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Disagree with your sentiment. Big tech employee for 12 years. There is substantial support for RTO, but those voices aren’t as loud, don’t advocate their positi

Disagree with your sentiment. Big tech employee for 12 years. There is substantial support for RTO, but those voices aren’t as loud, don’t advocate their positions as vocally as the rest.

d3w4s9 3y ago
"substantial" needs to be put in context. At my company with thousands of employees, informal polls (where every employee can participate anonymously) show that people who are in favor/against of RTO is 1:4. At least that's a number I can quote.
- aeyes 3y ago
  We were also polled at quite a big company with offices in multiple countries. Most engineering teams have teammates in different locations. The results came out very comparable to yours, 78% against RTO but the company is still enforcing it.
asylteltine 3y ago
In big tech and not one single person I know wants rto. Not one.
- badlucklottery 3y ago
  Same here. And it makes perfect sense. For me personally, being able to move somewhere with a lower cost of living without having a lengthy commute is a huge benefit. Especially in the face of ongoing layoffs.
- timthelion 3y ago
  I know several top managers who are in favor of mandatory RTO for those lower ranked than themselves.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    LOL yes, of course! This is like voting for a tax increase on other people.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    My favorite director made RTO mandatory for his org on a "we're better together" campaign, moved his office away from the org, and spends most of his days on zoom calls with executives. And it turns out, when he's on zoom for most of a day, he doesn't see the point to coming into the office!
    - grumpy_coder 3y ago
      One thing I have seen is a massive increase in wider executive meetings. With Zoom calls routinely having 100 executives. There's no time to manage their own teams because top execs are forever inviting everyone to 'fireside chats' and 'deep dives' because on the surface it costs nothing to add another person to a Zoom call.
  - lannisterstark 3y ago
    >several top managers well yes, that's what managers do - make life miserable for others lol. (mostly /s but not really)
- spike021 3y ago
  That's hardly a qualifier, because I work in big tech and I know many people who'd love to RTO at least in a hybrid capacity.
  - asylteltine 3y ago
    That’s not RTO
    - spike021 3y ago
      So you'd be fine going into the office up to 3 days a week or every other week?
      - lannisterstark 3y ago
        The issue here is "voluntary" vs "told to." If people (or a team) wants to be in office 2-3 days a week, fine, good for them. If you don't, _you should_ be allowed that choice.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Not all of the stakeholder's voices are in the room, right? Something that's essential for Big Tech is the wave of newly minted engineers to facilitate growth (and replace people that retire). These people don't even work for your company yet, but I know that the're going to have an awful onboarding experience when there is nobody to sit next to them and answer all the "dumb questions" that we inevitably have when we're learning the field. My impression from working at Google was that mentorship was one of the most important software engineering job responsibilities. There were many summers there where I had interns and my full-time job was answering their questions, and that seemed to be what was expected. (They made some neat stuff that I would have prioritized for myself to do!) Big Tech's goal is to get huge, so they can pursue any opportunity that comes up. It isn't necessarily for Engineer #23847 on Team #8734 to type in as much code as possible. (Whether or not this strategy is a good idea is up for debate, several rounds of layoffs later.)
  - asylteltine 3y ago
    Yeah I hear that as a common argument but why is that my problem? Why should I be forced to commute just because a junior engineer can’t figure shit out?
    - jrockway 3y ago
      Because your job at this type of company is to train junior engineers. That might not be a priority elsewhere, so the idea is to get you to work elsewhere instead.
aaomidi 3y ago
Consistently every single survey at various places has shown you're wrong. Force RTO has also been devastating for caregivers (which are, usually, non-white & immigrants due to larger family sizes and less-established parents).
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
How do you know there is substantial support if the people who support it don't voice that opinion? Also, why would they not voice that opinion if it matters to them? I know some people who like working in the office, and some whose home arrangements make WFH hard, and that is fine. However, the majority of my colleagues I have spoken to have the opposite view and prefer WFH. I haven't found anyone who withholds their view. Just anecdata of course, like yourself, but I haven't seen substantial RTO support, even if some people prefer it.
steveBK123 3y ago
I don't think the "we prefer RTO" crowd is anything more than 10%, but I won't quibble about exact percents. The problem with the RTO boosters is they aren't happy enough to just RTO themselves. RTO boosters generally start demanding OTHER people return to the office with them. So the problem is RTO boosters demand other people conform to their preference because "the office is dead without my team there" or similar statements. Hybrid/WFH boosters don't care what OTHER people do. You wanna work from the office, go for it man, I literally could not care less. Work from the moon, your beach house, your moms house, Holiday Inn, Starbucks, or the office.. whatever.
- 31337Logic 3y ago
