22 ms·

Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely

• dt3ft 4y ago
  Why would I commute (and in doing so lose 2 hours of my time per day)? Focusing in the office is next to impossible, the equipment is sub-par (I have a 3-monitor setup at home)? What is it about software engineering that requires physical presence? Currently we meet once a week in the office and I get almost no work done that day, and I’m not the only one.
  • thejackgoode 4y ago
    I do mostly remote work, but there’s advantages to physical presence. First, offline is a more rich channel for communication. Blunt analogy is an audio vs video meeting. It’s easier to explain and understand people. If you have a lot of uncertainty and things changing fast, you want this. Secondly, it brings people together. I myself found this argument BS, but I found out it really depends on the team. I am looking forward to the interactions I am having in the office now. So, to each their own. Most importantly IMO is that teams can have freedom to decide what works best for them.
    • denvrede 4y ago
      It depends not only on the own team but also the other teams you collaborate with or provide service for. We're a small "DevOps" team that provides all kind of services but we figured out that people in our company (it's a small startup) just don't come to us virtually if they need something or want a second opinion. So we said we'll come into office once a week on a specific day and that day they can approach us with everything. Of course it hasn't changed behavior of everyone but that day we have more interactions with all kind of colleagues than the rest of the remote days combined.
  • andersa 4y ago
    I never understood why anyone would spend hours traveling each day just so they can sit in front of a computer in another place for a while and go back home. Glad the world has caught up with this being complete nonsense!
    • FooBarWidget 4y ago
      Some people don't have a home office, or even a basic desk + chair setup that's suitable for long hours of computer work. A colleague of mine prefers going to the office because at home he's constantly distracted by kids. Another has literally injured himself due working from his kitchen in a bad position for a year. It's worse than RSI. He had to rehabilitate for half a year just to get back to 95% health, and even now whenever he concentrates for too long the pain comes back. One might say, "well they should arrange a suitable setup then". Not everyone has a home that's large enough. Besides, my experience is that most people don't have the discipline or will to do this properly, and as an employer you have to more or less force this upon employees (not even "recommend" is good enough). In the Netherlands, if employees — even office employees — injure themselves, then the employer is obliged to take care of them for max 2 years, even if the injury was not directly caused by the employer.
      • andersa 4y ago
        The home office equipment can be bought from the higher salaries the companies are able to provide now that they don't need to waste as much money on office rent. Of course, getting a good chair is just as important as it used to be!
      • prmoustache 4y ago
        > A colleague of mine prefers going to the office because at home he's constantly distracted by kids. Why aren't they at school?
        • FooBarWidget 4y ago
          School is until 14.30. And they have many holidays.
  • dustedcodes 4y ago
    Once a week is a lot, that’s hybrid and not remote. The thing is if someone “forces” you into an office once a week then it’s not for team collaboration but for control. They want to control that you are never going to travel too far from the office away. Organisations who care about collaboration and team bonding would say you should meet when the team decides it’s right for them. Throw in some budget so the teams can go for a nice lunch together when it happens, maybe have some for drinks after or let them plan an activity. But let the team decide when that time is, after all they will know best when a natural moment takes place where getting together will be good. It could be once a month, once every 6 weeks or sometimes once every two weeks.
  • pmoriarty 4y ago
    "Why would I commute (and in doing so lose 2 hours of my time per day)?" Working remotely has really made me think hard about the enormous part of my life that I've wasted commuting. Never again!
    • jay_kyburz 4y ago
      When you hire a plumber to come and fix your sink, they charge a call out fee to cover the time to drive to you place and look at the job. I think in future people will clock on as soon as they walk out the door at 9, and not clock off till they get home again at 5.
      • re-thc 4y ago
        It's always been a part of the cost - maybe implicitly.
      • spyke112 4y ago
        I'm working as a freelance developer in Denmark, this is my reality. I live about 30-40 minutes away from my current customer, and every time I go there I will charge the time spent. My company can also pay me a tax free "bonus" for every kilometre driven, because I use my own private car.
  • __oh_es 4y ago
    I like the work/home divide. I like the in person interactions. I like being able to walk and meet with other departments and dig into what really needs doing. Pairing is easier and the work I do feels more effective. I do appreciate flexibility in my role and being able to work wherever I want whenever I want. But for 70-80% of the time, I prefer the office and considering the full office, Im not alone. I feel that software engineering isn’t a one size fits all and its up to you to chase the work environment you enjoy the most.
  • citrin_ru 4y ago
    I personally would prefer to working remotely (at least 4 days a week) unless my commute is less than 15-20 minutes but executives put significant value in seeing people working from the office. If they'll decide to save (offices are not cheap) and hire a remote developer what would stop from hiring around the world? Developer salaries in developed countries (and especially the US) are much higher than world average. Working from office you compete with candidates in the same city or in the same country if willing to relocate. Working remotely one have to compete with the whole world.
    • prmoustache 4y ago
      Well maybe it can help the world be a better place by levelling income and costs of living accross all borders.
    • devnullbrain 4y ago
      If my high salary depends on artificial barriers to workers in poorer countries, it's not sustainable anyway.
    • stodor89 4y ago
      Same culture makes communication way easier, and the main problem in most teams is actually communication.
  • izacus 4y ago
    Doing a mental/empathy exercise to think about all the reasons why people would want to do that is an important practice for your career growth and building great software products for people that aren't like you.
  • devnullbrain 4y ago
    >the equipment is sub-par (I have a 3-monitor setup at home)? This is a funny reality. Even the profligate employers of software developers are reluctant to spend money on a monitor setup as nice as what I had at home at the entry level. ...except, of course, I paid for it - plus sales tax - with the money they gave me - net of income tax.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• imadierich 4y ago
  [dead]
• nohuck13 4y ago
  Do 40% of software engineers work fully remotely now?
