17 ms·

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, b

by n8cpdx 4y ago

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before times, good remote companies would be intentional about having regular company meetings in a single location. That is a good alternative. But if you already have an office and already expect everyone to be relatively close, why fly everyone to London or SF? Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. P.S. if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Edit: full disclosure, I’m not an employer but I sympathize and spent a lot of time thinking about these things as a scrum master, trying to mitigate some of these problems in 2020. Now I’m not an SM and largely work independently, but I love being able to walk to the office every day (30 minute commute). I used to do hybrid but now I’m really enjoying the separation and am loathe to work from home, except on weekends. I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces.

jonathankoren 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I call bullshit. This is the claptrap that upper management always uses to to justify RTO or keeping separate bus lines or whatever, but it doesn’t match reality. In 25 years of professional experience, I have never seen collaboration done by random encounter. At most you’ll ask a question you were already going to ask. And guess what? In 2023, that happens over Slack.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This. I think of this every time I hear the "spontaneous connection" argument. Decades ago, this was true, but it hasn't been true anywhere I've worked for at least 15 years. Now, even when people are all in the office, very nearly 100% of the communications are done via chat programs (even to the person next to you) or email. For good reason, really. It minimizes the risk of interrupting someone deep in the flow.
- hfbff 4y ago
  I've talked about this topic with many people and it seldom matches the opinions of many people here in hacker news. I wonder if hacker news is biased towards a specific type of people that is less social / more family oriented / etc? (Of course, the people I meet in real life could be the more biased sample)
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    I’d challenge your friends to give some examples of these collaborations by random encounter. I suspect there’s a lot less to them than they think.
  - The_Colonel 4y ago
    I noticed that very technically focused people tend to underestimate the importance of communication. They dislike daily standups, coordination meetings, don't really value informal exchange. All these things take their time out of what they want to do - deep work on solving technical problems. There's often the hidden assumption that "solving technical problems" equals "creating value", but that's not always so. Lack of communication often leads to solving the wrong problems, solving more general/complex problems than needed, overengineering the solution over actual needs etc. To avoid this, it's a good practice to talk about stuff you work on and getting feedback from other people, including questions you yourself did not think of.
    - projectazorian 4y ago
      I used to prioritize communication and collaboration because I’m better at it than most engineers I work with. A problem emerged where I noticed that come review and promotion time, I was always coming up short due to concerns about lacking technical seriousness. My interview performance was also suffering due to not spending enough time in the codebase. I deprioritized collaboration as a result and now I get much better results. It’s not an issue because I am happy to explain the trade off up-front to anyone who asks. My job title is “software engineer” and my job role is to ship code. If you want me to be a staff+ engineer, engineering manager, or PM, happy to chat about a role change, but until then collaboration needs to take up a minority of my time.
snozolli 4y ago
Every element you mention as being part of an in-office experience has been completely absent from my career. Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance, I was always simply given a task and expected to complete it. Company culture doesn't even feel like a real thing outside of HR blurbs. Spontaneous collaboration was outweighed by interruptions and meddling from management. Maybe it's just because I've never worked at a FAANG or BigCo, but I have a hard time believing these points.
- thisarticle 4y ago
  > Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance That sounds awful, none of your senior or principal engineers offered/provided any mentorship?
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    Not every person works in a company organized this way, even IT people. In all my working years and all companies, I always had managers that were technically inferior to me (not bragging, most were not technical people at all, some had some basic tech skills). My only mentoring was for management skills, not guidance in any technical matter.
  - snozolli 4y ago
    What senior or principal engineers? I graduated college with significant, real-world programming skills. I immediately went to work writing software. The only thing my first manager contributed was showing me where to find documentation, and even then, books that I found on my own were far more valuable overall. It was no different the first year from the tenth: here's what we want made, go make it. No mentorship, no training, just self-learning and resourcefulness. I can't even imagine what mentorship software people could need, besides general career or investment advice.
    - phphphphp 4y ago
      I don’t mean this as a slight against you because there’s a place in the world for every type of developer, but your description of work and collaboration is very cynical. You could be the most unlucky person in the world and thus you’ve never met anyone worth collaborating with, or, more likely, you’ve not attracted those people in your workplaces. I’ve worked at great companies and awful companies, and no matter what, I have always met talented people in these companies who I’ve been able to build meaningful professional relationships with. Even in the most toxic hell-holes, there’s people worth learning collaborating with — across all disciplines. The most valuable work you can do when in software engineering is to help non-swengs in businesses achieve their goals: code is just a means to an end, collaboration is how we discover what to build.
thisarticle 4y ago
Sorry but this sounds really bad (and frankly, a bit entitled). Not everyone can afford to live 15 minutes walk to work w/ Bay Area, Seattle, etc housing prices. Not everyone wants to spend 30 minutes or more each way in a car just to get to an office that has a demonstrably worse setup than what they have at home. I have a healthy separation between work and home, it’s called closing the laptop lid and walking away.
ilaksh 4y ago
If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). There are also several good applications for internet collaboration that simulate a rich shared 2d or 3d or video space. Or things like GitHub issues and Wikis. Networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. can all happen over the internet. You make it part of the company culture to use the remote collaboration tools for these things routinely. So if it's someone's job to mentor someone else then you tell them and the other person getting mentored. That 100% can be done with a text chat. But you can also do screen shares, remote code collaboration, voice and video chats, or simply an at mention in a GitHub issue. If one or both employees cannot or will not use the tools and accomplish this mentorship then you warn them and if they continue to refuse then you fire them.
- The_Colonel 4y ago
  > If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). I don't believe that, those are very different modes of communications. > There are also several good applications for internet collaboration that simulate a rich shared 2d or 3d or video space. I think, this could potentially help, but we seem to be still very far from it technologically. It's still impossible to achieve a realistic eye contact. Audio in calls is still tragically bad - it's actually somewhat shocking that nobody was able to figure this out yet, it feels like there was hardly any progress in the last 15 years. Personally, participating in a remote meeting is very noticeably more demanding for me than an in-person meeting. > Networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. can all happen over the internet. Might work in theory, but in my experience not in practice. My company tried to organize some socializing remotely, but the attendance was dramatically lower than in the in person events.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > > If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). > I don't believe that, those are very different modes of communications. So what? Just because something is different, it doesn't mean you can't get useful benefits from it. No, you're not going to have a random hallway meeting and conversation on on a chat platform. But the barrier to just saying hello to someone or asking them a question drops to near-zero when you have those chat platforms. Yes, it does mean you need to be more deliberate about making interactions happen, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The "remote renaissance" is still very new. (And it started during a time that was not ideal for methodically exploring and learning a new paradigm.) It'll take many more years before people adjust and really find out how communication works best.
jpeterson 4y ago
"There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes." I've seen this idea repeated many times, but in over 20 years in the tech industry, I've never once seen a meaningful collaboration spring up in a kitchenette or hallway. It's invariably "how was your weekend?" fare. Don't get me wrong, there's value in connecting that way, but it's never the sort of thing that directly leads to any of the productivity gain that the anti-remote crowd would like you to believe.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  Same. I don't really collaborate in the hallways, I don't think IT people tend to.
  - downrightmike 4y ago
