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He seems to be writing for CEOs. Reading further he seems to figure that CEOs will be able to reassert control of employees by forcing them back to the office s

He seems to be writing for CEOs. Reading further he seems to figure that CEOs will be able to reassert control of employees by forcing them back to the office since employees are not going to be able to easily jump ship for another job. As CEO now is your opportunity to rethink remote work. You may decide you want to continue as is, or you may want to make changes. You have an opportunity to act. Not that returning to the office will necessarily result in better results, but many CEOs will tend to believe that things will go better with everyone back in the office.

TexanFeller 4y ago
> but many CEOs will tend to believe that things will go better with everyone back in the office Many of us SWEs believe the same!
- harryVic 4y ago
  SWEs that want to force everyone back to office have no life or a personality outside of their job.
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    For real. Make some friends outside of work. Or enjoy time with your family. Or take time to make a family.
    - llampx 4y ago
      We are still talking about working during work, right? Or are you playing with your kids and having beers with your friends while you work? It is a strawman argument to claim that people who want to go to the office have no social life. It is in fact easier to claim that "only antisocial people want to hide at home like a hermit with their webcam shut off."
      - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
        When work and social life are the same, you never need to leave work. I've seen too many buy into that just to lose their entire social lives over a job change, and also have horrible life satisfaction over the long term. So yes and no. Depends on how you define work.
        llampx 4y ago
        Yes if you have no life outside of work then it can't be good. However I still don't know if that's a common enough problem to solve for by making everyone work from home. I think the more common issue would be lack of collaboration and ties to the company and colleagues when working fully remote.
      - ProZsolt 4y ago
        No, but I have lunch and coffee break with my girlfriend.
        llampx 4y ago
        Hope your wife doesn't mind lmao gottem
- lytedev 4y ago
  Everyone in the office? Really? All the time?
  - klyrs 4y ago
    No, only when you're not stuck in traffic
- anotherrandom 4y ago
  What makes you think this? I haven't observed any advantages to an office beyond overexposing the company to real estate (not really an advantage) - there is nothing I could do in person that I haven't been able to do faster in MS Teams (and better - now I have a written record and recording of everything). Another advantage of remote is that nobody ruins my train of thought by tapping me on the shoulder and asking stupid questions like "hey did you get that email." Best of all, no stupid pressure to go to lunch with anyone
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I think brainstorming, discovery, and discussion type of tasks work much better in-person, maybe 5-10x better (driven in part by a small percentage that are thousands of times better). Delivery works great remotely, probably better for me and many.
    - ProZsolt 4y ago
      If you want to mimic the in–office fast paced decision making then yes in–person works better. If you adopt a written RFC based slower decision making where people have time to fully articulate their thoughts and have time to respond to those comments then it not worst, just different. If the house is burning and we need to come up with a solution now the first works way better. There is a reason why the military have war rooms. But for long term changes the second can be as good if not better.
      - aliciawilliams 4y ago
  - sour-taste 4y ago
    I think the reality is some people do better remote, some better in office. There's no one size fits all solution. I hated my time working from home, but it sounds like you enjoy it. There's no perfect solution for companies here except to cater to individual preferences, or mandate one at the risk of angering some employees
- Clent 4y ago
  Many or a few? Most software engineers find themselves most effective in work from home. This breaks in favor at 3:4 or higher. The software engineers that want to work in office are the odd-balls. I am interested in the break down when one factors in whatever concept of '10x developers' -- which do the most productive of us prefer?
  - Skunkleton 4y ago
    Nit: Many can still be a minority.
    - rendaw 4y ago
      It can also be understood as the majority, per wiktionary > the generality; the common herd GP was countering the possibility that GGP meant the above.
  - jmt_ 4y ago
    I just want to be able to choose which I want on a day-by-day basis. Some days I am much more productive in the office because I need to, say, communicate with a bunch of people or there's some sort of back and forth that needs to occur. Or I just need to get out of the house for a bit. Other days, I just want to stay home and spend the time focusing on something in particular without being bothered. But I need both to have both to do my job effectively. However, I work at a small company and am the primary software engineer which changes the dynamic a bit.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > Some days I am much more productive in the office because I need to, say, communicate with a bunch of people But on that day all of those people might've chosen to work from home so you sit all alone in the office. The hybrid solution only really works well if the office days are the same for everyone.
      - justahuman74 4y ago
- arpa 4y ago
  yeah, no, dude. Fuck the mandatory office the same way fuck the meetings that could have been an email.
