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Work from home is great when you have a team of driven, motivated individuals. If your team demonstrates you can work remotely and make progress, there’s no imm

Work from home is great when you have a team of driven, motivated individuals. If your team demonstrates you can work remotely and make progress, there’s no immediate reason to go back to the office, maybe except for some team building events. I believe many of the folks vehemently against the return to office are ignoring this detail. At my last company, I left because leadership refused to recognize that not all teams are the same. We didn’t want to manage people when they’re not delivering. Some organizations were working people to death while other orgs and teams became a form of corporate welfare. Imagine not showing up to any meetings, making no progress on your Kanban board, etc etc. Either you have management find some way to motivate them, directly let them go, or force them to come in until they demonstrate they can work from home. Ignoring the problem or pretending it doesn’t exist, or worse, making up for it by offloading even more work to your high performers is all wrong. I saw managers who refused to do anything because it meant they’d effectively lose half or more of their people. Meanwhile, other orgs were unsustainable engineer burnout factories.

Akronymus 4y ago
As someone with self control issues, work from home has been a disaster for me.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Which is why I think the solution is “office available.” You wanna come in and work, great — we have desks, coffee, soda, snacks, hardwired business internet and quiet. If you don’t that also cool.
  - blacksmith_tb 4y ago
    It's a solution to that, but worse one than the disease for my office, where's there less bandwidth (shared among ~100 people), bad tea/coffee, and having to listen to other people on Zooms (or be on a Zoom myself in a noisy environment).
  - hiptobecubic 4y ago
    I find that most of the tech companies don't actually have that last one.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    My problem with that is that I kinda have to be forced to go to the office or I will more likely than not WFH. I hate myself for it, but find it VERY hard to change my habit. I am definitely not strong mentally.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Buy why force everyone? Since I have ADHD I've made these kinds of arrangement with my manager before to be harder on me in some ways for motivation and softer in others because I get RSD real bad; it's never been that weird. Different management styles for different people.
      - Akronymus 4y ago
        Oh did I imply it should be forced for everyone? That wasn't really my intention. But yeah, I probably have to talk to my supervisor about it.
Ameo 4y ago
You found that when they were required to come into the office, the underperforming employees+teams did more work? I wonder if you have any thoughts on why that is, I'm not necessarily surprised but I'm interested to hear more about your scenario. Do you feel it was because they were held to a higher standard by managers etc. or ended up being motivated to do more because of camaraderie of irl interactions or something else?
- Rapzid 4y ago
  Some people do better with more structure and accountability controls. Others do better with less.
fartcannon 4y ago
Adding 2 hours of unpaid commute doesn't do anything but increase burnout. Nor would it prevent slackers from slacking.
- tra3 4y ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I have to go into the office occasionally to get my work done. The energy required for commuting is non trivial. I’m not sure why nobody is talking about that. I can parlay that energy into the product I’m building on the days I don’t commute and I feel like I achieve more. Certainly the remote first culture will require more from managers so I get where the push to return is coming from, but that’s something we can deal with together as teams.
  - ChrisRR 4y ago
    Because for some people it really does. We have one such example in our team that unless he has people watching over his shoulder, he seems to have spent lockdown twiddling his thumbs
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      If it was up to me, I wouldn't keep him employed. Managers shouldn't be babysitters.
      - ChrisRR 4y ago
        Pro: It's difficult to fire people in the UK Con: It's difficult to fire people in the UK
        alaricus 4y ago
        As a manager I have access to restricted table our HR keeps for the correct procedures around firing people in all the jurisdictions we operate in. Short version: it's not difficult to fire anyone, all that changes across countries is how much it costs.
azth 4y ago
How much of the RTO movement is motived by real estate and rental contracts those companies got themselves into? Almost a sunken cost fallacy of sort?
alaricus 4y ago
Forcing people to waste time commuting is unlikely to motivate them.
ChrisRR 4y ago
We unfortunately have one of those people in our team and he just can't be trusted to work from home. Unless he has people basically watching over his shoulder, then he gets nothing done Over the 18 months of lockdown, his weekly engineering updates showed little change from week to week. No surprise that when the order to return to the office came in, he argued for months about it
raxxorraxor 4y ago
But that isn't a work from home issue at all. You complain about people not delivering. That wouldn't change if they are at home or on premise. Management must set timelines here or employees will maximize the time they can get away with. That is the exact same optimization we try to achieve in any other business process. Spend your budget or it will be cut. Sure, intrinsic motivation exists in some teams but that can be highly dependent on the task. I have ones that I like and those that I don't. I won't hide the fact that the tasks I like might get done quicker. Shouldn't be that way perhaps but people aren't robots. But still, the problem is the same if people are at home or at work. I personally didn't even like working from home but my office is just 10 minutes from where I live. Not true for most employees though.

