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The consistent response I have gotten from managers is that more or less - people fake work sitting in their homes or work multiple jobs, and we collaborate bet

The consistent response I have gotten from managers is that more or less - people fake work sitting in their homes or work multiple jobs, and we collaborate better when we are sitting in an office. They use this as a force function to pull employees back into the office. I call BS on all of these. Employees faking work - your hiring problem. Employees working multiple jobs - again your problem, keep them occupied with meaningful work, if not bring in legality to protect your IP or whatever. AFAIK no one working multiple jobs are revealing IPs. In person collaboration - There may be some truth to this. High profile decisions are best taken in person, that being said during covid almost all decisions were done on Zoom not just for a week or so but for 2 years. Isn't that proof enough that even government level decisions can be done on Zoom ? Design discussions are best done on Miro/Google docs than on the whiteboard. Multiple people can collaborate efficiently on Miro, especially with an iPad. Not only this, every voice is heard instead of just 2-3 folks standing at a whiteboard and driving discussions. So many tools that make even pair programming or production debugging a breeze. I can pretty much negate every argument that mandates in person office presence. What I really vouch for is in person collaboration events once or twice a month where everyone comes together for a couple of days and hash out key issues and have a totally unstructured time for collaboration. And of course, have an office for those who want to come in to collaborate. Not everyone has a spacious home, people like to hang out with co-workers during lunch etc. However make it mandatory that all group meetings will be done on zoom, in order to provide equal participation opportunity to remote workers. These hybrid meetings with a few people in a room and a few on zoom are a total disaster.

prepend 4y ago
> people fake work sitting in their homes People fake work sitting in offices. If someone is going to fake work in the office, why not let them fake work from home and safe everyone a hassle. Or maybe incentivize real work over fake work. I worked with someone in the office next to mine for a few years and he was running a side business the whole time. It was bizarre how brazen he was, but people are interesting and varied. Remote work isn’t perfect, but it’s not like office work was perfect either. It’s like showing an example of a welfare cheat and saying “we can’t give welfare to help parents because people claim imaginary kids.”
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I keep saying - if they aren't doing the job you'd fire them even if they were in office. If you think they are working two jobs but they are getting their job done you have to ask yourself - are you paying for someone to get the job done (which in this scenario they are) or someone you force to sit in a seat for x amount of time each week?
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Exactly! As a manager if you hire someone to do X, Y, and Z, and he does X, Y, and Z with high quality and up to your expectations in 20 hours, why do you care if he spends his other 20 hours working for Facebook? Assuming performance is good and no confidential information is being shared, the guys second job doesn't hurt you. I think they just don't want to admit the reason: That if they knew the worker was getting their job done in 20 hours, they'd simply raise their expectations to squeeze more out of the worker for the same pay. When a service worker or retail clerk does multiple jobs, it's seen as hard-working and hustling, but when an office worker has multiple jobs it's somehow taboo.
    - 3np 4y ago
      Sure, but "hiring someone to do X, Y, Z" is generally consulting, freelancing, or outsourcing. Employment contracts are typically tied to number of hours (much like service and retail). If you dedicate the 20-40 agreed hours per week to the employer and don't tread on noncompetes or NDA, reasonable managers will have no issues with side-hustles. At any moment in time, your attention can only be working for one employer. That's what you're paid for as an employee. Much like you typically can't wait tables for several restaurants simultaneously. If you want delivery-based contracts you're looking for a different kind of relationship.
cvak 4y ago
> Employees working multiple jobs I got at least 2 colleagues that were working multiple jobs from the office, of course it wasn't 4 hours straight, but committing fixes to their 2nd job/ mini-startup they started was extremely common.
tracker1 4y ago
In terms of not working or splitting to multiple jobs. Then that's a performance issue. If you're getting expected work done, it's not a problem... If you aren't, then you're a problem either way. This is not me condoning the practice, only pointing out that it shouldn't be the crux of the problem. Depending on the job, you won't be on all the time. I have about 2-3 days a week where I'm on and pretty hyper productive and 1-2 where I'm kind of coasting or spending more thinking/learning/reading time. I do find, I prefer office culture to working remotely... it's much more productive and team cohesion is often much, much better. International work is much harder still to coordinate. Right now I'm working on an East coast team, living in AZ... I'm about to have to start getting up yet another hour earlier next week, and so not a morning person. That said, given the market shifts really remind me of around 2001, and I'm holding on where I am for as long as I can and generally like the people I work with. Mandatory office presence cuts both ways, you're less likely to gain top talent and even then, you're going to pay above relative market rates for it if you do. I've seen companies try to pay relative to cost of living for developers in different locations, and to me that just doesn't work either. Splitting the difference between top locations and local relative cost of living seems to be the trend, and I'm frankly happy to see it.