  This completely misses the point. In the case of RTO, you can't be a relativist. You can't say "well I prefer to RTO but I'm okay if everyone else chooses to WFH" because the whole point of RTO is that we all (or almost all, within reason) return together. Even if your immediate teammates may not be in the same physical space as you, hopefully you're "extended team" is. And I'd argue that even if no one from your team or department shares your physical space, there's still absolute value in returning to office because it promotes a sense of community and networking.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    No I'm not missing the point. I'm pointing out that the RTO boosters are making a much larger ask of their teammates. In the age of open floor plans, no cubes, no offices.. many of us find it near impossible to do "deep work" in the office. Sitting on an open floorplan with noise cancelling headphones on for 8 hours per day is not a life I want to go back to living.
    - LazarWolf_ 3y ago
      I generally support choice in work place. However, many advocates of WFH disappear for days; seem to produce less results. Younger teammates don’t have the best work philosophies, and won’t necessarily develop them in isolation. Some of this may be fixed with process changes and better tooling; but that does not exist today for the company I work for. I signed a contract that said I would come to the office when I took my offer, and honestly, if WFH people are serious; that should be more vocal about allowing folks to leave the state boundaries too. Silicon Valley folks who live in 3+ mil houses seem to be really happy with WFH… As a personal anecdote, many of our local restaurants near my office have closed down, people I cared about lost jobs and livelihoods from these somewhat self-centered changes. I want more people to understand that these arguments have perverse secondary effects on society as well.
wfhBrian 3y ago
There are great places to work in-person, for example, any of Musk's companies which have missions that require extreme levels of communication and dedication that can only be achieved through colocation. This makes it worthwhile. And it's great for other people to be able to choose something more flexible, whether for family or some other desire, and be able to leverage the benefits that remote work provides. But even in small company, it's absurd to think that there's a single answer to "which is better" for every employee. What's more absurd is that the executive-level positions tend to be more flexible. If anyone's to benefit from in-person communication and spontaneous interactions it's those making decisions that impact those people. As an outsider, neither employee or employer, to me the whole thing looks like an abusive relationship, particularly egregious on the employer side, but not without problematic actions from the employee side either. And while HN is an outlier, most people work to survive, not the other way around. Imagine if the same energy that went into promoting RTO, or even WFH for that matter, went into "enabling individuals to make worthwhile contributions and feel good about what they do." Queue the "people are lazy and can't be trusted" and "basic income is the only answer" choir. /end rant (cost: -37 karma)
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  > /end rant (cost: -37 karma) I wish people wouldn't sarcastically portray themselves as the underdog. It comes off as superior, rather than humble.
- lannisterstark 3y ago
  >basic income is the only answer Ironically, I think ensuring that people don't starve and become homeless during durations they are unemployed (which unemployment insurance/payments doesn't really do in many locations), is actually a good idea. It'll be nice to move away from "work because if I miss it we'll be homeless" to "work because I enjoy what I do, and can contribute positively in the field."
  - gray_-_wolf 3y ago
    That would work for (some) fields, but I do not expect enough people will volunteer to clean up the streets or stock up the shelf at the stores.
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
This sounds like "it doesn't seem like it, but I know there is a silent majority that shares my common-sense opinion.".
j-bos 3y ago
If the RTO support is substantial And backed by the executives, why is RTO support not heard in the workplace? Except by a tiny minority? At least that's what I see in the co I work for with several thousand techies.
kstrauser 3y ago
The preference seems to be highly asymmetric. People who want to RTO want to go back and think they'll be more efficient there. People who don't want to RTO may have things childcare routines, hell, even recent moves to distant cities, that make RTO a severe hardship. I don't mind going in to the office to meet up with my coworkers sometimes. People who took advantage of the opportunity to move to cheaper locales may have an incredibly hard time with that.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  I don't know a single person who doesn't list "more efficient" in their list of reasons they prefer WHO. The different opinions are only asymmetric in that the advantages alleged for WHO are typically a superset of the advantages alleged for RTO. Practically speaking, both are mostly correct - it's the person who does better with one or the other, not the policy itself. E.g. just looking at the efficiency variable alone, people who collaborate better remotely are not more or less hampered be being in-person with their colleagues than vice versa (unless you cherry-pick). So there's no reason not to just allow both, other than those common petty motivations that poor leaders are susceptible to focusing on, usually for optics reasons or other bad second-order metrics.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I agree with you. I feel like I'm way more efficient at WFH. The most common argument I've heard in favor of RTO is a claim that it will boost efficiency. I don't believe it, but that's the claim. Just pointing out that if someone wants to RTO but their office wants to WFH, that person will be slightly inconvenienced. If a person who built their lifestyle around WFH is required to RTO, they might face insurmountably major problems. And I think that's why the WFH contingent, including myself, is so much more vocal. Even if it were true that there were roughly as many RTO and WFH fans, which I don't believe for a moment, the WFH group deals with way more hardship if they don't get their way than the RTO group would.