  • remus 4y ago
    No. Pet peeve of mine, but actually this article is based on a survey and the actual detail from the survey is: > The report showed that nearly 40% of software engineers preferred only remote roles, and if their employers mandated a return to the office, 21% indicated they would quit immediately, while another 49% said they would start looking for another job. So it sounds like they've asked a few questions along the lines of "Do you prefer remote or onsite work?" and "If your employer said you had to return to the office, what would you do?" and they're drawing these conclusions based on the response to those questions. I'd be surprised if this is much of a reflection on reality. Some questions that are fun to think about with surveys like this (that arent answered in the article): - What is the sample size? - How was the sampling performed? (Just guessing here, but I'd be surprised if they sampled many software engineers in china for example) - Could the sample be biased? Did this survey go out in a newsletter for example? What kind of people might be subscribed to that newsletter? - The survey asked people what they would do in a hypothetical situation. If push came to shove would they actually do it?
• renewiltord 4y ago
  Could generate the mess of comments here from ChatGPT but fine, I will do it myself: (100% human made) - Why would I subject myself to a commute? - I like being in the office and talking to my coworkers - You have no social life. I actually have friends unlike you - Managers are twirling their moustaches to make us come in - no it's the company executives trying to justify their office space purchases - actually it's the real estate mafia - managers just want to exercise power - yeah it's the managers who want to see butts in seats - clearly you don't have a family - that's actually why they want to go in to the office, they don't like their family Blah blah blah blah constant ceaseless repetition. God why do we never tire of it.
  • Oxidation 4y ago
    You missed a couple: - real whiteboards are just better - real whiteboards aren't as good as screen sharing But yes indeed, nothing new has been said on this subject for years.
  • self_awareness 4y ago
    "I could easily make a dump at your doorstep but I won't do it. I'll just describe for you how this dump would look like if I'd do it."
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Well, tbh I was trying to kill engagement on the post in a way that will cause others to copy it later thereby killing engagement on this junk forever but there is some skill here that I lack. The gnashing of teeth and wailing will proceed.
  • bruce343434 4y ago
    Very on point, subsequent discussions of this topic contain no new nuggets of information. It's 100% a tired topic.
  • asdff 4y ago
    People are beating the horse talking about their own opinions of working from home, but this thread could be a lot more compelling if people focused on at the very least the headline. It's a story about how expectations are shifting in the wider labor market, and people here are unfortunately missing the forest for the trees. The article goes on to say that when you mandate back to office, 70% of your staff either quits immediately or starts looking for new jobs. It's crazy just how much expectations have shifted over the past three years.
• lnsru 4y ago
  I must return to the office for 4 days a week soon. Popcorn time, it will be very interesting, because some colleagues come 1 day a week for meetings now. If 4 days in the office will be enforced I will look for something different despite coming promotion. I really hate open space budget offices.
  • siva7 4y ago
    You can start literally any time a new job as a developer. The problem is more like that your executives believe their company is sexy so you will stay while it's usually not.
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    The irony is an open office is fine when hardly anyone is going in. I think 400sqft per person in an open office space is a good amount to enjoy low noise. I have been as low as 40sqft/person including walkways and open office and it was impossible to work to the point it was a major reason I had to leave.
    • lnsru 4y ago
      I have roughly 60 sqft for me in the office. 6 feet wide table and walkway behind me. At home I have 160 sqft room dedicated for work. The difference can’t be bigger.
      • coffeebeqn 4y ago
        That’s big! At the open office I had.. my desk and a tiny bit of personal space since I lucked out on a corner near a window. A few feet of space to the side and back of my desk
        • quickthrower2 4y ago
          Yeah it is common to end up with a desk, a desk worth of space for your chair and maybe half a desk walkway. What tends to happen is company expands but moving office is too hard so is put off.
• dijit 4y ago
  While everyone has their preferences I find myself hating the office a lot less than I used to these days. (and I was very vocal about hating the office pre-covid[0]) However, some things of note: 1) My "Office" (not home) is not an "Open Office", it's a place where I can reasonably sit in peace and have control of my surroundings (this is something not afforded to most people in offices, and something that work from home provides) 2) I do not have children at home, which is a pro and a con of working remotely. Being able to look after your offspring is great! I have it on good authority though that kids are distraction machines. 3) My Commute is a 10 minute walk through a sparsely populated city in southern Sweden with no heavy trafficways (or even mild trafficways by North American standards) So even though my home office setup is dedicated, clean, & spacious, I do quite enjoy going to the office at the moment. My meandering point is that: everyone has different life situations, the office has to be a better place to be than home if you want people to come to it and it needs to be accessible too; it can't be the case that you force people to sit in traffic for 2 hours each day to get to a place where their senses are assaulted all day. On the whole, gathering around a whiteboard is fantastic and casual conversations over coffee can really help smooth over accidental communication gaps that exist in every organisation. (and, also help create some more positive interactions with colleagues than the relatively normal situation of calling on people only when they need to do something). I can't imagine needing to be in the same place 5 days per week to get the same benefit though. [0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/how-to-survive-an-open-office https://blog.dijit.sh/how-to-survive-an-open-office
  • radu_floricica 4y ago
    Looking for children under a certain age is more or less a full time job. Trying to mix it with work is, well, simply a bad decision. Over that age, and if the kids themselves can manage it... sure, it's great. You're there for breaks and emergencies - much better than being absent for the whole day.
    • prmoustache 4y ago
      It is more for the commuting in and out of school that it helps. My kids could walk back from school but primary school do not allows them to get out without me. This is kind of stupid as I would sign a waiver if they wanted it but they won't. So until they both reach what you call high school in the USA I have to go to the primary school and back every day. The most funny thing is sometimes I go there by bicycle, let them out of school give them a kiss then ride bike at full speed home to make it before the call while my daughters are walking on their own. I could pay someone to do that but that just sounds so stupid.
• mnd999 4y ago
  I would expect that number to be higher than reality because when push comes to shove a lot of people are not actually going to quit. But it’s still a surprisingly high number.
• sshine 4y ago
  Recent interview: Employer 1: “All work is on-site, no exception. No lunch. Open source? What’s that? Sounds like you’re earning money on the side!” Employer 2: “Work is fully flexible, but usually people like to go in the office 2-3 days a week. We like to pick the same days. Paid lunch. We rely on open source, but we don’t actively contribute.” Me to Employer 1: “I have another offer, 10% higher salary, fully flexible work conditions, Rust, and they won’t fire me for doing open source.” Employer 1: “You can work home one day per week, you can do open source, and here’s +3% salary.” I’m sure they had to respect their own budget. But the number of companies that reverted to 100% work on-site after covid just grew right back.
