remote or nothing" thing. There are plenty of reasons why it cannot work: - Entry Level employees who have never worked remote and need a lot of training/guidance. Their chance of failure goes up significantly if they have to wfh. - Some people prefer to work from office as their home situation is not conducive for remote work. Lot of young people or even families literally live in shitty/tiny apartments where they hardly have space for desk. - Some people just prefer to work from dedicated office even though they CAN work from home (I am one of those). Social animals. Whatever you wanna call them. I love interacting with my team, co workers etc. - Some people actually enjoy a reasonable commute on a train/subway/bike etc. Yes, shocking right ? It allows them to get out of their house, get fresh air and take their minds off their house a little. I keep saying this and will say it. This is not a binary thing. The best option is Hybrid where it should be a combination and people should have flexibility. Keyword is flexibility. I am however getting tired of this "100% remote is the future blah blah" crowd.

decafninja 5y ago
The problem is that when offering flexibility, the WFO person is dependent on at least the majority of coworkers also being (forced?) to WFO to derive the often touted benefits of WFO. Meanwhile the WFH person is not dependent on their coworkers being WFO or WFH. What happens to the WFO person when a company/team offers the flexibility to WFH or WFO, but the majority of the team choose to WFH?
- codegeek 5y ago
  Depends if it is 100% WFH or hybrid ? Regardless though, unless you literally are the only person in office, I don't see that as an issue.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    The advantage of the office is that I can go over and talk to people as needed without going through the process of scheduling a call. While I of course do my best to not bother others too often, I can usually glance at someone's desk to get a sense of how "in the zone" they are, and most discussions are mutually beneficial. Having one other person in the office is great when they are also the one person I need to talk to, and pretty useless otherwise. Having 50% of people are in the office is useful around 50% of the time, and so on. And then there are meetings. IMO, meetings suck if even one person is remote, because we basically all have to gather around the camera instead of sitting around a table and facing each other like normal human beings. This might be better at big companies that can afford fancy conference room camera setups; I wouldn't know.

donkey-hotei 5y ago

Unless there is... free food ? That's how I was lured.. However, I also live a very short bike ride away from the office.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Zanneth 5y ago

One of the problems I noticed with people citing productivity statistics is that they always come from surveys of employees who are evaluating themselves. I don't know how many people are being completely honest about their own productivity when the remote work benefits are mostly aligned with their personal goals and not necessarily the company's. Maybe there is a reason why so many more people in leadership positions are willing to return to the office compared to lower-ranking employees. They see a serious problem with productivity that doesn't show up in self-oriented surveys.

decafninja 5y ago
People in leadership positions - especially in more conservative and traditional companies/industries - often derive their status and sense of worth (both personal and on the job) by exerting and enforcing control on their underlings. So of course they prefer the environment where they can do just that - working from the office.

mr_tristan 5y ago

I will never go back to a team that's even partially "colocated" because I've found, that when the team gets async right, it's enormously annoying to go back. But, as someone who has experienced full time work in a couple of different places, let me start by saying it is hard to get right. A ton of process has been built up in a sync world, like, most of your agile process recommendations. So you have to approach async with a constant experimentation, and question all the "best practices" of the past. A few observations that work well: 1. Slack workflows are your friends for stuff like status checks, or cross-team communication. 2. Have meetings regularly (like, daily), but, have a clear agenda. If you ever have a meeting that's a "round robin" sort of thing, that's a giant red flag for me. Every time I've gotten people used to a daily Slack thread for "my status" it's gone really well. And any other meeting it just makes it better to offload that kind of thing. At the same time, meetings are useful, if they have a good agenda. Managing a regular meeting agenda is tricky. What I've found that works well is to have some kind of kanban-like tool where anyone can propose a topic. Then you just go through any of the open topics until you're out of time. We usually pair the kanban board with a meeting notes document that we can cross link to for each topic. Then, any follow ups or whatever can just be tracked. If you smooth out the communication like this, a lot of the interpersonal connnections, morale and spontaneous interaction problems get fixed. The dynamic will never be like having everyone together, but, I've noticed that the meetings I attend are actually useful. Which is 99% of the reason I will never, ever, join a company that wants me physically located again. What's still not clear to me is exactly how to build broader cross-team connections. I suspect the right way to do this is to actually just move teams every 12-24 months.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> What's still not clear to me is exactly how to build broader cross-team connections. I suspect the right way to do this is to actually just move teams every 12-24 months. This is probably gonna be the biggest issue with fully-remote/WFH setups. Like small team communication can definitely work (even better, sometimes), but it's really really hard to meet people organically in a remote/WFH setup, which leads to a decrease in weak ties, which tend to be the most useful in retaining company culture and forging bonds that make things happen.