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  Um many? Not me. Not any of the engineers I have talked to, which makes those who want to return the minority.
- randomsearch 4y ago
  I think on remote it’s worth reframing the argument a little. If you’re totally pro-remote, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this formulation. Consider an early stage startup of six employees. Working full remote - everyone at home, communicating via slack and zoom, working hours roughly the same. Vs 9-6 ish hours, some flexibility, where they all come into an office. That office is a small, modern, comfortable office in a workspace. The office has a closed door, and only the team are allowed in the office. The team chat amongst themselves as needed during the day. They take breaks alone or in small groups outside of the office in the kitchen space or on the sofas in the workspace. They chat with folks from other companies. But no one from outside the team ever enters the inner office. It’s their space. Do you think remote will be more productive for the team as a whole? Do you think the startup will do better with the small office or the remote scenario? You can add an hour extra at the computer for remote (saved from commuting), but you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote - realistically, delivery men (in the office scenario, deliveries go to a reception), families or pets, a bit of domestic chores, making lunch alone where no work discussions take place.
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    No, your vaporware office scenario still isn't going to get me to come into the office. :-) And I find it very hard to believe. When I started working in the 1980s, everybody got a cubicle, we didn't even like cubicles!, but you had walls and it was quieter and people treated it like your personal space. In my last job, I could've stood up and put my hand on seven different people's shoulders without moving my feet. So your quiet shielded office doesn't sound like anything an actual company does. > you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote - No, you get a lot fewer interruptions when working remotely than in an office. Deliveries do not take an hour a day, particularly when there are two adults who can split the task. Pet interruptions take basically zero time per day because they aren't actually an interruption: I don't have to stop thinking about my problem for one second, but if I have to answer a single question about some other technical thing, I blow away my whole thought process and have to build it up again.
    - luminouslow 4y ago
Spivak 4y ago
We're just gonna gloss over, "quick your employees don't have leverage, make changes they won't like" like that isn't indicative of a capitalist hellscape? If shit like this doesn't radicalize you into democracy in the workplace then we're fucked. Especially since right now that lack of leverage was literally manufactured on purpose by the fed.
- arpa 4y ago
  What starts with U and gives them nightmares? That's right.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  > that lack of leverage was literally manufactured on purpose by the fed As was the leverage. They artificially drove the economy in the other direction in an unsustainable manner for a number of years before that.
- eru 4y ago
  Different employers offer different compensation packages. That package includes salary, but it also includes things like the extent of 'democracy in the workplace'. To a certain extent, as an employee I'm happy to trade off some 'democracy' for more money in that package. As an employer, I would be happy to give people more 'democracy' if that's cheaper to provide than more money.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    You’re just stating the exact problem just one level up. The fact that employers can choose whether or not to offer democracy is the fucked up thing. Do you not hear yourself? For the average American, your employer has more control over your individual liberty than your government and we look at like that’s somehow a good thing. Like sure, if you land a cushy office job then you can forget the abuses the rest of the job market has to suffer. The railroad strike that happened this year was fought over fucking sick days and the government almost stepped in to force the workers to accept whatever their owners gave them.
spamizbad 4y ago
CEOs are also going to face significant budget scrutiny and will have to really justify signing a 10 year lease (which won't be cheap) instead of investing in things that are proven to drive growth. Class A office space outside of super expensive cities runs about $35/sqft on average. Employees need about 175 square feet each. So every employee is $6125 more expensive -- but that's only assuming you're renting someplace turnkey, which you probably aren't, so even if you cheap out at an additional $100/sqft ($17,500 per employee) for a custom build-out (one-time cost, but still). Where is all this money coming from? If your business is perfectly functional remote, with capital costs being what they are, why would you do this?
- irrational 4y ago
  I’d really like to know what the numbers are for the company I work for. Even if they rent a building in a business park (because there is not enough room on campus for a group), they will completely revamp the building from top to bottom and make it completely bespoke. The last time I worked in one of these buildings, they brought in artists who spent a week stenciling words and artwork over a concrete wall. How much did that cost?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    But, don't you feel engaged to come to a place with such inspirational artwork? Truly, a company that cares. /s
    - llampx 4y ago
      On the other hand, would you feel inspired and happy about going to a workplace with nothing on the walls or better still, the last company's name on them? If the place feels dingy or like the owners don't care to make it look nice, I doubt it has a positive effect on productivity and employee retention.