• aledalgrande 4y ago
  I do 100% remote work and will never go back. I'm lucky that the company I work at is remote first, so all processes are optimized for it. I get 90 days a year to work from other countries too, this year I stayed in Barbados for 4 weeks (it was an amazing experience) while I championed a project with a public release date (work still gets done). I have a routine with walks at lunch, exercise after work etc. I can shift my working day by 1-2 hours if I decide. If I get bored of working at home I grab my WeWork card and meet with a friend at one of the locations in town. Or I go to a cafe. I don't have a ton of recurring Zoom meetings like in the "remote" companies. I can see people on the team at the offsites (more free travel to other cities/countries) and have fun with them too. No more office for me. kthxbai
  • somewhat_drunk 4y ago
    This sounds great. Would you mind sharing the company name? Perhaps in a DM if not here?
    • aledalgrande 4y ago
      https://www.fastcompany.com/90729862/shopify-exec-the-4-secrets-of-successful-digital-first-companies https://www.fastcompany.com/90729862/shopify-exec-the-4-secr...
      • somewhat_drunk 4y ago
        Thanks!
• Animats 4y ago
  Is anyone tracking whether remote workers get laid off more or promoted less?
  • moneywoes 4y ago
    Anecdotally saw posts on blind indicating yes
    • hosteur 4y ago
      Blind?
      • adamors 4y ago
        Yes https://www.teamblind.com https://www.teamblind.com
• isaacfrond 4y ago
  dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34994266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34994266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35011425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35011425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35019383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35019383
• entropyneur 4y ago
  My problem is not with offices. My problem is with living near one (let alone dedicating a whole percentage of your life to commute).
• ll_mama 4y ago
  So let them? What's the deal, why can't we have a society where people who want to work from home, do so while those who want to work remotely do so as well? I do know that I am deciding for myself (100% remote).
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    Because if companies decide that in office is more productive or more reliable, remote options will dry up. And the fact most big tech companies are going back to office suggests they have the data to show it is more effective.
    • re-thc 4y ago
      Are you sure it's data driven or perception?
      • perryizgr8 4y ago
        Does it matter? The end result is the same. Plenty of big problems in the world are based only on perceptions.
        • Valakas_ 4y ago
          "Because X is done like this, then Y should also be done like this." Cannot see any fault in this argument. And no, the end result is not the same if in reality one is more productive then the other.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > And the fact most big tech companies are going back to office suggests they have the data to show it is more effective. Could it not also suggest they have significant real estate holdings? Edit: and return to office bas been used as a way to get rid of some people without having to terminate them.
    • ll_mama 4y ago
      Where is the data? If this is true, then this is something companies will have to learn to deal with, and compensate differently for. If I enjoy working from home better, but am 10% less productive, please pay me 10% less. It's still not worth for me to show up to an office.
• otikik 4y ago
  15 years remote worker here. I would be sad to have to get back to the office. I get that some gatherings around a whiteboard are useful. We concentrate those in a once or twice per year gathering.
• t344344 4y ago
  We had this discussion. I wanted the same "luxuries" as at home: - 200 sqf dedicated room with my own toilet, shower and kitchenet - Basic lab equipment: 4 tables, 10 screens, 6 computers... Nothing crazy, under $20k total - Soundproofing, video conferencing equipment, 1Gbps uplink - Compensation for time and expenses I would spend on commute - Window with a nice view It did not go down very well.
  • k4ch0w 4y ago
    You knew it wouldn’t when you asked for that though lol.
  • tristor 4y ago
    > It did not go down very well. And yet, you can have all of that at home without much effort. My setup is significantly less elaborate than yours, and still not something any company seems willing to replicate any more. I don't think either is excessive, obviously my own setup I don't consider excessive since I spent /my own money/ to make it so. It's insanity that any company would expect you to return to the office and accept anything less.
• concinds 4y ago
  Do any of the Big Five stand out in terms of being above-average (or below-average) for WFH? Or are they universally meh? I know there's team-by-team variation, just wondering about overall trends.
  • peanuty1 4y ago
    Apple has been anti-WFH from the beginning, which led to their director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, resigning. Amazon was previously very WFH-friendly but their CEO, Andy Jassy, recently announced RTO. Meta and Google have allowed a high percentage of their employees to WFH. Microsoft has a lot of in-person roles in Redmond.
• zmmmmm 4y ago
  while people will all point out the benefits of working together in the office, when you weigh it against the blindingly obvious downsides: - enormous time lost to commutes - massive lost flexibility - restriction of your workforce to the tiny 20 mile radius of people willing / able to physically travel to your office instead of literally the entire world (or at least, those in your time zone who speak your language) If you put the mild benefits of "chit cat at the water cooler", "separation b/w home and work" etc which mostly only benefits the extroverts it seem utterly bonkers to sacrifice all that. Far better to invest in actually doing remote well - which does take effort and does heavily mitigate many of the things people complain about with WFH.
  • nicbou 4y ago
    I'd rephrase "chit chat at the water cooler" as "not being alone in a room for most of the day". Others are happy to spend time away from their home, which might be unsuitable for productive work. I am quite fine with this arrangement, but it's a bit more charitable to those who aren't.
    • whateveracct 4y ago
      > not being alone in a room for most of the day I think differences in people's personal lives silently drive this conversation. I've worked remote before covid (better part of a decade now). I've never felt alone .. but I'm married. So I spend my remote work time with my wife instead of being apart from her in an office. That drives my love of remote work. But someone without that may frame it as "being alone all day."
• kagaw 4y ago
  While in poorer country, here in the Philippines, we don't have an option to WFH if our company is under PEZA https://business.inquirer.net/378811/hundreds-of-bpos-with-wfh-may-lose-tax-perks-in-2023 https://business.inquirer.net/378811/hundreds-of-bpos-with-w... The government reason to return to office is to boost the economy.
  • silisili 4y ago
    This one I just don't get. Never seen traffic like Manila traffic, it's not like people WFH would even put a dent in it. I guess BongBong doesn't have all the gold he pretended to have after all. Sorry mate.
