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> The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job. Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They a

> The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job. Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.

slipperlobster 3y ago
I assume the statement was geared towards those who do not prefer working in-office. No need to force RTO for those willing to (or already did) return to the office.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  I know more than a few extremely skilled engineers who'd leave if their team wasn't local, simply because they hate doing everything over virtual meetings.
  - adra 3y ago
    No matter how much I you puff up about the advantages, most workers will choose cutting their commute to zero with the lost costs/ time wasted as a net positive. The calculation on workers remote / local benefits and costs were always there, but they're certainly more heavily scrutinized now. So sure those guys will find the few willing to come to office while the rest just make more staying at home. Enjoy!
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    I, too, know people with odd habits. They are still statiscal oddities.
    - blub 3y ago
      If we’re talking about people with the “odd” habit of working away from home, they represent the great majority of humanity. One has to be several layers deep in the bubble to think otherwise.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago
        The great majority of humanity are forced to work away from home. The system of work and bosses was always a system of coercion, after all. One has to be several layers deep in the bubble to imagine otherwise.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If you have a group that consists of four home office warriors and one office worker (and assume they're all the best of the best) you still either have an office they go to or you don't, and if one person is alone in the office, what is the real point? I think the end is going to mash out, but the real underlying problem that nobody wants to directly address is managers know who they'd be fine with working from home, and those who they are not so fine with (and it could all be entirely legitimate). Since they can't discriminate, they just slam to the lowest common denominator.
  - slipperlobster 3y ago
    > what is the real point? I can't speak for anyone but myself, I can only speculate. Maybe the lone office warrior wants to get away from noisy construction at home, family, etc.? I know we have been WFH since March 2020, and we're _just_ starting to talk about RTO. No one wants to, but the state institution we work for is about to demand it. We have plenty of low performers that may work better (or, with some of them, actually work) being in the office. For our team, that would come at a significant disadvantage for those who _can_ work remote who now have to juggle managing the lower performers. Obviously, it'd be easy to let go of the low performers and replace with more solid people, but being a state employee makes that somewhat difficult (HR, salaries, etc).
nkellenicki 3y ago
They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).
- whateveracct 3y ago
  There are also the people who like to get away from their spouse and/or kids.
- c-fe 3y ago
  I dont think you can generalise this way, its is also dependent on where you are living or what your commute looks like. As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    How is your partner/kids?
    - tivert 3y ago
      > How is your partner/kids? Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        You don't spend time with friends?
        refulgentis 3y ago
tivert 3y ago
> Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site. And who don't work for an employer who, simultaneous with RTO, is working to make in-office work a shit experience. Hot-desking* in an open-office space, while you Zoom with your remote teammates based in a different office? WHO WOULDN'T WANT THAT? * Now euphemized as "hoteling." I actually like working in-office, but FFS, at least give me a cube with some storage, open desktop space, 3 or 4 walls that are taller than I am when sitting (and preferably when standing) that's in the same building with my team.
- ozim 3y ago
  Or at least give these 3 or 4 walls to these guys who are constantly on the phone or video calls.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  > * Now euphemized as "hoteling." Just FYI, I was a consultant for Deloitte in the early 2000's in Boston and they called it that even then, because consultants frequently travel and were out of the office anyway, so the incentive of paying for less under-utilized office space was already there. And, heh, if you didn't reserve a desk in time then you basically got stuck in the hallway on a "floater" terminal with a lot of foot-traffic behind you
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  "Hoteling" is an awesome euphemism. Give me a desk that's depressingly impersonal, wasn't cleaned very well after its previous occupant left, and is always three degrees too cold. (At least there's free breakfast, right?)
  - m-p-3 3y ago
    I'd be happy if we had free coffee..
  - klyrs 3y ago
    You're not supposed to eat the free breakfast, it was supposed to be somebody's lunch but got left out overnight...
jvanderbot 3y ago
I love working on site. I wish my preferred employers would pick up and move to my comfortable suburb near my family and friends. They won't. Why did we ever allow that to become choice and why did we ever create a culture where the "obvious" answer was to move away for decades? I'm glad I left to get world class experience, and I'm glad I'm back to stay. So I expect young people will do what I did and move on site.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site. It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority. And they are a minority indeed [0]. In fact, if the average HN poster was a white male, the RTO crowd would be overrepresented and thus it would explain that, in each one of these debates, there is always a good bunch claiming that in person office work is great. [0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-post-pandemic-offices-could-be-whiter-and-more-male/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-post-pandemic-offic...