deet 5y ago

I’m a manager at a FAANG company—-resigning in a few weeks!—-and I previously small startup that was distributed (though we had an office too). So I’ve seen the good and bad of both remote work and in-person offices, and at opposite ends of the company size scale. I’ll possibly start another company at some point, and here’s a remote work policy I’ve thinking about: - Employees live wherever they want - People need to commit to being reachable a certain number of hours per day, overlapping with a selected USA time zone - Company maintains an office in an accessible-but-affordable location capable of housing the entire company at one time - Require in-person attendance for one week every X weeks — where X might be small early in the company’s life (like 4, so one week/month) when iteration must be fast and X might be higher (like one week every 6, 8 or 12 weeks) in later stages. - The in-person attendance week would be for the whole company, and everyone would be there at the same time. The selected week would be announced with sufficient advance notice so people can plan their lives - Provide limited in-office perks, instead focusing on wellbeing subsidies for gyms, outdoor activities, and other self-care, etc that can be used anywhere - Provide a per-day stipend to *every employee in the company* for each day that the whole company is required to be in office. For example if in a month there are 5 “in office days”, maybe everyone gets $100-150/day = $500-750 added to their pay check. No expensing for the travel beyond the stipend - No location-based pay adjustments, just market rate for remote roles (including attractive to Bay Area/NYC talent) Reasoning: - Work that gets done is the important measure. How it gets done is the employee's choice. - The stipend aligns company incentives with employee incentives -- more days in office costs the company more - Try to not favor either local or remote employees with pay, perks, etc - Reason for stipend instead of expensing: level the playing field for location; if an employee wants to live close to the office and save the money, that’s their choice. If they want to live in a hard-to-get-to location but pay more for travel, that’s also their choice. This is based on my beliefs that: - Full in-office is too limiting — we all know that much work can be done from home much of the time, people want to live in different places, etc. I certainly enjoy the flexibility myself - Fully remote all the time does reduce iteration speed and collaboration that’s crucial for innovation (especially in an early stage company). There’s still no substitute for a whiteboarding session. It also does reduce social bonding, team culture, etc. But that doesn't mean it needs to be every day. Periodic in-person sessions followed by a few weeks to "get stuff done" seems to balance the objectives. - The “Hybrid” plans many companies propose (a few times in office per week) don’t make sense. They still force people to live near a particular office, within commuting distance, and with a routine that mostly looks like a full in-office one. And even if the days are synchronized, these policies still seem more like “butts in seats” pseudo-management than actively trying to promote collaboration with an intentional goal of getting stuff done I'm still thinking on this; any feedback would be welcome

uptownfunk 5y ago

My perfect solution, 2-3 days in office every 2-3 weeks and no more slack.

