14 ms·

The back-to-office backfire: Companies ending WFH perks lose out on top talent

200 points by rustoo 3y ago

archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/vL1mC https://archive.is/vL1mC The back-to-office backfire: Companies ending WFH perks lose out on top talent, who view flexible work as equivalent to an 8% raise.
gumballindie 3y ago
> Workers today put an increasing value in a flexible workplace and view hybrid work accommodations as equal to an 8% pay increase Nope. They put value in fully remote. Boiling the frog wont work.
- ehnto 3y ago
  I actually do prefer hybrid, except hybrid meetings. I worked remotely for years before the pandemic too, so I am not a newbie to remote work who just doesn't get it. I get value from the office being a good social space, and a good space to focus if I am noticing my self-dicipline drift. There really is some good adhoc discussions that happen in person that just don't occur online as well. I would never give up WFH though, it is what allows me to handle the whole week in general. Fewer distractions, no commute means more rest, means better thoughts. If I were a perfect worker robot it wouldn't matter where you put me, but I am a human so my needs fluctuate. Having options lets me be where I can work best and be happiest on any given day.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I've just about given up trying with remote work tbh. I've found it just about impossible to collaborate with people since it seems everyone is out walking their dog otherwise unresponsive for most of the day. Occasionally I've attempted to start the day with a good attitude and try to get as much work done as possible but found that I still can't get much done since I'll have 5 in progress tasks all blocked by various people who never respond. Occasionally work rents out a meeting room for the day and then we can actually get a full days work in where everyone is available and communication flows freely. Job hunting to see if it's better at the next place but I'm not too hopeful since the last places have been so poor at remote work. Haven't been able to find anything which has an office these days.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >I'll have 5 in progress tasks all blocked by various people who never respond. Slackers are ruining WFH for everyone but if the company tolerates them slacking off like that it means that that's the company culture and getting stuff done doesn't matter. I've had the same issue as a junior. Stagnated at a job where the team was WFH and full of slackers who wouldn't respond. A lot of companies haven't built a system of properly mentoring juniors remotely and accountability where people WFH can also be trusted to do their job and not masquerade at doing work.
      - projektfu 3y ago
        This is part of the problem I suppose. Top talent likes to get things done, will do it anywhere. There's always a group that gets nothing done, they're less visible when they WFH. But for the middle, how much productivity do they gain or lose by going remote? Also, the mix of "stars" is probably different on site or remote. Some people who really were crushed by commuting and working in a distracting office are shining at home, others who need that routine and comraderie are struggling to be as effective. Voluntary office work probably helps, but friends of mine who liked being in the office talk about going to work to sit in an empty bullpen and do the same zoom/slack teamwork they'd do at home. For me, I don't have the experience as I have a job that needs to be on site.
    - j-bos 3y ago
      That sounds like an issue with the people blocking you. Someone who needs to be forced into an office to do the work, or even respond to urgent comms, sounds unreliable. If returning to office fixes that, my concern would be that same organization being unreliable for other reasons.
      - dnissley 3y ago
        The black pill on WFH is that a lot of people are actually that unreliable and "forcing" them to work in an office makes them more reliable.
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    > Having options lets me be where I can work best and be happiest on any given day. You are lucky if that is really an _option_ for you. Hybrid work usually means that "team" (i.e. the boss) decides which N days a week everyone must come to the office and compliance is not really optional.
- layer8 3y ago
  Speak for yourself. As evidenced in each thread like this, there are workers who prefer working in the office or hybrid and wouldn’t want to be fully remote.
oxfordmale 3y ago
I live outside London in the UK, and the cost of travelling in daily is around $7500/year taking into account train and parking costs. Most software engineer will be in the 40% tax bracket for the top end of their salary. That means a company need to pay an additional $12500 to just break even. If you do live in London, you will reduce your travel costs but your rent goes up. I don't have figures for this, but I expect it will work out roughly the same. That is not even taking into account the costs of extended child care,etc.
- malablaster 3y ago
  That’s the cost of productivity. /s
- EliRivers 3y ago
  I've been making similar calculations, but I include the travel time. An hour or so each way adds about 25% to the remuneration I expect. Given that the time is effectively fallow time that the company will receive zero benefit from, but would be available to me for reading, I can come down to 20%. However, having to travel in to the office at all, even one day a week, would mean I still have to live within travel distance; this is a massive and expensive inconvenience. Not sure quite how to price that in.
  - namdnay 3y ago
    The thing is, if you’re not within commuting distance, why would the company pay you London rates and not standard UK rates :)
    - EliRivers 3y ago
      Why wouldn't they pay me a higher rate? They'll pay me the least they can to get my services; where I live makes no difference to them. I'm sure that if they can get away with "we'll pay you less because you live far away" they will; it's up to me (us) to put a stop to that nonsense.
      - 3y ago
39 3y ago
We got a return to office memo and an active shooter plan in the same week.
- shipscode 3y ago
  Do they let you guys carry at least?
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    What kind of hellscape office has guns in it?
    - logicchains 3y ago
      Maybe people'd behave extra-civil in an office in which everyone was carrying.
      - nkrisc 3y ago
        What a lovely working environment: please everyone, or die.
    - jfengel 3y ago
      An American one, where the solution to the problem of guns is more guns.
      - devoutsalsa 3y ago
        Peace through superior firepower #murica
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Pigalowda 3y ago
        You got a solution? Are you going to travel back in time to prevent the second amendment from being written? Or are you going to get a 2/3rd majority of state governors to call for a constitutional convention? Maybe you can convince 2/3rd majorities of the house and senate to overturn?
solardev 3y ago
Top talent probably never had much issue negotiating whatever they want. It's the rest of us who are impacted. Most companies don't need or want top talent, just good enough mediocrity that will fall in line, do the work, and not make a stink about it. They don't care if they lose a few percent of top workers as long as they have a steady stream of easier to manage mediocre applicants. It's kinda a filtering process both ways.
- goalieca 3y ago
  I’ve seen projects DOA and entire product lines and services slowly die once the engineering talent leaves. Cheap talent can be used for maintenance but new products and major revisions need a certain creative drive to envision the future and push through corporate entropy.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    Is it talent, or is it experience and a sense of ownership? Projects and products can fail when key people leave, because the organization no longer knows what it's doing. When the knowledge is gone, new people will have a hard time rediscovering it on their own. But they can have more success with new projects, because it's their project and they understand it.
    - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      For greenfield projects, voracious and relentless talent is integral to building great products. Talent is general aptitude coupled with fast learning within the general domain. Experience can often be detrimental as the person may be too biased to see what they are missing. I have experienced this bias first hand at AWS. Experience can be blinding as it doesn’t let you explore new ideas.
      - jltsiren 3y ago
        I didn't mean experience in general but experience with the specific project. If an organization loses everyone with that experience in a project, it's no longer their project. If they want to continue working on it, they must spend a lot of effort to understand it. I have more experience in the academia and with volunteer projects than in industry. Based on what I have seen, while talent does exist, it's rare. Success comes mostly from having the right mix of people working on the right project in the right environment. There are far more successful people and successful projects than truly talented people.
spaniard89277 3y ago
Companies hoping people forgot how nice it felt living in a nicer place and not commuting. Being able to close my laptop, walk down to the beach and meet my friends is not something I will forget easily, nor something I want to trade for living in Madrid or Barcelona for a few peanuts more.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  You’re supposed to feel miserable and cheer up on company townhall meetings
  - dudul 3y ago
    The paradox is that remote townhalls are probably so much more productive since everybody can just put it in the background and actually get things done.
- barrotes 3y ago
  This comment hits very hard, I can fully relate with this. Also pre-covid I often worked in peripherals zones of Rome, one of the worst cities in Europe about traffic and public transport. I still have nightmares about those trips.
meindnoch 3y ago
>Workers today put an increasing value in a flexible workplace and view hybrid work accommodations as equal to an 8% pay increase No. Fuck off with your hybrid bullshit.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hirako2000 3y ago
  Ditto. Hybrid is a hat trick to lure those who categorically reject on-site roles. Once in, there are dozens of ways to justify needing you in most often.
  - HelloNurse 3y ago
    "Hybrid" means "you don't even know when you'll be required to come to the office".
bgribble 3y ago
I have 2 kids. Commuting took a huge fraction of the available time I could be spending with them and for them -- asleep 8, working 8, kids sleep a couple hours longer than I do, so absolute max of 6 hours on a workday I could spend doing everything I need and want to do with my kids and spouse. Taking 2 of those hours for commuting is not just 2/24 of the day, it's 1/3 of the total time I have available. Juice is not worth the squeeze.
- namdnay 3y ago
  Is the problem the office or the commute? If offices, schools/nurseries and housing are all within a 20mn cycle radius the question of remote or in-office work becomes different
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    Whilst more time could be spent at home relaxing, I've just had a soak in the bath and have finally worked out why my dog would not come in the bathroom. I'm lying there detecting the foul odour of my neighbours diet wafting through the overflow hole in the bath and basin! At least my supplements are improving my olfactory bulb, who would have thought being on a mains water supply is a low level neighbourly germ warfare zone. No wonder the water companies tell us to spend no more than 4mins in the shower!
    - CommieBobDole 3y ago
      > the foul odour of my neighbours diet wafting through the overflow hole You have a plumbing problem - both the drain and the overflow should be protected by the trap, preventing intrusion of sewer gases and other odors.
      - darkclouds 3y ago
        This seems to be pushing the fluid in the trap, and I say that because I can hear it from the basin which has its own trap and the bath and the toilet. I can watch the water in the toilet rising and then receding when the basin and sink gurgle. I also would not put anything past the US and UK military around here.
mechhacker 3y ago
Having to go back to the office would now require me moving 3000 miles across the country, to a place that made me depressed every winter. To a place that had some of the most restrictive policies the last few years. And to a spot that has housing costs even higher and worse. No thanks, I'd rather take contract work or figure out something else.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  You could always take a job locally. Your position would just be filled by someone who lives near by.
logicchains 3y ago
It bears remembering the massive misalignment of incentives here: the funds like Blackrock holding large portions of the stock in these companies also hold significant positions in commercial real estate, so if they let WFH become permanently widespread they could suffer a big loss on that, hence the push for companies to enforce work from office. Many companies themselves also have commercial real estate positions (if only in their own office buildings), which they don't want to lose value.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  It's also the tax breaks. >Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly. >The state [New Jersey] said it will revoke benefits granted under the multibillion-dollar Enterprise Zone Program to companies whose employees no longer work on site at least half the time. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t... https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv
  - logicchains 3y ago
    I wonder why that is? I suppose the governments of states with big cities stand to lose a lot of tax revenue if employees no longer need to go to those big cities to do their jobs, and can instead work from (and pay tax to) states with lower cost of living.
    - tyingq 3y ago
      The "zone" programs are for specific, limited, areas where the government entity wants to see the company employees spend their money. Generally areas that neThe tax break to the business is because their employees are spending money in the area where the office is located...some area in need of renewal/spending. With WFH, the employees stay at home in their upscale suburb areas that don't need artificial incentives to attract money.
mabbo 3y ago
In my recent job offer negotiations, I made mostly-remote a key factor. They wanted me. I didn't want to commute an hour each way every day when I could spend that time with my toddler instead. I didn't give an ultimatum as much as say "I will stop interviewing with other companies and sign your offer now if you amend it to say I don't have to be in the office if I don't want to". I work there now.
spaceheater 3y ago
I mean, every 2-3 weeks there is top story on hn about how returning back to office is evil, and the same comments about how working from home gave those people a whole new meaning and fulfillment in life. This must be an ad, right?
xyzzy4747 3y ago
I have multiple million in my brokerage account and a newborn child... to put it mildly nobody can entice me to go back into the office.
DoingIsLearning 3y ago
Trying to frame remote in mainstream media as a perk of benevolence from great leadership is in my view a wage supressing strategy. If a business cuts office space by half or eliminates office space completely then that is a saving for the company, end of. Lease, insurance, Energy bills, internet bills, etc. Framing this in the context of business to business. If my service created a saving for your company then everyone would agree that I could charge more for my service, as I stand to benefit from your saving. Somehow that disolves if the relation involves an HR department.
LightBug1 3y ago
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon our company enforced return-to-work policies (and not even flex/hybrid which would have been acceptable), I absolutely quiet-quit. Bare minimum productivity. And in my quiet-quit zone, I'm spending at least 20% of that time in the office sifting through roles trying to find the perfect hybrid/remote role. p.s. the title of this article says "WFH perks" ... that's exactly what's wrong with how the Big Cheese view WFH ... as a perk ... it's not a perk, it's leveraging technology to make your staff more productive with the benefit of a more balanced life ... while, literally, showing mercy on them by not forcing the sardine-commute on them 5 days a week. Anyway.
