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As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a bypr

As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Taking my company as an example, while the executive team has been ambiguous, I know that a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all, not the least of which because we don't want to lose ~30% of our staff. But for the suspicious, it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise, and even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response. And the funny thing is, I absolutely understand the suspicion! It's just that, as a person in a leadership position, it makes me want to tear my hair out because I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it. Hence why I admire what Apple has done, here. They laid out their policy, they've demonstrated their commitment to that policy, and now they're letting the staff make their decision about how they want to react to that policy. Whether you agree with the policy or not, that's far better than ambiguity or constant flip-flopping.

ghaff 4y ago
> never Leadership changes. People change their minds. Something can absolutely be a genuine intent today but that could change in a few years.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  First, if Apple declared, right now, that full remote was an option, what you say is still true. i.e., in two years, management could decide to take away that benefit. So I don't see how that kind of reasoning is useful when making an employment decision today. Getting up in arms about a purported future two years from now is just not rational, and is ultimately a byproduct of fear. More broadly, this has always been true. Employers have always been in an position where they could change the terms of employment, and employees have always been in the position of being able to make a choice as to whether they would be willing to accept those changes. The WFH situation isn't special in that regard. Second, this could go either way. Future leadership could equally decide Apple will go full remote. But the assumption is always that future change will take away the benefit rather than expanding it. That the slippery slope will always be to the worker's detriment. That's just another form of management distrust. Edit: And oddly, given the current demand for positions in technology companies, that distrust is especially unfounded. Employees have never been more empowered. The sheer demand for labour means that any company instituting a policy that's broadly unpopular will lose staff. Absent a profound change in the labour market, in that context it would be insane for Apple to communicate a hybrid work policy, now, only to renege on it.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I don't really disagree with any of that although I do think some policies are stickier than others. It's probably easier to adjust the terms of hybrid work than it is to tell remote workers who can't commute to an office that they have to move if they want to stay with the company. But, yes, in general I wouldn't make decisions based on what could happen in 2-3 years unless I really saw the writing on the wall and wanted to proactively spare myself the pain.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >But the assumption is always that future change will take away the benefit rather than expanding it. That the slippery slope will always be to the worker's detriment. This seems like a reasonable assumption unless the labor seller is in very high demand relative to supply.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      > This seems like a reasonable assumption unless the labor seller is in very high demand relative to supply. Which is precisely the situation we're in right now.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    > "The sheer demand for labour means that any company instituting a policy that's broadly unpopular will lose staff." If that were true, we'd all have private offices, or at least the option, instead of open plan office space.
aftbit 4y ago
You could pre-commit to it. For example, you could sign a contract that if the company mandates a full return to work in the next 10 years, they will also increase everyone's base salary by 50%. That would be prohibitively expensive, so the company will never do it.
- tuyiown 4y ago
  I totally agree with you. If the manager can't grant such a thing then he has no power over it, the employees have no reason to trust the upper hierarchy either, even if they trust their direct manager.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Flexible working means giving people an option, and when it is mandatory a justification. Flexibility is not forcing people to come some arbitrary number of days because reasons.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Absolutely true. Employees do not trust management for good reasons, because they have experience with management not being open and honest with them (speaking generally here, of course there are exceptions). Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common.
- krschultz 4y ago
  Spoken like someone that's never been a manager.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    Except that I have. I've been on both sides of this issue and stand by these comments.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - samhw 4y ago
    What they are describing is literally the objective objectives of a company's management. It's not some fluffy 'cultural values' thing that changes based on what the company's philosophy is. I've held exec positions at startups and ... well, I don't need to have held those positions to tell you this. (These authority contests are so frustratingly silly. We're not 5 year olds.)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  > Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common. Yes, there are companies that behave this way. And there are many companies that don't. As you say, it's not universal. The question is: What kind of company is Apple? I honestly have no idea. But to assume, universally, that all companies will renege on their hybrid work commitments is much too cynical for me.
namelessoracle 4y ago
When the recession hits, yanking hybrid away and demanding full time is an easy way to both A) easily cut staff that cant show up to the office easily (so preselected layoffs) and B) have massive leverage to force the issue sense they cant just go quit to make 20k more now in response
- xt00 4y ago
  Yea came here to say the same thing -- you can just imagine the executive level conversations.. "the company is really struggling, and here are these bozo's sitting at home enjoying their life while I am stressed out in this board room... we need to be all rowing the boat in the same direction, and the only way I can see us doing that is by seeing everybody else stressed out along with me at the office..." so yea.. unless the management is also work from home, you can pretty much guess that a recession will cause a whole bunch of "well, when we said work from home forever, we meant like, ya know while the company was running fine.."
