5 ms·

> My commute is less than 30 minutes (one-way) and is a pretty pleasant drive.... it takes an hour out of my day, but it's not the primary reason I don't want t

by timr 4y ago

> My commute is less than 30 minutes (one-way) and is a pretty pleasant drive.... it takes an hour out of my day, but it's not the primary reason I don't want to go to the office. Focusing on "reasons why I don't like the office" is missing the point, IMO. A lot of folks are betting on the long-term results of a short-term dislocation, but ignoring why things were as they were before the dislocation. It's sort of like the commentariat who come up with hot-takes in the aftermath of a natural disaster, and conclude "life will never be the same"...but within a few years life is, almost always, pretty much the same. Yes, there are obvious upsides to working from home, but there are also fundamental reasons that we used to go into the office, and dismissing them all as "the old way of doing it" is facile. I think, in the "long" run (i.e. the next few years), the same forces that led humans to form cities throughout all of human existence will prevail. Said differently: offices sucked before the pandemic too. The technology existed for remote work before the pandemic, too. Yet even in the most remote-friendly work environments, we went out of our way to make time for in-person communication. There was no sudden shift in technology or quality here. We did some short-term things to deal with a short-term circumstance, and now we're seeing the hangover of those choices. But the forces at play are largely unchanged. If I had to wager, I'd bet that being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career. Making on-site visits will be how you get the sale. Having in-person communication will offer productivity gains over video chat. The incentives to in-person communication will therefore accumulate over time, until we're back to where we started.

