4 ms·

I attended a HR conference a few months ago with several Fortune 500 company heads of people, etc. Most of the sentiment in the room was that WFH flexibility is

by Zaheer 3y ago

I attended a HR conference a few months ago with several Fortune 500 company heads of people, etc. Most of the sentiment in the room was that WFH flexibility is valuable but so is collaborative time in office. Some more 'forward-thinking' leaders were all in on remote though it was clear this was the minority. The leaders talked a lot about pressures from other execs on wanting to go back in-office even though they knew most employees wanted more flexibility. I think most companies will go back to 3 days a week in office and 2 days remote. Remote companies will continue to hold an advantage on attracting talent. We've recently improved our remote filter on Levels.fyi Jobs - give it a try and lmk your feedback as well: https://www.levels.fyi/jobs?workArrangements=remote https://www.levels.fyi/jobs?workArrangements=remote

_tdd2 3y ago
I think it's relatively well known that heads of people/whatever fancy name HR peeps come up with for themselves are generally sociopathic scumbags, so it's not surprising to me that this was the case.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  There is just no way any of this is based on actual data.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Actually we have lots of data on sociopath and narcissistic tendencies in management. Management consistently scores higher in these negative personality traits.
- Zaheer 3y ago
  Have you met any of these people? They're quite normal people like you and I. They've climbed the ranks in some cases by spending 20+ years at the same company. The discussions I attended were HR leaders in attendance only aside from myself. I was just popping into breakout rooms and observing. I left with the impression that the HR leaders are genuinely interested in improving the workplace experience. A central topic for instance was "How can I convince my CEO / board that we should allow hybrid / fully remote?". If they were sociopathic scumbags I would instead expect "How can we force employees to come back to the office" discussions.
  - notac 3y ago
    I misread your original comment. I rescind my previous statement. Apologies for commenting on the internet while tired :-P
regularfry 3y ago
I would strongly suspect a division between hierarchical and egalitarian mindsets on this, and would be fascinated if there's any research on it. My gut suspicion would be that a hierarchical mindset would value exerting control over the outcomes of that control, and that an egalitarian mindset would value giving autonomy over the costs of that autonomy. In fact, I think that's likely to be such a strong influence that haggling over the value of "collaborative time in office" is going to be a fig-leaf over the underlying drivers. Not a small part of that is because when you look at the argument it just falls apart: you can tell me to be in a room with someone else; you can't dictate that the result of that proximity is going to be any sort of useful collaboration. Whereas if I have the flexibility to choose to be in that room when it is useful to both of us and we have something defined to get done, the outcome of that collaboration is far more likely to be positive. If the argument was about discovery rather than collaboration I'd have far more sympathy, but "we need to force our employees into physical proximity so they'll work together" - which, when you unpack it, is all that is being said - is a more revealing position than the pro-office-mandate crowd might want to lead with.

by Zaheer 3y ago

_tdd2 3y ago

I think it's relatively well known that heads of people/whatever fancy name HR peeps come up with for themselves are generally sociopathic scumbags, so it's not surprising to me that this was the case.

barbazoo 3y ago
There is just no way any of this is based on actual data.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Actually we have lots of data on sociopath and narcissistic tendencies in management. Management consistently scores higher in these negative personality traits.
Zaheer 3y ago
Have you met any of these people? They're quite normal people like you and I. They've climbed the ranks in some cases by spending 20+ years at the same company. The discussions I attended were HR leaders in attendance only aside from myself. I was just popping into breakout rooms and observing. I left with the impression that the HR leaders are genuinely interested in improving the workplace experience. A central topic for instance was "How can I convince my CEO / board that we should allow hybrid / fully remote?". If they were sociopathic scumbags I would instead expect "How can we force employees to come back to the office" discussions.
- notac 3y ago
  I misread your original comment. I rescind my previous statement. Apologies for commenting on the internet while tired :-P

regularfry 3y ago

I would strongly suspect a division between hierarchical and egalitarian mindsets on this, and would be fascinated if there's any research on it. My gut suspicion would be that a hierarchical mindset would value exerting control over the outcomes of that control, and that an egalitarian mindset would value giving autonomy over the costs of that autonomy. In fact, I think that's likely to be such a strong influence that haggling over the value of "collaborative time in office" is going to be a fig-leaf over the underlying drivers. Not a small part of that is because when you look at the argument it just falls apart: you can tell me to be in a room with someone else; you can't dictate that the result of that proximity is going to be any sort of useful collaboration. Whereas if I have the flexibility to choose to be in that room when it is useful to both of us and we have something defined to get done, the outcome of that collaboration is far more likely to be positive. If the argument was about discovery rather than collaboration I'd have far more sympathy, but "we need to force our employees into physical proximity so they'll work together" - which, when you unpack it, is all that is being said - is a more revealing position than the pro-office-mandate crowd might want to lead with.