- Spooky23 4y ago
  That was the IBM and GE playbook, right? I used to work with them a lot in a past role, and the remote guys seemed to get disappeared much more quickly than the folks who had a home base. When your boss is in Brazil or whatever and gets a savings target, he sorts a spreadsheet by salary and utilization and poof!
hackerfromthefu 4y ago
If you want people to 100% believe it, add it to the employment contracts, with significant payments if the company reneges. However I think you will find that the executives won't go for it.
- banannaise 4y ago
  Yep. Money where your mouth is. Corporate management has a history of only responding to direct incentives, so if they want me to believe anything they say, then they have to give themselves a direct incentive to follow through with it.
Syonyk 4y ago
> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Usually the result of past "Say one thing, do another" sort of experiences. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that. In the past decade or so, for instance, a lot of the rush to "open office" (which is Hell on Earth for the sort of deep work a lot of tech types are typically paid to do) has been surrounded with all sorts of talk about the benefits of people and ideas colliding and such... mostly coming from people who have an office with a door that closes. There's a place and time for those ideas, and it's the various "watercooler" places a typical office has - break room, lounge area, etc. "I am not working on something, let's BS on some ideas!" But there's a time and place for "not having random conversations," and it would be where people try to get work done. It's exceedingly hard to focus on deep work when there are lots of conversations around, and having gone from one extreme to another (open office with probably 100 people in line of sight to my own dedicated shed office), even if you know how bad it is, you don't realize how bad it really is. I listen to a lot less music now, and a lot of what I listen to is quieter and instrumental. In the open office plan, I'd acquired an appreciation for some pretty aggressive metal - because it was better than random conversations. And if I'm in the middle of something, I don't get constantly jacked out of the groove by other people being bored or hungry or such. There are many days out in my shed when I couldn't tell you what time it is without explicitly looking, and on more than one occasion it's been my wife pinging me, "Hey, you coming up to the house for dinner?" I'd been buried in something technical for the last few hours and had no idea it was dinnertime. But despite all this, a lot of tech companies still try to spin "butts in tiny seats with people all around them" as somehow better. Anyway, if nobody believes what management is saying, there's probably a very good reason for it.
deleted 4y ago
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blitzar 4y ago
> even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response Which in turn makes the executive team suspicious which makes them hint at even just one day a month which makes people suspicious which ... I dont have any solutions - but I agree with you. > They laid out their policy, they've demonstrated their commitment to that policy That is all you can do while hoping that both sides (and yes in this case there are good people and bad people on both sides) chill the fuck out.
karaterobot 4y ago
> a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all, not the least of which because we don't want to lose ~30% of our staff. Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. If the argument from your leadership doesn't begin with "according to these very clear numbers, our profitability as a business has suffered due to remote work," then it's reasonable to consider what the real reason might be: Wanting to exert control, or the sunk cost fallacy of leasing commercial real estate, or a justification for managers to have someone to manage. Who knows? These things are often not well explained. But anything except an existential business risk is a bad reason as far as I am concerned, when the "resources" so clearly want it to go otherwise.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  > Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. I said "not the least of which because". I didn't say that was the only reason. This is precisely the kind of cynical reading-between-the-lines that I'm talking about.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    > I didn't say that was the only reason. But, it was the only reason you gave.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      From the HN guidelines: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I wasn't attempting to give you a complete and thorough explanation of our work-from-home policy or the reasoning behind it, but rather just one (very important) factor that's part of the overall calculus. I believe that was clear from the context.
  - not2b 4y ago
    If you are experiencing cynical reading between the lines from your reports, you might want to ask yourself why. Why don't they trust you? Or maybe they think you're sincere but they don't trust senior management? I suspect that they have good reason for that, and you might take a closer look as to why.
banannaise 4y ago
> This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. What do you think the lack of trust comes from? We have a large body of evidence that management does things in exactly this way. You can argue that this evidence isn't germane, but you can't argue that it doesn't exist.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  I wish I knew! The technology industry in general is one with some of the most empowered workers in the economy. The incredible imbalance in labour supply-and-demand means that salaries and benefits are sky high, work conditions tend to be quite favourable, and employees have a ton of options in selecting employers that have positive work environments. And yet there are some who seem to think that tech workers are continuously under attack from heartless corporations looking to maximize profits at all costs, even at the expense of workers. Absolutely, if you're working in, I dunno, service or manufacturing industries where labour supply is high and anti-union efforts have resulted in a rollback of labour rights, there is every reason to be concerned. But in tech? I genuinely have no idea where this perception comes from or how it can be justified given the current structure of the labour market.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    It’s because we know exactly how precarious the situation is. If the demand for labor dropped significantly, do you think companies would maintain the status quo working conditions? Or would we see many more instances of worker exploitation?