    Probably, because if you do, you get asked to fix something and you're already overloaded with work to do and people can't be bothered to google.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  Moreover, personally I'd prefer it stays this way. When I take a break and go to the kitchen to get a coffee, it is also a part of mental hygiene - I need to clear my mind as it needs some rest, too. So the last thing I want is someone bothering me about a merge request or some planned feature. A weekend trip, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    Hear hear. I worked at a place that pair programmed all the time (I liked it that way—it's why I joined the company) but it meant that I always had to eat lunch at my desk. To me it's crazy to be talking all morning then talk all through lunch then talk all afternoon! But to each their own.
    - kelnos 4y ago
barbazoo 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. > That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. As an employer it's your job (via delegation) to facilitate how people (can) collaborate with each other. Relying on people doing that for you during their breaks is just lazy and poor leadership.
thewebcount 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I’ve literally never seen this. I’ve seen people sit around and gossip about coworkers or talk about the latest TV shows or movies or sports, though. (And nothing wrong with that. We can’t think about work for 8 hours straight.) > That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on That’s the exact opposite of my experience. The first few months were awkward because it was slightly new and assumptions were made that we’d be back in the office in a few weeks. But as time went on, everyone became much more productive. But that’s just my office, not everyone else’s. > Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. That’s total speculation. When I was first hired out of college, I had 1 colleague I was kind of close with, but rarely interacted with outside of work. The majority of my friends were people I met in real life around town. > if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Or you can just turn off your work computer and do something else to create that space, like hang with your family or friends.
- sseagull 4y ago
  >> Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. > That’s total speculation. When I was first hired out of college, I had 1 colleague I was kind of close with, but rarely interacted with outside of work. The majority of my friends were people I met in real life around town. These are not the same thing, although you aren’t the only one in this (frankly depressing) thread making this mistake. You don’t have to be completely best buds with your mentor, including outside of work. Spontaneous discussions and networking don’t work as well online because it requires more intent to talk to the other person. That spontaneous networking is more important for junior rather than senior people. Being “in the kitchen” is a sign someone is probably not really working on something at that moment, and therefore may be open to conversation about something other than work. That signal is almost always missing online, and therefore doesn’t happen.
QIYGT 4y ago
> I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. There's more demand than ever before to live in NYC, as evidenced by record high rent prices. Cities don't need to be about offices.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  I heard the opposite, but I haven't seen any proof in any direction. What I read is that office space in NYC is still expensive, but occupation rate is lower than ever.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I don't think the person you're replying to is talking about office rents. Residential rents are still high, so clearly people still want to live in NYC, regardless of whether or not they're working in an office or work from home. The number of people who want to live in cities seems to be pretty similar now to what it was before the pandemic. I don't think urbanism is dying, or, if it is, it's not because of remote work.
    - AdrianB1 4y ago
      I would like to revisit this in 3-5 years, without an office there is less motivation to live in a very expensive city like NYC. As leases expire and companies close even more offices, we'll see where all this goes.
Natsu 4y ago
I think there's some value in actually meeting one's teammates, but I've found that the collaboration I have works just fine if they know they can IM me to talk when they're having issues. I have lots of people from many different departments who just know what kind of things to IM me for. I don't always have answers for them, but I can usually point them to someone who does. When I hung around in person, we'd chat with them about totally random stuff. You can learn from that, but it's not nearly as business-centric as intentionally talking to people about work stuff.
jasonpeacock 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes If your business success is predicated on random encounters, then your business success is just pure luck compensating for a lack of planning and communication. If you actually plan and communicate well across teams & orgs then your business will work equally well in person or remote (or a hybrid).
arcturus17 4y ago
> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life Everyone is picking on the rest of your arguments, and I can sympathize with some of them, but not this one. Never had, nor can I envision, a commute with a healthy separation of work and life or that wasn't orders of magnitude worse than, you know, reclaiming that time for whatever I want.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  > nor can I envision Actually I implemented this. When I worked in the office, I used to bike to and from work every day. Every week I tried to choose a (slightly) different route. An it was really, really good for my mental health. For the first 10 minutes or so of the ride I still had some thoughts from work, then gradually they started to disappear, I got intrigued by new shops being opened, some random folks doing crazy stuff on the street etc. In the end, I could feel endorphins coming and finally felt pleasantly tired when arriving home. Now, when I work remotely, I do the same, I just ride whenever I want instead to the office.
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    Me as well. I intentionally chose to live within a 30 min bike ride and biked as much as I can. That’s how I got fit. That said, companies don’t pick their office location based on how close it is to where most people live. In all major cities and especially in the Bay Area, commute is a nightmare you just have to deal with rather than do something with it.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Now, when I work remotely, I do the same, I just ride whenever I want instead to the office. Thank you! I've seen far too many posts where someone is saying "I biked/walked to work and it was great; everyone else should be forced to go to an office so I can keep my nice commute". How are so many people blind to the idea that, if they are working from home, they can still take a bike ride or go for a walk before and after work? Hell, they might even now have the flexibility to take that ride/walk during lunch, or at other times when they need it.
gemstones 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I echo others here - I've not seen a meaningful, revenue-driving conversation happen in these in a decade of work. Do you have specific examples of valuable collaboration in one of these environments? > Edit: full disclosure, I’m not an employer but I sympathize and spent a lot of time thinking about these things as a scrum master, trying to mitigate some of these problems in 2020. What about being a scrum master would give insight into what hallway conversations are valuable from an engineering perspective, in an engineering org? Or did you find that process improvements came out of these conversations? > I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces. Why didn't cities have this problem before the rise of big employers that utilize dense downtown construction? Additionally, if neighborhood livability improves at the expense of downtown livability, why should I be overly concerned with how downtown livability is?
- skhameneh 4y ago
  Depends on the environment. If your team is open to casual conversations and comfortable going off topics, then this likely isn't an issue. But, if your team is very metrics focused, you may not see levels of casual conversation that build rapport and build on ideas that come up on conversation. Sometimes a casual conversation is all it needs to hook a random thought into successful action. I like having casual talks about nothing in particular without having to worry about meeting budgets or taking away from "limited time" of others. Such time is important for growth in many aspects.
  - garciasn 4y ago
    I’m a Sr. Director. There is nothing but non sense in any claims that say random shout outs as people are breezing between one unnecessary meeting and another are useful. It just doesn’t happen. The only useful conversations are thoughtful, planned, and collaborative. Almost never what happens in a hallway nor in most meetings, frankly. Let’s dispel with any of this outdated thinking. Remote work is here to say and it should be embraced. Any company that can do it should be and any that isn’t should go the way of the dodo.
ovao 4y ago
For the purpose of enabling more “spontaneous connection” in a remote environment, could managers not simply foster an environment in which bandying around ideas in Slack or Teams is just encouraged? I can see how employees existing solely in the Slackosphere can be crippling to the sort of shop talk that can spur new ideas, but I see no reason why it has to be that way.
sbmthakur 4y ago
What was the 70s-era trend?
- mprovost 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Association_with_urban_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Association_with_...
turtlesdown11 4y ago
> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life May be true in some small, limited segments of the States. The vast majority commute by car. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death. Very pleasant!
asveikau 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I can't believe the amount of people here denying this exists or that they've ever seen it. I wonder if they are the type to neglect social dynamics over cold, detached, ultimately flawed and incomplete metrics? They can't even conjecture about unseen forces and subtle influences, a sort of butterfly effect where an off topic conversation about the weekend leads to different technical decisions? Because all that stuff does happen. It can be very hard to quantify or understand. That's one reason I hate cultures they put too much weight on performance reviews. They think they can measure individual contribution and productivity. They don't get the less obvious things that arise from group settings and informal collaboration.