troon-lover 4y ago
MrPatan 4y ago
"being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career. " In every job I had working from the office I didn't have to get noticed before quitting for a better job and advancing my career.
- timr 4y ago
  The exception makes the rule. If you're truly working a job where you only advance by leaving, then you likely aren't in a position where you can advance at all. Or you are in such a job, but you've neglected the value of visibility to your career growth (PSA: this is far too common amongst programmers). It certainly happens, but it's not a counterargument to what I'm saying.
  - MrPatan 4y ago
    I'm not the exception, I'm the rule.
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    If you want to make big advances in your career and/or compensation, getting a new job will get you there faster. Advancing within a company is almost always a very slow process with minimal rewards - you get to move to a new salary band, but that doesn't result in a big jump in salary.
    - timr 4y ago
      Sure. But there are other steps that matter on the way. Want to get on the interesting project, which lets you put the big accomplishment on your resume? Want to get more responsibility, which lets you tell the recruiter that you've done the $essential_thing they're seeking for that better job? It always helps to be visible, even if your long-term plan is to job hop into infinity (though I have to say this as another PSA: job-hopping will eventually stop working. It's a notably programmer-since-2012 phenomenon to assume that leaping from place to place will result in a monotonic increase in your salary and/or prestige forever and ever.)
      - Clubber 4y ago
        >Want to get on the interesting project, which lets you put the big accomplishment on your resume? Smart managers pick the best people if the project is important, they certainly won't pick a mediocre developer just because he shows up in the office every day. Attendance is no replacement for hard work and aptitude, unless you are in high school. >It always helps to be visible It does, but filling a seat in a cube isn't the best way. The best way is to solve business problems. >It's a notably programmer-since-2012 phenomenon to assume that leaping from place to place will result in a monotonic increase in your salary and/or prestige forever and ever. I don't think anyone thinks it's forever. There's certainly a cap to how much you can earn as a software developer/engineer/architect/x working for someone. There are exceptions where you can negotiate some equity or percentage of revenue, but you almost certainly can't do that outside the initial offer phase. In other words, you won't get it at the company where you are already employed; the negotiation window is most likely closed forever. I doubled my salary 2x from 1998-2001. Then the dot bomb happened, but it's not a new phenomenon. Companies that hire for x amount only give y% when giving out raises. It's pretty close to inflation. The trick to having a larger salary is to get hired with a larger salary, full stop. I wish it wasn't that way, I usually like staying at a company for a while, but as long as traditional raises are 2-5%, that's what the hiring market wants.
willcipriano 4y ago
> being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career That's a classic move. Businesses could offer a significant premium over remote roles to attract candidates, and could easy afford it if you take their in office productivity claims at face value, but that costs money, much easier to make handwavy, unfalsifiable (at least with the information you have as an employee) claims about how you will be rewarded someday in the future.
- timr 4y ago
  I think you're attributing too much intent to the process. Monkeys gonna monkey. As you note, you can do things to try to fight our fundamentally social nature, but it's like fighting the tides.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    I'm not complaining that the people in the office are getting promoted faster. Far from it, I hope they get something for all that wasted time. However I know how promotions tend to go in most companies, and 9/10 you are better off interviewing at another firm and getting promoted that way on a hours worked/pay received basis. With that knowledge I see this as a rather empty incentive.
tristor 4y ago
> I'd bet that being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career I think this is true, somewhat. But I also will say that as remote work has become more commonplace, it is less true. In my mind, it's mostly about social norms, more than some universal absolute. It used to be the word on the street that if you wanted to get ahead at any FAANG you had to move to the Bay, rather than working in NYC, Austin, et al. That's hasn't been true for awhile, and with remote work now commonplace it's no longer true you need to be in the office to get ahead. I've been perm remote for quite some time, and in that time I've shifted from Eng to PM, and have moved ahead in my career quite significantly. A lot of that is due to remote becoming more socially acceptable over time, and part of that is that I learned remote skills in how to appropriately communicate my successes so others know about them without needing to hear about it at the watercooler. Different work environments require different processes for self-promotion to be noticed, but it's still definitely possible while remote, and it becomes more possible the more remote work becomes the norm rather than the exception. I see no reason that we require RTO for people to advance their careers other than butt-seatism managers who mostly should just retire at this point.
Johnny555 4y ago
>Focusing on "reasons why I don't like the office" is missing the point Well, that depends on whether the point is my own job satisfaction, or my employer's belief that making me work in a different environment is better for him. I'm at the point in my career where I can focus on the first point.
havblue 4y ago
The status quo was never to attempt remote work by default as much as to get employees to be productive even when they're at home, on vacation, when there's bad weather etc. I agree that the technology have fundamentally changed and that it's difficult for companies to revoke the benefit of working from home after it was granted. I do think the needle has shifted now that there are metrics to support or oppose permanently working from home for specific positions.
jasondigitized 4y ago
Knowledge workers went to the office because we didn’t have the internet and computers. You had to access paper and people to get work done. That’s it. It’s not deeper than that. If Peter Drucker saw what was happening today with the Cloud / video / etc he would think it absurd to spend a ton of money on office space and hours sitting in traffic draining energy from the system.
anon2020dot00 4y ago
I think this is a wrong take which will be proven by time. The past is not a predictor for the future; if so we would still all be using horses instead of cars. Big reason that there will likely be a fundamental shift to more remote and hybrid working options is that just there is a mountain of inertia from the Industrial age which carried over to the Information Age. The pandemic has initiated a great experiment which individual companies would have never tried for risk-avoidance reasons.

by timr 4y ago

troon-lover 4y ago

MrPatan 4y ago

"being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career. " In every job I had working from the office I didn't have to get noticed before quitting for a better job and advancing my career.

timr 4y ago
The exception makes the rule. If you're truly working a job where you only advance by leaving, then you likely aren't in a position where you can advance at all. Or you are in such a job, but you've neglected the value of visibility to your career growth (PSA: this is far too common amongst programmers). It certainly happens, but it's not a counterargument to what I'm saying.
- MrPatan 4y ago
  I'm not the exception, I'm the rule.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  If you want to make big advances in your career and/or compensation, getting a new job will get you there faster. Advancing within a company is almost always a very slow process with minimal rewards - you get to move to a new salary band, but that doesn't result in a big jump in salary.
  - timr 4y ago
    Sure. But there are other steps that matter on the way. Want to get on the interesting project, which lets you put the big accomplishment on your resume? Want to get more responsibility, which lets you tell the recruiter that you've done the $essential_thing they're seeking for that better job? It always helps to be visible, even if your long-term plan is to job hop into infinity (though I have to say this as another PSA: job-hopping will eventually stop working. It's a notably programmer-since-2012 phenomenon to assume that leaping from place to place will result in a monotonic increase in your salary and/or prestige forever and ever.)
    - Clubber 4y ago
      >Want to get on the interesting project, which lets you put the big accomplishment on your resume? Smart managers pick the best people if the project is important, they certainly won't pick a mediocre developer just because he shows up in the office every day. Attendance is no replacement for hard work and aptitude, unless you are in high school. >It always helps to be visible It does, but filling a seat in a cube isn't the best way. The best way is to solve business problems. >It's a notably programmer-since-2012 phenomenon to assume that leaping from place to place will result in a monotonic increase in your salary and/or prestige forever and ever. I don't think anyone thinks it's forever. There's certainly a cap to how much you can earn as a software developer/engineer/architect/x working for someone. There are exceptions where you can negotiate some equity or percentage of revenue, but you almost certainly can't do that outside the initial offer phase. In other words, you won't get it at the company where you are already employed; the negotiation window is most likely closed forever. I doubled my salary 2x from 1998-2001. Then the dot bomb happened, but it's not a new phenomenon. Companies that hire for x amount only give y% when giving out raises. It's pretty close to inflation. The trick to having a larger salary is to get hired with a larger salary, full stop. I wish it wasn't that way, I usually like staying at a company for a while, but as long as traditional raises are 2-5%, that's what the hiring market wants.