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority. YMMV. It seems to me that "zealots" on either spectrum (fully remote or fully office) are vocal minorities. Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days. HN crowd seems to have a lot of vocal proponents of fully-remote work.
  - FullyFunctional 3y ago
    While hybrid works for me, only fully-remote enables you to move far away from the office and, potentially, significantly improve your quality of life. I totally get why people feel so strongly about it. My annecdata is that I feel far more productive (concentrated) at home, but going in 1-2 times a week is very important for incidental communication that can have important consequences. I currently manage a fully remote intern, but we have him come ~ two days every month. So far this seems to work.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days. The numbers given don't seem to back that up. Either way, the hybrid model is also polarizing, as it proves ineffective over time when people go to the office in non overlapping days, effectively turning going to the office into the same experience as working from home, just away from it.
kodah 3y ago
I actually like working in an office sometimes, but if you mandate it to me I'll never show up and eventually quit.
pmarreck 3y ago
I'm one of those who are most certainly more productive in-office (learned the hard way and the soft way via various work experiences). The reasons don't matter, but we are a significant minority. The problem is that you can't have a discriminatory work policy. If for example you make a rule that "if you are considered productive, you can work more days from home; if you are considered to be becoming less productive, then you must come to the office more," then a few things happen, first and foremost being that people who are visibly in the office more are perceived as slackers, which can be a self-fulfilling belief, and the people who are out of the office more are "primadonnas" or "boss bootlickers". All of this creating more tension, as the "productive mostly from-home'ers" are also less likely to get promoted, etc. Basically there are a bunch of knock-on effects from treating employees differently in this capacity. I have a friend who had hard data showing he was more productive when he was WFH and he still ended up having to RTO after covid lockdowns. I'm sure this wasn't a decision made lightly by management. There's always the option of finding a 100% WFH company where they basically don't hire (or end up retaining) anyone with any ADHD =) and where those highly self-disciplined folks can go to thrive. But a large company like Blizzard won't be it. I almost want to apologize to the people who are more productive when 100% WFH for having to comply with RTO policies for the sake of people like me. People like me are grateful for your sacrifice.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  a significant factor in choosing my current role was that it was 100% on-site. Of course, this comes with a significant amount of nice amenities like catered lunch, free beverages/snacks, a gym, etc. It's also close to where I live. I understand people's reasoning for wanting to WFH, and they are valid, but just wanted to voice there is a subset that don't prefer this way (or thrive when WFH, I am like you, I am much less productive at home). At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management. Part of it may be that working on-site is still culturally considered the default, and WFH an exception. This creates an interesting asymmetry: if you're less productive at home than in the office, then obviously you should work from the office; if you're less productive in the office than at home... then you're a bad employee and should be let go.
mellosouls 3y ago
Yeah that line was a bit of a daft generalisation not helping the rest of the argument. Different strokes for different folks, and there are definitely strengths to on site that full time remote can't match (remote has its own strengths), especially team cohesion - or we might as well all be off shore contractors.
felipellrocha 3y ago
Thank you. It feels like nowadays everyone assumes that remote work is a worker's right, when I couldn't think of a worst future for myself.
birdyrooster 3y ago
Yeah I liked the office when I actually had an office but during Covid they got us out of our offices and when we returned put us in cube farms. It sucks ass.
BluePen7 3y ago
I actually kinda liked it. The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work. Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up. When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year. Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years. Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth. tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  > The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work. It's such an amazing own goal that as municipal politicians overly pandered to the nimby attitudes of established wealthy homeowners, and disallowed any and all new housing in desirable near downtown areas, they induced a requirement for massive, shitty commutes, which people are now naturally and smartly abandoning for WFH as soon as they can, thus destroying the economies of said cities' downtowns. All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built. I still often go into the office purely for the enjoyment of a pleasant and healthy 15 minute bike ride into work. I recognize however that most colleagues do not have that privilege of a short commute, and I understand completely why they'd rather stay home.
  - cudgy 3y ago
    > All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built. Perhaps to some extent, but the type of housing in cities is mostly restricted to apartments, which is not satisfying for everyone, especially those that prefer living outside the city.

slipperlobster 3y ago

I assume the statement was geared towards those who do not prefer working in-office. No need to force RTO for those willing to (or already did) return to the office.

