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I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. Some people like the office, some people can't abide it. A lot of programmers love remote because they

I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. Some people like the office, some people can't abide it. A lot of programmers love remote because they enjoy the isolation to do work. Others do not, be that because they need to talk to people, or because the home situation sucks donkey balls. I suspect the venom is because people are assuming that its a binary situation, you're either a remote company or not. They worry that their remote will be taken from them. I don't think removing the remote option is wise or healthy. I don't think the future is fully remote _for everyone_, because fundamentally we are social people. On the flip side, I don't think full office 5 days a week is going to be the future either (caveats apply.) The other point to think about is this: remote work is brill if you are enjoying it, but it licks massive donkeyballs if you don't. Having that dread of the workplace seep into where you are living is deeply bad for your mental health.

temp8964 5y ago
I like to work in the office, bc one of the reasons is that I get to chat with my boss, about general stuff or potential new projects. If you go remote, you are going to fully lose this kind of opportunities. Does this create an unfair condition for remote workers? It could be.
- simion314 5y ago
  >I like to work in the office, bc one of the reasons is that I get to chat with my boss, Why? I can chat with my boss, he can share with me ideas he he has and I can give my opinion.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    You mean in person or in text message?
  - lastofthemojito 5y ago
    Not the commenter you replied to, but I think my personality is such that I chat casually with my in-group and am a perfectionist with communication with outsiders. Back when I worked in-person, I had daily informal communication with lots of teammates as well as my boss. Since I got a new remote job during the pandemic, I tend to only reach out to those I work most closely with (just a couple of people). Certainly there's nothing actually stopping me from opening a new Teams message to my boss or other teammates and saying "hey, how's life?", but in practice, I don't. It's almost as if most of my team are now "outsiders" who I'm very deliberate messaging, rather than the in-group who I feel comfortable bantering with. It's something I'm aware of and am working on, but I definitely don't have the same level of intra-team communication now as I had pre-pandemic.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      I've had the same from the manager point of view. As the manager I had the luxury of just forcing the issue by scheduling one on ones with everyone and flat out telling them I wanted to make sure I actually regularly spoke to everyone and I could just blame it on being "busy" and so wanting to block out time to make sure I had it set aside. As an introvert, I resorted to that in large part because it removed my ability to manufacture excuses for myself or just forgetting because I rarely get the impulse that I feel a strong need to talk to someone. But you can do the same yourself even if you're not in a position to demonstratively schedule actual meeting slots with people: Just put reminders in your calendar to talk to people without scheduling an actual meeting. If you want to make it seem more organic, just put in the right number of slots and keep a list to yourself that you randomise week by week. You can always tick people off if you have conversations outside of your schedule.
    - simion314 5y ago
      My boss is not my friend, why should I chat with him about his or my private life, I am an introvert so I never start this kind of discussion, but from the OP I understood he was refering to work related chat
      - lastofthemojito 5y ago
        Yeah, I'm not an "I need to be friends with my coworkers" person either, but I just mean the everyday stuff that is work-related or work-tangential. Who is meeting with who, how people feel about what's going on, etc. More than one might glean from a Confluence page with notes from a design meeting or whatever. "Oh, the real reason we chose technology X for this feature is just because Jim knows it well", "oh, the real reason we're adding this logic to the back-end is because the boss thinks the front-end devs are incompetent", etc. Things that get whispered in person, but don't get written in an email or wiki page. Maybe some teams are small enough or well-adjusted enough for this not to be an issue, but I've definitely felt I've lacked this sort of context since having fewer informal talks with my boss.
- crmrc114 5y ago
  Do you not set weekly one on one time or just do quick huddle calls to chat on simple projects? My boss and my team is just as buried in the office and full of meetings. So we are going to be talking on teams/slack anyway- not sure about what I personally view as FUD about these mythical conversations people have with their managers and peers. Maybe my workplace is more fast paced than most. We also have a huge slew of contractors and offices coast to coast.. so it's not uncommon to have to set meetings with resources on both coasts. For us remote work has been, well, pretty freaking normal. And cheaper we have already divested of a couple smaller remote offices.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    Not every office is the same. We have busy days and not so busy days.
    - crmrc114 5y ago