willcipriano 4y ago

> being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career That's a classic move. Businesses could offer a significant premium over remote roles to attract candidates, and could easy afford it if you take their in office productivity claims at face value, but that costs money, much easier to make handwavy, unfalsifiable (at least with the information you have as an employee) claims about how you will be rewarded someday in the future.

timr 4y ago
I think you're attributing too much intent to the process. Monkeys gonna monkey. As you note, you can do things to try to fight our fundamentally social nature, but it's like fighting the tides.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  I'm not complaining that the people in the office are getting promoted faster. Far from it, I hope they get something for all that wasted time. However I know how promotions tend to go in most companies, and 9/10 you are better off interviewing at another firm and getting promoted that way on a hours worked/pay received basis. With that knowledge I see this as a rather empty incentive.

tristor 4y ago

> I'd bet that being in the office will be how you get noticed and advance in your career I think this is true, somewhat. But I also will say that as remote work has become more commonplace, it is less true. In my mind, it's mostly about social norms, more than some universal absolute. It used to be the word on the street that if you wanted to get ahead at any FAANG you had to move to the Bay, rather than working in NYC, Austin, et al. That's hasn't been true for awhile, and with remote work now commonplace it's no longer true you need to be in the office to get ahead. I've been perm remote for quite some time, and in that time I've shifted from Eng to PM, and have moved ahead in my career quite significantly. A lot of that is due to remote becoming more socially acceptable over time, and part of that is that I learned remote skills in how to appropriately communicate my successes so others know about them without needing to hear about it at the watercooler. Different work environments require different processes for self-promotion to be noticed, but it's still definitely possible while remote, and it becomes more possible the more remote work becomes the norm rather than the exception. I see no reason that we require RTO for people to advance their careers other than butt-seatism managers who mostly should just retire at this point.

Johnny555 4y ago

>Focusing on "reasons why I don't like the office" is missing the point Well, that depends on whether the point is my own job satisfaction, or my employer's belief that making me work in a different environment is better for him. I'm at the point in my career where I can focus on the first point.

havblue 4y ago

The status quo was never to attempt remote work by default as much as to get employees to be productive even when they're at home, on vacation, when there's bad weather etc. I agree that the technology have fundamentally changed and that it's difficult for companies to revoke the benefit of working from home after it was granted. I do think the needle has shifted now that there are metrics to support or oppose permanently working from home for specific positions.

jasondigitized 4y ago

Knowledge workers went to the office because we didn’t have the internet and computers. You had to access paper and people to get work done. That’s it. It’s not deeper than that. If Peter Drucker saw what was happening today with the Cloud / video / etc he would think it absurd to spend a ton of money on office space and hours sitting in traffic draining energy from the system.

anon2020dot00 4y ago

I think this is a wrong take which will be proven by time. The past is not a predictor for the future; if so we would still all be using horses instead of cars. Big reason that there will likely be a fundamental shift to more remote and hybrid working options is that just there is a mountain of inertia from the Industrial age which carried over to the Information Age. The pandemic has initiated a great experiment which individual companies would have never tried for risk-avoidance reasons.