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> By early 2021, I was considered to not only be a top performer, but also a critical expert for the cryptography organization. My time ended up split across th

> By early 2021, I was considered to not only be a top performer, but also a critical expert for the cryptography organization. My time ended up split across three different teams, and I was still knocking my projects out of the park. But more importantly, junior employees felt comfortable approaching me with questions and our most distinguished engineers sought my insight on security and cryptography topics. Beside this humble brag is the realization that the author is atypical. That is, their experience with remote work and return-to-office experiences may be very different from that of the typical American tech worker. If everyone knows that return-to-office is bullshit why is there no data? If remote work is a great idea then why did so few companies adopt it after being forced to implement it during the pandemic? Virtually every company with offices in one form or another required their employees to show up at the office regularly (including my place of work). I don't have any data, but I'm assuming that most of these companies must have seen some productivity decrease or something or else they would have closed their expensive offices for good and let everyone work from home. At the very least the pandemic was not enough to demonstrate the "obvious" benefits of work from home over work from office.

nerevarthelame 3y ago
> If everyone knows that return-to-office is bullshit why is there no data? If remote work is a great idea then why did so few companies adopt it after being forced to implement it during the pandemic? Virtually every company with offices in one form or another required their employees to show up at the office regularly (including my place of work). I don't have any data, but I'm assuming that most of these companies must have seen some productivity decrease or something or else they would have closed their expensive offices for good and let everyone work from home. You're right, no one is sharing that data. But I think it's a pretty significant assumption that the decision to return to the office must therefore be being made based on some secret data and informed analysis that supports it. There's a tremendous amount of momentum to maintain the pre-2020 in-office status quo. That's the world that the people making these decisions know. Every member of the C-suite at my typical Fortune 500 company instead cites vague concerns over spontaneous connections and corporate culture. It certainly doesn't seem like it's based on data, but rather their desire to keep thousands of people working in the environment they happened to have thrived in.
- bjourne 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm assuming there was some evidence or else every company wouldn't have reached the same conclusion. My hunch is that a lot of people who claim to work from home are not actually working at all. Employers are bullshitting about the reasons for return to office and employees are bullshitting about their desire to "work" remotely...

nerevarthelame 3y ago

> If everyone knows that return-to-office is bullshit why is there no data? If remote work is a great idea then why did so few companies adopt it after being forced to implement it during the pandemic? Virtually every company with offices in one form or another required their employees to show up at the office regularly (including my place of work). I don't have any data, but I'm assuming that most of these companies must have seen some productivity decrease or something or else they would have closed their expensive offices for good and let everyone work from home. You're right, no one is sharing that data. But I think it's a pretty significant assumption that the decision to return to the office must therefore be being made based on some secret data and informed analysis that supports it. There's a tremendous amount of momentum to maintain the pre-2020 in-office status quo. That's the world that the people making these decisions know. Every member of the C-suite at my typical Fortune 500 company instead cites vague concerns over spontaneous connections and corporate culture. It certainly doesn't seem like it's based on data, but rather their desire to keep thousands of people working in the environment they happened to have thrived in.

bjourne 3y ago
Yeah, I'm assuming there was some evidence or else every company wouldn't have reached the same conclusion. My hunch is that a lot of people who claim to work from home are not actually working at all. Employers are bullshitting about the reasons for return to office and employees are bullshitting about their desire to "work" remotely...