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>Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market It will be interesting to see how the return to office/remote work

>Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market It will be interesting to see how the return to office/remote work debate will be settled by the competitive market. If remote work is such a big draw for top talent (and increases productivity), companies that offer remote flexibility will outperform companies that don’t, since they will attract better employees who are also more productive. If, on the other hand, remote work leads to a decrease in productivity (as return to office proponents claim), it may be the case that the better talent wooed by companies offering remote positions will be offset by the drop in productivity from remote work. It may also be the case that remote flexibility simply isn’t that big of a draw, and companies with remote options won’t attract significantly better talent than companies without them.

Guthur 3y ago
Commercial property market forces might be stronger...
- Schnitz 3y ago
  Care to explain?
  - bloppe 3y ago
    Coming to the office has to be significantly more productive than working from home for it to make sense after accounting for the astronomical costs of office space in major cities.
    - codeduck 3y ago
      This smells like a sunk-cost fallacy. My counterargument would be that there has been a massive captive market for commercial real-estate that has now, thanks to high-bandwidth networking, been exposed as superfluous. The pandemic ripped the bandage off our collective eyes. People are now seeing that it is not necessary to jam employees cheek-by-jowl in order to extract value from them.
    - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
      > Coming to the office has to be significantly more productive than working from home for it to make sense after accounting for the astronomical costs of office space in major cities. It doesn't "have to be", there's other explanations. For example, maybe working from the office is less productive than wfh, but no one has figured that out yet.
  - Guthur 3y ago
    There is considerable wealth tied to continuing to herd us all into the cities. If economic activity was to become increasingly decentralised that wealth would be at considerable risk. A lot of that wealth is held by very powerful and influential companies. It's not a massive leap to assume it's in their best interests to encourage a return to the office. A few choice editorials espousing loss of culture and productivity and good old group think will start to kick in.
    - Guthur 3y ago
      But either way the last in line to be considered will be you, your family or the environment.
pyrophane 3y ago
I think that is the wrong way to think of it. Remote work has a short-term advantage in that your workers will be more productive (according to the author) so you'll get more done, and also it is a nice perk to offer recruits. That sounds like a no-brainer for startups who are thinking about an exit that is a few years away. They don't have to worry as much about attrition, hiring is more focused on senior eng (in my experience), and given the relatively lower cash comp they are trying to find cheap perks. For the BigCos of the world though, it is different. They have an established business that is probably profitable and they need to cycle in junior engineers and train them to make up for retiring/leaving senior engineers. For them, mentoring is more important than IC productivity. None of this is to say that the author is wrong, because they are arguing that you can have the best of both worlds by adopting a hybrid mentoring model that they are selling.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  I think it an unsupported assertion that mentoring is not possible in remote environments. The mentoring process does work better when its intentional and remote may need a change in the process of mentoring vs in-office. But the can’t do it is an assertion convenient to the return to office chaff.
  - WheatMillington 3y ago
    I cannot imagine how miserable it must be to be a junior being remotely mentored.
    - dv_dt 3y ago
      Why? Periodic meetups, discussion, pair programming, and a slack channel or other RT channel with an open invite to ping. What is missing? And actually in well documented places with pointers to sandbox environments (which remote tends to force better docs for both), it's great to let the juniors play and ask questions on missing and poorly documented items - reproducibility and learning is improved. And I've worked too many in-person places where mentoring is random, unplanned and ineffective because of it.
babyshake 3y ago
I suspect there might not be a clear answer simply from remote vs. in-office. It might depend on what type of company you are, how large of a company, etc. And I tend to think that some types of teams benefit more from being in office than others, such as those with more time in meetings vs. engineers spending most of their time on individual work requiring deep focus.
nostrademons 3y ago
My guess is: it doesn't really matter for established companies, because the market isn't actually that competitive. It matters for startups, with the advantage going to in-person (office or apartment) work. Tomorrow's startups become the established companies of the next decade, so eventually the pendulum will swing back toward office work, with lots of executives convinced it brings higher productivity. It's really because of path dependence, though, and not because of any intrinsic merits. The dirty secret of capitalism is that companies become successful based on what customers do, not what owners or executives or employees do. A product or service basically just has to work, just enough that the transaction still happens. The amount of money the company makes depends on how many customers it has and how much it charges each one, not on how good its product is, so long as the product is "good enough". When the company is young and scrambling to take the market, then maybe effort and efficiency matters, so that you can go from "not good enough" to "good enough" faster than anyone else. But once you're already way past "good enough", you can fire 75% of the company and you'll still continue collecting money until the market changes enough that your product is no longer "good enough".