Disagree with your sentiment. Big tech employee for 12 years. There is substantial support for RTO, but those voices aren’t as loud, don’t advocate their positions as vocally as the rest.

d3w4s9 3y ago

"substantial" needs to be put in context. At my company with thousands of employees, informal polls (where every employee can participate anonymously) show that people who are in favor/against of RTO is 1:4. At least that's a number I can quote.

aeyes 3y ago
We were also polled at quite a big company with offices in multiple countries. Most engineering teams have teammates in different locations. The results came out very comparable to yours, 78% against RTO but the company is still enforcing it.

asylteltine 3y ago

In big tech and not one single person I know wants rto. Not one.

badlucklottery 3y ago
Same here. And it makes perfect sense. For me personally, being able to move somewhere with a lower cost of living without having a lengthy commute is a huge benefit. Especially in the face of ongoing layoffs.
timthelion 3y ago
I know several top managers who are in favor of mandatory RTO for those lower ranked than themselves.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  LOL yes, of course! This is like voting for a tax increase on other people.
- klyrs 3y ago
  My favorite director made RTO mandatory for his org on a "we're better together" campaign, moved his office away from the org, and spends most of his days on zoom calls with executives. And it turns out, when he's on zoom for most of a day, he doesn't see the point to coming into the office!
  - grumpy_coder 3y ago
    One thing I have seen is a massive increase in wider executive meetings. With Zoom calls routinely having 100 executives. There's no time to manage their own teams because top execs are forever inviting everyone to 'fireside chats' and 'deep dives' because on the surface it costs nothing to add another person to a Zoom call.
- lannisterstark 3y ago
  >several top managers well yes, that's what managers do - make life miserable for others lol. (mostly /s but not really)
spike021 3y ago
That's hardly a qualifier, because I work in big tech and I know many people who'd love to RTO at least in a hybrid capacity.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  That’s not RTO
  - spike021 3y ago
    So you'd be fine going into the office up to 3 days a week or every other week?
    - lannisterstark 3y ago
      The issue here is "voluntary" vs "told to." If people (or a team) wants to be in office 2-3 days a week, fine, good for them. If you don't, _you should_ be allowed that choice.
jrockway 3y ago
Not all of the stakeholder's voices are in the room, right? Something that's essential for Big Tech is the wave of newly minted engineers to facilitate growth (and replace people that retire). These people don't even work for your company yet, but I know that the're going to have an awful onboarding experience when there is nobody to sit next to them and answer all the "dumb questions" that we inevitably have when we're learning the field. My impression from working at Google was that mentorship was one of the most important software engineering job responsibilities. There were many summers there where I had interns and my full-time job was answering their questions, and that seemed to be what was expected. (They made some neat stuff that I would have prioritized for myself to do!) Big Tech's goal is to get huge, so they can pursue any opportunity that comes up. It isn't necessarily for Engineer #23847 on Team #8734 to type in as much code as possible. (Whether or not this strategy is a good idea is up for debate, several rounds of layoffs later.)
- asylteltine 3y ago
  Yeah I hear that as a common argument but why is that my problem? Why should I be forced to commute just because a junior engineer can’t figure shit out?
  - jrockway 3y ago
    Because your job at this type of company is to train junior engineers. That might not be a priority elsewhere, so the idea is to get you to work elsewhere instead.

aaomidi 3y ago

Consistently every single survey at various places has shown you're wrong. Force RTO has also been devastating for caregivers (which are, usually, non-white & immigrants due to larger family sizes and less-established parents).

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

How do you know there is substantial support if the people who support it don't voice that opinion? Also, why would they not voice that opinion if it matters to them? I know some people who like working in the office, and some whose home arrangements make WFH hard, and that is fine. However, the majority of my colleagues I have spoken to have the opposite view and prefer WFH. I haven't found anyone who withholds their view. Just anecdata of course, like yourself, but I haven't seen substantial RTO support, even if some people prefer it.

steveBK123 3y ago

I don't think the "we prefer RTO" crowd is anything more than 10%, but I won't quibble about exact percents. The problem with the RTO boosters is they aren't happy enough to just RTO themselves. RTO boosters generally start demanding OTHER people return to the office with them. So the problem is RTO boosters demand other people conform to their preference because "the office is dead without my team there" or similar statements. Hybrid/WFH boosters don't care what OTHER people do. You wanna work from the office, go for it man, I literally could not care less. Work from the moon, your beach house, your moms house, Holiday Inn, Starbucks, or the office.. whatever.