      Gotcha brother, just curious I know wfh is a hit for some companies and easy as hell- bit for others it's like torture. I don't understand the latter.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I have had teams that were in the office but fully distributed, with only one of my team members even in the same country as me. People could, and did, still chat to me. The big difference is that it required discipline. Especially from me in order to deal with team members who were reluctant to speak up. I solved that by ensuring we always had at least one weekly one on one call scheduled to speak about nothing in particular. If nothing else came up, we'd discuss ideas or training or general improvements we could make, but on purpose those calls were always explicitly not for project discussions (if anything came up during these calls I'd schedule other calls for that). Sometimes we'd have "nothing" to talk about until people realised I'd still insist on doing the call and it turned out they had stuff to talk about when I was there on the phone anyway and they didn't feel like they were wasting my time because I'd made it clear this time was already blocked out. Doing fully remote requires managers who understand how to ensure they pick up on things from team members when they can't see them, and that will be an adjustment for a lot of companies. But once you have that, and managers learn how to be available in the same way, it'll work just fine. Consider that lots of managers don't know how to be available in person either, but lock themselves away in offices and only emerge for meetings with agendas that does not leave much room for raising issues or general chat other than for a selected few, so this is not a new issue - just a different version of an old one.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  My boss is fully remote as is their boss and both of them prefer it that way. The only time either of them are at the office are new employee introductions and that's a half-day max.
krageon 5y ago
> fundamentally we are social people That's nice, but what does that have to do with your job? You can meet people anywhere and when you choose the venue and the context they may even have something in common with you. All anyone at your job needs to have in common with you is a desire to eat.
stavros 5y ago
> I suspect the venom is because people are assuming that its a binary situation, you're either a remote company or not. That's because it's true. You're either a remote company or the remote people find that they routinely hear about things much later than everyone in the office knows about them.
- cm2012 5y ago
  Yeah, hybrid is worst of both worlds. You still have to live near the office (so little labor market advantage), and remote workers become second class.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    > little labour market advantage The market advantage only works where there is a lack of labour. In cities with a big scene, there will be a lack of labour for a given industry. everyone remote will depress your labour's value because you are competing against a much bigger pool of talent. In tech its not so apparent yet, because there is a short supply of staff generally. But that wont persist for ever.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > In tech its not so apparent yet, because there is a short supply of staff generally. But that wont persist for ever. There's a lot more programmers on the market right now than 10 years ago thanks to bootcamps and short degrees. Honestly, for each one hired you generally need a proper engineer to cleanup the mess afterward. I'm not worried about an oversupplied of qualified engineers anytime soon.
    - krageon 5y ago
      > that wont persist for ever. Being good tech staff is a hard skill. This idea that there will ever be enough just because the demand is high (and therefore there are many people getting schooling) is not healthy. Even when there are a lot of tech workers, there will be sourcing trouble. Instead of not finding anyone at all, companies will find very poor tech folks. In a very real sense this is already a problem today.
anthropodie 5y ago
Exactly. Thank you for articulating this so well. Nowadays people get either side of binary about all sorts of things. Then they fight for their side with tooth and nails without even considering ideas of other side of that binary. Truth is neither white or black it's millions of shades in between.
- bhawks 5y ago
  Agreed, the trend of the past 10 years to jump into a life and death binary opposition is costing us our humanity. Saying we are a remote company or a mandatory office company is an attack on the individual to be subordinate to the collective. The pandemic upended this cultural norm and additionally made unprecedented demands on the individual by the collective on a global scale. In context it is not surprising to see visceral reactions and people drawing battle lines. A rough idea I would like to see knowledge worker companies follow some sort of flexible model (not hybrid). That might look like a small hub office. Space at the hub needs to be reserved and people who use it less often are prioritized for seats (regular visitors may find themselves working from home occasionally to accommodate others). Travel to the hub is a 0 friction business expense if you have a reservation. Ideally this allows easy adhoc in person collaboration, creates norms that include individuals working remotely while also providing an accessible professional/social environment for people that benefit from those spaces. I'd love to see some creative collaborative problem solving instead of an all or nothing battle between artificial groups.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
There is a binary component to this. Proponents of remote work don’t generally oppose hybrid or in person for anyone else who prefers it, but those going to the office would find themselves effectively doing “remote from the office”, if enough people choose not to go. This is the reason why I think hybrid is a bit dumb. Regardless of the social component, the hybrid model effectiveness relies on everyone who collaborates in the same field, to agree when and where to attend, most of the time. If not, it’s just an excuse to fill up cubicles.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  This is why I don’t see hybrid lasting. It breaks what most like about their preferred option.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I think it can somewhat work with flexible timelines. A full 2/5 days a week in-office hybrid is decidedly the worst of both, but a "we come into the office every N weeks for 1-2 days to handle major meetings in person" feels both more fair and less disruptive to all parties. Expand it further where folks living further away are maybe only expected to come in quarterly for maybe a full week. It helps to keep up some in-person social constructs - you can spend time with coworkers at lunch, or going out for a group activity if you want, but keeps the majority of the day-to-day focused on making remote work for everyone.
    - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      Coming to the office for 1-2 days a month would also be reasonably possible for people living far away.
      - noirbot 5y ago
        Yea, it depends on the distance. I wouldn't want to demand that people fly for a few hours every months, and that's not really particularly environmentally friendly, but if it's in drive/train range, much more reasonable.
noasaservice 5y ago
> I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. Nor I, with the complete ridiculousness of "hybrid". And I support climate justice. Commutes to go to a workplace where someone is hacking coughing, and I'm still doing Teams meetings is fucking ridiculous. Never again. > A lot of programmers love remote because they enjoy the isolation to do work. Others do not, be that because they need to talk to people, or because the home situation sucks donkey balls. Standard introvert/extrovert justifications. People need to learn how to partition these things to create a hard delineation between work and not-work. Most whom I know who hate remotework don't have these essential skills. > I suspect the venom is because people are assuming that its a binary situation, you're either a remote company or not. They worry that their remote will be taken from them. I don't think removing the remote option is wise or healthy. It is binary. Either you're a remote-first org, in which where your butt's geographical location doesn't matter, or it does. If you're remote, there's a LOT of positives including: uses no gas to get to work, less wear and tear on vehicle, climate benefits on massive scale, easily eat from home with food amenable to us, have access to niceties here at the house, pets, multitask with stuff like laundry (3 minutes activity with 1h waittimes), and I'm compensated the moment I log in versus commute. WfW is bad because all the above aren't true. The major justifications I'm seeing with this revolves around business rents, middle-manager surveillance capitalism, and appearance of work vs work really done. Hybrid it's worse than WfH or WfW. Now, most of the above are true, but in work's location, you're now having to also act remote. > The other point to think about is this: remote work is brill if you are enjoying it, but it licks massive donkeyballs if you don't. Having that dread of the workplace seep into where you are living is deeply bad for your mental health. That's the first real big change with remotework. YOU MUST SET HARD GATED THINGS BETWEEN WORK AND NOT-WORK. Me? I set my work laptops out at 8:55a and log in at 9a. I pack up my work laptops in their respective bags at 5p. I'll even do a short walk before and after shift as a "commute" and exercise. And sometimes, I'll even change clothes. The hard line is what's absolutely needed to partition work from not-work.
- WheatM 5y ago
  God this is such an insufferable post from someone who simply refuses to believe that they can be wrong.
- 5y ago
iratewizard 5y ago
I've run fully remote teams for several years now and have worked remotely for 15 years of my career. There are some other things to consider as well, especially for people in this company. Remote as an option doesn't work well for the remoters. They will be passed up on opportunities for career growth. The people who didn't show up when the CEO demanded it should strongly consider finding a place that is more remote friendly -- especially if their manager isn't one of the people who refused to go in. There are a lot of unique challenges that come with fostering all remote teams. It would be easy to put the remoters on the back burner if I had a group of devs I saw face to face every day. That will be especially true for people working at a company that harbors active hostility towards those people who refuse to come into the office.
prepend 5y ago
For me it’s the forcing of an unnecessary decision. It’s like there are cat people and dog people. If companies forced people to own a dog, or own a cat there will be lots of conflict. I don’t want to see companies become tribal, but a company that tries to make me come into the office for random reasons will make me really angry and frustrated and probably make me seek out a non-stupid company. Stupid because if remote works for me and I’m highly productive, forcing me to come into an office to do the same thing is inefficient.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  I think this, in the end, will be what happens and companies will start to act like filters. Remote work or office work will be a filter for talent that companies will have to chase for talent if we stay in a market that needs workers, or if we switch to a market where workers are desperate for jobs, vice versa. Of course, companies like Apple and Google who have sunk massive cost into office monstrosities will want on-site workers to justify their cost.
stormbrew 5y ago
This is such a great demonstration of the problem with "both-sidesing" things. You say all this as if "both sides" of this have equal power in the relationship, and this is something they can just politely disagree on and go on about their lives. The reality is that if you need more flexible working arrangements, you are extremely subject to the whims of people who want offices to be the primary mode of work. If they don't want you to be remote, they don't need venom or arguments or to seem angry or even to seem to have much of an opinion at all. Simple inaction and lack of effort, followed by an "oh I'm sorry I forgot to tell you after we all got back from lunch" 3 weeks later is enough to make the remote person's situation untenable. Eventually the "oh I forgot you worked here. Just kidding hah hah hah" jokes kick in and then you know you're a couple months from being let go. To have a successful working relationship with people who aren't in the office, work must be done by the people who are in the office to keep things working. Essentially, it can't work unless everyone adopts a remote-first approach where major discussions happen in writing out in the open. The massive proliferation of slack and similar in the covid era certainly has and will continue to help establish this mode of working, but the people who don't want it because they feel uncomfortable when they don't see butts in seats 8 hours a day will likely put in a lot of passive-aggressive effort to bring things back to the old status quo.