- itronitron 4y ago
  I understand your point, and I have experienced that on occasion, maybe once or twice a year. However that also requires that people have slack time available to kick things around in conversation. I've had equal or better success following paths on my own that while being highly tangential/unrelated to my work ultimately provided valuable and relevant insights. I guess my point is that valuable spontaneous connections require time but they don't require in-person interpersonal interactions.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I used to work at a job where I was required to go into the office (Florida). My teammates were 1. offshore (India) 2. in Nebraska 3. in Atlanta. My manager was in Atlanta. I had 0 teammates in the office in Florida. What's the justification there? I also had to do a lot of 2am-3am on call. Our laptops were also tracked with Sapience Buddy. I no longer work there.
PheonixPharts 4y ago
> everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. I've personally found mentorship is much easier remote since you can more easily dedicate your entire focus on a person rather than just catching up real quick before meetings. I had a team member who was really struggling with isolation. Mentioned it to me briefly in chat and I had him give me a call. That turned into regular bi-weekly meetings where we chat about work issues and whatever topics are interesting to us. It's helped us both tremendously. The only reason for anyone to suffer remotely is deliberate ignorance by senior member of the team. And because of the more private nature of remote communication, I've found colleagues are much more willing to open up about concerns and frustrations they have about the office. Sure remote means that if you're a senior member of the team and want to abandon your responsibilities it's easier to hide, but some of my best working relationships have been founded remotely.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Yeah I haven't had an issue mentoring remotely, but it requires people to be aggressive about hopping on zoom and asking questions.
throw1230 4y ago
All these commenters are unfairly picking on you. There IS value in personal connections and it is different when you have been in the same physical space with the other person instead of an avatar that can send texts and emails. Spontaneous conversations happen every once in a while to creates an opportunity for collaboration, or maybe someone is working on a problem that another colleague worked on, so you can connect them etc. IMO, Happy hours in front of the screen are boring and feels like more work. I don't want to go back to the office on a regular schedule, but I actually miss having stronger connections to my coworkers. I think the regular company meetings in a single location is an excellent alternative
giantg2 4y ago
"for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc" To be fair, most of this doesn't happen in the office either. I don't see any real mentorship going on in my 10 years at the company. Comany culture is a joke in my experience. Management doesn't really care about the culture as long as it facilitates getting work done and keeping people in line. Networking might be easier in person, at least for some people. I personally think networking is toxic since it effectively means that outgroups remain outsiders and potentially promotes cronyism.
ilyt 4y ago
>There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. It has been certainly be nice distraction, and I definitely knew more people by name but I haven't noticed anything actually profitable for company happening there. The things that did happen is that I could just catch the few people needed to push things forward, drag one to the other and clear the roadblocks but grabbing a quick call on the communication system of choice isn't that worse. The brainstorming on problems was better when in person tho, but that might be the mix of tooling and platform company I work for chose (MS Teams, need I say more?) > Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. Yeah, the one remote work experience that has been my benchmark (in startup) had us meet every 2 weeks and just had half-party, half socialising, half-brainstorming thing. I feel like there is heavy underuse of tooling, back then our standard was voice only but screen sharing via ancient methods (screen session) that worked well, editors like IDEA also have very neat "editor sharing" feature that I rarely seen talked about
brightball 4y ago
I remember when I first started my career, my boss told me "Don't miss meetings, don't miss deadlines. Otherwise, I don't care when you're here." I thought it sounded great. Spent most of my time out of the office for the first 3 weeks. Quickly felt the downsides and got back in the office for the remainder of my next 2 jobs. Networking alone was more valuable for my career personally than anything that we actually accomplished in the office by being there together. I don't know that the company benefited, but I felt like I did. At the larger company though (business telecom), it was a lot easier for them to secure the network by controlling all of the devices and endpoints in the office, including camera access and building access. Dealing with all those employees on remote devices over a VPN would have been a huge security headache IMO.
_gmax0 4y ago
I'd be curious to see a study done comparing the extent of happen-chance that occurs in-person vs digitally. Digital hallways exist in the form of private messages.
- pflanze 4y ago
  Do you have tips on how to approach coworkers about "odd" topics via private messages? The "hallway" principle as I understand it is that it is low-key, low-risk, you can immediately read the others' reactions, and you (usually) won't be blamed for odd thoughts, nor does the other side need to feel pressured to handle your question well.
  - _gmax0 4y ago
    Good question, I completely overlooked that aspect of online interaction. I guess more real-time digital communication such as video or call (video taking priority given that it contains additional sensory information) could come close, but none of these are 'memory-less' as physical interaction. I wonder if I myself have blown through professional relationships in this way...I like to think that the cultures I'm in aren't so risk averse towards the first impressions they make.
paxys 4y ago
This whole "spontaneous collaboration in a shared space" thing was a myth started by Google to sell the idea of open office layouts, and something the rest of the industry latched on to after that. This is not how software development works.
kelnos 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I love reading things like this, because it tickles my hypocritical funny bone. Where is the evidence for this? Where is the hard data showing that these "hallway conversations" ultimately generate more sustainable long-term revenue for the company? Because at the end of the day, that's the only reason a company should ever mandate anything that employees don't want: because it either generates more revenue, or saves them money. If you can't prove that requiring employees to be in-office accomplishes this, then there's no reason to do so. Regarding hypocrisy: I recall as an individual contributor all the times I've been required to justify -- with hard data -- things I wanted management to support because I believed it would increase developer happiness and comfort, and thus increase productivity (and reduce costs). It was always hard (or impossible) to do this, especially before the fact, so management would often turn me down. And yet, we have this completely unsupportable statement -- "everyone in-office creates better connections that leads to higher productivity" -- that management is all-in on enforcing. I think the real reason for "return to office" initiatives is mundane and obvious: ego, power trips, and an unreasonable lack of trust. > But if you already have an office and already expect everyone to be relatively close, why fly everyone to London or SF? If you already have an office and expect everyone to be relatively close, you don't have to fly everyone anywhere. You just have "come to the office" days. Depending on the level of remoteness of your workers, that can be as often as once a week, or once a quarter. > if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day False. You're not taking into account the myriad ways people choose and need to live. I wouldn't do the SF<->south bay commute ever again (used to do that 10+ years ago daily). Are you telling me I'm required to move to take a job that's a 60-minute drive away? That's ridiculous. > I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Ah, I see. So basically you see "people are leaving cities in droves" and think the solution is "make people come to the office". Another unsupportable statement, and also unreasonable to ask of people. I live in a city, have no intention of leaving, and value the fact that I work from home, even though any job I'd take would also be in the city. I hate sprawl and would never go back to living in a suburb. Maybe some people don't want to live in cities, though. Your "solution" to this problem is to require people do that (through completely unrelated employment considerations), just to keep cities healthy? How selfish!
allenrb 4y ago
I'm with you 100% but we're fighting an uphill battle. For the couple of years pre-Covid, I alternated between a 15-mile bike ride (each way) and a walk->train->walk commute. It was wonderful, and great for my mental and physical health. I felt like a part of the city. At the start of the pandemic we went full-remote and it worked, because we all knew each other well. Yet even then, I felt the loss of informal (sometimes work-related, sometimes not) communication with coworkers. Time passed and now I'm in a fully-remote job. It's alright, my coworkers are nice, and things get done. But it's not the same. I don't feel like a part of anything. I'm constantly subject to the distractions of being at home -- there's lots of interesting stuff to do here, and my ADHD makes it tough to ignore. More than likely, I'll retire early rather than finish out a career that's some mix of WFH or going to a nearly-empty office.
8ytecoder 4y ago