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      > It’s because we know exactly how precarious the situation is. The labour market for tech has been on fire for nearly 20 years now. There was barely a blip during the 2008 crash that evaporated huge chunks of the economy. During COVID demand for labour went up despite massive disruptions in the economy. I swear I've been reading articles about labour supply shortages in tech for as long as I've been in the industry. I honestly have no idea where this fear comes from. Please, I'm very curious to know: in what way is the situation for engineering labour "precarious"?
nerpderp82 4y ago
> we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it. Unless you are in the c-suite and are also the board, you can't make those promises. Your job is to say these things and gain employee trust, only to have a different set of orders come from on high.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  In which case I quit along with the rest of my staff and find another job. If my management expects me to renege on a commitment that they've told me I can make, then I can't trust management any more than my staff can, and I will no longer be willing to work for that company. Honestly, it's like folks around here don't grok that a) employees are actually empowered, and b) management knows that.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    I hear this from line managers at every company I have worked for, at FAANGs and non-FAANGs. It is romantically naive. Unless you are working for a small tight knit org run by leader with solid moral character, management will always renege. Fool me 7 times ...
no_wizard 4y ago
Its the kind of thing that needs to be codified in the handbook and come from the top. I know middle managers that make these kind of decisions right now at their companies and feel the same way, but the calculus that gets missed is that until its codified in the manual, the HR processes, and is said from the executive c-suite level, it will always appear suspicious, because the course would be easy to reverse on everyone if we take it as a pinkie promise or handshake agreement. Same reason I don't like "well let teams decide". It doesn't force the business processes to update themselves to the divergent realities, it pushes all of the burden onto teams and individuals instead, which is not good in aggregate for these sorts of things.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
>This is pure supposition based on no evidence. Unfortunately for your argument, their policy speaks to their attitude, which is "fuck what you think". Anyone with a basic understanding of human power dynamics correctly interprets this policy as "in a year all you peasants will be back with your arses in your seats where we can see you". The statement is the evidence. >But for the suspicious, it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise, and even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response. The fact that you have a problem with this proves our point. You are not approaching this from the perspective of "how can I empower my team to do their best work and make us all a ton of money". Your frustration is "I know better and these idiots won't do what they are told". And the fact that you claim to be unable to understand these basic ideas means that either (a) you do understand and are lying or (b) are incompetent, and in either case, your team has come to the correct conclusion. I look forward to hiring a ton of Apple devs while also being disappointed that macOS will continue to get worse.
danaris 4y ago
I would say that it's not just a lack of trust in your specific organization's management intentions. It's also related to how much we've all seen management throughout the Western world react with horror to the idea that the people they're supposed to be telling what to do might not be physically within their view for weeks or months at a time...or ever! There's unquestionably a very strong strain of "management" in our culture that consists almost solely of a) distrusting the employees, b) therefore trying to physically monitor them at all times, and c) justifying their own existence by calling for many hours of (in-person) meetings every week. Personally, the institution I work for has claimed—in defiance of all logic and obvious reality—that certain jobs here can only be done in the office, all the time, and thus anyone in these jobs (which is basically everything below Director-level) seeking to work remote even part of the time will be denied. Your company many not even have any of these people. I don't know. But so many of us have heard the stories from so many others who do have management like this that we would be stupid not to be wary of any manager—on up to the C-suite/owner/board—who seems unenthusiastic about remote work.
conductr 4y ago
> it makes me want to tear my hair out because I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it. Six months from now you get a new CEO and they want asses in seats immediately. What do you say then?
infamia 4y ago
Without transparency and some level of clarity, you cannot expect trust from others and the cynics will remain cynical.
1123581321 4y ago
How much less are you believed about remote work than other situations where the recipient of the news has to trust you, and whose quality of life will suffer if you’re wrong or dishonest?
nazka 4y ago
I mean it seems all the reasons are laid out in your response. Just reordering them: > I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office > the executive team has been ambiguous > it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise You can claim all you want but if the CEO and all the chief officers are not the one making it all clear and not just taking about it at a standup but in black and white on paper. Then it means nothing and what you claim means nothing too to your employees. Like someone said next step after that is to put it in the contract. Also it’s up to you and the other managers and officers, and not the people bellow you, to create a trusting environment and trust with your team. It’s frustrating you to hear comments like that but it should be instead a red flag for you about the health of your team. Because it’s even more stressful and frustrating to be in the very seat of an employee where there is no trust at their work and the leaders are vague about critical part of their work life and don’t care and (not pointing finger at you but just saying) are just frustrated when they voice their concerns instead of listening and acting as leaders.