- deleted 5y ago
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- bob1029 5y ago
  This is a fantastic point. The biggest hazards lie in the grey area between extremes. If everyone is remote always, everyone is on equal footing. Same can be said if everyone simply has to show up at the office every day. Maybe the whole org doesn't have to be all on way or all the other, but you should at least be consistent within the teams that work closely together every day.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  In practice, even most office jobs are remote. Everyone is wearing headphones & don’t want to be disturbed, so you gotta Slack them. If even one person on the team is in another office or at home for the day, then the meeting is over Zoom. For any type of 100% onsite job, when is it even 50% onsite anymore?
tqi 5y ago
> I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. The loudest voices are the whiniest and most entitled, thus more likely to engage in online discourse about it. That in turn amplifies the team sports mentality that has become so pervasive in all aspects of society. I think most people have a moderate live/let live attitude toward it all, with the understanding that if they don't like it they will quit for something more suited to their interests.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  I think you're right. Most people don't care. Remote is okay, in-office is okay, both have pros/cons. But people make it a game to shout their preferences as though the world will end if they don't get their way.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    On this issue most do care. The loudest voices will win like in the case of CEO of Goldman. It will take a generation to turnover those c-levels until than it will be a battle with many employees not showing up when demanded back to the office. Feels like we are in a 60s/70s cultural change period. People are battling over what they want the world to be. This is no different.
    - tqi 5y ago
      By "60s/70s cultural change period", do you mean the civil rights era?
baby 5y ago
I'm sorry but it's not that simple, people who want to work in the office tend to want everyone else to work at the office too. People who want to work outside of the office want people to use remote tools to communicate (otherwise they miss out on conversations). You either go full remote or you don't, I think most people would agree that hybrid is the worst of both worlds. > The other point to think about is this: remote work is brill if you are enjoying it, but it licks massive donkeyballs if you don't. I really don't understand this point of view, just pay for wework
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > I'm sorry but it's not that simple, people who want to work in the office tend to want everyone else to work at the office too I think both extremes want their own way. I don't want to force people in or out of the office. I want the option to do either. > just pay for wework You do see the inherent problem with that, its basically subsidising the facilities budget. If you have enough money to pay for a wework, you can pay for better home accommodation.
  - baby 5y ago
    > You do see the inherent problem with that, its basically subsidising the facilities budget. If you have enough money to pay for a wework, you can pay for better home accommodation. I actually think remote work places should start offering wework budget to employees. I agree that not everyone can be comfortable at home.
BlargMcLarg 5y ago
From a socio-economical and ecological point of view, the insistence on pushing people back to the office while employers CBA to build/hire offices away from busy city centers is absolutely blasphemous. This goes way beyond just less cars on the road (imagine what less need for a car does once extrapolated all the way to parking spaces, asphalt, manufactory, etc.) Ironically, many of these companies would still claim they care about the environment in the same breath. I don't necessarily feel the need to be militantly against in-office, but outside the elite bubble of fat TCs, loads of places expect juniors-mediors to just deal with it while giving them a pittance for what is otherwise a pretty difficult white collar job, to either settle in the city and make next to no savings / hope to further their life goals or live outside the city and erode one's sanity by dropping their QoL through commutes. Of course there's going to be some rebellion when the in-office crowd brings out BS arguments like "because it fits our culture better" which equates to "because we say so" with such a large benefit on the line.
fnordpiglet 5y ago
I think the vehemence is easy to understand. No one likes to be told to do something they hate and to lose freedom of choice to be in the environment most conducive to their happiness. I think the structurally advantaged management will let people work the way they work best and figure out how to smooth the rough spots.
mostly_harmless 5y ago
One thing I haven't seen mention much is real estate. The "back-to-office" militants are usually corporate, and there's a lot of corporate money tried up with office real estate that would lose a lot of value if everything shifted to WFH forever
spacexsucks 5y ago
There is not a militancy on both sides. The WFH people are okay with other people going to work. The going to work people want everyone to come in for them.