I’ve never ever ever have had all my team in one place. I’ve worked in two different countries and six different cities. Not one team has had everyone in the same area. Water cooler conversations always ended up isolating and creating in-out group dynamics. We always had to fight to force communication through async global channels as much as we can to make sure people don’t feel left out or lack important context. It is a challenge. Pandemic changes in work has thrust into the open the challenges with remote. But you ignore it at your own peril or curl up to the familiar return-to-work ass-on-the-seat model and be left behind. Btw, if you need good ideas, you schedule and organise a brainstorming session or create an idea board org wide. You encourage challenging assumptions and involve your team in decision making. All of this need to happen irrespective of whether your team is local or scattered. Might as well use modern technology when you can and support remote and local discussions.
ktosobcy 4y ago
I think this boils down towards being extrovert and introvert. you seem to cheering lots of "people interaction" and thrive on it while "the remote crowd" can get by just doing work without the need or pressure for in-person interaction. From the about 1 year i spend in the office about 10 years ago it was mostly annoying to have to "connect" (and the worst thing was force "team building", after 8h spend together in the office). Sometimes we had fun and laugh aut at the end of the day work is just work. everything beyond that is some weird, twisted invention by the HR and corporate mumbo-jumbo (especially part about "corporate culture") - remember, you don't own anything to the company, you are not a slave and corporation doesn't own you anything (which was shown by the recent lay-offs)..
xwdv 4y ago
Not good enough. In fact, a counter example: people regularly spawn random threads of conversation like the one you mention in Slack channels. A lot of times nothing comes of it, but some of these threads tag senior executives and managers within the company who have followed insights from threads into new cost improvement or even revenue generating ideas. These conversations are unlikely to happen in passing hallway conversations and even if they did would likely not develop further than a couple remarks without forcing people to creating meetings to discuss topics that may or may not be important, which quickly gets overwhelming and makes people lose interest in further discussion. Having people sit around all day at an office in case such a conversation spontaneously happens is very inefficient when it can be done online in asynchronous fashion. The central tenet of your argument is thus unraveled and the conclusion you must come to is that we don’t need offices. Accept it. Office workers aren’t here to serve as NPCs to fill your pretty little cities.
balfirevic 4y ago
> if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. I'm supposed to move whenever I change jobs?
User23 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes That's an interesting way to say "office politics."
leftbit 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. Those spontaneous connections yielding noticeable results are probably an urban legend. 25 years in the business and I've never seen this happen. You're talking with people in your team/project anyway in regular meetings, so there is no reason to drag that into the hallway. Talking biz to people from other projects/teams is mostly impossible - would take hours to explain a specific problem to get a meaningful contribution. Never goes beyond basic griping and commiseration. If you think those meetings are essential for company success you REALLY should examine your process.
isoprophlex 4y ago
> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Unhealthy separation: spending 45-90 minutes (one way) in traffic, polluting the planet. Healthy separation: the 6 vertical meters between me working in the attic and my kids playing downstairs in the living room
klooney 4y ago
> if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. I feel like this isn't really true in the SF Bay Area, it's too expensive even for most software engineers. We're not all making L7 @ Meta money.
- itronitron 4y ago
  I know, that comment about a pleasant commute is absolutely laughable for anyone that commutes in or around a major US city.
pm90 4y ago
> I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces. I can see why you would think that but might I offer another perspective: we are better off without cities being built as commuter hubs for suburbanities. Cities in the US are often located in very valuable real estate, most of which is used suboptimally for office spaces, which are occupied only during certain time on weekdays. I would like this to change. American cities should build a TON more apartment towers and dense housing in city centers that no longer need so many office buildings. Let the young, the weird and the creatives live in the cities and make them great. In fact, I am seriously happy about the reduction in traffic to/from suburbs. Every weekday, most American cities turn into traffic severs, mostly commuters getting in/out of the city. This is just madness! And no doubt makes our cities more polluted (air and noise) and less desirable to live/work in.
extraAccount 4y ago
> Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. Thank you for mentioning the importance of this. I graduated and entered the job market during the start of the pandemic. Getting a job was super difficult because every company suddenly implemented a hiring freeze. I managed to find a job at the company I interned at because they lost many developers due to the company being in the travel space (they didn't want to find themselves jobless in a pandemic, travel related payments were tanking). They were so desperate for bodies I got waived through because I was an intern one whole year before. I quickly found myself in an empty office trying to onboard myself through the process, with a handful of tired devs trying to do the work that before had a team of 30. I spent my first few months in panic because nobody could find the time or patience to work with me, and the business logic was quite dense. It was still my first job and I hadn't worked up the courage to ask for help, and it was x10 harder when we worked from home. I could ask my fellow desk-mate because I could judge how busy they were, but it was torture asking people over teams and interrupting their flow. Now almost 3 years into my job, I can definetly see how my anxiety kept me from progressing and I grew a lot. But WFH as a new person into the workforce, it was difficult until I found my footing and a routine. And a nice mentor. I am not ashamed to admit that it took me quite a while. Now I have more experience and I can work a bit more independently, so I appriciate our 2 wfh days. But most of our collaboration work is done best in the office.
alentred 4y ago
> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I agree, but not with the hallways and kitchenettes part. Sorry, never have I ever seen anything productive done in a hallway. But I wholeheartedly agree with the "spontaneous communication" part, but *in the office, at the desk*. There are many things that are much easier when you can just come to a desk of your colleague (someone on the team, or your manager, or your direct report) and discuss instantly, then maybe grab another person into this discussion, make a decision, etc. Yes, I see that happening all the time in the office. Just not in a kitchenette indeed. Now, I agree that maybe not every team needs it. Consider the two extremes. One is when your daily work is mostly "executing tasks”. In this case, whatever is more *comfortable* is the best: for some it would be working from home, for some it may be working from the office. Or, on the other end, if the team is in the early stages of making some important decisions. In this case, I truly believe this team needs to be able to communicate spontaneously. If this team is Okay with Discord - fine. Or if this team prefers being in the same physical place - fine as well. Bottom line: being in *the office* is *one of the ways* to create an environment for spontaneous communications, which works wonders for making a series of small decisions fast. P.S. I currently work in a flexible hybrid environment: we just agree with colleagues when we go to the office, if we want to.
jahewson 4y ago
> P.S. if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Clearly you don’t live in the Bay Area. My commute was 2hrs each way. That’s 4hrs a day, just gone.
lamontcg 4y ago
I've absolutely managed to have non-structured zoom meetings which have been productive. Often its just a spillover of standup where me and a coworker take over the end of the meeting and basically let everyone else drop off (or not) and we start bitching about something horrible to fix. Sometimes it resulted in something meaningful, sometimes it was just a bitching session. I did this mostly with other coworkers because I'm an introvert. If you're aggressive about hopping on zooms with other people then they can happen with external people. I've gotten dragged into zooms with customers, via the customer services team airdropping me into some horrible customer issue, which later solidified the direction the architecture should go based on the obvious struggles the customer was having. My coworker at prior job was better about inserting himself into those kinds of virtual discussions. And there's a major advantage to being able to operate that way since you don't have to be geolocated with your customer or your customer services folks and you don't need plane tickets and you can get it done with an hour or three virtually rather than having to take days out of your schedule to do an onsite.
Spooky23 4y ago
I feel similarly. WFH has killed my city. I personally enjoy it and generally work remote 2-3 days a week, but it’s awful for the organization. At this point I keep doing it as I expect there will be some incentives offered to come back. On the productivity side, There’s way too much babysitting and people in certain roles doing errands. On the work relationship side, units with turnover struggle as new hires don’t get assimilated well.
terminatornet 4y ago
fine, i'll come in but you have to rip out all the desks and turn every bit of space in the office into a hallway or a kitchenette to maximize opportunity for collaboration.
davidguetta 4y ago
The point is choice. Most compagny should allow both remote and not remote

