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People are not getting as much done, low performers are harder to manage (hide easier), most importantly people don’t build the same quality relationships they

People are not getting as much done, low performers are harder to manage (hide easier), most importantly people don’t build the same quality relationships they used to. This is uber important at a big tech company where ppl collaborate with more ppl on average. All of these were known benefits of WFO prepandemic, but then WFH was forced, and worked for a bit as people worked off of relationships established in the past. Then wishful thinking set in, and now reality is kicking in. That is not to say that there aren’t people who thrive in WFH (this might be you). But a big company needs a system that works across the variety of ppl and teams it employs. My ideal was and is to form Remote teams, made out of ppl who really are good at WFH. Mixed teams of remote and onsite ppl suck for everyone.

kyrra 3y ago
For sure! Mixing in person and remote seems to me a recipe for inefficiency. I'd say the same to distributed teams (where an immediate team is split across locations). This seems to drastically impact performance of the team.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Except that people being spread around offices and even countries/continents (and traveling) is pretty much the reality at most large companies. Immediate teams may be co-located but the norm for a lot of people is spending a lot of the time on the phone or, now, video calls.
  - kyrra 3y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear. Agree with you here. I'm on a team where my immediate team is is distributed, which I feel is a waste of time for our team to coordinate. A larger team can have the subteams distributed, but immediate teams should be colocated or fully remote.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
> People are not getting as much done, low performers are harder to manage (hide easier), most importantly people don’t build the same quality relationships they used to. None of these problems were ever dealt with in all the WFO settings I was ever in, so this seems like little more than scapegoating WFH for all the sicknesses that afflict large organizations. I’m currently working on a remote team that’s a collaboration across a few different orgs, one of whom is primarily WFO, and we have the highest rate of execution across all our parent organizations. The reality of every place I’ve ever worked is that product and project management are really bad across the board, far worse than your so called low-performers. But the top of the hierarchy rarely disciplines itself when it can just let shit roll down hill, which is why we end up with the fairy tales about how the lack of water-cooler chat is preventing the otherwise guaranteed success.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
This is essentially the same argument that Paul Graham made, which is that WFH worked decently during the pandemic because people were able to "coast" off of previously built pre-pandemic relationships, but as time goes on that the difficulties in building new relationships that are as strong remotely shows up. I get particularly worried about younger employees and new grads. I learned a ton as a new grad being onsite, and I had the benefit that the first company I joined after college had a "bootcamp" training onboarding for new grads - a quarter century later I'm still friends with many of the people from that bootcamp and have gotten many professional jobs through that network. The strife over WFH vs WFO is what I call a standard "all of these are true" problem, meaning that the points people make on different sides are both true - the problem is people want to optimize for different things. E.g. I think all of these are true: 1. People can save a ton of time and money WFH. 2. The additional flexibility from WFH makes it easier for people with outside responsibilities (e.g. child or elder care) to contribute productively in work. 3. Overall productivity, especially for non-rote tasks, goes down measurably when the vast majority of people are remote. The FAANGs appear to have data to back this up. For everyone that says "but I'm more productive!" it's not hard to believe a bunch of other people are taking multi-hour lunch breaks. 4. The overall strength of work relationships goes down when people are remote. Again, not for everyone, but in aggregate. 5. People are spending much more time alone. The article shows the data for this. I think long term this will be particularly bad for society. It's much harder to empathize with people from different groups if you never interact with them, nevermind that loneliness in and of itself is something of an epidemic. 6. WFH makes people less likely to be "career obsessed" in the first place. I think this is the thing a lot of companies are realizing, that if anything the masses are actually getting to see the "wizard behind the curtain". That is, pre-pandemic, loads of tech companies wanted to motivate their employees with grand talk of "changing the world", and it's a lot easier to feel that motivation in a colocated group. Of course, for most companies, you're not actually changing the world, and most importantly, the company doesn't really give a damn if you change the world or not. They just want to make money. So I think WFH leads a lot of people to re-evaluate their priorities into what they want out of life in the first place, and this is overall bad news for companies that want to convince employees that they should put work above all else (primarily for the benefit of shareholders).
- 3y ago
iaseiadit 3y ago
If a manager can’t differentiate between a high performer and a low performer unless the employee is sitting next to the manager, that sounds like a manager deficiency

kyrra 3y ago

For sure! Mixing in person and remote seems to me a recipe for inefficiency. I'd say the same to distributed teams (where an immediate team is split across locations). This seems to drastically impact performance of the team.

