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Except almost all white-collar offices (in the US at least) went remote during the first 2-3 years of COVID. Most did so successfully. Yet, many now want to ret

Except almost all white-collar offices (in the US at least) went remote during the first 2-3 years of COVID. Most did so successfully. Yet, many now want to return to traditional office work with little evidence that’s a better way to work.

voisin 3y ago
> Most did so successfully. There’s a lot of nuance being glossed over here and I don’t think this is clear cut. Successfully for who? All stakeholders? Every department? Customers and suppliers too? Does this success translate to a non-pandemic environment with lower expectations by everyone given the circumstances?
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Wife works for a retail bank. Front-line employees didn't go remote - they need to be in retail bank locations serving customers. Back-office employees were 98% in-office prior to COVID. In several weeks, the company pivoted to remote work, including procurement of laptops (most non-managers had desktops). During the 2.5-3 years of COVID-induced WFH, their engagement numbers and measured productivity went up. I've heard similar stories from friends and family in similar workplaces. While I realize that's all anecdotal, I haven't heard any stories countering this narrative. All that said, I like being in the office a few days/week for all the reasons mentioned. But, my team is all remote (hired that way, mostly pre-COVID), so even when I'm at the office, I'm only chatting with peers on other teams, not the people I'm doing project work with.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    My company went permanent full remote. We are much less productive, velocity per engineer is about half what it was. I'll freely admit it's because the company is poorly managed, but in my experience tons of companies have leadership that isn't able to quickly pivot in the way needed for WFH to be successful. It requires a lot of effort to get remote engineers to communicate well and at least here it basically just doesn't happen anymore.
CtrlAltDelete51 3y ago
You have a source for any of that? Speaking personally, everyone I’ve spoken to on the matter (myself included) have zero desire to return to a traditional office.
- losteric 3y ago
  Are you referring to individual employees or the companies? Clearly many companies are mandating RTO despite remote/self-determined hybrid supported by a strong majority of employee sentiment (and often performance data)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- VirusNewbie 3y ago
  I like going to the office, i know many people who prefer it.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  Heh, you ask for a source and then just provide a personal anecdote?
- lynx23 3y ago
  How many people do you know? When WFH was mandated, I hated it. When the mandate was finally kicked, I loved going back to the office, and have spent almost every workday at the office, despite having the possibility to do 40% WFH if I wanted. No, I don't want that, thank you. Not a coder, working as admin. I like people, that is why I work in an office. And personal experience is definitely that working together with people who are currently at home usually slows down processes quite a bit. Besides, sometimes, WFH-people are just not reachable, because reasons... Daughter has sneezed the first time, or wife has decided she needs to go for her yoga class and coworker suddenly needs to care for a 4-year-old... And, god forbid, if you ever say anything when these blatantly shameless things happen, you are the bad guy.
  - oregano 3y ago
RestlessMind 3y ago
> with little evidence that’s a better way to work. You are assuming that decision makers are dumb. I disagree with that. My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  You are assuming that they see high attrition of their best talent as something bad. Sometimes they don't seem to care if the numbers in Excel look good.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  > My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. Speaking as a senior manager at a smallish software company (300 people), absolutely, decision makers are in my experience smart and competent. But what they don't do is necessarily make decisions based on data. I don't believe for a second that most RTO debates are based on meaningful measurement. As with a lot of corporate decisions, I suspect it's a lot of HIPPOs, fingers in the air, and herding behavior.
  - Agentlien 3y ago
    When I joined my current employer the biggest drawback was that unlike my previous job they did not allow remote work. Managers were against it because they were paranoid about people slacking off. The pandemic hit, we transitioned to remote work, I was happy. Everyone quickly adapted and learned how to efficiently work from home. About two years later, two things happened: 1. Surveys and postmortems showed that remote work lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity at our company. 2. Company leadership started talking about a mandated return to office. People of course challenged this decision, pointing to the data, and no real explanation was given. Those who wanted to returned to office, but the mandated return was indefinitely postponed and eventually silently dropped as the manager primarily pushing for a return left the company.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
WalterBright 3y ago
I've done a lot of remote work over the decades. It starts out well, because you know your coworkers well. But, over time, those relationships fade, and people come and go at work. You lose the connection with them, and they with you. It's hardly all roses.
- soligern 3y ago
  It’s all roses. I see my coworkers in person once a year at the Christmas party. Other than that I’ve only every worked with them online since I started working here 2.5 years ago. It’s all roses.
  - jalapenos 3y ago
    Classic HN, any pitch for a shade of grey gets met with either "no it's white!", followed by "what? everyone knows it's always black!".
    - verve_rat 3y ago
      People are complex and different. If something is white for one person, and black for another, when you put them next to each other you get... black and white. Reducing people's different experiences to a homogeneous grey mush is overly reductive.
- smaudet 3y ago
  This is what is meant by the "big corps haven't cracked it". More progressive corps embraced online socializing earlier, and honestly that's all I need. To be sure something is lost socially by not being in person, but the workplace is not social-drinks club, or if it is that's where your productivity went. You still build connections with people you only meet online, older folk might have more trouble with that, which makes sense why they might struggle to manage if they heavily depend on "making friends" to do their job. Training and onboarding can be issues, but barring a straight up lack of talent generally focused efforts are probably better than just assuming the new employee will "make connections" and learn via osmosis.
Kiro 3y ago
I don't think most did so successfully. A lot of companies did it without any sort of software or procedures to support remote working and never managed to implement it during the time. They still rely on Skype. Tech companies are not representative.
- nottorp 3y ago
  When I started working remotely we had icq and a private irc server :)

voisin 3y ago

> Most did so successfully. There’s a lot of nuance being glossed over here and I don’t think this is clear cut. Successfully for who? All stakeholders? Every department? Customers and suppliers too? Does this success translate to a non-pandemic environment with lower expectations by everyone given the circumstances?