ghaff 4y ago

> never Leadership changes. People change their minds. Something can absolutely be a genuine intent today but that could change in a few years.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
First, if Apple declared, right now, that full remote was an option, what you say is still true. i.e., in two years, management could decide to take away that benefit. So I don't see how that kind of reasoning is useful when making an employment decision today. Getting up in arms about a purported future two years from now is just not rational, and is ultimately a byproduct of fear. More broadly, this has always been true. Employers have always been in an position where they could change the terms of employment, and employees have always been in the position of being able to make a choice as to whether they would be willing to accept those changes. The WFH situation isn't special in that regard. Second, this could go either way. Future leadership could equally decide Apple will go full remote. But the assumption is always that future change will take away the benefit rather than expanding it. That the slippery slope will always be to the worker's detriment. That's just another form of management distrust. Edit: And oddly, given the current demand for positions in technology companies, that distrust is especially unfounded. Employees have never been more empowered. The sheer demand for labour means that any company instituting a policy that's broadly unpopular will lose staff. Absent a profound change in the labour market, in that context it would be insane for Apple to communicate a hybrid work policy, now, only to renege on it.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I don't really disagree with any of that although I do think some policies are stickier than others. It's probably easier to adjust the terms of hybrid work than it is to tell remote workers who can't commute to an office that they have to move if they want to stay with the company. But, yes, in general I wouldn't make decisions based on what could happen in 2-3 years unless I really saw the writing on the wall and wanted to proactively spare myself the pain.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >But the assumption is always that future change will take away the benefit rather than expanding it. That the slippery slope will always be to the worker's detriment. This seems like a reasonable assumption unless the labor seller is in very high demand relative to supply.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    > This seems like a reasonable assumption unless the labor seller is in very high demand relative to supply. Which is precisely the situation we're in right now.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  > "The sheer demand for labour means that any company instituting a policy that's broadly unpopular will lose staff." If that were true, we'd all have private offices, or at least the option, instead of open plan office space.

