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The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big nu

• blagie 3y ago
  This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower. Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is friction with top-down work-from-office mandates.
  • jack_riminton 3y ago
    This is it. Add to the fact that poor managers don't really understand or know what their staff are doing, it gives them anxiety. If the same poor manager is in an office with them and can see them at their desk then it alleviates that somewhat. Managing people is really really hard, but we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly.
    • walledstance 3y ago
      “Managing people is really really hard” I like your reply, but for different reasons. I am a middle school teacher, and my day to day is managing people. It is tiring, decidedly so, and yet at the end of the day, management is rewarding for me for because it is relationship building through gaining individual understanding and building classroom consensus. I love my job and am good at my job. But if I’m to step outside of my classroom your latter quote becomes far too truthful for me: “we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly” Your quote applies directly to my supposed superiors; assistant principals, principals, and higher ups in the school board. Most of the managerial class outside of a classroom is trash at their jobs. Their management style seems mostly morale busting and ego inflation at day’s end. I agree with you, just from a different occupational domain.
    • icedchai 3y ago
      Yep. It's the old "butts in seats" philosophy. The new one is "keep your Slack dot green" (or equivalent.) Many managers were always clueless what their staff are doing at the office. Many still are. It's incredible that we have all these tools (Jira, Asana, Github, Slack...) plus many are forced to give status updates in daily standups and other assorted "agile" nonsense, yet there are still those can't figure out what people are working on.
  • brandall10 3y ago
    I think this is largely it - the whole maker vs. manager thing... when your job relies on focus, being in a situation where you can control distractions is a benefit. But when your job relies on getting others' attention it can clearly be a negative, esp. if the culture is not thoroughly supportive. It also adds an extra hurdle for those who aren't particularly skilled at management.
  • weebull 3y ago
    It's the point where you're no longer an individual contributor. Running a team and keeping people on target is difficult remotely. Consensus is difficult remotely. Feedback is difficult remotely. Getting your head down and coding on your personal goal is easy remotely. I think some ICs like that it's harder for people to say to them that they are driving in the wrong direction, even if it's still true.
    • intended 3y ago
      I argue against this point. I believe it indicates a skill gap, not a physical law. If you've played MMOs, been parts of raids, or been active in a guild - you figure out how to solve these problems. I've been in a community management and moderation role entirely online - those interactions and issues were, by far, the most subjective and complex project discussions I have had to conduct. I believe that there is an entire generation of workers AND managers, who will be entering the workforce with highly effective remote working habits. The caveat is, that this applies to work that can be done online, where your product can be examined and verified online.
      • jltsiren 3y ago
        The MMO generation already entered the workforce a long time ago. Many of them are now middle-aged professionals. But because MMOs have always been a relatively niche hobby, with even the most popular games having only a few million daily players, their impact has not been that significant. They are a small minority in the overall workforce, and while they do have effective remote working habits, they have been self-selected for the ability and interest to form communities online.
        • intended 3y ago
          I think that was the reminder that I am very much middle aged now. You are right, however I would say that raids and coordinated e-sports were on the periphery when I was playing. I had to set up my own teams and lan tournaments. Nice distinction to highlight though, thank you! The skill set would require specific coordination skills, not just being able to play team matches occasionally. I suppose its proof that the skill exists, just not its distribution in the workforce.
  • AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Seems pretty obvious to me that this has always been the divide
  • dfxm12 3y ago
    I have a lot of interpersonal work, with people all around the world. Going into the office just to talk on these people on Teams doesn't give a productivity boost. Being able to do this or not is a skill, just like coding is a skill. I try not to bog down my team if I'm deficient in some skill, instead, I work to improve it.
  • julianozen 3y ago
    I agree with this
• intended 3y ago
  I would add one major change that the work from home experiment has achieved - its made the opportunity cost of the work commute clear. This is a time cost paid for by the worker. As you stated, this is variable. If you have a short commute, or you like it, or you get some exercise - office is great. If you hate your commute, if its 3 hours in pollution and traffic - not so much. Earlier the position was that WFH was not possible. Now we know it is, and I hazard that this change isn't factored in job postings. Considering what an hour of time means in this era, its not a trivial cost. This means an hour which could be spent just unwinding, studying, on hobbies, procrastinating, whatever. If you have any drive, or strong interests, thats time you would want to spend on something other than a commute.
  • KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Exactly. For me, there's nothing better than 15 minute walking commute.
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    I definitely agree here. For most of my career I was fortunate enough to not have a "real" commute. at most a 20 min walk to the office. The worse commute is when it was raining or snowing. The problem becomes now my home is tied to my work place. If the company moves or I change companies, I have move or stress at a new commute. I did move once during a job change, and it didn't last long. Another compounding issue is that I like to stay at companies for a long time, 10 years. This is frequently becoming difficult for a number of reasons not entirely in my control. I wonder if others are in the same situation.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • jen20 3y ago
      I wouldn’t call 2.5% of the day (including night) nothing. 20 minutes is way past the upper bound of a daily commute I would consider reasonable!
• brailsafe 3y ago
  > Some people require micro management and constant oversight Aside from having an actual assistant, is this just hypothetical or do you know someone that prefers being micromanaged?
  • CPLX 3y ago
    Yes. Like a thousand times yes. I learned this lesson as a manager very slowly because I hate being micromanaged. It made me a bad manager to not have that in my tool kit. There are a lot of people who just want you to tell them exactly what to do.
  • Grayskull 3y ago
    I dont think this is about workers preference. People without oversight can get unsure about how to execute task and need validation, but when directly asked nobody will tell you they like micromanaged (seen this). Other thing I've seen is people without supervision producing less/lower quality results.
    • brailsafe 3y ago
      > People without oversight can get unsure about how to execute task and need validation This sounds more like it could occur at least temporarily when most people get some categorically new task that's potentially costly to screw up, and I could imagine it being voluntarily requested rather than overbearingly applied. > Other thing I've seen is people without supervision producing less/lower quality results. I feel like managers identify a risk and apply their toolkit to it, which often ends up being increased oversight regardless of whether or not it's a good idea. It may or may not be I suppose, but it seems like only a niche person would respond with greater effectiveness in response to more frequent and perhaps intrusive scrutiny.
  • rvba 3y ago
    Interns, new employees...
  • halfcat 3y ago
    It’s not a preference to be micromanaged. It’s a preference to not execute two different skill sets when you lack one of them. That’s stressful. You might be a good developer, but not great at talking to users and figuring out the priority and the solution and executing on that independently. Or you might not be good at delivering eloquent speeches. Or whatever. Everyone lacks some skillset which they’d prefer someone more qualified handle for them.
• boppo1 3y ago
  >forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided So offering people remote work for a 20% TC reduction?
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    Not across the board, no. Most companies do this by using a cost of labor index for areas. NYC/SF/Seattle being the highest, and then smaller reductions outside. Basically you don't want to be in a HCOL (High Cost of Living) remote area with a LCOL (Low cost of Labor)
• furyg3 3y ago
  Totally agree, since the individual's situation varies so much (both intra-team, in their personal life, and across time) the only conclusion that can be said at a c-suite level is that nothing should be broadly mandated and that teams should have the option to decide on their own about office vs remote. I hypothesize, however, that a lot of these decisions at a c-suite level have more to do with other considerations, like property investments, headcount, salaries, or (worst of all) egos.
• goodpoint 3y ago
  > lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature Or in some specific countries and company cultures...
• e_i_pi_2 3y ago
  > the decision C-suite have to make when planning projects > in the setup that's decided I'd argue this shouldn't be a top-down decision - you can just let teams and individuals decide what works best for them, then that can be communicated upwards so the company can plan office space/resource allocation
  • swozey 3y ago
    I can't imagine a C-suite determining literally anything about my team beyond allowing it to exist in the budget. I worked at way too many startups where the CEO was far too involved with day to day minutiae.
