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Pro-WFH people absolutely want companies to embrace fully remote. I haven't yet had a discussion where, after traversal of enough rabbit-holes, everyone agrees

Pro-WFH people absolutely want companies to embrace fully remote. I haven't yet had a discussion where, after traversal of enough rabbit-holes, everyone agrees that only viable options are (A) fully-remote, (B) fully-office, (C) hybrid where everyone is in office on the same days. Just to give one specific example - if half the team is in office huddled around a conference room table and the rest half is dialing in via Zoom, the ones in the common room will have far better connection and the remote members will feel neglected.

olliej 4y ago
> Pro-WFH people absolutely want companies to embrace fully remote. I haven't yet had a discussion where, after traversal of enough rabbit-holes, everyone agrees that only viable options are (A) fully-remote, (B) fully-office, (C) hybrid where everyone is in office on the same days. I have not had a discussion at all with anyone, that says "people should be banned from the office". I have not met a single WFH person who has said anything other than "people should not have to go to the office if working in they are more productive at home". I don't know where this "the only options are A, B, or C come from" when quite clearly "people who don't need to be in the office don't need to come into the office" is what every WFH person (I guess outside of nonsense "thought" pieces from random people trying to get press coverage, rather than actual employees effected by these choices) has wanted. "Hybrid" plans are entirely about trying to mitigate the unrelenting harm caused by mandatory RTO. We even get that some times it would be useful to be in the office - but again, non-mandatory RTO folk are not banning offices, whereas RTO folk are banning WFH. > Just to give one specific example - if half the team is in office huddled around a conference room table and the rest half is dialing in via Zoom, the ones in the common room will have far better connection and the remote members will feel neglected. If this is how your company operates continuously that sounds like a horrific work environment. Also, people who are working from home are not feeling "neglected". Again, if someone is unable to handle online communication they can go to an office - for larger companies they clearly aren't going to be alone - but you can't project their feelings of neglect on to others. I want to be clear here, "Mandatory office work because I need X, therefore those WFH people must need X as well, and the only solution is to force them to come in to the office" is projecting your personal feelings on to other people, it is not "caring" about those people, and framing it as such is dishonest. Here is what my "hybrid" work week looks like: * I get paid for 40 hours of work * I am now required to spend 12 hours driving to and from the office each week. * I am not paid for that time, nor are my deliverables reduces. * I am spending ~25-30% more hours on work, but am not getting paid any more. Hence I've taken a 20-25% cut to hourly income. On the plus side there are some huge benefits: * People can knock on my office door to interrupt me * I contribute to the economy by having to pay for a dog walker, having to buy an additional car, etc * I get the comfort of working with a mask on for four hours. It's only four hours, because if I head to or from the office earlier or later my commute would increase by an hour or more each office day. Seriously, I understand that for some people the opportunity to socialize in person in the office is necessary, and they can do that. But for people who don't need to do that, mandatory return to office is horrifically expensive in numerous metrics, and has literally no benefit.
- twelve40 4y ago
  > I have not had a discussion at all with anyone, that says "people should be banned from the office" Just look around, most of the threads here have someone chime in saying "i'm 10x productive at home with my wife and my dogs by my side, so my RTO CEO is an idiot". In plenty of these discussions, people don't even think about anything but themselves, in the most narrow way.
  - olliej 4y ago
    ...your example is a person saying that they are more productive at home, and saying that forcing them to return to the office is stupid. It is not a person saying "offices should be banned". Because you seem to have difficulty with this: a person saying "forcing everyone to return to the office is stupid" is not "don't allow anyone to work from an office". Your preferred alternative "force people to come into the office" is definitionally "ban wfh". I do appreciate that all the "I need an office to do my job" people seem to try to denigrate anyone who disagrees as in your example "i'm 10x productive at home with my wife and my dogs by my side" which is clearly intended to make this sound false. Rather than more realistically: * Commuting for a mandatory RTO essentially a massive pay reduction: unnecessary but mandatory commuting is fundamentally unpaid labor. For me "hybrid" RTO is essentially a 20-25% reduction in per hour income. * Office environments are filled with people who routinely interrupt their coworkers. It's hard not to imagine that there's an overlap between this group, and the mandatory RTO folk who insist that work is for socializing. To be clear, I have two dogs, one of which is still relatively young and an idiot, and he is less distracting than many coworkers that I have had. It goes without saying that my wife isn't a distraction because that whole mutual respect thing. I understand, there are many people who need an office environment to work, for a variety of reasons (focus, home distractions, or not having any other social environment). The problem is that this group of people - which I'm taking to include you - isn't saying "I need this, so I'm going to RTO", it's saying "I need this, therefore everyone must RTO". Oftentimes this argument is coupled with an implicit or explicit "I need RTO for this reason, therefore those other people do to and the only reason that they don't want to RTO, is that they don't want to work". Again: No one is saying "ban offices", they are saying "offices are not necessary, and mandating them for everyone is at best equally productive, often times not, and certainly makes work much less pleasant for many of us". A real hybrid system where people don't have to come to the office for no reason makes things better for people who do want/need to RTO as well: fewer people in offices means less doubling of offices, or less dense seating in open plan pens (noting of course that open plan and similar have only ever been shown to be worse for productivity).