dathinab 5y ago

> You can't lure employees back to the office a) You don't need to because for a lot of work office isn't necessary, but you have to approach many things very different in a remote only/first context on the long term. (Like don't think replacing in-person meetings with digital ones is all what is needed.) b) You don't need to as long as your office has good conditions part of them will come back. Which can be "good enough" for quite many use cases where you sometimes need people in place. Home office is not all flowers, and weather it's better or worse depends on many individual factors. The spectrum is so wide that for some people staying at home is a major health risk while for others going to work is. And I'm speaking about a situation where both places have reasonable good working conditions. (Home-office only is good for people in a well working relation ship with many social contact and a stable life and mind. It can be outright poisonous for people with chronic depression which life alone and are social rather isolated. To name one example.)

thunderbong 5y ago

I've commented on this earlier [0] > I think there is a particular aspect of social interaction that gets fulfilled at work. Talking about some small things, not for too long. Meeting people face to face whom you've enjoyed working with. Sharing work related anecdotes. These have a special place which don't quite get fulfilled elsewhere. And all the while having a clear line which doesn't get crossed is a relief and one which we take for granted. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29434272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29434272

mbrodersen 5y ago
My company introduced minimum 2 days in the office, the rest is up to us. Perfect.

smugglerFlynn 5y ago

I predict that most people will just switch from badly designed office work to badly designed remote/hybrid. Remote work is not a silver bullet that magically waives all the workspace problems away. It is much harder to do right, both in terms of productivity, and in terms of keeping people motivated and mentally healthy. My experience with badly designed remote: - it may improve personal productivity, but decreases team productivity - it decreases transparency across the org - it reduces personal connections inside of a team - it reduces touch points between different teams - any problems with personal performance are now very tricky to ‘debug’ and solve Unless your org invests heavily to redesign all work processes in a proper way that fits remote or hybrid work, unless your managers are good enough to self-adjust their work habits, you might as well end up spending all these ‘personal extra hours’ talking to a mental health professionals and actively avoiding burnout. You may even find yourself working more and doing overtimes to keep up because overall productivity of your org has plummeted (despite “self reported productivity gains” that all these articles preach).

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I think we should have teams where everyone is expected to work from the office, and those teams should hire people who are talented at working from the office, and we should also have teams where everyone is expected to work from home, and those teams should hire people who are talented at working from home. This seems to be controversial, and I don't quite understand why. It takes all sorts to make the world, but there is such a thing as culture fit. No, I don't necessarily think people should be able to switch where they work and keep their current job at the same time. Office work is pointless unless you also have team members in the office—the more the better—and frankly home work is less-than-ideal if everyone else is sitting in an office together. Figure out which you prefer, then apply for jobs accordingly, just like anything else in life.

flyingchipmann 5y ago

You can, if the pros outweighs cons. Why not?

geodel 5y ago

I think one detail that is not covered often in pro/against in-office or remote work is nature of work has changed quite a bit for typical IT worker. It is vastly more standardized and in-person discussions are not more insightful than webex/zoom calls. All this seems to have happened over last decade so it is not a pandemic thing. In my case a lot of good technical work I have seen/done during 2005-2015 is now replaced with commercial/OSS assembly which requires a lot less design/architecture work. Now for businesses it maybe absolutely delightful or reasonable change. But for me this new model where every little thing is broken into 50 JIRA tickets, office now seems extraneous. So WFH saves me few hours per day, help me take care of my unwell kid and avoid general dreariness of office environment. All good things that I remember from past about office like great discussions, watercooler talks, discussions with managers about upcoming projects and so on does not happen nowadays. Work flows through project management tools. By the time it reaches me interesting parts are taken care of and all that is left if marking JIRA complete and filling timesheets against it.

themusicgod1 5y ago

Step #1: End the pandemic. Then we'll talk

el_don_almighty 5y ago

WFH is ONE workplace compensation claim away from ending at your company. - HR exists to mitigate legal risks to the company - The company cannot manage health and safety risks at your home - HR is going to insist that WFH ends with implementation of the OSHA vaccine mandate - The lawyers are coming to destroy your WFH comfy slippers and sweatpants

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

I could be lured back to WFO by an extra $30k a year commuting bonus and a private office with a door that closes. Seems laughably far-fetched in today's world.