TexanFeller 4y ago

> but many CEOs will tend to believe that things will go better with everyone back in the office Many of us SWEs believe the same!

harryVic 4y ago
SWEs that want to force everyone back to office have no life or a personality outside of their job.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  For real. Make some friends outside of work. Or enjoy time with your family. Or take time to make a family.
  - llampx 4y ago
    We are still talking about working during work, right? Or are you playing with your kids and having beers with your friends while you work? It is a strawman argument to claim that people who want to go to the office have no social life. It is in fact easier to claim that "only antisocial people want to hide at home like a hermit with their webcam shut off."
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      When work and social life are the same, you never need to leave work. I've seen too many buy into that just to lose their entire social lives over a job change, and also have horrible life satisfaction over the long term. So yes and no. Depends on how you define work.
      - llampx 4y ago
        Yes if you have no life outside of work then it can't be good. However I still don't know if that's a common enough problem to solve for by making everyone work from home. I think the more common issue would be lack of collaboration and ties to the company and colleagues when working fully remote.
    - ProZsolt 4y ago
      No, but I have lunch and coffee break with my girlfriend.
      - llampx 4y ago
        Hope your wife doesn't mind lmao gottem
lytedev 4y ago
Everyone in the office? Really? All the time?
- klyrs 4y ago
  No, only when you're not stuck in traffic
anotherrandom 4y ago
What makes you think this? I haven't observed any advantages to an office beyond overexposing the company to real estate (not really an advantage) - there is nothing I could do in person that I haven't been able to do faster in MS Teams (and better - now I have a written record and recording of everything). Another advantage of remote is that nobody ruins my train of thought by tapping me on the shoulder and asking stupid questions like "hey did you get that email." Best of all, no stupid pressure to go to lunch with anyone
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I think brainstorming, discovery, and discussion type of tasks work much better in-person, maybe 5-10x better (driven in part by a small percentage that are thousands of times better). Delivery works great remotely, probably better for me and many.
  - ProZsolt 4y ago
    If you want to mimic the in–office fast paced decision making then yes in–person works better. If you adopt a written RFC based slower decision making where people have time to fully articulate their thoughts and have time to respond to those comments then it not worst, just different. If the house is burning and we need to come up with a solution now the first works way better. There is a reason why the military have war rooms. But for long term changes the second can be as good if not better.
    - aliciawilliams 4y ago
- sour-taste 4y ago
  I think the reality is some people do better remote, some better in office. There's no one size fits all solution. I hated my time working from home, but it sounds like you enjoy it. There's no perfect solution for companies here except to cater to individual preferences, or mandate one at the risk of angering some employees
Clent 4y ago
Many or a few? Most software engineers find themselves most effective in work from home. This breaks in favor at 3:4 or higher. The software engineers that want to work in office are the odd-balls. I am interested in the break down when one factors in whatever concept of '10x developers' -- which do the most productive of us prefer?
- Skunkleton 4y ago
  Nit: Many can still be a minority.
  - rendaw 4y ago
    It can also be understood as the majority, per wiktionary > the generality; the common herd GP was countering the possibility that GGP meant the above.
- jmt_ 4y ago
  I just want to be able to choose which I want on a day-by-day basis. Some days I am much more productive in the office because I need to, say, communicate with a bunch of people or there's some sort of back and forth that needs to occur. Or I just need to get out of the house for a bit. Other days, I just want to stay home and spend the time focusing on something in particular without being bothered. But I need both to have both to do my job effectively. However, I work at a small company and am the primary software engineer which changes the dynamic a bit.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Some days I am much more productive in the office because I need to, say, communicate with a bunch of people But on that day all of those people might've chosen to work from home so you sit all alone in the office. The hybrid solution only really works well if the office days are the same for everyone.
    - justahuman74 4y ago
arpa 4y ago
yeah, no, dude. Fuck the mandatory office the same way fuck the meetings that could have been an email.
flippinburgers 4y ago
Um many? Not me. Not any of the engineers I have talked to, which makes those who want to return the minority.
randomsearch 4y ago
I think on remote it’s worth reframing the argument a little. If you’re totally pro-remote, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this formulation. Consider an early stage startup of six employees. Working full remote - everyone at home, communicating via slack and zoom, working hours roughly the same. Vs 9-6 ish hours, some flexibility, where they all come into an office. That office is a small, modern, comfortable office in a workspace. The office has a closed door, and only the team are allowed in the office. The team chat amongst themselves as needed during the day. They take breaks alone or in small groups outside of the office in the kitchen space or on the sofas in the workspace. They chat with folks from other companies. But no one from outside the team ever enters the inner office. It’s their space. Do you think remote will be more productive for the team as a whole? Do you think the startup will do better with the small office or the remote scenario? You can add an hour extra at the computer for remote (saved from commuting), but you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote - realistically, delivery men (in the office scenario, deliveries go to a reception), families or pets, a bit of domestic chores, making lunch alone where no work discussions take place.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  No, your vaporware office scenario still isn't going to get me to come into the office. :-) And I find it very hard to believe. When I started working in the 1980s, everybody got a cubicle, we didn't even like cubicles!, but you had walls and it was quieter and people treated it like your personal space. In my last job, I could've stood up and put my hand on seven different people's shoulders without moving my feet. So your quiet shielded office doesn't sound like anything an actual company does. > you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote - No, you get a lot fewer interruptions when working remotely than in an office. Deliveries do not take an hour a day, particularly when there are two adults who can split the task. Pet interruptions take basically zero time per day because they aren't actually an interruption: I don't have to stop thinking about my problem for one second, but if I have to answer a single question about some other technical thing, I blow away my whole thought process and have to build it up again.
  - luminouslow 4y ago