by n8cpdx 4y ago

jonathankoren 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I call bullshit. This is the claptrap that upper management always uses to to justify RTO or keeping separate bus lines or whatever, but it doesn’t match reality. In 25 years of professional experience, I have never seen collaboration done by random encounter. At most you’ll ask a question you were already going to ask. And guess what? In 2023, that happens over Slack.

JohnFen 4y ago
This. I think of this every time I hear the "spontaneous connection" argument. Decades ago, this was true, but it hasn't been true anywhere I've worked for at least 15 years. Now, even when people are all in the office, very nearly 100% of the communications are done via chat programs (even to the person next to you) or email. For good reason, really. It minimizes the risk of interrupting someone deep in the flow.
hfbff 4y ago
I've talked about this topic with many people and it seldom matches the opinions of many people here in hacker news. I wonder if hacker news is biased towards a specific type of people that is less social / more family oriented / etc? (Of course, the people I meet in real life could be the more biased sample)
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  I’d challenge your friends to give some examples of these collaborations by random encounter. I suspect there’s a lot less to them than they think.
- The_Colonel 4y ago
  I noticed that very technically focused people tend to underestimate the importance of communication. They dislike daily standups, coordination meetings, don't really value informal exchange. All these things take their time out of what they want to do - deep work on solving technical problems. There's often the hidden assumption that "solving technical problems" equals "creating value", but that's not always so. Lack of communication often leads to solving the wrong problems, solving more general/complex problems than needed, overengineering the solution over actual needs etc. To avoid this, it's a good practice to talk about stuff you work on and getting feedback from other people, including questions you yourself did not think of.
  - projectazorian 4y ago
    I used to prioritize communication and collaboration because I’m better at it than most engineers I work with. A problem emerged where I noticed that come review and promotion time, I was always coming up short due to concerns about lacking technical seriousness. My interview performance was also suffering due to not spending enough time in the codebase. I deprioritized collaboration as a result and now I get much better results. It’s not an issue because I am happy to explain the trade off up-front to anyone who asks. My job title is “software engineer” and my job role is to ship code. If you want me to be a staff+ engineer, engineering manager, or PM, happy to chat about a role change, but until then collaboration needs to take up a minority of my time.

snozolli 4y ago

Every element you mention as being part of an in-office experience has been completely absent from my career. Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance, I was always simply given a task and expected to complete it. Company culture doesn't even feel like a real thing outside of HR blurbs. Spontaneous collaboration was outweighed by interruptions and meddling from management. Maybe it's just because I've never worked at a FAANG or BigCo, but I have a hard time believing these points.

thisarticle 4y ago
> Never made a connection that proved valuable later on. Never received any mentorship or even any guidance That sounds awful, none of your senior or principal engineers offered/provided any mentorship?
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  Not every person works in a company organized this way, even IT people. In all my working years and all companies, I always had managers that were technically inferior to me (not bragging, most were not technical people at all, some had some basic tech skills). My only mentoring was for management skills, not guidance in any technical matter.
- snozolli 4y ago
  What senior or principal engineers? I graduated college with significant, real-world programming skills. I immediately went to work writing software. The only thing my first manager contributed was showing me where to find documentation, and even then, books that I found on my own were far more valuable overall. It was no different the first year from the tenth: here's what we want made, go make it. No mentorship, no training, just self-learning and resourcefulness. I can't even imagine what mentorship software people could need, besides general career or investment advice.
  - phphphphp 4y ago
    I don’t mean this as a slight against you because there’s a place in the world for every type of developer, but your description of work and collaboration is very cynical. You could be the most unlucky person in the world and thus you’ve never met anyone worth collaborating with, or, more likely, you’ve not attracted those people in your workplaces. I’ve worked at great companies and awful companies, and no matter what, I have always met talented people in these companies who I’ve been able to build meaningful professional relationships with. Even in the most toxic hell-holes, there’s people worth learning collaborating with — across all disciplines. The most valuable work you can do when in software engineering is to help non-swengs in businesses achieve their goals: code is just a means to an end, collaboration is how we discover what to build.

thisarticle 4y ago

Sorry but this sounds really bad (and frankly, a bit entitled). Not everyone can afford to live 15 minutes walk to work w/ Bay Area, Seattle, etc housing prices. Not everyone wants to spend 30 minutes or more each way in a car just to get to an office that has a demonstrably worse setup than what they have at home. I have a healthy separation between work and home, it’s called closing the laptop lid and walking away.

ilaksh 4y ago

If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). There are also several good applications for internet collaboration that simulate a rich shared 2d or 3d or video space. Or things like GitHub issues and Wikis. Networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. can all happen over the internet. You make it part of the company culture to use the remote collaboration tools for these things routinely. So if it's someone's job to mentor someone else then you tell them and the other person getting mentored. That 100% can be done with a text chat. But you can also do screen shares, remote code collaboration, voice and video chats, or simply an at mention in a GitHub issue. If one or both employees cannot or will not use the tools and accomplish this mentorship then you warn them and if they continue to refuse then you fire them.

The_Colonel 4y ago
> If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). I don't believe that, those are very different modes of communications. > There are also several good applications for internet collaboration that simulate a rich shared 2d or 3d or video space. I think, this could potentially help, but we seem to be still very far from it technologically. It's still impossible to achieve a realistic eye contact. Audio in calls is still tragically bad - it's actually somewhat shocking that nobody was able to figure this out yet, it feels like there was hardly any progress in the last 15 years. Personally, participating in a remote meeting is very noticeably more demanding for me than an in-person meeting. > Networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. can all happen over the internet. Might work in theory, but in my experience not in practice. My company tried to organize some socializing remotely, but the attendance was dramatically lower than in the in person events.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > > If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). > I don't believe that, those are very different modes of communications. So what? Just because something is different, it doesn't mean you can't get useful benefits from it. No, you're not going to have a random hallway meeting and conversation on on a chat platform. But the barrier to just saying hello to someone or asking them a question drops to near-zero when you have those chat platforms. Yes, it does mean you need to be more deliberate about making interactions happen, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The "remote renaissance" is still very new. (And it started during a time that was not ideal for methodically exploring and learning a new paradigm.) It'll take many more years before people adjust and really find out how communication works best.

jpeterson 4y ago

"There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes." I've seen this idea repeated many times, but in over 20 years in the tech industry, I've never once seen a meaningful collaboration spring up in a kitchenette or hallway. It's invariably "how was your weekend?" fare. Don't get me wrong, there's value in connecting that way, but it's never the sort of thing that directly leads to any of the productivity gain that the anti-remote crowd would like you to believe.

deafpolygon 4y ago
Same. I don't really collaborate in the hallways, I don't think IT people tend to.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  Probably, because if you do, you get asked to fix something and you're already overloaded with work to do and people can't be bothered to google.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
Moreover, personally I'd prefer it stays this way. When I take a break and go to the kitchen to get a coffee, it is also a part of mental hygiene - I need to clear my mind as it needs some rest, too. So the last thing I want is someone bothering me about a merge request or some planned feature. A weekend trip, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  Hear hear. I worked at a place that pair programmed all the time (I liked it that way—it's why I joined the company) but it meant that I always had to eat lunch at my desk. To me it's crazy to be talking all morning then talk all through lunch then talk all afternoon! But to each their own.
  - kelnos 4y ago

barbazoo 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. > That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. As an employer it's your job (via delegation) to facilitate how people (can) collaborate with each other. Relying on people doing that for you during their breaks is just lazy and poor leadership.