  • zajio1am 3y ago
    'place of work' is usually (here in Czechia) defined in a labor contract. So that cannot change because 'team decided'. I have contract with my employer, not with my team.
  • pompino 3y ago
    >you can just let teams and individuals decide what works best for them, then that can be communicated upwards so the company can plan office space/resource allocation Finding this many self-motivated conscientious employees is uncommon. Consider yourself lucky. This has never been a winning strategy that I've seen anywhere.
• internet101010 3y ago
  You used "some" in a lot of your sentences and that sums it up perfectly. Some people work better at home, some people work better in an office. Some jobs require more collaboration than others. I am the first to admit that meetings are usually a tad more productive in person but arbitrary "two days at office" policies make no sense, especially if there is not a policy where everybody has to go in on the same day(s). Office mandates are dumb and it should be left up to individual team leaders.
• ralmidani 3y ago
  This kind of nuance is also brought up in sister comments, but you probably explained it best. With the caveat that C-suite mandates should not be the only determinant; let teams have some degree of autonomy and self-organization, and be able to advocate for what works best for them. It’s unfortunate that there’s now very little nuance in American discourse especially, whether that’s in business, politics, economics, or society. Everything is an ideological “cause” worth fighting for, with an inverted bell curve showing lots of people at the extremes, and precious few in the middle. It doesn’t bode well. I fear America is devolving toward a 1980s Lebanon-style civil war, with everyone fighting against everyone at least at one point or another. The military could step in, but then we’d essentially have martial law which isn’t much better. It may seem silly to bring this up in a thread about remote work, but it’s really a microcosm for how polarized we’ve become.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Strong agree. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to run HR for any company of significant size, that accounts for individual differences. My personal management style was about treating each employee as an individual, but I was also fortunate to have a small team of high-performing, mature, dedicated professionals. My technique would not work on many of the teams that I see out there, these days.
• user3939382 3y ago
  I agree in general except on this > workload splitting where syncing isn't very important I'm not convinced that remote means syncing is harder. There is a case to be made that: it's easier because it compels teams to have a structure for syncing, and structured syncing may be more efficient than ad hoc. Put another way, you potentially lose the crutch and end up stronger as a result. This isn't a whimsical theory either- structured business processes are often missing and causing hidden costs and inefficiencies.
  • flkiwi 3y ago
    It doesn't make syncing harder. I've worked for high-performing global teams for DECADES, so this debate is amusing to me. It shows me which companies absolutely cannot scale past a certain point, and which perpetuate terrible communication and management practices papered over with in person smokescreens. Work requires effective communication. Global teams place a premium on that and nurture it if they're successful. The remote work dilemma is non-global teams discovering this well-trodden ground and attempting to reinvent the wheel, with a sprinkling of terrible commercial real estate decisions on top. (Nothing in this response addresses specific team types that benefit from in person work or the entirely valid in-office preferences of individual workers.)
    • chaosmonger7 3y ago
      [dead]
• rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
  I hope it's OK to dissent here since all the other comments agree with you anyway. Regarding this: > The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. > The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. If statistics is invalid, then how do you propose companies decide, based on a reasonable and empirical estimate of reality, on what work arrangement to implement? Do you believe that it is not expensive and disruptive to introduce as many variations of work setups as there are people in a company? What if the people deciding company policy simply prefer and believe in the advantages of onsite, which they have the freedom and right to believe---so why do people who prefer remote force themselves in such places?
  • codingdave 3y ago
    I am 100% in the remote work camp, but I agree with you. Every company has the right to make the choice that works for them... whether empirically driven or not, it is their prerogative to choose. But they do then need to hire the people for whom that choice works. And as people looking for work, we need to accept that some companies are non-viable for us because of the choices they make. The friction we're seeing now is that we're still recovering from a pandemic that forced everyone remote whether it works for them or not. So this idea of remote vs. office being a core strategic decision as a company grows is fairly new. We are all still learning how to navigate the options.