Akronymus 4y ago

As someone with self control issues, work from home has been a disaster for me.

Spivak 4y ago
Which is why I think the solution is “office available.” You wanna come in and work, great — we have desks, coffee, soda, snacks, hardwired business internet and quiet. If you don’t that also cool.
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  It's a solution to that, but worse one than the disease for my office, where's there less bandwidth (shared among ~100 people), bad tea/coffee, and having to listen to other people on Zooms (or be on a Zoom myself in a noisy environment).
- hiptobecubic 4y ago
  I find that most of the tech companies don't actually have that last one.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  My problem with that is that I kinda have to be forced to go to the office or I will more likely than not WFH. I hate myself for it, but find it VERY hard to change my habit. I am definitely not strong mentally.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Buy why force everyone? Since I have ADHD I've made these kinds of arrangement with my manager before to be harder on me in some ways for motivation and softer in others because I get RSD real bad; it's never been that weird. Different management styles for different people.
    - Akronymus 4y ago
      Oh did I imply it should be forced for everyone? That wasn't really my intention. But yeah, I probably have to talk to my supervisor about it.

Ameo 4y ago

You found that when they were required to come into the office, the underperforming employees+teams did more work? I wonder if you have any thoughts on why that is, I'm not necessarily surprised but I'm interested to hear more about your scenario. Do you feel it was because they were held to a higher standard by managers etc. or ended up being motivated to do more because of camaraderie of irl interactions or something else?

Rapzid 4y ago
Some people do better with more structure and accountability controls. Others do better with less.

fartcannon 4y ago

Adding 2 hours of unpaid commute doesn't do anything but increase burnout. Nor would it prevent slackers from slacking.

tra3 4y ago
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I have to go into the office occasionally to get my work done. The energy required for commuting is non trivial. I’m not sure why nobody is talking about that. I can parlay that energy into the product I’m building on the days I don’t commute and I feel like I achieve more. Certainly the remote first culture will require more from managers so I get where the push to return is coming from, but that’s something we can deal with together as teams.
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  Because for some people it really does. We have one such example in our team that unless he has people watching over his shoulder, he seems to have spent lockdown twiddling his thumbs
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    If it was up to me, I wouldn't keep him employed. Managers shouldn't be babysitters.
    - ChrisRR 4y ago
      Pro: It's difficult to fire people in the UK Con: It's difficult to fire people in the UK
      - alaricus 4y ago
        As a manager I have access to restricted table our HR keeps for the correct procedures around firing people in all the jurisdictions we operate in. Short version: it's not difficult to fire anyone, all that changes across countries is how much it costs.

azth 4y ago

How much of the RTO movement is motived by real estate and rental contracts those companies got themselves into? Almost a sunken cost fallacy of sort?

alaricus 4y ago

Forcing people to waste time commuting is unlikely to motivate them.

ChrisRR 4y ago

We unfortunately have one of those people in our team and he just can't be trusted to work from home. Unless he has people basically watching over his shoulder, then he gets nothing done Over the 18 months of lockdown, his weekly engineering updates showed little change from week to week. No surprise that when the order to return to the office came in, he argued for months about it

raxxorraxor 4y ago

But that isn't a work from home issue at all. You complain about people not delivering. That wouldn't change if they are at home or on premise. Management must set timelines here or employees will maximize the time they can get away with. That is the exact same optimization we try to achieve in any other business process. Spend your budget or it will be cut. Sure, intrinsic motivation exists in some teams but that can be highly dependent on the task. I have ones that I like and those that I don't. I won't hide the fact that the tasks I like might get done quicker. Shouldn't be that way perhaps but people aren't robots. But still, the problem is the same if people are at home or at work. I personally didn't even like working from home but my office is just 10 minutes from where I live. Not true for most employees though.