- rcme 3y ago
  I have yet to see anything indicate remote work makes knowledge workers more productive. I prefer hybrid word, but exclusively because of the benefits outside of work. Anecdotally, I’m probably around 80% as productive at home compared to at the office.
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    Anecdotally, I’m probably around 150% as productive at home compared to at the office. How's that for a reverse card? Seriously, I can't stand hearing other people talk. I can't stand hearing their keyboards, or their mice clicking, I can't stand to hear people walking around, I don't want them to be able to talk to me abruptly. Work gets done faster when I'm allowed to focus in my own controlled environment.
    - rcme 3y ago
      I did mention my experience was anecdotal. This is a debate that can easily be settled with hard data. https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productiv... For what it’s worth, I agree with all of your office complaints. Yet, personally, I’m still more productive at the office. I liken this to working out at the gym alone vs. with a personal trainer. Working out alone is like working from home. No one is watching you to keep you accountable. Feeling sleepy? Take a nap! Whereas at work you have to appear productive all the time, similar to how it’s hard to slack off when working out with a trainer. And the easiest way to appear productive is just to be productive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FredPret 3y ago
Big surprise. Most work is done by a tiny minority. This minority will perform well from home or from the office. The majority will slack off in both places, but less visibly so in the office. So mandating return to office for the whole company (don't really see a practical way to mandate it for some only) to make bad employees suck slightly less, is of course going to annoy the productive few the most.
cj 3y ago
The (unfortunate) reality is these shifts back to office are going to be easier to pull off if a company is willing to lose 10% of their staff (or whatever the percentage ends up being) because the job market right now is very loose with a lot of people out of work, making replacements are easy (and quick) to find. Some companies may even like the idea of shedding some of their top talent (who also tend to be paid a lot) if they feel they're still overstaffed from the covid hiring boom. Source: I'm a hiring manager at a remote company. I've talked to candidates who are leaving their companies because they tried to negotiate 100% remote but their companies are refusing, so they're looking to land at a permanent fully remote position. Edit: comment above is in the context of tech companies
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  The US unemployment rate and total unemployed people is at its lowest point in at least 20 years.
  - cj 3y ago
    Thanks, I edited the comment to clarify tech industry, not the overall market
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Tech unemployment is trending differently but still in the general ballpark it has been at around half of overall unemployment.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  You raise an interesting point. For large companies, they'll use this as an opportunity to push salaries down. This happened in banks in London over the 90s and 00s. At each 'crisis' (IR35, LTCM, credit crunch, etc.), they made staff redundant, and reduced new salary offers across the board, you could argue, almost like a cartel.
m-p-3 3y ago
With kids going to school, working from home is definitely better to handle the unpredictability that comes with it. I have about a one hour commute to do (one way) to get to the office. I'd live closer if I could afford it, but it is what it is. While I worked at the office, having a sick kid meant I had to call the entire day off, now I can simply keep him at home or go pick him up in 10 minutes and resume my day. Productivity and stress-wise, WFH is definitely better.
Insanity 3y ago
I can absolutely see this happening. I work at a FAANG as software manager and have seen multiple resignations in my org of high performers where the number one reason was “return to office”. As far as I can tell, every one of them now has a full remote job. (And higher pay for at least some)
- xvector 3y ago
  The higher pay is a big thing - lots of people think they "need" to take a pay cut but this is absolutely not the case. Often, I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - people self-deprecatingly accept lesser pay because a job is remote, when in fact a compromise was never needed to begin with. When my old company (paying top of market) started to enforce RTO, I left for another company paying ~twice as much - fully remote.
bloopernova 3y ago
WFH is just deeply ingrained in some people and corporate cultures. Some corporations seem to be too apathetic or stubborn to walk away from their huge office leases. I'm glad my employer did. Of course, in the client I work for, all the middle-management and above all work from home 100%. It's only the peons and their immediate managers who have to go into the office. It's so blatant I can't believe the upper management can keep a straight face while talking about how great it is to see everyone together while they themselves are remote.
cpfohl 3y ago
I know the 8% is a statistic, averaging over lots of users, but it seems dramatically too low. I have a flexible, remote job (I have have for 11 years of my 13 year career to date). When I think about the cost it would take to poach me for the exact same job, but non-remote, non-flexible it would be a multiple of 4 or 5 (maybe more). So 400% to 500%. I suspect it's implied that this is for people who were granted temporary WFH status in the peak of the Pandemic...that said I think 8% is wildly undervaluing WFH
austin-cheney 3y ago
If I have to choose between remote work and coming into an office with an amazing team I would choose the amazing team every time. I say this after switching from a 90 minute one-way commute to remote work from home for 3 years. By awesome team I mean people who operate with confidence where confidence defines the distance between our honesty about perceiving a problem and our approach. I only chose the remote work because I would rather be bored at home with my fruit orchard and personal electronics than bored at an office reading CNN with 3 hours on the road. When my directness becomes offensive only due to its direct nature it becomes apparent I have made a grave mistake in choosing a my social circle, and so I would rather work with an awesome team even with a long commute.
xvector 3y ago
Quit my job and left for a remote job paying double the moment my work decided to enforce RTO.
wkat4242 3y ago
They shouldn't forget that the office is no longer as productive. We used to have our own desks before the pandemic but now we have a half broken booking system for the hotdesks. Half the people ignore it so I often have to fight work colleagues. Also I'm no longer near the people who I actually work with but mindless sales drones instead, barking loudly on the phone all day. I really hate the office now. I go as little as possible even though HR demands we come 2 days a week. But screw them.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - sib 3y ago
    His (quiet) "pipsqueak nerdism" doesn't prevent them from doing their jobs...
  - lampshades 3y ago
    Found the salesman. Is it any wonder we (programmers) talk so much shit about you all when you act like this? And you call us childish. Hilarious.
- SonicScrub 3y ago
