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There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously diffic

There's a belief among folks who already favor RTO that the highest performers will also dislike permanent WFH, it seems to me. And given how notoriously difficult it is to reliably measure developer quality, that may be a belief they can harbor long past when you'd expect evidence to have mounted against it.

belval 3y ago
Your parent does not really say that though. Assuming that WFH/RTO preference is distributed equally across highest and lowest performers his statement will be true. As lowest performers will be stickier (regardless of preference) and highest performers won't be so you may lose 50% of your highest performers but a lower amount of lowest WFH-loving performers. Effectively averaging down the skill level of your company. It's not really a WFH/RTO thing so much as a benefits thing. The same would be true for another variable like free lunches.
- darkerside 3y ago
  Is there a study that breaks down whether high performers are more or less likely to want a return to office?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    A study like that would be nearly impossible to measure. What we do know is anecdotal evidence of very influential and high performers at various FAANG type companies that have ended up leaving due to forced RTO.
    - brookst 3y ago
      Everyone has anecdotes that support their opinion. Anecdotally, I work at a large company that fully supports 0% to 100% remote work, and I work with a wide mix. Some people, and some roles, just do better in the office. Others don’t. I’d be very suspicious of forming beliefs based on anecdotes, especially if they coincidentally align to your expectations.
      - smaudet 3y ago
        I do agree some roles. e.g. sales, have to be done in office. If you want to snooze someone over dinner a remote call is a poor shadow of an option. Less certain about roles that are generally technical. The strongest claim for in-office work, collaboration, is mostly a well solved problem for at least software, possible simple administration that just relies on some collaborative spreadsheets. Sitting everyone in a stuffy boardroom all staring at the same boring spreadsheet is likely to cause stress and mental fatigue, not increased collaboration. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ This is a well known effect. Even large "interactive" meetings in remote settings can be counter productive - of course not all meetings are bad and one key to being an excellent manager is picking the right people for the right meetings, but the idea that your "top performers" objectively speaking will be the ones experiencing the most stress is seriously suspect. What is more likely is some combination of workers who either "do well" in high stress environments, usually implying they are healthy and have some effective stress management techniques and as such are recognized as top performers compared to those unable to effectively manage their stress, or those in mainly technical areas have not yet experienced (somehow) the benefits of less stressful remote-work environments. E.g. parents or partners in cramped personal quarters being more distracted compared to e.g. a private office space. Finally, for those workers that have an active job component where they must e.g. be on site for customer testing or perhaps they are a technical liason, some hybrid approach may work better - in office for resources which are cost prohibitive to simulate or when their role requires them to interact in an another capacity e.g. as a technician, security guard, or triage such as a front desk. There is also the case where "top performers" are leeching off their colleagues e.g. where they can "get more done" because they can interrogate and corral others but where others are mostly experiencing productivity hits as a result of the constant interruption.
      - aaomidi 3y ago
        Your company is doing the best possible option then, so of course you’re going to see that as positive. Forcing in office work for everyone means all the people who work better remotely now…simply don’t.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    I don't even think there's a study that indicates developer productivity can be reliably measured.
TechBro8615 3y ago
Just because they think they can justify it doesn't mean they're right. If the best performers are leaving, but management is stubbornly or ignorantly refusing to admit it, that only hides the problem, and the company will eventually fail.
bee_rider 3y ago
This works nicely with the current top comment I think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501068 We’ll just find out in a couple years or decades by observing who is still standing.
theshrike79 3y ago
There are actual high performers and there are people who can cosplay as high performers in the office because of their amazing people skills. I think the RTO folks are in the latter group. If their work was measured objectively by results, they wouldn't be considered high performers.
seanhunter 3y ago
There's a number of kind of obvious reasons for that belief. Firstly the people who are mandating RTO want to think of themselves as high performers. They want RTO so "high performers want RTO" is obvious to them. Secondly a lot of non-doing managers want to be able to justify their existance. To do that they need people in the office to distract by walking around and having conversations etc. They can't do this when people are just WFH doing deep work. Thirdly, if they know a manager wants RTO, then people who want to suck up to that manager will say they want RTO and will come in to the office to actively suck up to the manager. The manager will see these sycophants as high performers because they are spending their time fluffing the ego of the aformentioned manager.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Not every job is Office space, in fact I've never experienced one in my 20 years of coding in 3 countries. You find bits and pieces if you look hard enough in some places, but that's it. Behavior you describe would never get my any promotion anywhere I worked. Maybe I was just lucky, who knows.
AwaAwa 3y ago
Bootlickers/Fluff afficianados do best in RTO. The class that usually winds up in managerial/exec roles. Small wonder.