UncleMeat 3y ago
I know more than a few extremely skilled engineers who'd leave if their team wasn't local, simply because they hate doing everything over virtual meetings.
- adra 3y ago
  No matter how much I you puff up about the advantages, most workers will choose cutting their commute to zero with the lost costs/ time wasted as a net positive. The calculation on workers remote / local benefits and costs were always there, but they're certainly more heavily scrutinized now. So sure those guys will find the few willing to come to office while the rest just make more staying at home. Enjoy!
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I, too, know people with odd habits. They are still statiscal oddities.
  - blub 3y ago
    If we’re talking about people with the “odd” habit of working away from home, they represent the great majority of humanity. One has to be several layers deep in the bubble to think otherwise.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      The great majority of humanity are forced to work away from home. The system of work and bosses was always a system of coercion, after all. One has to be several layers deep in the bubble to imagine otherwise.
bombcar 3y ago
If you have a group that consists of four home office warriors and one office worker (and assume they're all the best of the best) you still either have an office they go to or you don't, and if one person is alone in the office, what is the real point? I think the end is going to mash out, but the real underlying problem that nobody wants to directly address is managers know who they'd be fine with working from home, and those who they are not so fine with (and it could all be entirely legitimate). Since they can't discriminate, they just slam to the lowest common denominator.
- slipperlobster 3y ago
  > what is the real point? I can't speak for anyone but myself, I can only speculate. Maybe the lone office warrior wants to get away from noisy construction at home, family, etc.? I know we have been WFH since March 2020, and we're _just_ starting to talk about RTO. No one wants to, but the state institution we work for is about to demand it. We have plenty of low performers that may work better (or, with some of them, actually work) being in the office. For our team, that would come at a significant disadvantage for those who _can_ work remote who now have to juggle managing the lower performers. Obviously, it'd be easy to let go of the low performers and replace with more solid people, but being a state employee makes that somewhat difficult (HR, salaries, etc).

nkellenicki 3y ago

They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).

whateveracct 3y ago
There are also the people who like to get away from their spouse and/or kids.
c-fe 3y ago
I dont think you can generalise this way, its is also dependent on where you are living or what your commute looks like. As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  How is your partner/kids?
  - tivert 3y ago
    > How is your partner/kids? Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      You don't spend time with friends?
      - refulgentis 3y ago

tivert 3y ago

> Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site. And who don't work for an employer who, simultaneous with RTO, is working to make in-office work a shit experience. Hot-desking* in an open-office space, while you Zoom with your remote teammates based in a different office? WHO WOULDN'T WANT THAT? * Now euphemized as "hoteling." I actually like working in-office, but FFS, at least give me a cube with some storage, open desktop space, 3 or 4 walls that are taller than I am when sitting (and preferably when standing) that's in the same building with my team.

ozim 3y ago
Or at least give these 3 or 4 walls to these guys who are constantly on the phone or video calls.
pmarreck 3y ago
> * Now euphemized as "hoteling." Just FYI, I was a consultant for Deloitte in the early 2000's in Boston and they called it that even then, because consultants frequently travel and were out of the office anyway, so the incentive of paying for less under-utilized office space was already there. And, heh, if you didn't reserve a desk in time then you basically got stuck in the hallway on a "floater" terminal with a lot of foot-traffic behind you
spondylosaurus 3y ago
"Hoteling" is an awesome euphemism. Give me a desk that's depressingly impersonal, wasn't cleaned very well after its previous occupant left, and is always three degrees too cold. (At least there's free breakfast, right?)
- m-p-3 3y ago
  I'd be happy if we had free coffee..
- klyrs 3y ago
  You're not supposed to eat the free breakfast, it was supposed to be somebody's lunch but got left out overnight...

jvanderbot 3y ago

I love working on site. I wish my preferred employers would pick up and move to my comfortable suburb near my family and friends. They won't. Why did we ever allow that to become choice and why did we ever create a culture where the "obvious" answer was to move away for decades? I'm glad I left to get world class experience, and I'm glad I'm back to stay. So I expect young people will do what I did and move on site.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site. It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority. And they are a minority indeed [0]. In fact, if the average HN poster was a white male, the RTO crowd would be overrepresented and thus it would explain that, in each one of these debates, there is always a good bunch claiming that in person office work is great. [0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-post-pandemic-offices-could-be-whiter-and-more-male/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-post-pandemic-offic...