thewebcount 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I’ve literally never seen this. I’ve seen people sit around and gossip about coworkers or talk about the latest TV shows or movies or sports, though. (And nothing wrong with that. We can’t think about work for 8 hours straight.) > That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on That’s the exact opposite of my experience. The first few months were awkward because it was slightly new and assumptions were made that we’d be back in the office in a few weeks. But as time went on, everyone became much more productive. But that’s just my office, not everyone else’s. > Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. That’s total speculation. When I was first hired out of college, I had 1 colleague I was kind of close with, but rarely interacted with outside of work. The majority of my friends were people I met in real life around town. > if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Or you can just turn off your work computer and do something else to create that space, like hang with your family or friends.

sseagull 4y ago
>> Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. > That’s total speculation. When I was first hired out of college, I had 1 colleague I was kind of close with, but rarely interacted with outside of work. The majority of my friends were people I met in real life around town. These are not the same thing, although you aren’t the only one in this (frankly depressing) thread making this mistake. You don’t have to be completely best buds with your mentor, including outside of work. Spontaneous discussions and networking don’t work as well online because it requires more intent to talk to the other person. That spontaneous networking is more important for junior rather than senior people. Being “in the kitchen” is a sign someone is probably not really working on something at that moment, and therefore may be open to conversation about something other than work. That signal is almost always missing online, and therefore doesn’t happen.

QIYGT 4y ago

> I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. There's more demand than ever before to live in NYC, as evidenced by record high rent prices. Cities don't need to be about offices.

AdrianB1 4y ago
I heard the opposite, but I haven't seen any proof in any direction. What I read is that office space in NYC is still expensive, but occupation rate is lower than ever.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I don't think the person you're replying to is talking about office rents. Residential rents are still high, so clearly people still want to live in NYC, regardless of whether or not they're working in an office or work from home. The number of people who want to live in cities seems to be pretty similar now to what it was before the pandemic. I don't think urbanism is dying, or, if it is, it's not because of remote work.
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    I would like to revisit this in 3-5 years, without an office there is less motivation to live in a very expensive city like NYC. As leases expire and companies close even more offices, we'll see where all this goes.

Natsu 4y ago

I think there's some value in actually meeting one's teammates, but I've found that the collaboration I have works just fine if they know they can IM me to talk when they're having issues. I have lots of people from many different departments who just know what kind of things to IM me for. I don't always have answers for them, but I can usually point them to someone who does. When I hung around in person, we'd chat with them about totally random stuff. You can learn from that, but it's not nearly as business-centric as intentionally talking to people about work stuff.

jasonpeacock 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes If your business success is predicated on random encounters, then your business success is just pure luck compensating for a lack of planning and communication. If you actually plan and communicate well across teams & orgs then your business will work equally well in person or remote (or a hybrid).

arcturus17 4y ago

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life Everyone is picking on the rest of your arguments, and I can sympathize with some of them, but not this one. Never had, nor can I envision, a commute with a healthy separation of work and life or that wasn't orders of magnitude worse than, you know, reclaiming that time for whatever I want.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
> nor can I envision Actually I implemented this. When I worked in the office, I used to bike to and from work every day. Every week I tried to choose a (slightly) different route. An it was really, really good for my mental health. For the first 10 minutes or so of the ride I still had some thoughts from work, then gradually they started to disappear, I got intrigued by new shops being opened, some random folks doing crazy stuff on the street etc. In the end, I could feel endorphins coming and finally felt pleasantly tired when arriving home. Now, when I work remotely, I do the same, I just ride whenever I want instead to the office.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  Me as well. I intentionally chose to live within a 30 min bike ride and biked as much as I can. That’s how I got fit. That said, companies don’t pick their office location based on how close it is to where most people live. In all major cities and especially in the Bay Area, commute is a nightmare you just have to deal with rather than do something with it.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > Now, when I work remotely, I do the same, I just ride whenever I want instead to the office. Thank you! I've seen far too many posts where someone is saying "I biked/walked to work and it was great; everyone else should be forced to go to an office so I can keep my nice commute". How are so many people blind to the idea that, if they are working from home, they can still take a bike ride or go for a walk before and after work? Hell, they might even now have the flexibility to take that ride/walk during lunch, or at other times when they need it.

gemstones 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I echo others here - I've not seen a meaningful, revenue-driving conversation happen in these in a decade of work. Do you have specific examples of valuable collaboration in one of these environments? > Edit: full disclosure, I’m not an employer but I sympathize and spent a lot of time thinking about these things as a scrum master, trying to mitigate some of these problems in 2020. What about being a scrum master would give insight into what hallway conversations are valuable from an engineering perspective, in an engineering org? Or did you find that process improvements came out of these conversations? > I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces. Why didn't cities have this problem before the rise of big employers that utilize dense downtown construction? Additionally, if neighborhood livability improves at the expense of downtown livability, why should I be overly concerned with how downtown livability is?

skhameneh 4y ago
Depends on the environment. If your team is open to casual conversations and comfortable going off topics, then this likely isn't an issue. But, if your team is very metrics focused, you may not see levels of casual conversation that build rapport and build on ideas that come up on conversation. Sometimes a casual conversation is all it needs to hook a random thought into successful action. I like having casual talks about nothing in particular without having to worry about meeting budgets or taking away from "limited time" of others. Such time is important for growth in many aspects.
- garciasn 4y ago
  I’m a Sr. Director. There is nothing but non sense in any claims that say random shout outs as people are breezing between one unnecessary meeting and another are useful. It just doesn’t happen. The only useful conversations are thoughtful, planned, and collaborative. Almost never what happens in a hallway nor in most meetings, frankly. Let’s dispel with any of this outdated thinking. Remote work is here to say and it should be embraced. Any company that can do it should be and any that isn’t should go the way of the dodo.

ovao 4y ago

For the purpose of enabling more “spontaneous connection” in a remote environment, could managers not simply foster an environment in which bandying around ideas in Slack or Teams is just encouraged? I can see how employees existing solely in the Slackosphere can be crippling to the sort of shop talk that can spur new ideas, but I see no reason why it has to be that way.

sbmthakur 4y ago

What was the 70s-era trend?

mprovost 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Association_with_urban_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Association_with_...

turtlesdown11 4y ago

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life May be true in some small, limited segments of the States. The vast majority commute by car. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death. Very pleasant!

asveikau 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I can't believe the amount of people here denying this exists or that they've ever seen it. I wonder if they are the type to neglect social dynamics over cold, detached, ultimately flawed and incomplete metrics? They can't even conjecture about unseen forces and subtle influences, a sort of butterfly effect where an off topic conversation about the weekend leads to different technical decisions? Because all that stuff does happen. It can be very hard to quantify or understand. That's one reason I hate cultures they put too much weight on performance reviews. They think they can measure individual contribution and productivity. They don't get the less obvious things that arise from group settings and informal collaboration.

itronitron 4y ago
I understand your point, and I have experienced that on occasion, maybe once or twice a year. However that also requires that people have slack time available to kick things around in conversation. I've had equal or better success following paths on my own that while being highly tangential/unrelated to my work ultimately provided valuable and relevant insights. I guess my point is that valuable spontaneous connections require time but they don't require in-person interpersonal interactions.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I used to work at a job where I was required to go into the office (Florida). My teammates were 1. offshore (India) 2. in Nebraska 3. in Atlanta. My manager was in Atlanta. I had 0 teammates in the office in Florida. What's the justification there? I also had to do a lot of 2am-3am on call. Our laptops were also tracked with Sapience Buddy. I no longer work there.