temp8964 5y ago

I like to work in the office, bc one of the reasons is that I get to chat with my boss, about general stuff or potential new projects. If you go remote, you are going to fully lose this kind of opportunities. Does this create an unfair condition for remote workers? It could be.

simion314 5y ago
>I like to work in the office, bc one of the reasons is that I get to chat with my boss, Why? I can chat with my boss, he can share with me ideas he he has and I can give my opinion.
- temp8964 5y ago
  You mean in person or in text message?
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
  Not the commenter you replied to, but I think my personality is such that I chat casually with my in-group and am a perfectionist with communication with outsiders. Back when I worked in-person, I had daily informal communication with lots of teammates as well as my boss. Since I got a new remote job during the pandemic, I tend to only reach out to those I work most closely with (just a couple of people). Certainly there's nothing actually stopping me from opening a new Teams message to my boss or other teammates and saying "hey, how's life?", but in practice, I don't. It's almost as if most of my team are now "outsiders" who I'm very deliberate messaging, rather than the in-group who I feel comfortable bantering with. It's something I'm aware of and am working on, but I definitely don't have the same level of intra-team communication now as I had pre-pandemic.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I've had the same from the manager point of view. As the manager I had the luxury of just forcing the issue by scheduling one on ones with everyone and flat out telling them I wanted to make sure I actually regularly spoke to everyone and I could just blame it on being "busy" and so wanting to block out time to make sure I had it set aside. As an introvert, I resorted to that in large part because it removed my ability to manufacture excuses for myself or just forgetting because I rarely get the impulse that I feel a strong need to talk to someone. But you can do the same yourself even if you're not in a position to demonstratively schedule actual meeting slots with people: Just put reminders in your calendar to talk to people without scheduling an actual meeting. If you want to make it seem more organic, just put in the right number of slots and keep a list to yourself that you randomise week by week. You can always tick people off if you have conversations outside of your schedule.
  - simion314 5y ago
    My boss is not my friend, why should I chat with him about his or my private life, I am an introvert so I never start this kind of discussion, but from the OP I understood he was refering to work related chat
    - lastofthemojito 5y ago
      Yeah, I'm not an "I need to be friends with my coworkers" person either, but I just mean the everyday stuff that is work-related or work-tangential. Who is meeting with who, how people feel about what's going on, etc. More than one might glean from a Confluence page with notes from a design meeting or whatever. "Oh, the real reason we chose technology X for this feature is just because Jim knows it well", "oh, the real reason we're adding this logic to the back-end is because the boss thinks the front-end devs are incompetent", etc. Things that get whispered in person, but don't get written in an email or wiki page. Maybe some teams are small enough or well-adjusted enough for this not to be an issue, but I've definitely felt I've lacked this sort of context since having fewer informal talks with my boss.
crmrc114 5y ago
Do you not set weekly one on one time or just do quick huddle calls to chat on simple projects? My boss and my team is just as buried in the office and full of meetings. So we are going to be talking on teams/slack anyway- not sure about what I personally view as FUD about these mythical conversations people have with their managers and peers. Maybe my workplace is more fast paced than most. We also have a huge slew of contractors and offices coast to coast.. so it's not uncommon to have to set meetings with resources on both coasts. For us remote work has been, well, pretty freaking normal. And cheaper we have already divested of a couple smaller remote offices.
- temp8964 5y ago
  Not every office is the same. We have busy days and not so busy days.
  - crmrc114 5y ago
    Gotcha brother, just curious I know wfh is a hit for some companies and easy as hell- bit for others it's like torture. I don't understand the latter.
vidarh 5y ago
I have had teams that were in the office but fully distributed, with only one of my team members even in the same country as me. People could, and did, still chat to me. The big difference is that it required discipline. Especially from me in order to deal with team members who were reluctant to speak up. I solved that by ensuring we always had at least one weekly one on one call scheduled to speak about nothing in particular. If nothing else came up, we'd discuss ideas or training or general improvements we could make, but on purpose those calls were always explicitly not for project discussions (if anything came up during these calls I'd schedule other calls for that). Sometimes we'd have "nothing" to talk about until people realised I'd still insist on doing the call and it turned out they had stuff to talk about when I was there on the phone anyway and they didn't feel like they were wasting my time because I'd made it clear this time was already blocked out. Doing fully remote requires managers who understand how to ensure they pick up on things from team members when they can't see them, and that will be an adjustment for a lot of companies. But once you have that, and managers learn how to be available in the same way, it'll work just fine. Consider that lots of managers don't know how to be available in person either, but lock themselves away in offices and only emerge for meetings with agendas that does not leave much room for raising issues or general chat other than for a selected few, so this is not a new issue - just a different version of an old one.
theshrike79 5y ago
My boss is fully remote as is their boss and both of them prefer it that way. The only time either of them are at the office are new employee introductions and that's a half-day max.