RestlessMind 3y ago
> It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority. YMMV. It seems to me that "zealots" on either spectrum (fully remote or fully office) are vocal minorities. Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days. HN crowd seems to have a lot of vocal proponents of fully-remote work.
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  While hybrid works for me, only fully-remote enables you to move far away from the office and, potentially, significantly improve your quality of life. I totally get why people feel so strongly about it. My annecdata is that I feel far more productive (concentrated) at home, but going in 1-2 times a week is very important for incidental communication that can have important consequences. I currently manage a fully remote intern, but we have him come ~ two days every month. So far this seems to work.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days. The numbers given don't seem to back that up. Either way, the hybrid model is also polarizing, as it proves ineffective over time when people go to the office in non overlapping days, effectively turning going to the office into the same experience as working from home, just away from it.

kodah 3y ago

I actually like working in an office sometimes, but if you mandate it to me I'll never show up and eventually quit.

pmarreck 3y ago

I'm one of those who are most certainly more productive in-office (learned the hard way and the soft way via various work experiences). The reasons don't matter, but we are a significant minority. The problem is that you can't have a discriminatory work policy. If for example you make a rule that "if you are considered productive, you can work more days from home; if you are considered to be becoming less productive, then you must come to the office more," then a few things happen, first and foremost being that people who are visibly in the office more are perceived as slackers, which can be a self-fulfilling belief, and the people who are out of the office more are "primadonnas" or "boss bootlickers". All of this creating more tension, as the "productive mostly from-home'ers" are also less likely to get promoted, etc. Basically there are a bunch of knock-on effects from treating employees differently in this capacity. I have a friend who had hard data showing he was more productive when he was WFH and he still ended up having to RTO after covid lockdowns. I'm sure this wasn't a decision made lightly by management. There's always the option of finding a 100% WFH company where they basically don't hire (or end up retaining) anyone with any ADHD =) and where those highly self-disciplined folks can go to thrive. But a large company like Blizzard won't be it. I almost want to apologize to the people who are more productive when 100% WFH for having to comply with RTO policies for the sake of people like me. People like me are grateful for your sacrifice.

JohnMakin 3y ago
a significant factor in choosing my current role was that it was 100% on-site. Of course, this comes with a significant amount of nice amenities like catered lunch, free beverages/snacks, a gym, etc. It's also close to where I live. I understand people's reasoning for wanting to WFH, and they are valid, but just wanted to voice there is a subset that don't prefer this way (or thrive when WFH, I am like you, I am much less productive at home). At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management. Part of it may be that working on-site is still culturally considered the default, and WFH an exception. This creates an interesting asymmetry: if you're less productive at home than in the office, then obviously you should work from the office; if you're less productive in the office than at home... then you're a bad employee and should be let go.

mellosouls 3y ago

Yeah that line was a bit of a daft generalisation not helping the rest of the argument. Different strokes for different folks, and there are definitely strengths to on site that full time remote can't match (remote has its own strengths), especially team cohesion - or we might as well all be off shore contractors.

felipellrocha 3y ago

Thank you. It feels like nowadays everyone assumes that remote work is a worker's right, when I couldn't think of a worst future for myself.

birdyrooster 3y ago

Yeah I liked the office when I actually had an office but during Covid they got us out of our offices and when we returned put us in cube farms. It sucks ass.

BluePen7 3y ago

I actually kinda liked it. The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work. Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up. When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year. Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years. Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth. tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.

Tiktaalik 3y ago
> The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work. It's such an amazing own goal that as municipal politicians overly pandered to the nimby attitudes of established wealthy homeowners, and disallowed any and all new housing in desirable near downtown areas, they induced a requirement for massive, shitty commutes, which people are now naturally and smartly abandoning for WFH as soon as they can, thus destroying the economies of said cities' downtowns. All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built. I still often go into the office purely for the enjoyment of a pleasant and healthy 15 minute bike ride into work. I recognize however that most colleagues do not have that privilege of a short commute, and I understand completely why they'd rather stay home.
- cudgy 3y ago
  > All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built. Perhaps to some extent, but the type of housing in cities is mostly restricted to apartments, which is not satisfying for everyone, especially those that prefer living outside the city.