olliej 4y ago

> Pro-WFH people absolutely want companies to embrace fully remote. I haven't yet had a discussion where, after traversal of enough rabbit-holes, everyone agrees that only viable options are (A) fully-remote, (B) fully-office, (C) hybrid where everyone is in office on the same days. I have not had a discussion at all with anyone, that says "people should be banned from the office". I have not met a single WFH person who has said anything other than "people should not have to go to the office if working in they are more productive at home". I don't know where this "the only options are A, B, or C come from" when quite clearly "people who don't need to be in the office don't need to come into the office" is what every WFH person (I guess outside of nonsense "thought" pieces from random people trying to get press coverage, rather than actual employees effected by these choices) has wanted. "Hybrid" plans are entirely about trying to mitigate the unrelenting harm caused by mandatory RTO. We even get that some times it would be useful to be in the office - but again, non-mandatory RTO folk are not banning offices, whereas RTO folk are banning WFH. > Just to give one specific example - if half the team is in office huddled around a conference room table and the rest half is dialing in via Zoom, the ones in the common room will have far better connection and the remote members will feel neglected. If this is how your company operates continuously that sounds like a horrific work environment. Also, people who are working from home are not feeling "neglected". Again, if someone is unable to handle online communication they can go to an office - for larger companies they clearly aren't going to be alone - but you can't project their feelings of neglect on to others. I want to be clear here, "Mandatory office work because I need X, therefore those WFH people must need X as well, and the only solution is to force them to come in to the office" is projecting your personal feelings on to other people, it is not "caring" about those people, and framing it as such is dishonest. Here is what my "hybrid" work week looks like: * I get paid for 40 hours of work * I am now required to spend 12 hours driving to and from the office each week. * I am not paid for that time, nor are my deliverables reduces. * I am spending ~25-30% more hours on work, but am not getting paid any more. Hence I've taken a 20-25% cut to hourly income. On the plus side there are some huge benefits: * People can knock on my office door to interrupt me * I contribute to the economy by having to pay for a dog walker, having to buy an additional car, etc * I get the comfort of working with a mask on for four hours. It's only four hours, because if I head to or from the office earlier or later my commute would increase by an hour or more each office day. Seriously, I understand that for some people the opportunity to socialize in person in the office is necessary, and they can do that. But for people who don't need to do that, mandatory return to office is horrifically expensive in numerous metrics, and has literally no benefit.

twelve40 4y ago
> I have not had a discussion at all with anyone, that says "people should be banned from the office" Just look around, most of the threads here have someone chime in saying "i'm 10x productive at home with my wife and my dogs by my side, so my RTO CEO is an idiot". In plenty of these discussions, people don't even think about anything but themselves, in the most narrow way.
- olliej 4y ago
  ...your example is a person saying that they are more productive at home, and saying that forcing them to return to the office is stupid. It is not a person saying "offices should be banned". Because you seem to have difficulty with this: a person saying "forcing everyone to return to the office is stupid" is not "don't allow anyone to work from an office". Your preferred alternative "force people to come into the office" is definitionally "ban wfh". I do appreciate that all the "I need an office to do my job" people seem to try to denigrate anyone who disagrees as in your example "i'm 10x productive at home with my wife and my dogs by my side" which is clearly intended to make this sound false. Rather than more realistically: * Commuting for a mandatory RTO essentially a massive pay reduction: unnecessary but mandatory commuting is fundamentally unpaid labor. For me "hybrid" RTO is essentially a 20-25% reduction in per hour income. * Office environments are filled with people who routinely interrupt their coworkers. It's hard not to imagine that there's an overlap between this group, and the mandatory RTO folk who insist that work is for socializing. To be clear, I have two dogs, one of which is still relatively young and an idiot, and he is less distracting than many coworkers that I have had. It goes without saying that my wife isn't a distraction because that whole mutual respect thing. I understand, there are many people who need an office environment to work, for a variety of reasons (focus, home distractions, or not having any other social environment). The problem is that this group of people - which I'm taking to include you - isn't saying "I need this, so I'm going to RTO", it's saying "I need this, therefore everyone must RTO". Oftentimes this argument is coupled with an implicit or explicit "I need RTO for this reason, therefore those other people do to and the only reason that they don't want to RTO, is that they don't want to work". Again: No one is saying "ban offices", they are saying "offices are not necessary, and mandating them for everyone is at best equally productive, often times not, and certainly makes work much less pleasant for many of us". A real hybrid system where people don't have to come to the office for no reason makes things better for people who do want/need to RTO as well: fewer people in offices means less doubling of offices, or less dense seating in open plan pens (noting of course that open plan and similar have only ever been shown to be worse for productivity).