krageon 5y ago

> fundamentally we are social people That's nice, but what does that have to do with your job? You can meet people anywhere and when you choose the venue and the context they may even have something in common with you. All anyone at your job needs to have in common with you is a desire to eat.

stavros 5y ago

> I suspect the venom is because people are assuming that its a binary situation, you're either a remote company or not. That's because it's true. You're either a remote company or the remote people find that they routinely hear about things much later than everyone in the office knows about them.

cm2012 5y ago
Yeah, hybrid is worst of both worlds. You still have to live near the office (so little labor market advantage), and remote workers become second class.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > little labour market advantage The market advantage only works where there is a lack of labour. In cities with a big scene, there will be a lack of labour for a given industry. everyone remote will depress your labour's value because you are competing against a much bigger pool of talent. In tech its not so apparent yet, because there is a short supply of staff generally. But that wont persist for ever.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > In tech its not so apparent yet, because there is a short supply of staff generally. But that wont persist for ever. There's a lot more programmers on the market right now than 10 years ago thanks to bootcamps and short degrees. Honestly, for each one hired you generally need a proper engineer to cleanup the mess afterward. I'm not worried about an oversupplied of qualified engineers anytime soon.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > that wont persist for ever. Being good tech staff is a hard skill. This idea that there will ever be enough just because the demand is high (and therefore there are many people getting schooling) is not healthy. Even when there are a lot of tech workers, there will be sourcing trouble. Instead of not finding anyone at all, companies will find very poor tech folks. In a very real sense this is already a problem today.

anthropodie 5y ago

Exactly. Thank you for articulating this so well. Nowadays people get either side of binary about all sorts of things. Then they fight for their side with tooth and nails without even considering ideas of other side of that binary. Truth is neither white or black it's millions of shades in between.

bhawks 5y ago
Agreed, the trend of the past 10 years to jump into a life and death binary opposition is costing us our humanity. Saying we are a remote company or a mandatory office company is an attack on the individual to be subordinate to the collective. The pandemic upended this cultural norm and additionally made unprecedented demands on the individual by the collective on a global scale. In context it is not surprising to see visceral reactions and people drawing battle lines. A rough idea I would like to see knowledge worker companies follow some sort of flexible model (not hybrid). That might look like a small hub office. Space at the hub needs to be reserved and people who use it less often are prioritized for seats (regular visitors may find themselves working from home occasionally to accommodate others). Travel to the hub is a 0 friction business expense if you have a reservation. Ideally this allows easy adhoc in person collaboration, creates norms that include individuals working remotely while also providing an accessible professional/social environment for people that benefit from those spaces. I'd love to see some creative collaborative problem solving instead of an all or nothing battle between artificial groups.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

There is a binary component to this. Proponents of remote work don’t generally oppose hybrid or in person for anyone else who prefers it, but those going to the office would find themselves effectively doing “remote from the office”, if enough people choose not to go. This is the reason why I think hybrid is a bit dumb. Regardless of the social component, the hybrid model effectiveness relies on everyone who collaborates in the same field, to agree when and where to attend, most of the time. If not, it’s just an excuse to fill up cubicles.