  • epolanski 3y ago
    > If statistics is invalid, then how do you propose companies decide, based on a reasonable and empirical estimate of reality, on what work arrangement to implement? As Einstein said, you should make every problem as simple as possible, but no more simple. The problem we're describing cannot be reduced to few simple statistics, it's exactly making the problem simpler than it is. Not only just the task of measuring productivity of knowledge workers is extremely difficult if not impossible, but getting any statistic across a wide variety of different factors makes it even more pointless. In fact, the problem shouldn't be approached from a macro, but microscopic level. Start from the basics. There's knowledge workers that don't do anything from home. There's knowledge workers that won't achieve anything at the office. There's gargantuan projects like operating systems or databases developed fully remotely and asynchronously. There's projects that barely move without lots of synchronous, meaningful in-person interactions and there's environments like early stage startups that desperately need this kind of situation (albeit I'm sure there's many exceptions). In professional sports it is very well understood that slightly different formulas work differently for different teams and players. Some needs to be fast and lean to be effective. Some need to put up muscle and weight. Many need both. Some need lots of cardio, some need more skills training. And all of that has to interact and mesh together and face different challenges. Yet you want to complex systems like business projects/teams built around few statistics? Ignoring the wide variety of factors and humans that will end up there? I'm not saying that building teams like that is an easy task, sometimes you just need to make work whatever team you're given, and you will have to decide a setup and give the right structure incentives to everyone to make it work. But even if tomorrow a stat told us that there's proof that statistically remote is better for 60% of the teams (or the opposite) that really won't help much.
• steveBK123 3y ago
  Right, I think the important nuance is that "it depends" and therefore, top-down C-level suite dictates on Remote/Hybrid/In-office requirements are generally more punitive than useful. If your team level management org cannot organically work out the right mix on a team/role basis, then you probably should look at what else they are doing poorly.
  • repeekad 3y ago
    I think you’re touching on an important point though, mix of in person and in office is really challenging, because some people see each other all day while others are literally more disconnected. It creates a heterogeneous mix of work relationships, and I’m not so sure that handling mix WFH WFO is purely evident of poor team management, it’s just difficult to have a cohesive team when some are physically there and some arent
    • steveBK123 3y ago
      I don't know how important all this social science stuff is to be honest. I've worked for 20 years in global teams, and written communication is very important. Having US/UK/Ireland/HK/Singapore split team isn't much different from remote. Over the years I've worked in smaller orgs with a higher % of local people. What I can tell you is that the amount of chatter grew exponentially. One place I used to call it "bilateral communication" because A-B would side-talk then A-C, then A-D, then B-C, then B-D.. all in-person. Tremendous games of telephone constantly. Remote is a forcing function on better written communication. It's funny that half this site is people working on various SaaS tools that are supposed to make work collaboration better, but somehow we need to sit next to each other to be productive?
      • repeekad 3y ago
        Oh and to be clear I’m less commenting on productivity, more on the soft stuff like sense of belonging to the org, enjoying time at work, and building real relationships. These things are strictly local, no one expects to form relationships with the accounting team in Ireland, and having an explicit process for interacting with them is probably more important than an explicit process for interacting with your manager. How important is that stuff, I have no idea, but if half the team are friends at work and the rest can only be reached over slack, that doesn’t sound like much of a team
• sam0x17 3y ago
  The debate is dramatically simplified when you take into account the gargantuan environmental impact of maintaining massive 24/7 climate-controlled office spaces that are vacant other than 40 hours a week (vacant for 75% of the week) and having people commute 15 minutes to 1.5 hours a day to and from these office spaces in motor vehicles, versus simply not leaving your house and re-purposing these sky-scrapers for societal goods like cheap/free high quality public housing, etc. You can't justify the environmental destruction of working in an office just because you like the aesthetic or it makes you feel better. These are not apples and oranges that can be compared like two sides of an equally unproblematic coin, and it makes me sick that people equivocate and make it seem otherwise.
• spacemadness 3y ago
  I’ve seen team managers blame design work being poor or unproductive on having remote workers when most of the team isn’t. And then when everyone is flown in they claim a great victory when the output is the same or worse. I think many managers with poor performing teams are using the opportunity to blame poor performance on remote with zero data to back that up. It’s simply a useful group to blame for all your problems often due to hiring a team of less experienced people so you can pay them less.