belval 3y ago

Your parent does not really say that though. Assuming that WFH/RTO preference is distributed equally across highest and lowest performers his statement will be true. As lowest performers will be stickier (regardless of preference) and highest performers won't be so you may lose 50% of your highest performers but a lower amount of lowest WFH-loving performers. Effectively averaging down the skill level of your company. It's not really a WFH/RTO thing so much as a benefits thing. The same would be true for another variable like free lunches.

darkerside 3y ago
Is there a study that breaks down whether high performers are more or less likely to want a return to office?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- aaomidi 3y ago
  A study like that would be nearly impossible to measure. What we do know is anecdotal evidence of very influential and high performers at various FAANG type companies that have ended up leaving due to forced RTO.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Everyone has anecdotes that support their opinion. Anecdotally, I work at a large company that fully supports 0% to 100% remote work, and I work with a wide mix. Some people, and some roles, just do better in the office. Others don’t. I’d be very suspicious of forming beliefs based on anecdotes, especially if they coincidentally align to your expectations.
    - smaudet 3y ago
      I do agree some roles. e.g. sales, have to be done in office. If you want to snooze someone over dinner a remote call is a poor shadow of an option. Less certain about roles that are generally technical. The strongest claim for in-office work, collaboration, is mostly a well solved problem for at least software, possible simple administration that just relies on some collaborative spreadsheets. Sitting everyone in a stuffy boardroom all staring at the same boring spreadsheet is likely to cause stress and mental fatigue, not increased collaboration. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889069/ This is a well known effect. Even large "interactive" meetings in remote settings can be counter productive - of course not all meetings are bad and one key to being an excellent manager is picking the right people for the right meetings, but the idea that your "top performers" objectively speaking will be the ones experiencing the most stress is seriously suspect. What is more likely is some combination of workers who either "do well" in high stress environments, usually implying they are healthy and have some effective stress management techniques and as such are recognized as top performers compared to those unable to effectively manage their stress, or those in mainly technical areas have not yet experienced (somehow) the benefits of less stressful remote-work environments. E.g. parents or partners in cramped personal quarters being more distracted compared to e.g. a private office space. Finally, for those workers that have an active job component where they must e.g. be on site for customer testing or perhaps they are a technical liason, some hybrid approach may work better - in office for resources which are cost prohibitive to simulate or when their role requires them to interact in an another capacity e.g. as a technician, security guard, or triage such as a front desk. There is also the case where "top performers" are leeching off their colleagues e.g. where they can "get more done" because they can interrogate and corral others but where others are mostly experiencing productivity hits as a result of the constant interruption.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      Your company is doing the best possible option then, so of course you’re going to see that as positive. Forcing in office work for everyone means all the people who work better remotely now…simply don’t.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  I don't even think there's a study that indicates developer productivity can be reliably measured.

TechBro8615 3y ago

Just because they think they can justify it doesn't mean they're right. If the best performers are leaving, but management is stubbornly or ignorantly refusing to admit it, that only hides the problem, and the company will eventually fail.

bee_rider 3y ago

This works nicely with the current top comment I think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501068 We’ll just find out in a couple years or decades by observing who is still standing.

theshrike79 3y ago

There are actual high performers and there are people who can cosplay as high performers in the office because of their amazing people skills. I think the RTO folks are in the latter group. If their work was measured objectively by results, they wouldn't be considered high performers.

seanhunter 3y ago

There's a number of kind of obvious reasons for that belief. Firstly the people who are mandating RTO want to think of themselves as high performers. They want RTO so "high performers want RTO" is obvious to them. Secondly a lot of non-doing managers want to be able to justify their existance. To do that they need people in the office to distract by walking around and having conversations etc. They can't do this when people are just WFH doing deep work. Thirdly, if they know a manager wants RTO, then people who want to suck up to that manager will say they want RTO and will come in to the office to actively suck up to the manager. The manager will see these sycophants as high performers because they are spending their time fluffing the ego of the aformentioned manager.

saiya-jin 3y ago
Not every job is Office space, in fact I've never experienced one in my 20 years of coding in 3 countries. You find bits and pieces if you look hard enough in some places, but that's it. Behavior you describe would never get my any promotion anywhere I worked. Maybe I was just lucky, who knows.

AwaAwa 3y ago

Bootlickers/Fluff afficianados do best in RTO. The class that usually winds up in managerial/exec roles. Small wonder.