Spivak 4y ago

We're just gonna gloss over, "quick your employees don't have leverage, make changes they won't like" like that isn't indicative of a capitalist hellscape? If shit like this doesn't radicalize you into democracy in the workplace then we're fucked. Especially since right now that lack of leverage was literally manufactured on purpose by the fed.

arpa 4y ago
What starts with U and gives them nightmares? That's right.
TexanFeller 4y ago
> that lack of leverage was literally manufactured on purpose by the fed As was the leverage. They artificially drove the economy in the other direction in an unsustainable manner for a number of years before that.
eru 4y ago
Different employers offer different compensation packages. That package includes salary, but it also includes things like the extent of 'democracy in the workplace'. To a certain extent, as an employee I'm happy to trade off some 'democracy' for more money in that package. As an employer, I would be happy to give people more 'democracy' if that's cheaper to provide than more money.
- Spivak 4y ago
  You’re just stating the exact problem just one level up. The fact that employers can choose whether or not to offer democracy is the fucked up thing. Do you not hear yourself? For the average American, your employer has more control over your individual liberty than your government and we look at like that’s somehow a good thing. Like sure, if you land a cushy office job then you can forget the abuses the rest of the job market has to suffer. The railroad strike that happened this year was fought over fucking sick days and the government almost stepped in to force the workers to accept whatever their owners gave them.

spamizbad 4y ago

CEOs are also going to face significant budget scrutiny and will have to really justify signing a 10 year lease (which won't be cheap) instead of investing in things that are proven to drive growth. Class A office space outside of super expensive cities runs about $35/sqft on average. Employees need about 175 square feet each. So every employee is $6125 more expensive -- but that's only assuming you're renting someplace turnkey, which you probably aren't, so even if you cheap out at an additional $100/sqft ($17,500 per employee) for a custom build-out (one-time cost, but still). Where is all this money coming from? If your business is perfectly functional remote, with capital costs being what they are, why would you do this?

irrational 4y ago
I’d really like to know what the numbers are for the company I work for. Even if they rent a building in a business park (because there is not enough room on campus for a group), they will completely revamp the building from top to bottom and make it completely bespoke. The last time I worked in one of these buildings, they brought in artists who spent a week stenciling words and artwork over a concrete wall. How much did that cost?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fbdab103 4y ago
  But, don't you feel engaged to come to a place with such inspirational artwork? Truly, a company that cares. /s
  - llampx 4y ago
    On the other hand, would you feel inspired and happy about going to a workplace with nothing on the walls or better still, the last company's name on them? If the place feels dingy or like the owners don't care to make it look nice, I doubt it has a positive effect on productivity and employee retention.