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Anecdote: I work with multiple enterprise clients and the teams that are in-office are way more inept. They are always late to meetings, meetings run over, and

by dsgnr 3y ago

Anecdote: I work with multiple enterprise clients and the teams that are in-office are way more inept. They are always late to meetings, meetings run over, and everyone interrupts and just babbles on about nonsense wasting time and energy. Its so obviously unproductive its insane. Ill keep billing hours but in office is so dumb from my perspective.

rhaway84773 3y ago
Counter anecdote. My India teams that were easily less effective than my US teams have now become more effective than the US teams though the actual devs haven’t changed meaningfully. What’s different since the pandemic is the US teams are almost completely remote whereas the India teams voluntarily have been coming to the office 3 days/week.
- Niksko 3y ago
  This should be expected if: * the teams in India are all in the office on the same 3 days with a decent turnout, not just 3 random days of each individual's choosing and some that do and some that don't. * the US teams haven't done much to meaningfully go remote other than using Zoom more. When I say "meaningfully go remote" I mean investing in things like daily explicit social time, moving towards a more async, written way of communicating (to avoid endless meetings), thinking about how decisions are made instead of just defaulting to meetings, that sort of stuff. If neither of those things are true (i.e. your teams in India don't come in on the same days or come in sporadically, and your US teams have put in lots of effort to go remote with deliberateness) then I can't explain things.
clnq 3y ago
Where there is smoke, there is fire. In my observation, forced RTO in tech is just one symptom of larger inefficiencies and mismanagement. The whole RTO trend in software seems to be just friction-causing busywork for middle managers. People working from where they’re most effective - that should not be “solved”. That is okay as it is. Sometimes doing nothing as a manager is better than doing damage that costs talent, reputation, institutional knowledge, and significant money long-term. Considering all the harm forced RTO has caused in tech, it seems excessively naive to think it’s the only instance of damage these managers have done.

by dsgnr 3y ago

rhaway84773 3y ago

Counter anecdote. My India teams that were easily less effective than my US teams have now become more effective than the US teams though the actual devs haven’t changed meaningfully. What’s different since the pandemic is the US teams are almost completely remote whereas the India teams voluntarily have been coming to the office 3 days/week.

Niksko 3y ago
This should be expected if: * the teams in India are all in the office on the same 3 days with a decent turnout, not just 3 random days of each individual's choosing and some that do and some that don't. * the US teams haven't done much to meaningfully go remote other than using Zoom more. When I say "meaningfully go remote" I mean investing in things like daily explicit social time, moving towards a more async, written way of communicating (to avoid endless meetings), thinking about how decisions are made instead of just defaulting to meetings, that sort of stuff. If neither of those things are true (i.e. your teams in India don't come in on the same days or come in sporadically, and your US teams have put in lots of effort to go remote with deliberateness) then I can't explain things.

clnq 3y ago

Where there is smoke, there is fire. In my observation, forced RTO in tech is just one symptom of larger inefficiencies and mismanagement. The whole RTO trend in software seems to be just friction-causing busywork for middle managers. People working from where they’re most effective - that should not be “solved”. That is okay as it is. Sometimes doing nothing as a manager is better than doing damage that costs talent, reputation, institutional knowledge, and significant money long-term. Considering all the harm forced RTO has caused in tech, it seems excessively naive to think it’s the only instance of damage these managers have done.