  > Also I'm no longer near the people who I actually work with I think herein lies the divide between people who find the office valuable vs those who don't (or at least part of it). Back in the pre-pandemic days, I worked for large Megacorp1234, and my team was distributed throughout the country. Most people in my immediate office vicinity were not the people I needed to collaborate with to do my job. We were essentially a remotely operating team, who nevertheless all had to have a butt in cubicle for some reason. Being able to occasionally work from home (each specific instance had to be approved though!) improved productivity dramatically. Fast-forward to today, and I work for a small company. My team and I work next to one and another in a nice, quiet office space, with breakout rooms with whiteboards for noisy collaboration. Team cohesion is good, and we all actually know each other beyond a profile picture on a computer screen. In this environment (which I'm beginning to learn is quite rare), you simply cannot beat the benefits of in-person collaboration. The office does actually provide a real benefit, and I do actually enjoy coming in. As do my colleagues. We all have the option of working remote, yet most of choose to come in more often than not. However let's not understate that being hybrid is a big part of what makes this whole thing work. Pretty hard to beat the flexibility that provides. So I guess my point is if businesses want people to come back to the office, they need to provide real tangible benefits to actually coming back. I've worked in an office like yours, and if I still did, my stance on the matter would be the same as yours.
blitz_skull 3y ago
WFH is here to stay and I really wish companies like business insider would stop trying to pretend otherwise. The cat is out of the bag. Small, innovative startups that don’t care about the corporate bullshit will always use it as a strong lever that FAANG may or may not be willing to pull. I’ve now worked at 2 startups over the past 4 years who were remote-first culture, and probably 80% FAANG salary. Easy decision for me.
mypastself 3y ago
Did I miss the part where the article demonstrates the headline’s claim? The numbers comparing hiring increases between WFH and WFO companies need more context before we can make this conclusion. Does the paywalled WSJ article they’re linking to account for different business domains?
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I literally just quit my cushy senior leadership job at a megacorp because they asked me to come back 5 days a week. Switched up for a distinguished engineer role at a late stage startup making more with more interesting work and no one telling me they value controlling my physical body over my contribution. If they value my physical body over my work, they can have neither.
manzanarama 3y ago
I am torn, I 100% understand the huge burden of commuting and the amazing flexibilities of working from home. I have a medical condition where I essentially have to prepare or at least bring all of my own food. This is obviously much easier when I WFH, and can prepare food ad hoc. Although I do work for a large famous tech company, I have a sweet setup where I can bike to work (to my desk) in less than 10 minutes in Bay Area weather (which is cooperative probably 340 days a year), we are not working from office 5 days a week, and its somewhat socially acceptable to work limited hours (lets say 10-4:30) in the office. Working in the office, I am so so so much more aware of all the other projects my team is working on, and the org as a whole. I am able to pick up on so much more. The little conversations, both about work and not are lost when WFH. Obviously many companies never 100% committed to remote work, and some of this could be made up for by different technologies and processes. But in my opinion it will be very very very hard to reach the fidelity and bandwidth of information of in person work. I think you have a long list of pros and cons here. A while back I was thinking about what college may look like in 20 year. I was thinking of my experience in a California UC and how useless I found the lectures and but how incredibly helpful I found the office hours and studying with peers. I was thinking a distributed satellite model could be ideal. The lectures or base instruction could be remote, or even AI based, with small "campuses" or even just glorified rooms somewhere (library, strip mall) where small groups of students can meet in groups of 5,10,15 and learn together. I wonder if something could be done for work as well. If larger corporations could maintain lots of tiny office spaces, near where people want to, or could live and require teams to be co-located. I truly think that if the commute was just a few minutes, and the hours in office were only required to be 6 hours or something, that the working in office would not be a huge burden.
DrBazza 3y ago
The 'equivalent to an 8% pay rise' in the UK loosely matches the after-tax cost of an annual rail ticket on an hour commute or longer. That's a ticket in the region of £6000 per annum, which is about £10,000 of gross salary. So not doing that commute and working from home is quite a bit of money. And some anec-data: my former employer, after 3 years of WFH and a couple of non-London offices that they embraced with out-sourcing the work "since we're all remote anyway", has told people to come back to the London office at least 3 days a week. Almost all of my former colleagues I'm in contact with have told me they're now looking for new jobs with WFH.
manzanarama 3y ago
This "losing out on top talent" thing is 75% true but I know a lot of career oriented people who are passionate about building the best product possible that prefer a decent amount of in office time to be able to better collaborate and get stuff done.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  I know senior people that have taken the management path after being software developers, and they're definitely 'we need to collaborate'. I've yet to meet a senior developer that wants to collaborate in person more than once a week since COVID.
Const-me 3y ago
This reminds me of the old pandemic of 1346-1353. Many people died back then. Traditional manorial system, which was based on serfdom, became less viable. Land owners discovered they have to compete for workers, instead of just exploiting the free serfs. They started to pay them money, which over time launched the market economy. I would expect that in the long term, this pandemic (combined with low birth rates in most western countries) will also improve our society.
ochronus 3y ago
Yup, 100% my experience as a hiring manager. On top of that, forcing people to the office (just like forcing them to 100% work from home) can affect their productivity negatively. See https://leadership.garden/back-to-the-office/ https://leadership.garden/back-to-the-office/
black_13 3y ago
[dead]
th3byrdm4n 3y ago
Talent <> value to the company. We sadly let someone walk because while they were SUPER talented, they weren’t working effectively on things that mattered
GreenAlien 3y ago
I made my career with managers thinking that I could produce much better than the majority of their employees. The reality was that I would do things like: "Come in a hour before the other employees" or "work an extra hours after I got home". In those quiet times I could accomplish more work than the 8 hours in an open office where every phone or person walking by was a distraction. Management thought I was so good, but the reality is that open offices are so inefficient they cut productivity by 80% and I worked around their inefficiently. WFH evened the playing field for a while, because others became more efficient but the incompetence of insecure managers is reestablishing their inefficient open offices again.
bobolino123 3y ago
Another scam is that the 1h lunch is not paid in most parts of Europe. Like in Switzerland it's not 42.5h week but actually 47.5h if you include the unpaid lunch. When I tell this to a British/Canadian/American they are kinda surprised.
hurrrr 3y ago
I think that the Gartner hype cycle can be applied to remote work. The peak was in 2022 and now we are in the trough of disillusionment. I think that an improvement in market conditions (low rates), the realization that remote first/fully remote can work at scale (it's a matter of time before the remote startups founded in the last 3 years will become unicorn/decacorn) and a stabilization in the commercial real estate and service sector (a huge crash is an hard pill to swallow, let the market adjust slowly) will push remote work In The slope of enlightenment.