PheonixPharts 4y ago

> everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. I've personally found mentorship is much easier remote since you can more easily dedicate your entire focus on a person rather than just catching up real quick before meetings. I had a team member who was really struggling with isolation. Mentioned it to me briefly in chat and I had him give me a call. That turned into regular bi-weekly meetings where we chat about work issues and whatever topics are interesting to us. It's helped us both tremendously. The only reason for anyone to suffer remotely is deliberate ignorance by senior member of the team. And because of the more private nature of remote communication, I've found colleagues are much more willing to open up about concerns and frustrations they have about the office. Sure remote means that if you're a senior member of the team and want to abandon your responsibilities it's easier to hide, but some of my best working relationships have been founded remotely.

lamontcg 4y ago
Yeah I haven't had an issue mentoring remotely, but it requires people to be aggressive about hopping on zoom and asking questions.

throw1230 4y ago

All these commenters are unfairly picking on you. There IS value in personal connections and it is different when you have been in the same physical space with the other person instead of an avatar that can send texts and emails. Spontaneous conversations happen every once in a while to creates an opportunity for collaboration, or maybe someone is working on a problem that another colleague worked on, so you can connect them etc. IMO, Happy hours in front of the screen are boring and feels like more work. I don't want to go back to the office on a regular schedule, but I actually miss having stronger connections to my coworkers. I think the regular company meetings in a single location is an excellent alternative

giantg2 4y ago

"for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc" To be fair, most of this doesn't happen in the office either. I don't see any real mentorship going on in my 10 years at the company. Comany culture is a joke in my experience. Management doesn't really care about the culture as long as it facilitates getting work done and keeping people in line. Networking might be easier in person, at least for some people. I personally think networking is toxic since it effectively means that outgroups remain outsiders and potentially promotes cronyism.

ilyt 4y ago

>There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. It has been certainly be nice distraction, and I definitely knew more people by name but I haven't noticed anything actually profitable for company happening there. The things that did happen is that I could just catch the few people needed to push things forward, drag one to the other and clear the roadblocks but grabbing a quick call on the communication system of choice isn't that worse. The brainstorming on problems was better when in person tho, but that might be the mix of tooling and platform company I work for chose (MS Teams, need I say more?) > Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. Yeah, the one remote work experience that has been my benchmark (in startup) had us meet every 2 weeks and just had half-party, half socialising, half-brainstorming thing. I feel like there is heavy underuse of tooling, back then our standard was voice only but screen sharing via ancient methods (screen session) that worked well, editors like IDEA also have very neat "editor sharing" feature that I rarely seen talked about

brightball 4y ago

I remember when I first started my career, my boss told me "Don't miss meetings, don't miss deadlines. Otherwise, I don't care when you're here." I thought it sounded great. Spent most of my time out of the office for the first 3 weeks. Quickly felt the downsides and got back in the office for the remainder of my next 2 jobs. Networking alone was more valuable for my career personally than anything that we actually accomplished in the office by being there together. I don't know that the company benefited, but I felt like I did. At the larger company though (business telecom), it was a lot easier for them to secure the network by controlling all of the devices and endpoints in the office, including camera access and building access. Dealing with all those employees on remote devices over a VPN would have been a huge security headache IMO.

_gmax0 4y ago

I'd be curious to see a study done comparing the extent of happen-chance that occurs in-person vs digitally. Digital hallways exist in the form of private messages.

pflanze 4y ago
Do you have tips on how to approach coworkers about "odd" topics via private messages? The "hallway" principle as I understand it is that it is low-key, low-risk, you can immediately read the others' reactions, and you (usually) won't be blamed for odd thoughts, nor does the other side need to feel pressured to handle your question well.
- _gmax0 4y ago
  Good question, I completely overlooked that aspect of online interaction. I guess more real-time digital communication such as video or call (video taking priority given that it contains additional sensory information) could come close, but none of these are 'memory-less' as physical interaction. I wonder if I myself have blown through professional relationships in this way...I like to think that the cultures I'm in aren't so risk averse towards the first impressions they make.

paxys 4y ago

This whole "spontaneous collaboration in a shared space" thing was a myth started by Google to sell the idea of open office layouts, and something the rest of the industry latched on to after that. This is not how software development works.

kelnos 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I love reading things like this, because it tickles my hypocritical funny bone. Where is the evidence for this? Where is the hard data showing that these "hallway conversations" ultimately generate more sustainable long-term revenue for the company? Because at the end of the day, that's the only reason a company should ever mandate anything that employees don't want: because it either generates more revenue, or saves them money. If you can't prove that requiring employees to be in-office accomplishes this, then there's no reason to do so. Regarding hypocrisy: I recall as an individual contributor all the times I've been required to justify -- with hard data -- things I wanted management to support because I believed it would increase developer happiness and comfort, and thus increase productivity (and reduce costs). It was always hard (or impossible) to do this, especially before the fact, so management would often turn me down. And yet, we have this completely unsupportable statement -- "everyone in-office creates better connections that leads to higher productivity" -- that management is all-in on enforcing. I think the real reason for "return to office" initiatives is mundane and obvious: ego, power trips, and an unreasonable lack of trust. > But if you already have an office and already expect everyone to be relatively close, why fly everyone to London or SF? If you already have an office and expect everyone to be relatively close, you don't have to fly everyone anywhere. You just have "come to the office" days. Depending on the level of remoteness of your workers, that can be as often as once a week, or once a quarter. > if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day False. You're not taking into account the myriad ways people choose and need to live. I wouldn't do the SF<->south bay commute ever again (used to do that 10+ years ago daily). Are you telling me I'm required to move to take a job that's a 60-minute drive away? That's ridiculous. > I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Ah, I see. So basically you see "people are leaving cities in droves" and think the solution is "make people come to the office". Another unsupportable statement, and also unreasonable to ask of people. I live in a city, have no intention of leaving, and value the fact that I work from home, even though any job I'd take would also be in the city. I hate sprawl and would never go back to living in a suburb. Maybe some people don't want to live in cities, though. Your "solution" to this problem is to require people do that (through completely unrelated employment considerations), just to keep cities healthy? How selfish!

allenrb 4y ago

I'm with you 100% but we're fighting an uphill battle. For the couple of years pre-Covid, I alternated between a 15-mile bike ride (each way) and a walk->train->walk commute. It was wonderful, and great for my mental and physical health. I felt like a part of the city. At the start of the pandemic we went full-remote and it worked, because we all knew each other well. Yet even then, I felt the loss of informal (sometimes work-related, sometimes not) communication with coworkers. Time passed and now I'm in a fully-remote job. It's alright, my coworkers are nice, and things get done. But it's not the same. I don't feel like a part of anything. I'm constantly subject to the distractions of being at home -- there's lots of interesting stuff to do here, and my ADHD makes it tough to ignore. More than likely, I'll retire early rather than finish out a career that's some mix of WFH or going to a nearly-empty office.