prepend 4y ago

> people fake work sitting in their homes People fake work sitting in offices. If someone is going to fake work in the office, why not let them fake work from home and safe everyone a hassle. Or maybe incentivize real work over fake work. I worked with someone in the office next to mine for a few years and he was running a side business the whole time. It was bizarre how brazen he was, but people are interesting and varied. Remote work isn’t perfect, but it’s not like office work was perfect either. It’s like showing an example of a welfare cheat and saying “we can’t give welfare to help parents because people claim imaginary kids.”

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I keep saying - if they aren't doing the job you'd fire them even if they were in office. If you think they are working two jobs but they are getting their job done you have to ask yourself - are you paying for someone to get the job done (which in this scenario they are) or someone you force to sit in a seat for x amount of time each week?
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Exactly! As a manager if you hire someone to do X, Y, and Z, and he does X, Y, and Z with high quality and up to your expectations in 20 hours, why do you care if he spends his other 20 hours working for Facebook? Assuming performance is good and no confidential information is being shared, the guys second job doesn't hurt you. I think they just don't want to admit the reason: That if they knew the worker was getting their job done in 20 hours, they'd simply raise their expectations to squeeze more out of the worker for the same pay. When a service worker or retail clerk does multiple jobs, it's seen as hard-working and hustling, but when an office worker has multiple jobs it's somehow taboo.
  - 3np 4y ago
    Sure, but "hiring someone to do X, Y, Z" is generally consulting, freelancing, or outsourcing. Employment contracts are typically tied to number of hours (much like service and retail). If you dedicate the 20-40 agreed hours per week to the employer and don't tread on noncompetes or NDA, reasonable managers will have no issues with side-hustles. At any moment in time, your attention can only be working for one employer. That's what you're paid for as an employee. Much like you typically can't wait tables for several restaurants simultaneously. If you want delivery-based contracts you're looking for a different kind of relationship.

cvak 4y ago

> Employees working multiple jobs I got at least 2 colleagues that were working multiple jobs from the office, of course it wasn't 4 hours straight, but committing fixes to their 2nd job/ mini-startup they started was extremely common.

tracker1 4y ago

In terms of not working or splitting to multiple jobs. Then that's a performance issue. If you're getting expected work done, it's not a problem... If you aren't, then you're a problem either way. This is not me condoning the practice, only pointing out that it shouldn't be the crux of the problem. Depending on the job, you won't be on all the time. I have about 2-3 days a week where I'm on and pretty hyper productive and 1-2 where I'm kind of coasting or spending more thinking/learning/reading time. I do find, I prefer office culture to working remotely... it's much more productive and team cohesion is often much, much better. International work is much harder still to coordinate. Right now I'm working on an East coast team, living in AZ... I'm about to have to start getting up yet another hour earlier next week, and so not a morning person. That said, given the market shifts really remind me of around 2001, and I'm holding on where I am for as long as I can and generally like the people I work with. Mandatory office presence cuts both ways, you're less likely to gain top talent and even then, you're going to pay above relative market rates for it if you do. I've seen companies try to pay relative to cost of living for developers in different locations, and to me that just doesn't work either. Splitting the difference between top locations and local relative cost of living seems to be the trend, and I'm frankly happy to see it.