200 points by rustoo 3y ago

https://archive.is/vL1mC https://archive.is/vL1mC The back-to-office backfire: Companies ending WFH perks lose out on top talent, who view flexible work as equivalent to an 8% raise.

gumballindie 3y ago

> Workers today put an increasing value in a flexible workplace and view hybrid work accommodations as equal to an 8% pay increase Nope. They put value in fully remote. Boiling the frog wont work.

ehnto 3y ago
I actually do prefer hybrid, except hybrid meetings. I worked remotely for years before the pandemic too, so I am not a newbie to remote work who just doesn't get it. I get value from the office being a good social space, and a good space to focus if I am noticing my self-dicipline drift. There really is some good adhoc discussions that happen in person that just don't occur online as well. I would never give up WFH though, it is what allows me to handle the whole week in general. Fewer distractions, no commute means more rest, means better thoughts. If I were a perfect worker robot it wouldn't matter where you put me, but I am a human so my needs fluctuate. Having options lets me be where I can work best and be happiest on any given day.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I've just about given up trying with remote work tbh. I've found it just about impossible to collaborate with people since it seems everyone is out walking their dog otherwise unresponsive for most of the day. Occasionally I've attempted to start the day with a good attitude and try to get as much work done as possible but found that I still can't get much done since I'll have 5 in progress tasks all blocked by various people who never respond. Occasionally work rents out a meeting room for the day and then we can actually get a full days work in where everyone is available and communication flows freely. Job hunting to see if it's better at the next place but I'm not too hopeful since the last places have been so poor at remote work. Haven't been able to find anything which has an office these days.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >I'll have 5 in progress tasks all blocked by various people who never respond. Slackers are ruining WFH for everyone but if the company tolerates them slacking off like that it means that that's the company culture and getting stuff done doesn't matter. I've had the same issue as a junior. Stagnated at a job where the team was WFH and full of slackers who wouldn't respond. A lot of companies haven't built a system of properly mentoring juniors remotely and accountability where people WFH can also be trusted to do their job and not masquerade at doing work.
    - projektfu 3y ago
      This is part of the problem I suppose. Top talent likes to get things done, will do it anywhere. There's always a group that gets nothing done, they're less visible when they WFH. But for the middle, how much productivity do they gain or lose by going remote? Also, the mix of "stars" is probably different on site or remote. Some people who really were crushed by commuting and working in a distracting office are shining at home, others who need that routine and comraderie are struggling to be as effective. Voluntary office work probably helps, but friends of mine who liked being in the office talk about going to work to sit in an empty bullpen and do the same zoom/slack teamwork they'd do at home. For me, I don't have the experience as I have a job that needs to be on site.
  - j-bos 3y ago
    That sounds like an issue with the people blocking you. Someone who needs to be forced into an office to do the work, or even respond to urgent comms, sounds unreliable. If returning to office fixes that, my concern would be that same organization being unreliable for other reasons.
    - dnissley 3y ago
      The black pill on WFH is that a lot of people are actually that unreliable and "forcing" them to work in an office makes them more reliable.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > Having options lets me be where I can work best and be happiest on any given day. You are lucky if that is really an _option_ for you. Hybrid work usually means that "team" (i.e. the boss) decides which N days a week everyone must come to the office and compliance is not really optional.
layer8 3y ago
Speak for yourself. As evidenced in each thread like this, there are workers who prefer working in the office or hybrid and wouldn’t want to be fully remote.

oxfordmale 3y ago

I live outside London in the UK, and the cost of travelling in daily is around $7500/year taking into account train and parking costs. Most software engineer will be in the 40% tax bracket for the top end of their salary. That means a company need to pay an additional $12500 to just break even. If you do live in London, you will reduce your travel costs but your rent goes up. I don't have figures for this, but I expect it will work out roughly the same. That is not even taking into account the costs of extended child care,etc.

malablaster 3y ago
That’s the cost of productivity. /s
EliRivers 3y ago
I've been making similar calculations, but I include the travel time. An hour or so each way adds about 25% to the remuneration I expect. Given that the time is effectively fallow time that the company will receive zero benefit from, but would be available to me for reading, I can come down to 20%. However, having to travel in to the office at all, even one day a week, would mean I still have to live within travel distance; this is a massive and expensive inconvenience. Not sure quite how to price that in.
- namdnay 3y ago
  The thing is, if you’re not within commuting distance, why would the company pay you London rates and not standard UK rates :)
  - EliRivers 3y ago
    Why wouldn't they pay me a higher rate? They'll pay me the least they can to get my services; where I live makes no difference to them. I'm sure that if they can get away with "we'll pay you less because you live far away" they will; it's up to me (us) to put a stop to that nonsense.
    - 3y ago

39 3y ago

We got a return to office memo and an active shooter plan in the same week.

shipscode 3y ago
Do they let you guys carry at least?
- Gigachad 3y ago
  What kind of hellscape office has guns in it?
  - logicchains 3y ago
    Maybe people'd behave extra-civil in an office in which everyone was carrying.
    - nkrisc 3y ago
      What a lovely working environment: please everyone, or die.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    An American one, where the solution to the problem of guns is more guns.
    - devoutsalsa 3y ago
      Peace through superior firepower #murica
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - Pigalowda 3y ago
      You got a solution? Are you going to travel back in time to prevent the second amendment from being written? Or are you going to get a 2/3rd majority of state governors to call for a constitutional convention? Maybe you can convince 2/3rd majorities of the house and senate to overturn?

solardev 3y ago

Top talent probably never had much issue negotiating whatever they want. It's the rest of us who are impacted. Most companies don't need or want top talent, just good enough mediocrity that will fall in line, do the work, and not make a stink about it. They don't care if they lose a few percent of top workers as long as they have a steady stream of easier to manage mediocre applicants. It's kinda a filtering process both ways.

goalieca 3y ago
I’ve seen projects DOA and entire product lines and services slowly die once the engineering talent leaves. Cheap talent can be used for maintenance but new products and major revisions need a certain creative drive to envision the future and push through corporate entropy.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  Is it talent, or is it experience and a sense of ownership? Projects and products can fail when key people leave, because the organization no longer knows what it's doing. When the knowledge is gone, new people will have a hard time rediscovering it on their own. But they can have more success with new projects, because it's their project and they understand it.
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    For greenfield projects, voracious and relentless talent is integral to building great products. Talent is general aptitude coupled with fast learning within the general domain. Experience can often be detrimental as the person may be too biased to see what they are missing. I have experienced this bias first hand at AWS. Experience can be blinding as it doesn’t let you explore new ideas.
    - jltsiren 3y ago
      I didn't mean experience in general but experience with the specific project. If an organization loses everyone with that experience in a project, it's no longer their project. If they want to continue working on it, they must spend a lot of effort to understand it. I have more experience in the academia and with volunteer projects than in industry. Based on what I have seen, while talent does exist, it's rare. Success comes mostly from having the right mix of people working on the right project in the right environment. There are far more successful people and successful projects than truly talented people.