31337Logic 3y ago
This completely misses the point. In the case of RTO, you can't be a relativist. You can't say "well I prefer to RTO but I'm okay if everyone else chooses to WFH" because the whole point of RTO is that we all (or almost all, within reason) return together. Even if your immediate teammates may not be in the same physical space as you, hopefully you're "extended team" is. And I'd argue that even if no one from your team or department shares your physical space, there's still absolute value in returning to office because it promotes a sense of community and networking.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  No I'm not missing the point. I'm pointing out that the RTO boosters are making a much larger ask of their teammates. In the age of open floor plans, no cubes, no offices.. many of us find it near impossible to do "deep work" in the office. Sitting on an open floorplan with noise cancelling headphones on for 8 hours per day is not a life I want to go back to living.
  - LazarWolf_ 3y ago
    I generally support choice in work place. However, many advocates of WFH disappear for days; seem to produce less results. Younger teammates don’t have the best work philosophies, and won’t necessarily develop them in isolation. Some of this may be fixed with process changes and better tooling; but that does not exist today for the company I work for. I signed a contract that said I would come to the office when I took my offer, and honestly, if WFH people are serious; that should be more vocal about allowing folks to leave the state boundaries too. Silicon Valley folks who live in 3+ mil houses seem to be really happy with WFH… As a personal anecdote, many of our local restaurants near my office have closed down, people I cared about lost jobs and livelihoods from these somewhat self-centered changes. I want more people to understand that these arguments have perverse secondary effects on society as well.

wfhBrian 3y ago

There are great places to work in-person, for example, any of Musk's companies which have missions that require extreme levels of communication and dedication that can only be achieved through colocation. This makes it worthwhile. And it's great for other people to be able to choose something more flexible, whether for family or some other desire, and be able to leverage the benefits that remote work provides. But even in small company, it's absurd to think that there's a single answer to "which is better" for every employee. What's more absurd is that the executive-level positions tend to be more flexible. If anyone's to benefit from in-person communication and spontaneous interactions it's those making decisions that impact those people. As an outsider, neither employee or employer, to me the whole thing looks like an abusive relationship, particularly egregious on the employer side, but not without problematic actions from the employee side either. And while HN is an outlier, most people work to survive, not the other way around. Imagine if the same energy that went into promoting RTO, or even WFH for that matter, went into "enabling individuals to make worthwhile contributions and feel good about what they do." Queue the "people are lazy and can't be trusted" and "basic income is the only answer" choir. /end rant (cost: -37 karma)

happytoexplain 3y ago
> /end rant (cost: -37 karma) I wish people wouldn't sarcastically portray themselves as the underdog. It comes off as superior, rather than humble.
lannisterstark 3y ago
>basic income is the only answer Ironically, I think ensuring that people don't starve and become homeless during durations they are unemployed (which unemployment insurance/payments doesn't really do in many locations), is actually a good idea. It'll be nice to move away from "work because if I miss it we'll be homeless" to "work because I enjoy what I do, and can contribute positively in the field."
- gray_-_wolf 3y ago
  That would work for (some) fields, but I do not expect enough people will volunteer to clean up the streets or stock up the shelf at the stores.

ParetoOptimal 3y ago

This sounds like "it doesn't seem like it, but I know there is a silent majority that shares my common-sense opinion.".

j-bos 3y ago

If the RTO support is substantial And backed by the executives, why is RTO support not heard in the workplace? Except by a tiny minority? At least that's what I see in the co I work for with several thousand techies.

kstrauser 3y ago

The preference seems to be highly asymmetric. People who want to RTO want to go back and think they'll be more efficient there. People who don't want to RTO may have things childcare routines, hell, even recent moves to distant cities, that make RTO a severe hardship. I don't mind going in to the office to meet up with my coworkers sometimes. People who took advantage of the opportunity to move to cheaper locales may have an incredibly hard time with that.

happytoexplain 3y ago
I don't know a single person who doesn't list "more efficient" in their list of reasons they prefer WHO. The different opinions are only asymmetric in that the advantages alleged for WHO are typically a superset of the advantages alleged for RTO. Practically speaking, both are mostly correct - it's the person who does better with one or the other, not the policy itself. E.g. just looking at the efficiency variable alone, people who collaborate better remotely are not more or less hampered be being in-person with their colleagues than vice versa (unless you cherry-pick). So there's no reason not to just allow both, other than those common petty motivations that poor leaders are susceptible to focusing on, usually for optics reasons or other bad second-order metrics.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I agree with you. I feel like I'm way more efficient at WFH. The most common argument I've heard in favor of RTO is a claim that it will boost efficiency. I don't believe it, but that's the claim. Just pointing out that if someone wants to RTO but their office wants to WFH, that person will be slightly inconvenienced. If a person who built their lifestyle around WFH is required to RTO, they might face insurmountably major problems. And I think that's why the WFH contingent, including myself, is so much more vocal. Even if it were true that there were roughly as many RTO and WFH fans, which I don't believe for a moment, the WFH group deals with way more hardship if they don't get their way than the RTO group would.