• whateveracct 4y ago
  My wife and cats and soon to be children are more important than any coworker at a whiteboard ever could be. I'll be scrapping remotely sooner than I take a rich office job. My time is more valuable than your business ever could be.
  • TheGigaChad 4y ago
    [dead]
• levidos 4y ago
  I have the best of both worlds as an introvert - moved to a low COL city as my job is fully remote and rented a 15 m2 private office in a local office building for £230/month, that's 10 minutes away. This way I shield myself from family distractions during work hours. My productivity has never been this high.
  • Tade0 4y ago
    My friend has this exact setup and, interestingly, a very similar price. A five minute stroll is enough for him to get there and he can go back for lunch if he has a need. I'm planning on doing something similar long term.
  • lentil_soup 4y ago
    I did something similar but went to a coworking space. A very nice 10min walk from my house, a bunch of my friends also work there so we have lunch together, in the evenings we sometimes go for a drink, close to my gym so can do gym breaks as well. Life changing!
• asdff 4y ago
  Employers who are forcing their employees back in really are shooting themselves in the foot if these stats are to be believed. Plenty of great applicants will just never consider their positions.
• snird 4y ago
  I worked fully remote even before the pandemic. This is worth at least 4x any salary I would have got anywhere else. So much more free time, no commute, the ability to really live in my community, REAL flexibility. What price tag is there to having more time with your family? I rally thought a lot about the 4x figure. That's the minimum required for me to even consider the hell of an office work again.
• mattbgates 4y ago
  I refuse to ever go back into an office again with my current job. A new job may convince me, but to be honest, I work better when I'm working from home. I'll just say that when you pay for a mortgage, and then you go somewhere for 8 or 9 hours a day, you're wasting your money. When you work from home, you're getting to experience the mortgage you're paying for and every dollar you spend matters. It changes your perspective. With my current job, despite being moved across the country in 2014 to work in an office and then being told to stay at home indefinitely once COVID-19 hit, I had experienced 4 bosses trying to fire me once I got into an office. I had to attend unnecessary meetings in person that made no sense. I had to kiss asses and say hi to people that I really didn't want to see or know in person. It'd take a lot to convince me that I should go to an office to do a job I can perfectly do at home. I remember when I was first moved across the country.. and I asked, "Am I safe for at least 6 months to a year?" And the boss who required the move said, "We cannot guarantee that." Not more than 3 months in and I had four different bosses scrutinizing me for everything from the way I wrote code, to the way I dressed to the way I was sitting... and it just sucked. I even had a boss that almost fired me for putting Lorem Ipsum in the content before it was sent to the client. #truestory read all about it: https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/lorem-ipsum-almost-got-fired/ https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/lorem-ipsum-almost-g... So I'm done with that life.. hopefully indefinitely.
  • precompute 4y ago
    > https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/lorem-ipsum-almost-got-fired/ https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/lorem-ipsum-almost-g... Wow, it sounds like your bosses were really stupid.
    • aaomidi 4y ago
      This is what happens when MBAs become managers.
  • throwwwaway69 4y ago
    Re: Lorem Your project manager sounds dumb, but Lorem Ipsum is a bad idea for development in general. It just confuses people, including clients, as you saw and wrote. Apps in staging should be seeded with real-looking information and text, and there are plenty of seeding libraries out there that do this. If you need to generate paragraphs of text, there is non-lorem text seeders that create real English paragraphs.
• seydor 4y ago
  I wonder whether people demand Async work and whether it is a trend
  • booleandilemma 4y ago
    Just await for it.
    • seydor 4y ago
      As promised
• t43562 4y ago
  My company cannot afford to demand that we are in-office. We aren't super-rich and cannot afford planet-busting salaries. So to get people we have to cast a wide net. We get people in other cities. Part of our team is in India anyhow. Overall it just doesn't make sense to have millions of people moving around twice a day who don't need to and this will take over. COVID made it much clearer but it's obvious anyhow.
• SCdF 4y ago
  I have managed to mangle my wrists so much over the years that I now almost exclusively use my computer with voice and an eye tracker. I will never work in an office again, unless the company I work for wants to pay for me to have a private office with a door that closes, and pay to duplicate my home set up (~£1000+). Even then: - it just seems moronic for me to spend my own free time on commuting. So I would also want my company to pay for that, both in transport fees and in my time. - it's very inconvenient to have to bring a packaged lunch to work, or wasteful to buy one every day. - I can control my own temperature, my own noise levels, and take breaks when I feel my performance lagging, not when it's socially appropriate to do so I think it's totally fine to come to an office occasionally to collaborate or celebrate, but doing it every day or even once a week is valueless
  • brynjar 4y ago
    RSI? Would like to hear more about your home set-up
    • SCdF 4y ago
      Yep. So I've been working for about fifteen years, had it from the start, but it just keep on getting worse. So now have migrated to a no keyboard solution, and am working on a no mouse solution. My setup, software: - talon (https://talonvoice.com/ https://talonvoice.com/), basing my configuration on the standard repo (https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/ https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/), with some minor modifications. This is how I navigate my whole computer, and runs the voice recognition and eye tracking. This is how I'm typing this right now. There are also a bunch of other little system changes that you need to make (eg, on macOS, disable double space to type a period), which is documented by the community with varying levels of success. - cursorless (https://www.cursorless.org/ https://www.cursorless.org/), and then vscode. Before this I used Sublime Text for years and years, but cursorless is too good for coding. I know there are some projects on going to port it to different editors, but I haven't massively looked into it. - vimium extension for web browsing (works in both chrome and firefox). This makes things like clicking links easier with your voice, without having too use an eye tracker all the time. And then hardware: - DPA 4488 microphone -> DAD6001 microdot-XLR converter -> Shure X2U USB XLR interface. ~£800. It's a very expensive microphone, but it's what the developer of talon uses (same brand anyway), and since I'm using this for work I want to remove every obstacle to having my voice recognised correctly and quickly - Tobii Eye Tracker 5. ~£250. This is basically the only game in town. It works well enough but needs a lot of light. It also needs to be physically mounted to a monitor. In theory this means I don't need to use a mouse, but because I have a 34" ultrawide it doesn't work well on the edges, so I have a specific window size and location configured (say "layout mouse") which I could move apps into if I need to. - At some point soon I want to replace the X2U with something higher quality and more permanent on my desk. Soon!
• PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Should we call it a "walk out" on middle management already?
• Neil44 4y ago
  Clarification, 40% of software engineers say they will only work remotely and will quit if forced.
• forinti 4y ago
  I spent the pandemic working all kinds of hours, and now management wants people back in the office. It does feel like my effort is not valued, but an ex colleague once said something really interesting: if you are sacrificing yourself to compensate for your company's shortcomings, they will never get fixed. So if something has to be deployed to production, it now has to be done during normal working hours. I'm not going to commute and still have to turn on the computer when I get home.
  • MaxMatti 4y ago
    Why would you take your work laptop home if you're not allowed to work from home?
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    > It does feel like my effort is not valued You are an employee. You are as valued as a package of staples.
  • patrickmay 4y ago
    > if you are sacrificing yourself to compensate for your company's shortcomings, they will never get fixed. My current director phrases that as "Externalize your pain."
• Beltiras 4y ago
  Moved to Tenerife for the ez climate. Never going back.
• DigitalSea 4y ago
  I am in that 40%. During the pandemic when things moved to remote, I sold my suburban home and moved to a regional area. Truth be told, I was already working remotely anyway. I did occasionally go into the office, but everyone found that remote work worked so well, they just decided to give people the option. It's not super regional, but where I am there is no sewerage, so I have a waste treatment plant (a fancy septic tank) and my kids have a yard, everyone is happy. I still have a 1gbps internet connect that is very reliable, phone reception can be spotty, but we love it. Remote work is not only a way of life now for me, but my household. Our family moved to a new area and while it was a big adjustment for us, everyone is so happy. When we were living in our shoebox of a house, it was nice to be close to the beach and brand name stores, but everyone seems less wound up. The traffic isn't bad, it takes 15 minutes to drive to the town centre which has a reasonable sized shopping centre and nice restaurants. Public transport isn't great, but there is transport. The best thing of all about working 100% remote is the flexibility. Some days I need to do the school drop off and pick up, I just let my employer know and it's not an issue. Sometimes I'll start earlier to compensate or work through lunch. I never miss packages anymore (I don't miss going to the post office to pick up packages). The postal service doesn't leave everything at your doorstep anymore like they did during the pandemic. If you need to sign, someone has to be home or they're taking it to the post office. I get to eat lunch with my wife, do some chores around the house. Sometimes I will get away from the computer and go out and push the mower to cut the lawn. If I were to quantify how much we have saved in child care costs, it would be immeasurable. One child costs us $70 per day for childcare. There have been days when my kids have been sick and I was working from home, so I could help out, but also work on my laptop (even if it's beside them). When I finish work, I can go outside and kick a ball with my son. Remote work has been tremendous from a family bonding perspective. If I were working in an office, my kids would only see me on the weekends as I wouldn't get home until it's their bedtime and I would be leaving as they were waking up. The one thing people need to respect is not everyone wants or can work from home. And I think people on both sides of the fence should have the choice. Obviously, if you're applying at a company that only works remotely, then you waive the right to complain. But, if the company offers both, nobody should be forced one way or the other. Flexibility is now a perk.
• xyzelement 4y ago
  It's seldom a single variable decision. What percentage would say "remote only" if it paid 80% less? 50% less? 20% less? Etc. Some would take it but most would not.
  • coffeebeqn 4y ago
    It also depends where you live. I moved to the Midwest and while finding Bay Area salaries remote is difficult, finding remote jobs that pay +30% more than any jobs in this city is easy
• okayworkplace1 4y ago
  My workplace requires us to come in a few days a week. I don't like it, but I don't dislike it enough to quit. I don't get value out of being in the office. I'm an introvert. I come in, dump my laptop on the table in the dull open space office, put my noise cancelling headphones on, then do the same exact thing I do at home. I do the watercooler banter on Slack. My coworkers are fine with remote work. My manager outright admits that he would have let the team stay remote if he wasn't getting prodded by HR, who are of course enforcing corporate's diktat. And that brings us to the problem. Corporate. Corporate wants everyone back in the office and they're insane about it. Every unoccupied screen now has some lines about how cool being back in the office is. Every company-wide meeting has a 10 minute speech about how we should finally get back together and collaborate. There is total disregard for people's actual circumstances. They keep telling us this policy is for our own good, that we can work better this way, but a FAQ document had a question on it about those who collaborate with people in other regions and even with all the HR-speak flowery words the answer basically was: we don't care, deal with it and come to the office. An executive at a corporate-wide meeting outright BRAGGED about being sick with COVID and lying about it so he could attend a company function in person at the height of the pandemic. The obsession is genuinely uncomfortable at this point.
• ZiiS 4y ago
  It is called an "Office" if you want to provide one I am happy to talk. If you want me to work in a noisy communal room I am happy to walk.
  • davemp 4y ago
    I feel like this is the real disconnect. I wonder how much of the current situation can be attributed to malfeasance in commercial architecture. A huge amount of office layouts are simply inhumane. Take this floor plan [0] I found by searching for "commercial space with private office floor plans" for example. There are cubes with workers' backs positioned literally 3ft from a door to an occupied room. When I position a desk in spaces I control, I point my back away from doors, windows, and walkways. Literally every cubicle or open office floor plan I've seen in practice seems to explicitly do the opposite. What fluffy things architects or executives have to say about collaboration is irrelevant imo, you are indisputably more physically vulnerable in positions with your back exposed. Some part of me is always trying to be aware of what's happening behind me and it kills my focus. I don't actually fear violence in such situations it's just a reflex. [0]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/ff/e7/d8ffe768ab6de0db4d7604a256a9a106.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/ff/e7/d8ffe768ab6de0db4d76...
  • lotsoweiners 4y ago
    Agreed. I mostly work from home but on occasion if I go in (for some forces reason) i do absolutely no work. I chit chat, go on long walks, chit chat more, go on a long lunch, look at the internet a little and then leave early enough so that i am still home at the time I normally home when I WFH. Your tax dollars hard at work.
    • jewayne 4y ago
      In my experience chit chatting lays the groundwork for extemporaneous collaboration, the kind that turns a week of work into an hour of work, because you happened to remember that one guy said he did something like this at a previous job.