ghaff 3y ago
Except that people being spread around offices and even countries/continents (and traveling) is pretty much the reality at most large companies. Immediate teams may be co-located but the norm for a lot of people is spending a lot of the time on the phone or, now, video calls.
- kyrra 3y ago
  Sorry I wasn't clear. Agree with you here. I'm on a team where my immediate team is is distributed, which I feel is a waste of time for our team to coordinate. A larger team can have the subteams distributed, but immediate teams should be colocated or fully remote.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

> People are not getting as much done, low performers are harder to manage (hide easier), most importantly people don’t build the same quality relationships they used to. None of these problems were ever dealt with in all the WFO settings I was ever in, so this seems like little more than scapegoating WFH for all the sicknesses that afflict large organizations. I’m currently working on a remote team that’s a collaboration across a few different orgs, one of whom is primarily WFO, and we have the highest rate of execution across all our parent organizations. The reality of every place I’ve ever worked is that product and project management are really bad across the board, far worse than your so called low-performers. But the top of the hierarchy rarely disciplines itself when it can just let shit roll down hill, which is why we end up with the fairy tales about how the lack of water-cooler chat is preventing the otherwise guaranteed success.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

This is essentially the same argument that Paul Graham made, which is that WFH worked decently during the pandemic because people were able to "coast" off of previously built pre-pandemic relationships, but as time goes on that the difficulties in building new relationships that are as strong remotely shows up. I get particularly worried about younger employees and new grads. I learned a ton as a new grad being onsite, and I had the benefit that the first company I joined after college had a "bootcamp" training onboarding for new grads - a quarter century later I'm still friends with many of the people from that bootcamp and have gotten many professional jobs through that network. The strife over WFH vs WFO is what I call a standard "all of these are true" problem, meaning that the points people make on different sides are both true - the problem is people want to optimize for different things. E.g. I think all of these are true: 1. People can save a ton of time and money WFH. 2. The additional flexibility from WFH makes it easier for people with outside responsibilities (e.g. child or elder care) to contribute productively in work. 3. Overall productivity, especially for non-rote tasks, goes down measurably when the vast majority of people are remote. The FAANGs appear to have data to back this up. For everyone that says "but I'm more productive!" it's not hard to believe a bunch of other people are taking multi-hour lunch breaks. 4. The overall strength of work relationships goes down when people are remote. Again, not for everyone, but in aggregate. 5. People are spending much more time alone. The article shows the data for this. I think long term this will be particularly bad for society. It's much harder to empathize with people from different groups if you never interact with them, nevermind that loneliness in and of itself is something of an epidemic. 6. WFH makes people less likely to be "career obsessed" in the first place. I think this is the thing a lot of companies are realizing, that if anything the masses are actually getting to see the "wizard behind the curtain". That is, pre-pandemic, loads of tech companies wanted to motivate their employees with grand talk of "changing the world", and it's a lot easier to feel that motivation in a colocated group. Of course, for most companies, you're not actually changing the world, and most importantly, the company doesn't really give a damn if you change the world or not. They just want to make money. So I think WFH leads a lot of people to re-evaluate their priorities into what they want out of life in the first place, and this is overall bad news for companies that want to convince employees that they should put work above all else (primarily for the benefit of shareholders).

3y ago

iaseiadit 3y ago

If a manager can’t differentiate between a high performer and a low performer unless the employee is sitting next to the manager, that sounds like a manager deficiency