aftbit 4y ago

You could pre-commit to it. For example, you could sign a contract that if the company mandates a full return to work in the next 10 years, they will also increase everyone's base salary by 50%. That would be prohibitively expensive, so the company will never do it.

tuyiown 4y ago
I totally agree with you. If the manager can't grant such a thing then he has no power over it, the employees have no reason to trust the upper hierarchy either, even if they trust their direct manager.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

Flexible working means giving people an option, and when it is mandatory a justification. Flexibility is not forcing people to come some arbitrary number of days because reasons.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Absolutely true. Employees do not trust management for good reasons, because they have experience with management not being open and honest with them (speaking generally here, of course there are exceptions). Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common.

krschultz 4y ago
Spoken like someone that's never been a manager.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  Except that I have. I've been on both sides of this issue and stand by these comments.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- samhw 4y ago
  What they are describing is literally the objective objectives of a company's management. It's not some fluffy 'cultural values' thing that changes based on what the company's philosophy is. I've held exec positions at startups and ... well, I don't need to have held those positions to tell you this. (These authority contests are so frustratingly silly. We're not 5 year olds.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common. Yes, there are companies that behave this way. And there are many companies that don't. As you say, it's not universal. The question is: What kind of company is Apple? I honestly have no idea. But to assume, universally, that all companies will renege on their hybrid work commitments is much too cynical for me.

namelessoracle 4y ago

When the recession hits, yanking hybrid away and demanding full time is an easy way to both A) easily cut staff that cant show up to the office easily (so preselected layoffs) and B) have massive leverage to force the issue sense they cant just go quit to make 20k more now in response

xt00 4y ago
Yea came here to say the same thing -- you can just imagine the executive level conversations.. "the company is really struggling, and here are these bozo's sitting at home enjoying their life while I am stressed out in this board room... we need to be all rowing the boat in the same direction, and the only way I can see us doing that is by seeing everybody else stressed out along with me at the office..." so yea.. unless the management is also work from home, you can pretty much guess that a recession will cause a whole bunch of "well, when we said work from home forever, we meant like, ya know while the company was running fine.."
Spooky23 4y ago
That was the IBM and GE playbook, right? I used to work with them a lot in a past role, and the remote guys seemed to get disappeared much more quickly than the folks who had a home base. When your boss is in Brazil or whatever and gets a savings target, he sorts a spreadsheet by salary and utilization and poof!

hackerfromthefu 4y ago

If you want people to 100% believe it, add it to the employment contracts, with significant payments if the company reneges. However I think you will find that the executives won't go for it.

banannaise 4y ago
Yep. Money where your mouth is. Corporate management has a history of only responding to direct incentives, so if they want me to believe anything they say, then they have to give themselves a direct incentive to follow through with it.

Syonyk 4y ago

> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Usually the result of past "Say one thing, do another" sort of experiences. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that. In the past decade or so, for instance, a lot of the rush to "open office" (which is Hell on Earth for the sort of deep work a lot of tech types are typically paid to do) has been surrounded with all sorts of talk about the benefits of people and ideas colliding and such... mostly coming from people who have an office with a door that closes. There's a place and time for those ideas, and it's the various "watercooler" places a typical office has - break room, lounge area, etc. "I am not working on something, let's BS on some ideas!" But there's a time and place for "not having random conversations," and it would be where people try to get work done. It's exceedingly hard to focus on deep work when there are lots of conversations around, and having gone from one extreme to another (open office with probably 100 people in line of sight to my own dedicated shed office), even if you know how bad it is, you don't realize how bad it really is. I listen to a lot less music now, and a lot of what I listen to is quieter and instrumental. In the open office plan, I'd acquired an appreciation for some pretty aggressive metal - because it was better than random conversations. And if I'm in the middle of something, I don't get constantly jacked out of the groove by other people being bored or hungry or such. There are many days out in my shed when I couldn't tell you what time it is without explicitly looking, and on more than one occasion it's been my wife pinging me, "Hey, you coming up to the house for dinner?" I'd been buried in something technical for the last few hours and had no idea it was dinnertime. But despite all this, a lot of tech companies still try to spin "butts in tiny seats with people all around them" as somehow better. Anyway, if nobody believes what management is saying, there's probably a very good reason for it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