• Tycho 4y ago
  I suppose it’s a good anti-competitive group strategy. Without the hassle of setting up a guild, the experienced developers can prevent new developers from gaining the skills/experience/tutelage necessary to compete with them for jobs.
• taude 4y ago
  I'm curious if other's have been experiencing this. I'm at my second job now where there's a big push to off-shore to India. If you can be remote, to an exec, they might not see it too differently between you and offshore, except for how much better the bottom line is. We're even hiring roles that I thought I'd never see moved over there, too, like Product Managers. I bet we'll see this trend increase. Since this is my second go at offshoring everything. Compared to 2015, it's not nearly as cheap to go get offshore talent. It used to be about 1/6th the cost, now it's about 1/2.... I'm curious about other's experience with this. I took current job because we were a very tech-driven, high performing, highly-skilled company, and I never thought we'd move engineering jobs overseas to improve the bottom line.
  • DogLover_ 4y ago
    Same here. What I found curious though is that the push is coming from the investors and not from the company itself.
    • taude 4y ago
      I believe my situation is investor driven, too.
  • tristor 4y ago
    I've seen this too, and I've also seen the results. I'm highly confident that this trend will cause those companies that adopt it to suffer and that it won't negatively impact the job market in the West. The reality is that there aren't enough people competent in tech roles in the entire world to serve the global need for people with those skillsets, and I encourage my employer to hire remote, from anywhere in the world, and pay a Western salary, to get the best talent possible to do the job. This is a different tactic than "offshoring", which is usually driven by bean counters without any regard to strategic alignment, work quality, or how it impacts customers and the long-term trajectory of the company/brand. There are enough companies and teams in tech like mine that hire people wherever they are that are competent, that companies focused on "offshoring" get people at a lower cost, but also at a significantly lower competency. That ratio used to be roughly equal, but as you pointed out the cost is roughly 1/2, however the competency is still around 1/6th.
• mikkelam 4y ago
  european single male pov: 1. I like my 30 minute bike ride to work 2. I like the social interaction, laughing, chatting and atmosphere of my office 3. I am less productive, but I'm not a machine. I (should) care about my well being more 4. I still work from home once in a while. Flexibility is key But, everyone is different. I totally understand many people have a lot more reasons than me to work remotely
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    [dead]
  • kilovoltaire 4y ago
    Yeah this conversation feels very car-centric (understandably so, since much of the world and especially the US is currently overrun with cars, but still sad)
  • Valakas_ 4y ago
    You claim to like it. Let's see: If you were paid regardless of going to work or working or not, would you still keep going there and doing your job?
    • mikkelam 4y ago
      I would not, no. I fail to see how that matters though. I would definitely leave this company if I was forced into a remote setting. I would go find another job. I would also take pay cut for keeping an office.
• lucidguppy 4y ago
  I could be convinced to commute to a satellite office that's not affected by rush hour traffic. There's a lot of real estate available in the burbs. These don't really exist though, and their expense far outweighs their benefits. The problem is that companies expect employees to be mobile when they are not. It's called putting down roots for a reason. Pulling kids out of school, buying a new house is very disruptive. ... or I can hook up my cable modem and work anywhere in the country... Corporate elites cannot have their cake and eat it too. Choose one: 1) Make housing affordable, and schooling more effective. Streamline the moving process through law and process improvements. Make transportation systems work better. Improve 2nd and 3rd tier cities social and political life. 2) Let people work from home. Suffer a 10-15% degredation in communications. 3) Have the entire industry force people to come to the office - have miserable workers. For me option 2 seems to be what will happen - you'll get a control loop where companies will hemorrhage their best workers if they force back to office.
  • lumost 4y ago
    Barring a change in city costs. Engineers expected to commute into the office will demand progressively higher rates. I’m not working for a billion+ profit firm for less than it costs to live in my area.
  • mikeweiss 4y ago
    Leaving family, friends, community and the place you know is higher on my list of disruptive than selling a house.
    • mistrial9 4y ago
      "A lot of the lay-offs were senior technical staff like C++ senior engineers; seems more like a realignment to shift those jobs to cheaper subsidiaries like India, Pakistan, Mexico"
      • ibejoeb 4y ago
        What's the source of that quote? The article says exactly the opposite and makes no mention of offshoring.
• diceduckmonk 4y ago
  What percentage of managers will only work in person?
• nfriedly 4y ago
  I've been in this category for 10+ years now. It's not that I'm against offices - I actually rented a private one for a few years after my daughter was born. I biked in most days, it was great. And I'm happy to visit my employer's office a few times a year. More often if it's in reasonable walking or bicycling distance. I just don't want to move or have a daily car commute. My wife and I spent a year in the Bay Area before moving back to the Midwest, and it was good for what it was, but we're much happier here.
• bradleyjg 4y ago
  I think the debate here has grown pretty stale. There’s a lot of arguing about what’s right or wrong, when this isn’t really about right or wrong. There’s a factual question here about whether remote first companies are more, less, or equally competitive with office first companies. Anecdotes aren’t going to answer that question. Logical arguments aren’t going to answer that question. Passionate rants about pointy haired bosses aren’t going to answer that question. We just going to need to wait and see the natural experiment play out. Meanwhile, if you are an employer make the best call you can with insufficient data. That’s why you get so much upside. If you’re an employee take the role that’s best for you and your family.
  • okamiueru 4y ago
    Anecdotal evidence does suggest this to be determined on a combination of the individual, and the task. If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? In my own case, if we say an ideal productivity output per day is 1 unit, that is 100% productive. Commuting to the office, office distractions, and general tiredness, I would put the hard limit at 50%. I've measured it, and the duration I'm very productive tends to be at best, half the working hours. Usually, it's much less. Any meeting that could be handled in slack, design documents w/feedback do not count (this is almost all meetings). The many "could you..", "do you know...", etc, all take up a good chunk, even though the requests are only 5 minutes worth of work. While working from home, suddenly the deep focus you had 2 hours in, stretches on for 6 hours, or even 10. Or around 2-300% productive. To what extent there is a tradeoff in office culture, and colloquial banter, that has its own value, I'm not sure. But, for people who value getting shit done, the office, and commuting, sure adds a lot of negative value in the mix. And, you might think that this just applies to "hands-dirty" (as much as they get dirty while typing on a keyboard :p) engineering work. Though I would argue it applies equally to secondary work planning, task breakdown, and strategic planning.