Guthur 3y ago

Commercial property market forces might be stronger...

Schnitz 3y ago
Care to explain?
- bloppe 3y ago
  Coming to the office has to be significantly more productive than working from home for it to make sense after accounting for the astronomical costs of office space in major cities.
  - codeduck 3y ago
    This smells like a sunk-cost fallacy. My counterargument would be that there has been a massive captive market for commercial real-estate that has now, thanks to high-bandwidth networking, been exposed as superfluous. The pandemic ripped the bandage off our collective eyes. People are now seeing that it is not necessary to jam employees cheek-by-jowl in order to extract value from them.
  - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
    > Coming to the office has to be significantly more productive than working from home for it to make sense after accounting for the astronomical costs of office space in major cities. It doesn't "have to be", there's other explanations. For example, maybe working from the office is less productive than wfh, but no one has figured that out yet.
- Guthur 3y ago
  There is considerable wealth tied to continuing to herd us all into the cities. If economic activity was to become increasingly decentralised that wealth would be at considerable risk. A lot of that wealth is held by very powerful and influential companies. It's not a massive leap to assume it's in their best interests to encourage a return to the office. A few choice editorials espousing loss of culture and productivity and good old group think will start to kick in.
  - Guthur 3y ago
    But either way the last in line to be considered will be you, your family or the environment.

pyrophane 3y ago

I think that is the wrong way to think of it. Remote work has a short-term advantage in that your workers will be more productive (according to the author) so you'll get more done, and also it is a nice perk to offer recruits. That sounds like a no-brainer for startups who are thinking about an exit that is a few years away. They don't have to worry as much about attrition, hiring is more focused on senior eng (in my experience), and given the relatively lower cash comp they are trying to find cheap perks. For the BigCos of the world though, it is different. They have an established business that is probably profitable and they need to cycle in junior engineers and train them to make up for retiring/leaving senior engineers. For them, mentoring is more important than IC productivity. None of this is to say that the author is wrong, because they are arguing that you can have the best of both worlds by adopting a hybrid mentoring model that they are selling.

dv_dt 3y ago
I think it an unsupported assertion that mentoring is not possible in remote environments. The mentoring process does work better when its intentional and remote may need a change in the process of mentoring vs in-office. But the can’t do it is an assertion convenient to the return to office chaff.
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  I cannot imagine how miserable it must be to be a junior being remotely mentored.
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    Why? Periodic meetups, discussion, pair programming, and a slack channel or other RT channel with an open invite to ping. What is missing? And actually in well documented places with pointers to sandbox environments (which remote tends to force better docs for both), it's great to let the juniors play and ask questions on missing and poorly documented items - reproducibility and learning is improved. And I've worked too many in-person places where mentoring is random, unplanned and ineffective because of it.

babyshake 3y ago

I suspect there might not be a clear answer simply from remote vs. in-office. It might depend on what type of company you are, how large of a company, etc. And I tend to think that some types of teams benefit more from being in office than others, such as those with more time in meetings vs. engineers spending most of their time on individual work requiring deep focus.

nostrademons 3y ago

My guess is: it doesn't really matter for established companies, because the market isn't actually that competitive. It matters for startups, with the advantage going to in-person (office or apartment) work. Tomorrow's startups become the established companies of the next decade, so eventually the pendulum will swing back toward office work, with lots of executives convinced it brings higher productivity. It's really because of path dependence, though, and not because of any intrinsic merits. The dirty secret of capitalism is that companies become successful based on what customers do, not what owners or executives or employees do. A product or service basically just has to work, just enough that the transaction still happens. The amount of money the company makes depends on how many customers it has and how much it charges each one, not on how good its product is, so long as the product is "good enough". When the company is young and scrambling to take the market, then maybe effort and efficiency matters, so that you can go from "not good enough" to "good enough" faster than anyone else. But once you're already way past "good enough", you can fire 75% of the company and you'll still continue collecting money until the market changes enough that your product is no longer "good enough".