blitzar 4y ago

> even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response Which in turn makes the executive team suspicious which makes them hint at even just one day a month which makes people suspicious which ... I dont have any solutions - but I agree with you. > They laid out their policy, they've demonstrated their commitment to that policy That is all you can do while hoping that both sides (and yes in this case there are good people and bad people on both sides) chill the fuck out.

karaterobot 4y ago

> a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all, not the least of which because we don't want to lose ~30% of our staff. Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. If the argument from your leadership doesn't begin with "according to these very clear numbers, our profitability as a business has suffered due to remote work," then it's reasonable to consider what the real reason might be: Wanting to exert control, or the sunk cost fallacy of leasing commercial real estate, or a justification for managers to have someone to manage. Who knows? These things are often not well explained. But anything except an existential business risk is a bad reason as far as I am concerned, when the "resources" so clearly want it to go otherwise.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. I said "not the least of which because". I didn't say that was the only reason. This is precisely the kind of cynical reading-between-the-lines that I'm talking about.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  > I didn't say that was the only reason. But, it was the only reason you gave.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    From the HN guidelines: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I wasn't attempting to give you a complete and thorough explanation of our work-from-home policy or the reasoning behind it, but rather just one (very important) factor that's part of the overall calculus. I believe that was clear from the context.
- not2b 4y ago
  If you are experiencing cynical reading between the lines from your reports, you might want to ask yourself why. Why don't they trust you? Or maybe they think you're sincere but they don't trust senior management? I suspect that they have good reason for that, and you might take a closer look as to why.

banannaise 4y ago

> This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. What do you think the lack of trust comes from? We have a large body of evidence that management does things in exactly this way. You can argue that this evidence isn't germane, but you can't argue that it doesn't exist.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
I wish I knew! The technology industry in general is one with some of the most empowered workers in the economy. The incredible imbalance in labour supply-and-demand means that salaries and benefits are sky high, work conditions tend to be quite favourable, and employees have a ton of options in selecting employers that have positive work environments. And yet there are some who seem to think that tech workers are continuously under attack from heartless corporations looking to maximize profits at all costs, even at the expense of workers. Absolutely, if you're working in, I dunno, service or manufacturing industries where labour supply is high and anti-union efforts have resulted in a rollback of labour rights, there is every reason to be concerned. But in tech? I genuinely have no idea where this perception comes from or how it can be justified given the current structure of the labour market.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  It’s because we know exactly how precarious the situation is. If the demand for labor dropped significantly, do you think companies would maintain the status quo working conditions? Or would we see many more instances of worker exploitation?
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    > It’s because we know exactly how precarious the situation is. The labour market for tech has been on fire for nearly 20 years now. There was barely a blip during the 2008 crash that evaporated huge chunks of the economy. During COVID demand for labour went up despite massive disruptions in the economy. I swear I've been reading articles about labour supply shortages in tech for as long as I've been in the industry. I honestly have no idea where this fear comes from. Please, I'm very curious to know: in what way is the situation for engineering labour "precarious"?