8ytecoder 4y ago

I’ve never ever ever have had all my team in one place. I’ve worked in two different countries and six different cities. Not one team has had everyone in the same area. Water cooler conversations always ended up isolating and creating in-out group dynamics. We always had to fight to force communication through async global channels as much as we can to make sure people don’t feel left out or lack important context. It is a challenge. Pandemic changes in work has thrust into the open the challenges with remote. But you ignore it at your own peril or curl up to the familiar return-to-work ass-on-the-seat model and be left behind. Btw, if you need good ideas, you schedule and organise a brainstorming session or create an idea board org wide. You encourage challenging assumptions and involve your team in decision making. All of this need to happen irrespective of whether your team is local or scattered. Might as well use modern technology when you can and support remote and local discussions.

ktosobcy 4y ago

I think this boils down towards being extrovert and introvert. you seem to cheering lots of "people interaction" and thrive on it while "the remote crowd" can get by just doing work without the need or pressure for in-person interaction. From the about 1 year i spend in the office about 10 years ago it was mostly annoying to have to "connect" (and the worst thing was force "team building", after 8h spend together in the office). Sometimes we had fun and laugh aut at the end of the day work is just work. everything beyond that is some weird, twisted invention by the HR and corporate mumbo-jumbo (especially part about "corporate culture") - remember, you don't own anything to the company, you are not a slave and corporation doesn't own you anything (which was shown by the recent lay-offs)..

xwdv 4y ago

Not good enough. In fact, a counter example: people regularly spawn random threads of conversation like the one you mention in Slack channels. A lot of times nothing comes of it, but some of these threads tag senior executives and managers within the company who have followed insights from threads into new cost improvement or even revenue generating ideas. These conversations are unlikely to happen in passing hallway conversations and even if they did would likely not develop further than a couple remarks without forcing people to creating meetings to discuss topics that may or may not be important, which quickly gets overwhelming and makes people lose interest in further discussion. Having people sit around all day at an office in case such a conversation spontaneously happens is very inefficient when it can be done online in asynchronous fashion. The central tenet of your argument is thus unraveled and the conclusion you must come to is that we don’t need offices. Accept it. Office workers aren’t here to serve as NPCs to fill your pretty little cities.

balfirevic 4y ago

> if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. I'm supposed to move whenever I change jobs?

User23 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes That's an interesting way to say "office politics."

leftbit 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. Those spontaneous connections yielding noticeable results are probably an urban legend. 25 years in the business and I've never seen this happen. You're talking with people in your team/project anyway in regular meetings, so there is no reason to drag that into the hallway. Talking biz to people from other projects/teams is mostly impossible - would take hours to explain a specific problem to get a meaningful contribution. Never goes beyond basic griping and commiseration. If you think those meetings are essential for company success you REALLY should examine your process.

isoprophlex 4y ago

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Unhealthy separation: spending 45-90 minutes (one way) in traffic, polluting the planet. Healthy separation: the 6 vertical meters between me working in the attic and my kids playing downstairs in the living room

klooney 4y ago

itronitron 4y ago
I know, that comment about a pleasant commute is absolutely laughable for anyone that commutes in or around a major US city.

pm90 4y ago

> I’m also an Urbanism nerd and don’t want to see cities revert to the 70s-era trend, which is clearly and noticeably happening, destroying decades of progress on livability. Unfortunately there’s a collective action problem; people will miss having nice cities to visit, but don’t make the connection that there is a “use it or lose it” aspect to great shared spaces. I can see why you would think that but might I offer another perspective: we are better off without cities being built as commuter hubs for suburbanities. Cities in the US are often located in very valuable real estate, most of which is used suboptimally for office spaces, which are occupied only during certain time on weekdays. I would like this to change. American cities should build a TON more apartment towers and dense housing in city centers that no longer need so many office buildings. Let the young, the weird and the creatives live in the cities and make them great. In fact, I am seriously happy about the reduction in traffic to/from suburbs. Every weekday, most American cities turn into traffic severs, mostly commuters getting in/out of the city. This is just madness! And no doubt makes our cities more polluted (air and noise) and less desirable to live/work in.

extraAccount 4y ago

> Finally, everyone being remote is really bad for younger/newer employees who completely miss out on networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. Thank you for mentioning the importance of this. I graduated and entered the job market during the start of the pandemic. Getting a job was super difficult because every company suddenly implemented a hiring freeze. I managed to find a job at the company I interned at because they lost many developers due to the company being in the travel space (they didn't want to find themselves jobless in a pandemic, travel related payments were tanking). They were so desperate for bodies I got waived through because I was an intern one whole year before. I quickly found myself in an empty office trying to onboard myself through the process, with a handful of tired devs trying to do the work that before had a team of 30. I spent my first few months in panic because nobody could find the time or patience to work with me, and the business logic was quite dense. It was still my first job and I hadn't worked up the courage to ask for help, and it was x10 harder when we worked from home. I could ask my fellow desk-mate because I could judge how busy they were, but it was torture asking people over teams and interrupting their flow. Now almost 3 years into my job, I can definetly see how my anxiety kept me from progressing and I grew a lot. But WFH as a new person into the workforce, it was difficult until I found my footing and a routine. And a nice mentor. I am not ashamed to admit that it took me quite a while. Now I have more experience and I can work a bit more independently, so I appriciate our 2 wfh days. But most of our collaboration work is done best in the office.

alentred 4y ago

> There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. I agree, but not with the hallways and kitchenettes part. Sorry, never have I ever seen anything productive done in a hallway. But I wholeheartedly agree with the "spontaneous communication" part, but *in the office, at the desk*. There are many things that are much easier when you can just come to a desk of your colleague (someone on the team, or your manager, or your direct report) and discuss instantly, then maybe grab another person into this discussion, make a decision, etc. Yes, I see that happening all the time in the office. Just not in a kitchenette indeed. Now, I agree that maybe not every team needs it. Consider the two extremes. One is when your daily work is mostly "executing tasks”. In this case, whatever is more *comfortable* is the best: for some it would be working from home, for some it may be working from the office. Or, on the other end, if the team is in the early stages of making some important decisions. In this case, I truly believe this team needs to be able to communicate spontaneously. If this team is Okay with Discord - fine. Or if this team prefers being in the same physical place - fine as well. Bottom line: being in *the office* is *one of the ways* to create an environment for spontaneous communications, which works wonders for making a series of small decisions fast. P.S. I currently work in a flexible hybrid environment: we just agree with colleagues when we go to the office, if we want to.

jahewson 4y ago

> P.S. if you do a good job arranging your life (as most software engineers absolutely have the means to do) you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life. Clearly you don’t live in the Bay Area. My commute was 2hrs each way. That’s 4hrs a day, just gone.

lamontcg 4y ago

I've absolutely managed to have non-structured zoom meetings which have been productive. Often its just a spillover of standup where me and a coworker take over the end of the meeting and basically let everyone else drop off (or not) and we start bitching about something horrible to fix. Sometimes it resulted in something meaningful, sometimes it was just a bitching session. I did this mostly with other coworkers because I'm an introvert. If you're aggressive about hopping on zooms with other people then they can happen with external people. I've gotten dragged into zooms with customers, via the customer services team airdropping me into some horrible customer issue, which later solidified the direction the architecture should go based on the obvious struggles the customer was having. My coworker at prior job was better about inserting himself into those kinds of virtual discussions. And there's a major advantage to being able to operate that way since you don't have to be geolocated with your customer or your customer services folks and you don't need plane tickets and you can get it done with an hour or three virtually rather than having to take days out of your schedule to do an onsite.

Spooky23 4y ago

I feel similarly. WFH has killed my city. I personally enjoy it and generally work remote 2-3 days a week, but it’s awful for the organization. At this point I keep doing it as I expect there will be some incentives offered to come back. On the productivity side, There’s way too much babysitting and people in certain roles doing errands. On the work relationship side, units with turnover struggle as new hires don’t get assimilated well.

terminatornet 4y ago

fine, i'll come in but you have to rip out all the desks and turn every bit of space in the office into a hallway or a kitchenette to maximize opportunity for collaboration.

davidguetta 4y ago

The point is choice. Most compagny should allow both remote and not remote