MattGaiser 5y ago
This is why I don’t see hybrid lasting. It breaks what most like about their preferred option.
- noirbot 5y ago
  I think it can somewhat work with flexible timelines. A full 2/5 days a week in-office hybrid is decidedly the worst of both, but a "we come into the office every N weeks for 1-2 days to handle major meetings in person" feels both more fair and less disruptive to all parties. Expand it further where folks living further away are maybe only expected to come in quarterly for maybe a full week. It helps to keep up some in-person social constructs - you can spend time with coworkers at lunch, or going out for a group activity if you want, but keeps the majority of the day-to-day focused on making remote work for everyone.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Coming to the office for 1-2 days a month would also be reasonably possible for people living far away.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      Yea, it depends on the distance. I wouldn't want to demand that people fly for a few hours every months, and that's not really particularly environmentally friendly, but if it's in drive/train range, much more reasonable.

noasaservice 5y ago

> I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. Nor I, with the complete ridiculousness of "hybrid". And I support climate justice. Commutes to go to a workplace where someone is hacking coughing, and I'm still doing Teams meetings is fucking ridiculous. Never again. > A lot of programmers love remote because they enjoy the isolation to do work. Others do not, be that because they need to talk to people, or because the home situation sucks donkey balls. Standard introvert/extrovert justifications. People need to learn how to partition these things to create a hard delineation between work and not-work. Most whom I know who hate remotework don't have these essential skills. > I suspect the venom is because people are assuming that its a binary situation, you're either a remote company or not. They worry that their remote will be taken from them. I don't think removing the remote option is wise or healthy. It is binary. Either you're a remote-first org, in which where your butt's geographical location doesn't matter, or it does. If you're remote, there's a LOT of positives including: uses no gas to get to work, less wear and tear on vehicle, climate benefits on massive scale, easily eat from home with food amenable to us, have access to niceties here at the house, pets, multitask with stuff like laundry (3 minutes activity with 1h waittimes), and I'm compensated the moment I log in versus commute. WfW is bad because all the above aren't true. The major justifications I'm seeing with this revolves around business rents, middle-manager surveillance capitalism, and appearance of work vs work really done. Hybrid it's worse than WfH or WfW. Now, most of the above are true, but in work's location, you're now having to also act remote. > The other point to think about is this: remote work is brill if you are enjoying it, but it licks massive donkeyballs if you don't. Having that dread of the workplace seep into where you are living is deeply bad for your mental health. That's the first real big change with remotework. YOU MUST SET HARD GATED THINGS BETWEEN WORK AND NOT-WORK. Me? I set my work laptops out at 8:55a and log in at 9a. I pack up my work laptops in their respective bags at 5p. I'll even do a short walk before and after shift as a "commute" and exercise. And sometimes, I'll even change clothes. The hard line is what's absolutely needed to partition work from not-work.

WheatM 5y ago
God this is such an insufferable post from someone who simply refuses to believe that they can be wrong.
5y ago

iratewizard 5y ago

I've run fully remote teams for several years now and have worked remotely for 15 years of my career. There are some other things to consider as well, especially for people in this company. Remote as an option doesn't work well for the remoters. They will be passed up on opportunities for career growth. The people who didn't show up when the CEO demanded it should strongly consider finding a place that is more remote friendly -- especially if their manager isn't one of the people who refused to go in. There are a lot of unique challenges that come with fostering all remote teams. It would be easy to put the remoters on the back burner if I had a group of devs I saw face to face every day. That will be especially true for people working at a company that harbors active hostility towards those people who refuse to come into the office.

prepend 5y ago

For me it’s the forcing of an unnecessary decision. It’s like there are cat people and dog people. If companies forced people to own a dog, or own a cat there will be lots of conflict. I don’t want to see companies become tribal, but a company that tries to make me come into the office for random reasons will make me really angry and frustrated and probably make me seek out a non-stupid company. Stupid because if remote works for me and I’m highly productive, forcing me to come into an office to do the same thing is inefficient.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
I think this, in the end, will be what happens and companies will start to act like filters. Remote work or office work will be a filter for talent that companies will have to chase for talent if we stay in a market that needs workers, or if we switch to a market where workers are desperate for jobs, vice versa. Of course, companies like Apple and Google who have sunk massive cost into office monstrosities will want on-site workers to justify their cost.

stormbrew 5y ago

This is such a great demonstration of the problem with "both-sidesing" things. You say all this as if "both sides" of this have equal power in the relationship, and this is something they can just politely disagree on and go on about their lives. The reality is that if you need more flexible working arrangements, you are extremely subject to the whims of people who want offices to be the primary mode of work. If they don't want you to be remote, they don't need venom or arguments or to seem angry or even to seem to have much of an opinion at all. Simple inaction and lack of effort, followed by an "oh I'm sorry I forgot to tell you after we all got back from lunch" 3 weeks later is enough to make the remote person's situation untenable. Eventually the "oh I forgot you worked here. Just kidding hah hah hah" jokes kick in and then you know you're a couple months from being let go. To have a successful working relationship with people who aren't in the office, work must be done by the people who are in the office to keep things working. Essentially, it can't work unless everyone adopts a remote-first approach where major discussions happen in writing out in the open. The massive proliferation of slack and similar in the covid era certainly has and will continue to help establish this mode of working, but the people who don't want it because they feel uncomfortable when they don't see butts in seats 8 hours a day will likely put in a lot of passive-aggressive effort to bring things back to the old status quo.

