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Well I agree with you. I love working remote and don’t want to RTO. However after several discussions on here where I simply asked the question of remote work

Well I agree with you. I love working remote and don’t want to RTO. However after several discussions on here where I simply asked the question of remote work proponents to just provide real evidence of the benefit of remote work to the organization and not just the personal benefits to them…I generally got argued and downvoted and told the same “brick and mortar savings” and “happier workers work harder” as the crust of the argument—both of which are usually highly subjective to the specific org and employee and not a hard and fast rule. Reality because of the HN audience is heavy on tech workers, which is one of the few disciplines that can actually and effectively WFH en masse, it’s out of balance to the real world. Add to that we tech folk already tend to believe we are the smartest humans to walk the earth, it makes for a fun combination of lack of real world awareness coupled with arrogance on the subject.

zrn900 3y ago
Maybe you were downvoted because the benefits of remote work to everybody and the society are obvious: - Avoid MASSIVE loss of time, and as a result, productivity and happiness to entire society by having people commute. That is time that can never be taken back. The time lost commuting is lost to the individual who's commuting, the company he or she works in, the economy and the society in general. No need to even talk about the cognitive cost that commuting carries. - Avoid ripping people off from their families, relatives, friends and their entire social support network which exist in the places they were born and grew up in. The cost of this is immeasurable as the loss of this support network involves a lot of costs ranging from detrimental psychological impact to the person to financial costs as the person must replace this support network by paying strangers to fill in those positions ranging from babysitting to care taking. The result is an entire society dumbed-down by xanax to cope. Which directly affects the companies that they work for as lost productivity. But of course, like real estate, there is an industry that profits from this misery - the pharma - and their profit is society's loss. - Avoid cramming millions into already overcrowded urban centers and creating innumerable problems ranging from social ones to infrastructure. There isnt any megapolis on the planet that solved these problems yet. And there wont be any until we invent something like 'space/time compression' and succeed in cramming more people into a place than what's physically possible. These should be enough by themselves as benefits as they are massive benefits to everybody involved and the society itself, while many more arguments can be made for remote work.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I don’t care about upvotes or downvotes. How my comments are received or not is what it is. I don’t measure my self worth by my karma on here. Karma or not, some topics on here do not evoke reasonable discussion. I do want to thank you however for making my exact point with an arrogant comment illustrating only the beneficial effects on the individual and nothing on the beneficial effects on the organization. It’s all the sweeter coming from an apparent throwaway account.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Why should anyone be interested in the beneficial effects on the organization though? That’s the point I think you’re missing. It’s not neutral, the point is that RTO benefits the individual less than the organization - hence why people don’t like it. Nobody has made a good case for RTO benefiting the individual
    - kcplate 3y ago
      >Nobody has made a good case for RTO benefiting the individual The organization gets to decide the work environment for its employees. The employee can decide to work for the organization or not. So if you as an employee want to influence the organization’s decision to RTO you better be able to make a case for why its better for the organization. They hold the cards on where you work for them.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
jdlshore 3y ago
One very real benefit to the org is that it’s much easier to recruit people with specialized skills. I recently posted a job opening for a Staff Eng position with very specific requirements and got a dozen very highly-qualified applicants, including some who are literally world class. Only one was located in my city. (To be fair, I’m pretty well known in the industry I was recruiting for, and presenting an extremely attractive opportunity for those people to work in a way few companies will allow. So maybe I would have gotten just as many star applicants if they had been required to move. But somehow I doubt it.) On the less positive side for US workers, it also opens the doors to hiring workers from places with lower cost of living. We can hire two engineers in Latam for the cost of one in the US, and three in India.

zrn900 3y ago

Maybe you were downvoted because the benefits of remote work to everybody and the society are obvious: - Avoid MASSIVE loss of time, and as a result, productivity and happiness to entire society by having people commute. That is time that can never be taken back. The time lost commuting is lost to the individual who's commuting, the company he or she works in, the economy and the society in general. No need to even talk about the cognitive cost that commuting carries. - Avoid ripping people off from their families, relatives, friends and their entire social support network which exist in the places they were born and grew up in. The cost of this is immeasurable as the loss of this support network involves a lot of costs ranging from detrimental psychological impact to the person to financial costs as the person must replace this support network by paying strangers to fill in those positions ranging from babysitting to care taking. The result is an entire society dumbed-down by xanax to cope. Which directly affects the companies that they work for as lost productivity. But of course, like real estate, there is an industry that profits from this misery - the pharma - and their profit is society's loss. - Avoid cramming millions into already overcrowded urban centers and creating innumerable problems ranging from social ones to infrastructure. There isnt any megapolis on the planet that solved these problems yet. And there wont be any until we invent something like 'space/time compression' and succeed in cramming more people into a place than what's physically possible. These should be enough by themselves as benefits as they are massive benefits to everybody involved and the society itself, while many more arguments can be made for remote work.

kcplate 3y ago
I don’t care about upvotes or downvotes. How my comments are received or not is what it is. I don’t measure my self worth by my karma on here. Karma or not, some topics on here do not evoke reasonable discussion. I do want to thank you however for making my exact point with an arrogant comment illustrating only the beneficial effects on the individual and nothing on the beneficial effects on the organization. It’s all the sweeter coming from an apparent throwaway account.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Why should anyone be interested in the beneficial effects on the organization though? That’s the point I think you’re missing. It’s not neutral, the point is that RTO benefits the individual less than the organization - hence why people don’t like it. Nobody has made a good case for RTO benefiting the individual
  - kcplate 3y ago
    >Nobody has made a good case for RTO benefiting the individual The organization gets to decide the work environment for its employees. The employee can decide to work for the organization or not. So if you as an employee want to influence the organization’s decision to RTO you better be able to make a case for why its better for the organization. They hold the cards on where you work for them.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

jdlshore 3y ago

One very real benefit to the org is that it’s much easier to recruit people with specialized skills. I recently posted a job opening for a Staff Eng position with very specific requirements and got a dozen very highly-qualified applicants, including some who are literally world class. Only one was located in my city. (To be fair, I’m pretty well known in the industry I was recruiting for, and presenting an extremely attractive opportunity for those people to work in a way few companies will allow. So maybe I would have gotten just as many star applicants if they had been required to move. But somehow I doubt it.) On the less positive side for US workers, it also opens the doors to hiring workers from places with lower cost of living. We can hire two engineers in Latam for the cost of one in the US, and three in India.