    • Hermitian909 4y ago
      > If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? This is only obviously true for rote work. For more ambiguous knowledge work increasing task completion rate may make the company less competitive if the tasks are less aligned with the company strategy (ever seen a product became a tangled mess of half-broken features?). If you're mathemtically inclined, it's useful to model tasks as vectors adding to the company's vector of progress; the net result can be a reduction in progress if the task vector and company vector are misaligned. Anecdotally, this misalignment is the what everyone at the middle management layer and above is worried about. You get to the end of the quarter and you realize that the work team A did was misaligned with the work from team B and now their shared business goal is shot. Many people's reaction to this line of thinking is "well that's management's fault" but, as the parent correctly calls out, that's beside the point. "Just hire more competent managers" is not something you can do en masse.
• tristor 4y ago
  I have been permanently remote for nearly a decade now. I never intend to go back into the office, and this is despite regularly traveling to meet with coworkers/customers and realizing that there is a high degree of value to face-to-face communication and camaraderie building. For me it comes down to three simple things: 1. Commute 2. Control of my Surroundings 3. Time Management (and as a centerpoint, Food) To expand on these three points, my biggest challenge is that if I were to take on going back to the office in my current or a future role, I'd be putting myself into a situation where I would be expected to be physically present at exactly the same time every day in an environment which I have no control over and which is not structured to suit my style of working or being, and to do so I would need to restructure how I manage my time and especially how I eat (I follow a strict diet and process) in order to adapt to the expectations and allowances of management and coworkers. If CEOs want workers back in the office, here's a handful of things they can do that would make this much much more tenable, all of which also generally improve society and reduce operational costs for the company: 1. Move your offices away from city centers and towards the places people actually live, and advocate for those municipalities to provide (good, reasonable, high speed) transit interconnection. Teams should be colocated with one another, but to make this possible you need to entice people to the office by making it not a horrible, stressy process to get there and an enjoyable experience once you are there. A maximum 30 minute commute by transit or car, maximum 1 hour by e-bicycle for the average person assigned to that office. Any more than this, and nobody will deal with that. Let me put this into simple business-speak, your best employee's BATNA to RTO is simply quitting and going to work for your competitors remotely, don't be stupid. 2. Provide knowledge workers with assigned offices that have closable doors. If you want to make it by seniority, that's probably reasonable, but it's absolutely insane to expect a staff engineer or senior level PM that are doing strategy, architecture, and planning work that have outsized business impact (and the salaries to match) to share a hotel desk with 3 other people in an open floorplan office where they are /constantly/ interrupted by noise, movement, and other distractions. 3. Constrain meeting schedules to a 5-6 hour block of time centered on the work-day, make it a company rule to avoid meetings on Fridays and to outright ban meetings that are first-thing in the morning or at the very end of the day. Preferably eliminate as many meetings as possible for ICs, but if you're going to make people attend a meeting, it shouldn't fuck up their morning routine by effectively disallowing the flexibility of 10-15 minutes in their morning or at the end of their day. I know for me, I would quit with no notice before I skip my breakfast ahead of work, there's absolutely no excuse for management to demand someone be physically present first thing in the morning down to the minute for office work. While working remotely none of these things are a concern, I commute 1 minute from my bedroom to my home office, which is in a separate room specifically structured for my preferred working environment, and I can eat while I'm working which means I've never had to skip any of the meal times in my diet in order to meet some arbitrary and unnecessary time expectation. When I do travel to the office, I get less "work" that doesn't involve meeting people face to face done, although I'm usually the first or second person to arrive at the office so have at least some quiet time (and despite my comments above, I am basically never late, I just don't like the anxiety that comes with the expectations), this difference in productivity is pretty much entirely down to surroundings. Open Floor Plan offices are a mistake, and companies don't seem to care and just double-down on it.
• jvanderbot 4y ago
  My "office" is a warehouse in some little town outside Denver. It's 20 minutes from anywhere, and an hour from where you would buy a house. It has a sparse smattering of desks populated with single monitors and those lowest tier dell mice and keyboards. All the desks are in one room. There's a bathroom. The kitchen is always in some state of dirty and nobody ever makes coffee. Yeah I'm good in my home, thanks.
• nmca 4y ago
  My take here is that remote first is great for a new company where you can build and hire with the specific knowledge that everything will be remote. But porting everything to remote, some folks will not cope at all.
• 3836293648 4y ago
  I'd like to see how the numbers differ in well designed cities, like those in the Netherlands, compare to these presumably American numbers where everything is a car dependent hellscape
  • kilovoltaire 4y ago
    Exactly, almost everyone mentions awful commutes, but if you have a short walk or bikeride through a beautiful city to start and end your work day, then I think it's pretty great. (Even then I like flexibility to only go in ~3 days a week.)
• mabbo 4y ago
  Everyone has a price, but I think the pandemic taught us that there are things we value more than just money. I have a 1 year old. I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with her every day. When I'm done work, instead of commuting for 40-75 minutes, I immediately get a big hug from her. She'll go to daycare in a few months when my wife goes back to work- but I'll get to walk her there every morning. If I had to pick between a 30% pay cut to stay this way, or to stay at the same salary and commute every day, I'd take the pay cut. It wouldn't be a hard decision at all. Now, if you started offering to double or triple my salary but it's in-office, there would be some hard decisions to make. But nobody is. They want to pay the same money, but with the commute- and I will continue to politely decline.
  • UncleMeat 4y ago
    This is me. I actually prefer working in an office if everything is equal. But it isn't. Remote work means I can support and be with my family in ways that are completely impossible in person. If my employer came to me tomorrow and told me they were cutting my pay by 50% for working remotely I'd look for alternative remote jobs, but I wouldn't move back to where the office is.
• jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 4y ago
  The average company wouldn't even give you a room with a door that closes.
• mgaunard 4y ago
  Working from home is a sham. It doesn't work. It's just a way to enable lazy people to keep on coasting. If you're dedicated to the job and want to be a team player, go to the office.