deleted 5y ago
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bob1029 5y ago
This is a fantastic point. The biggest hazards lie in the grey area between extremes. If everyone is remote always, everyone is on equal footing. Same can be said if everyone simply has to show up at the office every day. Maybe the whole org doesn't have to be all on way or all the other, but you should at least be consistent within the teams that work closely together every day.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
In practice, even most office jobs are remote. Everyone is wearing headphones & don’t want to be disturbed, so you gotta Slack them. If even one person on the team is in another office or at home for the day, then the meeting is over Zoom. For any type of 100% onsite job, when is it even 50% onsite anymore?

tqi 5y ago

> I really don't understand the militancy of both sides. The loudest voices are the whiniest and most entitled, thus more likely to engage in online discourse about it. That in turn amplifies the team sports mentality that has become so pervasive in all aspects of society. I think most people have a moderate live/let live attitude toward it all, with the understanding that if they don't like it they will quit for something more suited to their interests.

phendrenad2 5y ago
I think you're right. Most people don't care. Remote is okay, in-office is okay, both have pros/cons. But people make it a game to shout their preferences as though the world will end if they don't get their way.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  On this issue most do care. The loudest voices will win like in the case of CEO of Goldman. It will take a generation to turnover those c-levels until than it will be a battle with many employees not showing up when demanded back to the office. Feels like we are in a 60s/70s cultural change period. People are battling over what they want the world to be. This is no different.
  - tqi 5y ago
    By "60s/70s cultural change period", do you mean the civil rights era?

baby 5y ago

I'm sorry but it's not that simple, people who want to work in the office tend to want everyone else to work at the office too. People who want to work outside of the office want people to use remote tools to communicate (otherwise they miss out on conversations). You either go full remote or you don't, I think most people would agree that hybrid is the worst of both worlds. > The other point to think about is this: remote work is brill if you are enjoying it, but it licks massive donkeyballs if you don't. I really don't understand this point of view, just pay for wework

KaiserPro 5y ago
> I'm sorry but it's not that simple, people who want to work in the office tend to want everyone else to work at the office too I think both extremes want their own way. I don't want to force people in or out of the office. I want the option to do either. > just pay for wework You do see the inherent problem with that, its basically subsidising the facilities budget. If you have enough money to pay for a wework, you can pay for better home accommodation.
- baby 5y ago
  > You do see the inherent problem with that, its basically subsidising the facilities budget. If you have enough money to pay for a wework, you can pay for better home accommodation. I actually think remote work places should start offering wework budget to employees. I agree that not everyone can be comfortable at home.

BlargMcLarg 5y ago

From a socio-economical and ecological point of view, the insistence on pushing people back to the office while employers CBA to build/hire offices away from busy city centers is absolutely blasphemous. This goes way beyond just less cars on the road (imagine what less need for a car does once extrapolated all the way to parking spaces, asphalt, manufactory, etc.) Ironically, many of these companies would still claim they care about the environment in the same breath. I don't necessarily feel the need to be militantly against in-office, but outside the elite bubble of fat TCs, loads of places expect juniors-mediors to just deal with it while giving them a pittance for what is otherwise a pretty difficult white collar job, to either settle in the city and make next to no savings / hope to further their life goals or live outside the city and erode one's sanity by dropping their QoL through commutes. Of course there's going to be some rebellion when the in-office crowd brings out BS arguments like "because it fits our culture better" which equates to "because we say so" with such a large benefit on the line.

fnordpiglet 5y ago

I think the vehemence is easy to understand. No one likes to be told to do something they hate and to lose freedom of choice to be in the environment most conducive to their happiness. I think the structurally advantaged management will let people work the way they work best and figure out how to smooth the rough spots.

mostly_harmless 5y ago

One thing I haven't seen mention much is real estate. The "back-to-office" militants are usually corporate, and there's a lot of corporate money tried up with office real estate that would lose a lot of value if everything shifted to WFH forever

spacexsucks 5y ago

There is not a militancy on both sides. The WFH people are okay with other people going to work. The going to work people want everyone to come in for them.