  • wubrr 3y ago
    Pretty much agree, but ultimately the onus on hiring the right people is on the hiring manager. The pattern here is management blaming their own incompetence on anything that doesn't lead back to themselves, such as WFH. Then you have higher level leadership eating this up because of their own laziness and incompetence. Incompetence all the way up.
• wubrr 3y ago
  > The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. Is it though? My last employer (a FAANG) did publish (questionable) numbers suggesting WFH being more efficient when the lockdowns started. When RTO started they flatly refused to back it up with any numbers whatsoever. > At the end of the day the decision C-suite have to make when planning projects is not remote vs non-remote and apply blindly rather in forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided. I think at the end of the day the C-suite has no idea whether WFH is better or worse. Middle management will come out and blame any lack of progress/productivity on literally anything that's not directly related to their own performance, so WFH is a natural scapegoat for incompetent management.
• RamblingCTO 3y ago
  Good take! What the comments also show is that people willingly bring themselves in a situation of 3h of commute and then complain. That's not something you'd ever widely see in Europe imho. 3h is insane. I have < 20 minutes and love the reading time, as I travel by public transport. If I'd have a farther commute I would just move. Baffles me that someone would accept this. Maybe your public transport/zoning is fucked up, not your remote/not remote thing?
  • ElevenLathe 3y ago
    It's absolutely true that the real problem in the US is our public transit (and by extension basically all post-WW2 buildings and infrastructure) situation, but if I'm just a guy running a software company, there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. Hence all the hand-wringing about remote work. I work VERY remote (my employer is in Austin, I live in Michigan), so public transit isn't really an option for that arrangement, but if I'm honest the only real reason I'm doing it is because of Austin housing prices -- I'd much rather live in an urban core within walking distance of work, but that lifestyle is unimaginably expensive in all the places where jobs exist. Instead, I have an aging 1940s tract home in a city 2k miles from work. The housing crisis is also a transit crisis. We built most of our homes and businesses around the cheap automobile and infinite petro-energy, with the predictable result that we can barely afford to live near the places we work.
    • RamblingCTO 3y ago
      Also a very good point! We kind of have the same, in the sense that lower income brackets have tend to have a longer commute from the city limits, but in very dense cities like Frankfurt I see no real solution to that. Apart from a few "social housing" offers that need to be built on a quota for a lot of new buildings. Texas -> Michigan is a very long way. Afaict this trend really got started with covid, where people fled to their home towns, right? > I'd much rather live in an urban core within walking distance of work The best. I have 14 minutes by tram from door to door.
      • ElevenLathe 3y ago
• manicennui 3y ago
  "Some people require micro management and constant oversight" In my experience these people don't thrive in the office either. For software engineering in particular, these people are not useful employees.
  • pompino 3y ago
    But they exist, have jobs, and are producing things of value for other companies. You still have to deal with them. It is not realistic to fire people who don't align with someone's preferred management style.
• lwhi 3y ago
  I agree. Taking an average view isn't useful at all, apart from maybe insinuating more people carry out jobs that are suitable for remote working.
• gofreddygo 3y ago
  Also, people's circumstances change over time, but their work not so much. As a new grad, hell yeah I want to be in the office to interrupt and be interrupted for the learning, interact to know other, hope for serendipitous encounters, have a good time after work, meet a potential partner, yada yada. As a family person with decade of work history, I see it as losing my balance, a hindrance the interruptions, the banter, the random assignments because you ran into someone in the cafe, having to deny after hours stuff again and again for the kids or appointments, having to take the whole day off for a 2 hour appointment at lunch, blah blah blah. Not all new grads are the same, neither all seniors. Let people pick. The illusion of loss of productivity has been shattered and there's no going back. There was a point in time when all you could buy was a black ford model-T. Ford would love to do that. But it can't anymore. Times have changed. Took Ford a long time and many executive shifts to move on and get along with reality. So will this.