  • sirwhinesalot 4y ago
    I am not dedicated to the job beyond doing what is asked for me to the best of my ability and my team is distributed all over the world (in fact, 0 are in my office). I exchange my time, skills and knowledge for money. If the company wants that time to be spent sitting on a chair at a particular location, they need to pay me more than one that does not. I feel sorry for people like you who make their job their life. The company has no dedication to you.
    • mgaunard 4y ago
      having no drive to push beyond what's asked of you means you're not fit to have a strategic role.
  • rychco 4y ago
    In what way does it not work, when perhaps my position only requires that I attend virtual meetings, push code to a remote repository/depot, & edit online documents? What does my presence in the office, offer in value to the business? What does my presence in the office, offer in value to ME?
    • mgaunard 4y ago
      Your position requires that you dedicate your time to improving or promoting the company's products. Virtual meetings and collaboration platforms are but tools to achieve that. An event better tool is working next to your colleagues to enable more synergy between the various initiatives people are working on organically. As someone dedicated to your company's mission, you should want to use the best tool for the job.
  • roarcher 4y ago
    I've been doing this "sham" for 3 years, but somehow my work is still getting done. Weird. The fact that you can't believe anyone would have the discipline to do their job without someone looking over their shoulder says far more about you than about remote workers.
• jcutrell 4y ago
  A huge swath of midrange companies will have a major competitive advantage, in my opinion, because they choose to opt-in to remote. There might be one or two companies in the world I’d choose to move to work at. Even then, it’s a hard choice to make. As long as remote is an option, that’s where I will work, even if I prefer another job on all other dimensions.
• irrational 4y ago
  40% seems way low. I know a lot of software engineers and only one of them wants to work in an office.
• ibejoeb 4y ago
  > AI experts see diversity in hiring as important to addressing AI bias. The implication here is absurd, irrelevant to the topic, and essentially means that the endeavor is massive failure.
• m3kw9 4y ago
  Commute is a huge factor for remote workers. Most rural ppl travelling to downtown has to endure either rush hour traffic or crowded subways plus avg an hour each way.
  • rychco 4y ago
    Agree, the commute is 90% of the reason I'd like to stay remote. I think I'd prefer an office in some cases, but wasting an additional 1-2 hours is unreasonable. Here's an idea, I'd be willing to return to office if my workday was 6 hours - with no change in pay - to make up for the time I'm wasting in traffic.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  I think the office as a concept will need to change, and is going to change. We already started changing it for the worse decades ago with open spaces, non-permanent workplaces and so on. The thing we fear losing out on is the social aspect where you learn to understand people by meeting them more and observing them work. You see when they are happy and or stressed, even when you don't have a face-to-face call. You can have unplanned conversations. I have been remote for 10 years but I do understand the value in this. The idea of going to an office against your will to sit there quietly and work (or even do video calls), is obviously going away companies aren't going to afford making people do that, because of all things you can do with an edge in compensation, that feels like the worst investment. We need more models for teams than just "office", "remote" or "hybrid". We need "commute hybrid" where everyone can come in regularly say once a week, and "travel hybrid" where people can show up for say one week per quarter or similar. The problem as I see it is choosing one of these models, and making it work for a team or company. What do you do if you have a team that is "commute hybrid" while some are "travel hybrid" or fully remote? (I'm in that situation myself now and it's not without friction).
• RajT88 4y ago
  I've worked remotely for years now (still less than 10). It's OK. It took a while to get used to. I am not a full-time SWE, so it's better when I am coding on things. The quiet and lack of distraction is important. Even then, I turn on some music and put on headphones. What was very useful to me when I was working in an office was the hallway conversations, and making all the random connections. You would find opportunities to learn and get involved with things, and expand your sphere of influence. There's pros and cons. I'm not sure leadership understands the utility of quiet and isolation for coders. As well, there's the concern about "How do we know they're working" - which is a very old school way of thinking. That old school way of thinking also goes like, "We pay you to be here 8 hours a day, so you better be here and not screwing around". But that's not really what you're being paid for in a SWE position. If you aren't meeting your KPI's (hitting deadlines, pushing good code, spreading knowledge, etc.) you'll get fired. Because you're getting paid to perform well, not just sit there working - you're paid to work well. So - if you hire people who can hit every KPI and work 20 hours a week, who cares? You're not paying someone hourly anyways. You're paying a salaried worker.
• eat 4y ago
  What continues to amuse me is that this is still being framed as an ongoing debate. It's really not a debate; this is outdated leadership fighting against social and technological progress, while demanding that their employees give up the personal freedom they've enjoyed for the past few years. Unless you're one of a handful of massive, highly desirable tech employers, it's probably time to adapt. If you're a city relying on a massive pool of office workers doing a thing workers don't need to do anymore, it's probably time to adapt as well.
• nabbe23 4y ago
  A lot of people here voicing displeasure for in office work - so I'll add a counter point: I really miss the in person communication and relationship building of office work. I would love to be back in office 3 or 4 days a week, but have a medical condition (DVT) that basically requires me to be up and moving constantly or keep my leg elevated. Have a custom set up at home that allows me to recline at my desk for most of the day with a standing desk, keyboard tray and down tilted monitor on an arm. Could only imagine trying to get this sort of setup in an office (although - if I asked, I'm sure they'd oblige, but would just be an awkward set up since the office is now optional in a "hot desk" sort of fashion).
• pmarreck 4y ago
  That's fine, I cannot work remotely 100% of the time, so more power to me?
• noncoml 4y ago
  If anyone keeping track, for me flexibility is the key. Work for home when I need to be home or when I have work to do that needs me to be focused. Go in office the less busy day to socialize.
• exabrial 4y ago
  More money for me, I don’t mind the office.
• exabrial 4y ago
  40% of American SEs need to realize there are people in India and China that will do the same job for 1/6 the wage. If a company is going through the hassle and problems with remote workers, they might as well do it on the cheap. It’s not the same as it was 15 years ago. My interactions in general have encountered well educated individuals familiar with American culture.
  • potamic 4y ago
    That kind of protectionist thinking isn't sustainable in the long run.
• mgarfias 4y ago
  I don’t mind going in. I mind the long ass commute (I like to live rural), but I do mind going into an office just to… telecommute with the rest of the team