spaniard89277 3y ago

Companies hoping people forgot how nice it felt living in a nicer place and not commuting. Being able to close my laptop, walk down to the beach and meet my friends is not something I will forget easily, nor something I want to trade for living in Madrid or Barcelona for a few peanuts more.

lacrimacida 3y ago
You’re supposed to feel miserable and cheer up on company townhall meetings
- dudul 3y ago
  The paradox is that remote townhalls are probably so much more productive since everybody can just put it in the background and actually get things done.
barrotes 3y ago
This comment hits very hard, I can fully relate with this. Also pre-covid I often worked in peripherals zones of Rome, one of the worst cities in Europe about traffic and public transport. I still have nightmares about those trips.

meindnoch 3y ago

>Workers today put an increasing value in a flexible workplace and view hybrid work accommodations as equal to an 8% pay increase No. Fuck off with your hybrid bullshit.

deleted 3y ago
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hirako2000 3y ago
Ditto. Hybrid is a hat trick to lure those who categorically reject on-site roles. Once in, there are dozens of ways to justify needing you in most often.
- HelloNurse 3y ago
  "Hybrid" means "you don't even know when you'll be required to come to the office".

bgribble 3y ago

I have 2 kids. Commuting took a huge fraction of the available time I could be spending with them and for them -- asleep 8, working 8, kids sleep a couple hours longer than I do, so absolute max of 6 hours on a workday I could spend doing everything I need and want to do with my kids and spouse. Taking 2 of those hours for commuting is not just 2/24 of the day, it's 1/3 of the total time I have available. Juice is not worth the squeeze.

namdnay 3y ago
Is the problem the office or the commute? If offices, schools/nurseries and housing are all within a 20mn cycle radius the question of remote or in-office work becomes different
- darkclouds 3y ago
  Whilst more time could be spent at home relaxing, I've just had a soak in the bath and have finally worked out why my dog would not come in the bathroom. I'm lying there detecting the foul odour of my neighbours diet wafting through the overflow hole in the bath and basin! At least my supplements are improving my olfactory bulb, who would have thought being on a mains water supply is a low level neighbourly germ warfare zone. No wonder the water companies tell us to spend no more than 4mins in the shower!
  - CommieBobDole 3y ago
    > the foul odour of my neighbours diet wafting through the overflow hole You have a plumbing problem - both the drain and the overflow should be protected by the trap, preventing intrusion of sewer gases and other odors.
    - darkclouds 3y ago
      This seems to be pushing the fluid in the trap, and I say that because I can hear it from the basin which has its own trap and the bath and the toilet. I can watch the water in the toilet rising and then receding when the basin and sink gurgle. I also would not put anything past the US and UK military around here.

mechhacker 3y ago

Having to go back to the office would now require me moving 3000 miles across the country, to a place that made me depressed every winter. To a place that had some of the most restrictive policies the last few years. And to a spot that has housing costs even higher and worse. No thanks, I'd rather take contract work or figure out something else.

Gigachad 3y ago
You could always take a job locally. Your position would just be filled by someone who lives near by.

logicchains 3y ago

It bears remembering the massive misalignment of incentives here: the funds like Blackrock holding large portions of the stock in these companies also hold significant positions in commercial real estate, so if they let WFH become permanently widespread they could suffer a big loss on that, hence the push for companies to enforce work from office. Many companies themselves also have commercial real estate positions (if only in their own office buildings), which they don't want to lose value.

wildrhythms 3y ago
It's also the tax breaks. >Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly. >The state [New Jersey] said it will revoke benefits granted under the multibillion-dollar Enterprise Zone Program to companies whose employees no longer work on site at least half the time. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t... https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv
- logicchains 3y ago
  I wonder why that is? I suppose the governments of states with big cities stand to lose a lot of tax revenue if employees no longer need to go to those big cities to do their jobs, and can instead work from (and pay tax to) states with lower cost of living.
  - tyingq 3y ago
    The "zone" programs are for specific, limited, areas where the government entity wants to see the company employees spend their money. Generally areas that neThe tax break to the business is because their employees are spending money in the area where the office is located...some area in need of renewal/spending. With WFH, the employees stay at home in their upscale suburb areas that don't need artificial incentives to attract money.

mabbo 3y ago

In my recent job offer negotiations, I made mostly-remote a key factor. They wanted me. I didn't want to commute an hour each way every day when I could spend that time with my toddler instead. I didn't give an ultimatum as much as say "I will stop interviewing with other companies and sign your offer now if you amend it to say I don't have to be in the office if I don't want to". I work there now.

spaceheater 3y ago

I mean, every 2-3 weeks there is top story on hn about how returning back to office is evil, and the same comments about how working from home gave those people a whole new meaning and fulfillment in life. This must be an ad, right?

xyzzy4747 3y ago

I have multiple million in my brokerage account and a newborn child... to put it mildly nobody can entice me to go back into the office.

DoingIsLearning 3y ago

Trying to frame remote in mainstream media as a perk of benevolence from great leadership is in my view a wage supressing strategy. If a business cuts office space by half or eliminates office space completely then that is a saving for the company, end of. Lease, insurance, Energy bills, internet bills, etc. Framing this in the context of business to business. If my service created a saving for your company then everyone would agree that I could charge more for my service, as I stand to benefit from your saving. Somehow that disolves if the relation involves an HR department.