nerpderp82 4y ago

> we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it. Unless you are in the c-suite and are also the board, you can't make those promises. Your job is to say these things and gain employee trust, only to have a different set of orders come from on high.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
In which case I quit along with the rest of my staff and find another job. If my management expects me to renege on a commitment that they've told me I can make, then I can't trust management any more than my staff can, and I will no longer be willing to work for that company. Honestly, it's like folks around here don't grok that a) employees are actually empowered, and b) management knows that.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  I hear this from line managers at every company I have worked for, at FAANGs and non-FAANGs. It is romantically naive. Unless you are working for a small tight knit org run by leader with solid moral character, management will always renege. Fool me 7 times ...

no_wizard 4y ago

Its the kind of thing that needs to be codified in the handbook and come from the top. I know middle managers that make these kind of decisions right now at their companies and feel the same way, but the calculus that gets missed is that until its codified in the manual, the HR processes, and is said from the executive c-suite level, it will always appear suspicious, because the course would be easy to reverse on everyone if we take it as a pinkie promise or handshake agreement. Same reason I don't like "well let teams decide". It doesn't force the business processes to update themselves to the divergent realities, it pushes all of the burden onto teams and individuals instead, which is not good in aggregate for these sorts of things.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

>This is pure supposition based on no evidence. Unfortunately for your argument, their policy speaks to their attitude, which is "fuck what you think". Anyone with a basic understanding of human power dynamics correctly interprets this policy as "in a year all you peasants will be back with your arses in your seats where we can see you". The statement is the evidence. >But for the suspicious, it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise, and even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response. The fact that you have a problem with this proves our point. You are not approaching this from the perspective of "how can I empower my team to do their best work and make us all a ton of money". Your frustration is "I know better and these idiots won't do what they are told". And the fact that you claim to be unable to understand these basic ideas means that either (a) you do understand and are lying or (b) are incompetent, and in either case, your team has come to the correct conclusion. I look forward to hiring a ton of Apple devs while also being disappointed that macOS will continue to get worse.

danaris 4y ago

I would say that it's not just a lack of trust in your specific organization's management intentions. It's also related to how much we've all seen management throughout the Western world react with horror to the idea that the people they're supposed to be telling what to do might not be physically within their view for weeks or months at a time...or ever! There's unquestionably a very strong strain of "management" in our culture that consists almost solely of a) distrusting the employees, b) therefore trying to physically monitor them at all times, and c) justifying their own existence by calling for many hours of (in-person) meetings every week. Personally, the institution I work for has claimed—in defiance of all logic and obvious reality—that certain jobs here can only be done in the office, all the time, and thus anyone in these jobs (which is basically everything below Director-level) seeking to work remote even part of the time will be denied. Your company many not even have any of these people. I don't know. But so many of us have heard the stories from so many others who do have management like this that we would be stupid not to be wary of any manager—on up to the C-suite/owner/board—who seems unenthusiastic about remote work.

conductr 4y ago

> it makes me want to tear my hair out because I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it. Six months from now you get a new CEO and they want asses in seats immediately. What do you say then?

infamia 4y ago

Without transparency and some level of clarity, you cannot expect trust from others and the cynics will remain cynical.

1123581321 4y ago

How much less are you believed about remote work than other situations where the recipient of the news has to trust you, and whose quality of life will suffer if you’re wrong or dishonest?

nazka 4y ago

I mean it seems all the reasons are laid out in your response. Just reordering them: > I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office > the executive team has been ambiguous > it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise You can claim all you want but if the CEO and all the chief officers are not the one making it all clear and not just taking about it at a standup but in black and white on paper. Then it means nothing and what you claim means nothing too to your employees. Like someone said next step after that is to put it in the contract. Also it’s up to you and the other managers and officers, and not the people bellow you, to create a trusting environment and trust with your team. It’s frustrating you to hear comments like that but it should be instead a red flag for you about the health of your team. Because it’s even more stressful and frustrating to be in the very seat of an employee where there is no trust at their work and the leaders are vague about critical part of their work life and don’t care and (not pointing finger at you but just saying) are just frustrated when they voice their concerns instead of listening and acting as leaders.