alistairSH 3y ago
Wife works for a retail bank. Front-line employees didn't go remote - they need to be in retail bank locations serving customers. Back-office employees were 98% in-office prior to COVID. In several weeks, the company pivoted to remote work, including procurement of laptops (most non-managers had desktops). During the 2.5-3 years of COVID-induced WFH, their engagement numbers and measured productivity went up. I've heard similar stories from friends and family in similar workplaces. While I realize that's all anecdotal, I haven't heard any stories countering this narrative. All that said, I like being in the office a few days/week for all the reasons mentioned. But, my team is all remote (hired that way, mostly pre-COVID), so even when I'm at the office, I'm only chatting with peers on other teams, not the people I'm doing project work with.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  My company went permanent full remote. We are much less productive, velocity per engineer is about half what it was. I'll freely admit it's because the company is poorly managed, but in my experience tons of companies have leadership that isn't able to quickly pivot in the way needed for WFH to be successful. It requires a lot of effort to get remote engineers to communicate well and at least here it basically just doesn't happen anymore.

CtrlAltDelete51 3y ago

You have a source for any of that? Speaking personally, everyone I’ve spoken to on the matter (myself included) have zero desire to return to a traditional office.

losteric 3y ago
Are you referring to individual employees or the companies? Clearly many companies are mandating RTO despite remote/self-determined hybrid supported by a strong majority of employee sentiment (and often performance data)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
VirusNewbie 3y ago
I like going to the office, i know many people who prefer it.
RestlessMind 3y ago
Heh, you ask for a source and then just provide a personal anecdote?
lynx23 3y ago
How many people do you know? When WFH was mandated, I hated it. When the mandate was finally kicked, I loved going back to the office, and have spent almost every workday at the office, despite having the possibility to do 40% WFH if I wanted. No, I don't want that, thank you. Not a coder, working as admin. I like people, that is why I work in an office. And personal experience is definitely that working together with people who are currently at home usually slows down processes quite a bit. Besides, sometimes, WFH-people are just not reachable, because reasons... Daughter has sneezed the first time, or wife has decided she needs to go for her yoga class and coworker suddenly needs to care for a 4-year-old... And, god forbid, if you ever say anything when these blatantly shameless things happen, you are the bad guy.
- oregano 3y ago

RestlessMind 3y ago

> with little evidence that’s a better way to work. You are assuming that decision makers are dumb. I disagree with that. My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing.

jupp0r 3y ago
You are assuming that they see high attrition of their best talent as something bad. Sometimes they don't seem to care if the numbers in Excel look good.
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. Speaking as a senior manager at a smallish software company (300 people), absolutely, decision makers are in my experience smart and competent. But what they don't do is necessarily make decisions based on data. I don't believe for a second that most RTO debates are based on meaningful measurement. As with a lot of corporate decisions, I suspect it's a lot of HIPPOs, fingers in the air, and herding behavior.
- Agentlien 3y ago
  When I joined my current employer the biggest drawback was that unlike my previous job they did not allow remote work. Managers were against it because they were paranoid about people slacking off. The pandemic hit, we transitioned to remote work, I was happy. Everyone quickly adapted and learned how to efficiently work from home. About two years later, two things happened: 1. Surveys and postmortems showed that remote work lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity at our company. 2. Company leadership started talking about a mandated return to office. People of course challenged this decision, pointing to the data, and no real explanation was given. Those who wanted to returned to office, but the mandated return was indefinitely postponed and eventually silently dropped as the manager primarily pushing for a return left the company.
fzeroracer 3y ago

WalterBright 3y ago

I've done a lot of remote work over the decades. It starts out well, because you know your coworkers well. But, over time, those relationships fade, and people come and go at work. You lose the connection with them, and they with you. It's hardly all roses.

soligern 3y ago
It’s all roses. I see my coworkers in person once a year at the Christmas party. Other than that I’ve only every worked with them online since I started working here 2.5 years ago. It’s all roses.
- jalapenos 3y ago
  Classic HN, any pitch for a shade of grey gets met with either "no it's white!", followed by "what? everyone knows it's always black!".
  - verve_rat 3y ago
    People are complex and different. If something is white for one person, and black for another, when you put them next to each other you get... black and white. Reducing people's different experiences to a homogeneous grey mush is overly reductive.
smaudet 3y ago
This is what is meant by the "big corps haven't cracked it". More progressive corps embraced online socializing earlier, and honestly that's all I need. To be sure something is lost socially by not being in person, but the workplace is not social-drinks club, or if it is that's where your productivity went. You still build connections with people you only meet online, older folk might have more trouble with that, which makes sense why they might struggle to manage if they heavily depend on "making friends" to do their job. Training and onboarding can be issues, but barring a straight up lack of talent generally focused efforts are probably better than just assuming the new employee will "make connections" and learn via osmosis.

Kiro 3y ago

I don't think most did so successfully. A lot of companies did it without any sort of software or procedures to support remote working and never managed to implement it during the time. They still rely on Skype. Tech companies are not representative.

nottorp 3y ago
When I started working remotely we had icq and a private irc server :)