LightBug1 3y ago

I'm not ashamed to say that as soon our company enforced return-to-work policies (and not even flex/hybrid which would have been acceptable), I absolutely quiet-quit. Bare minimum productivity. And in my quiet-quit zone, I'm spending at least 20% of that time in the office sifting through roles trying to find the perfect hybrid/remote role. p.s. the title of this article says "WFH perks" ... that's exactly what's wrong with how the Big Cheese view WFH ... as a perk ... it's not a perk, it's leveraging technology to make your staff more productive with the benefit of a more balanced life ... while, literally, showing mercy on them by not forcing the sardine-commute on them 5 days a week. Anyway.

rcme 3y ago
I have yet to see anything indicate remote work makes knowledge workers more productive. I prefer hybrid word, but exclusively because of the benefits outside of work. Anecdotally, I’m probably around 80% as productive at home compared to at the office.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I’m probably around 150% as productive at home compared to at the office. How's that for a reverse card? Seriously, I can't stand hearing other people talk. I can't stand hearing their keyboards, or their mice clicking, I can't stand to hear people walking around, I don't want them to be able to talk to me abruptly. Work gets done faster when I'm allowed to focus in my own controlled environment.
  - rcme 3y ago
    I did mention my experience was anecdotal. This is a debate that can easily be settled with hard data. https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productiv... For what it’s worth, I agree with all of your office complaints. Yet, personally, I’m still more productive at the office. I liken this to working out at the gym alone vs. with a personal trainer. Working out alone is like working from home. No one is watching you to keep you accountable. Feeling sleepy? Take a nap! Whereas at work you have to appear productive all the time, similar to how it’s hard to slack off when working out with a trainer. And the easiest way to appear productive is just to be productive.

deleted 3y ago

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FredPret 3y ago

Big surprise. Most work is done by a tiny minority. This minority will perform well from home or from the office. The majority will slack off in both places, but less visibly so in the office. So mandating return to office for the whole company (don't really see a practical way to mandate it for some only) to make bad employees suck slightly less, is of course going to annoy the productive few the most.

cj 3y ago

The (unfortunate) reality is these shifts back to office are going to be easier to pull off if a company is willing to lose 10% of their staff (or whatever the percentage ends up being) because the job market right now is very loose with a lot of people out of work, making replacements are easy (and quick) to find. Some companies may even like the idea of shedding some of their top talent (who also tend to be paid a lot) if they feel they're still overstaffed from the covid hiring boom. Source: I'm a hiring manager at a remote company. I've talked to candidates who are leaving their companies because they tried to negotiate 100% remote but their companies are refusing, so they're looking to land at a permanent fully remote position. Edit: comment above is in the context of tech companies

jncfhnb 3y ago
The US unemployment rate and total unemployed people is at its lowest point in at least 20 years.
- cj 3y ago
  Thanks, I edited the comment to clarify tech industry, not the overall market
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Tech unemployment is trending differently but still in the general ballpark it has been at around half of overall unemployment.
DrBazza 3y ago
You raise an interesting point. For large companies, they'll use this as an opportunity to push salaries down. This happened in banks in London over the 90s and 00s. At each 'crisis' (IR35, LTCM, credit crunch, etc.), they made staff redundant, and reduced new salary offers across the board, you could argue, almost like a cartel.

m-p-3 3y ago

With kids going to school, working from home is definitely better to handle the unpredictability that comes with it. I have about a one hour commute to do (one way) to get to the office. I'd live closer if I could afford it, but it is what it is. While I worked at the office, having a sick kid meant I had to call the entire day off, now I can simply keep him at home or go pick him up in 10 minutes and resume my day. Productivity and stress-wise, WFH is definitely better.

Insanity 3y ago

I can absolutely see this happening. I work at a FAANG as software manager and have seen multiple resignations in my org of high performers where the number one reason was “return to office”. As far as I can tell, every one of them now has a full remote job. (And higher pay for at least some)

xvector 3y ago
The higher pay is a big thing - lots of people think they "need" to take a pay cut but this is absolutely not the case. Often, I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - people self-deprecatingly accept lesser pay because a job is remote, when in fact a compromise was never needed to begin with. When my old company (paying top of market) started to enforce RTO, I left for another company paying ~twice as much - fully remote.

bloopernova 3y ago

WFH is just deeply ingrained in some people and corporate cultures. Some corporations seem to be too apathetic or stubborn to walk away from their huge office leases. I'm glad my employer did. Of course, in the client I work for, all the middle-management and above all work from home 100%. It's only the peons and their immediate managers who have to go into the office. It's so blatant I can't believe the upper management can keep a straight face while talking about how great it is to see everyone together while they themselves are remote.

cpfohl 3y ago

I know the 8% is a statistic, averaging over lots of users, but it seems dramatically too low. I have a flexible, remote job (I have have for 11 years of my 13 year career to date). When I think about the cost it would take to poach me for the exact same job, but non-remote, non-flexible it would be a multiple of 4 or 5 (maybe more). So 400% to 500%. I suspect it's implied that this is for people who were granted temporary WFH status in the peak of the Pandemic...that said I think 8% is wildly undervaluing WFH

austin-cheney 3y ago

If I have to choose between remote work and coming into an office with an amazing team I would choose the amazing team every time. I say this after switching from a 90 minute one-way commute to remote work from home for 3 years. By awesome team I mean people who operate with confidence where confidence defines the distance between our honesty about perceiving a problem and our approach. I only chose the remote work because I would rather be bored at home with my fruit orchard and personal electronics than bored at an office reading CNN with 3 hours on the road. When my directness becomes offensive only due to its direct nature it becomes apparent I have made a grave mistake in choosing a my social circle, and so I would rather work with an awesome team even with a long commute.

xvector 3y ago

Quit my job and left for a remote job paying double the moment my work decided to enforce RTO.

wkat4242 3y ago

They shouldn't forget that the office is no longer as productive. We used to have our own desks before the pandemic but now we have a half broken booking system for the hotdesks. Half the people ignore it so I often have to fight work colleagues. Also I'm no longer near the people who I actually work with but mindless sales drones instead, barking loudly on the phone all day. I really hate the office now. I go as little as possible even though HR demands we come 2 days a week. But screw them.

tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
[flagged]
- sib 3y ago
  His (quiet) "pipsqueak nerdism" doesn't prevent them from doing their jobs...
- lampshades 3y ago
  Found the salesman. Is it any wonder we (programmers) talk so much shit about you all when you act like this? And you call us childish. Hilarious.
SonicScrub 3y ago
> Also I'm no longer near the people who I actually work with I think herein lies the divide between people who find the office valuable vs those who don't (or at least part of it). Back in the pre-pandemic days, I worked for large Megacorp1234, and my team was distributed throughout the country. Most people in my immediate office vicinity were not the people I needed to collaborate with to do my job. We were essentially a remotely operating team, who nevertheless all had to have a butt in cubicle for some reason. Being able to occasionally work from home (each specific instance had to be approved though!) improved productivity dramatically. Fast-forward to today, and I work for a small company. My team and I work next to one and another in a nice, quiet office space, with breakout rooms with whiteboards for noisy collaboration. Team cohesion is good, and we all actually know each other beyond a profile picture on a computer screen. In this environment (which I'm beginning to learn is quite rare), you simply cannot beat the benefits of in-person collaboration. The office does actually provide a real benefit, and I do actually enjoy coming in. As do my colleagues. We all have the option of working remote, yet most of choose to come in more often than not. However let's not understate that being hybrid is a big part of what makes this whole thing work. Pretty hard to beat the flexibility that provides. So I guess my point is if businesses want people to come back to the office, they need to provide real tangible benefits to actually coming back. I've worked in an office like yours, and if I still did, my stance on the matter would be the same as yours.

blitz_skull 3y ago

WFH is here to stay and I really wish companies like business insider would stop trying to pretend otherwise. The cat is out of the bag. Small, innovative startups that don’t care about the corporate bullshit will always use it as a strong lever that FAANG may or may not be willing to pull. I’ve now worked at 2 startups over the past 4 years who were remote-first culture, and probably 80% FAANG salary. Easy decision for me.

mypastself 3y ago

Did I miss the part where the article demonstrates the headline’s claim? The numbers comparing hiring increases between WFH and WFO companies need more context before we can make this conclusion. Does the paywalled WSJ article they’re linking to account for different business domains?

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I literally just quit my cushy senior leadership job at a megacorp because they asked me to come back 5 days a week. Switched up for a distinguished engineer role at a late stage startup making more with more interesting work and no one telling me they value controlling my physical body over my contribution. If they value my physical body over my work, they can have neither.

manzanarama 3y ago

I am torn, I 100% understand the huge burden of commuting and the amazing flexibilities of working from home. I have a medical condition where I essentially have to prepare or at least bring all of my own food. This is obviously much easier when I WFH, and can prepare food ad hoc. Although I do work for a large famous tech company, I have a sweet setup where I can bike to work (to my desk) in less than 10 minutes in Bay Area weather (which is cooperative probably 340 days a year), we are not working from office 5 days a week, and its somewhat socially acceptable to work limited hours (lets say 10-4:30) in the office. Working in the office, I am so so so much more aware of all the other projects my team is working on, and the org as a whole. I am able to pick up on so much more. The little conversations, both about work and not are lost when WFH. Obviously many companies never 100% committed to remote work, and some of this could be made up for by different technologies and processes. But in my opinion it will be very very very hard to reach the fidelity and bandwidth of information of in person work. I think you have a long list of pros and cons here. A while back I was thinking about what college may look like in 20 year. I was thinking of my experience in a California UC and how useless I found the lectures and but how incredibly helpful I found the office hours and studying with peers. I was thinking a distributed satellite model could be ideal. The lectures or base instruction could be remote, or even AI based, with small "campuses" or even just glorified rooms somewhere (library, strip mall) where small groups of students can meet in groups of 5,10,15 and learn together. I wonder if something could be done for work as well. If larger corporations could maintain lots of tiny office spaces, near where people want to, or could live and require teams to be co-located. I truly think that if the commute was just a few minutes, and the hours in office were only required to be 6 hours or something, that the working in office would not be a huge burden.

DrBazza 3y ago

The 'equivalent to an 8% pay rise' in the UK loosely matches the after-tax cost of an annual rail ticket on an hour commute or longer. That's a ticket in the region of £6000 per annum, which is about £10,000 of gross salary. So not doing that commute and working from home is quite a bit of money. And some anec-data: my former employer, after 3 years of WFH and a couple of non-London offices that they embraced with out-sourcing the work "since we're all remote anyway", has told people to come back to the London office at least 3 days a week. Almost all of my former colleagues I'm in contact with have told me they're now looking for new jobs with WFH.

manzanarama 3y ago

This "losing out on top talent" thing is 75% true but I know a lot of career oriented people who are passionate about building the best product possible that prefer a decent amount of in office time to be able to better collaborate and get stuff done.

DrBazza 3y ago
I know senior people that have taken the management path after being software developers, and they're definitely 'we need to collaborate'. I've yet to meet a senior developer that wants to collaborate in person more than once a week since COVID.

Const-me 3y ago

This reminds me of the old pandemic of 1346-1353. Many people died back then. Traditional manorial system, which was based on serfdom, became less viable. Land owners discovered they have to compete for workers, instead of just exploiting the free serfs. They started to pay them money, which over time launched the market economy. I would expect that in the long term, this pandemic (combined with low birth rates in most western countries) will also improve our society.

ochronus 3y ago

Yup, 100% my experience as a hiring manager. On top of that, forcing people to the office (just like forcing them to 100% work from home) can affect their productivity negatively. See https://leadership.garden/back-to-the-office/ https://leadership.garden/back-to-the-office/

black_13 3y ago

[dead]

th3byrdm4n 3y ago

Talent <> value to the company. We sadly let someone walk because while they were SUPER talented, they weren’t working effectively on things that mattered

GreenAlien 3y ago

I made my career with managers thinking that I could produce much better than the majority of their employees. The reality was that I would do things like: "Come in a hour before the other employees" or "work an extra hours after I got home". In those quiet times I could accomplish more work than the 8 hours in an open office where every phone or person walking by was a distraction. Management thought I was so good, but the reality is that open offices are so inefficient they cut productivity by 80% and I worked around their inefficiently. WFH evened the playing field for a while, because others became more efficient but the incompetence of insecure managers is reestablishing their inefficient open offices again.

bobolino123 3y ago

Another scam is that the 1h lunch is not paid in most parts of Europe. Like in Switzerland it's not 42.5h week but actually 47.5h if you include the unpaid lunch. When I tell this to a British/Canadian/American they are kinda surprised.

hurrrr 3y ago

I think that the Gartner hype cycle can be applied to remote work. The peak was in 2022 and now we are in the trough of disillusionment. I think that an improvement in market conditions (low rates), the realization that remote first/fully remote can work at scale (it's a matter of time before the remote startups founded in the last 3 years will become unicorn/decacorn) and a stabilization in the commercial real estate and service sector (a huge crash is an hard pill to swallow, let the market adjust slowly) will push remote work In The slope of enlightenment.