6 ms·

Working from home isn't going away, even if some CEOs wish it would

114 points by agomez314 3y ago

yuppiepuppie 3y ago
Having WFH for the past 3 years, Im not sure I would start my own WFH company. Maybe Im in a company that doesnt have the culture to support it very well, but the amount of inefficiency I see on the engineering level would make me prefer a hybrid solution for my own company. As an employee though, Im happy with WFH :)
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  I own equity in a fully remote company worth billions of dollars and highly profitable, and I would buy more if I could. There is (edit: at least) roughly $120B in enterprise value in fully remote and remote first orgs. Feelings and anecdotes aside, the data shows the model to be effective imho.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    Are there blogs on essays out there on how to do it properly?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job (See resources listed) https://basecamp.com/books/remote https://basecamp.com/books/remote
  - datascienced 3y ago
    Where does the 120B figure come from? In aggregate it seems low. Atlassian would be almost half that alone.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      A Google Sheet I lazily keep updated. I encourage someone to put something public and up to date if they have the time.
      - northhanover 3y ago
        You can just say you made up the number, it’s okay!
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I am lazy and time poor, not a liar. No need to troll if you [1], for whatever reason, take issue with the concept of remote work. You’re free to the opinion. I believe in the model based on a preponderance of the data (enterprise financial success and metrics, worker quality of life, environmental impact, etc). Probably a bit of “talking my book” [2] too if you will. I’ll make time to have the Google Sheet cleaned up and shared here as a post. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858529 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703 (Strong believer in putting my money where my mouth is)
  - Kiro 3y ago
    > Feelings and anecdotes aside, the data shows the model to be effective imho. Both sides are driven by feelings and anecdotes. The few data points that exist are inconclusive.
    - kkfx 3y ago
      Just see the FLOSS model: internet works on FLOSS software, typically developed in full-remote ways...
  - chollida1 3y ago
    > There is (edit: at least) roughly $120B in enterprise value in fully remote and remote first orgs. There aren't any North American private companies that have an enterprise value of over $120B right now so the company is public, why not just name it?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Figure presented is an aggregate if that was not clear, not a single enterprise. Open to suggestions how I could’ve improved that sentence in that regard.
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  WFH just amplifies management incompetence, it’s not a problem per se. If it doesn’t work, it’s better to look deeper to understand the root cause of inefficiency.
  - onion2k 3y ago
    WHF amplifies all incompetence, especially around comms. Managers are particularly bad at that but in my experience everyone is at least a little bad at it...
    - mojo74 3y ago
      The comms thing is a bit of a bug bear for me too. I like to respond quickly to messages/emails because I believe the person at the other end appreciates having their questions answered quickly so they can get one with their day. When I have to wait an hour (or whatever timeframe feels disproportionate) for a reply to my message it grates. Still, I can live with it if I don't have work in a noisy shared space.
      - fcatalan 3y ago
        About the remote work comms there is a widespread attitude that irks me: People texting "can we talk?" or simply "hello". No! tell me straight away what you need so I can judge how and when to respond. When people state what they need, most of the time the response is immediate and it's the thing they need or some ok followup. "can-we-talkers" I'm starting to let stew for a few minutes, because I suspect they do that on purpose to "skip my queue".
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        mojo74 3y ago
        I agree. Having worked on the shop floor I don't like my time being wasted and I'm careful to add detail for my colleagues so that they are engaged from the outset with my query. All I ask is 'give me half an hour' or some similar response so I can manage other people's expectations.
- pydry 3y ago
  I've worked for two types of WFH company - the kind where everybody is kind of just left to their own devices and the highly collaborative kind. I think a lot of people really like the former but I don't think it works very well. There's a marked tendency of many people to drift apart and communication breaks down within and across teams and the fallout it quite ugly - a lot of people individually doing their jobs (and perhaps doing them well), but nothing really fits together very well. I personally found working in this environment to be torture because my work felt performative and meaningless. I find that the highly collaborative kind works about as well as working in person - possibly better. However, I think it's only really possible with a lot of camera-on video calls which many people find quite draining.
  - photonthug 3y ago
    Things “fitting together” is generally on management though. Can’t speak for other industries but if you leave this up to engineers then they settle down into something like design by contract, or you write my tests I’ll write yours, etc. management often actively resists that with or without wfh because they don’t get to run fiefdoms on the strengths of their network and charisma, look important by forcing meetings, etc. So effectively you have middle management failing to be fulfilled at an emotional level as well as failing at a professional level to do management, and their plan to deal with this is to first blame others, then try to convince leadership to kill wfh for line workers before anyone notices the real problem. Nothing against any individuals out there, just seen these things play out a lot and have been having the wfh discussions since long before Covid. Technical alignment is easy in a sense because it’s clear when two ends of a bridge don’t meet in the middle. Product people or department heads have a harder time of things, but if I were a ceo, I don’t want to buy office space for 2500 when 25 will do. It’s kind of evil to advocate for back-to-office if you know it’s good for you, but bad for both the company and your coworkers, and I expect many of the most vocal advocates know these things in their secret hearts
  - anal_reactor 3y ago
    > I find that the highly collaborative kind works about as well as working in person - possibly better. However, I think it's only really possible with a lot of camera-on video calls which many people find quite draining. I think it's something else. It's providing space for employees to interact spontaneously. In software there's a huge push to have everything public and recorded, which makes me very cautious about how I present myself. When I switch to private messages, I get much higher sense of connection with the other person, because I don't need to stay that formal.
- glitchcrab 3y ago
  It's all down to the approach. I work for a company which has been remote right from the start (10 years ago) and if it's done right then it's great. A lot of it comes down to treating your employees as adults and trusting that they are doing their jobs. A good company culture is key to making it work.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  At work there tend to be other inefficiencies. A lot of "spontaneous collaboration" that people claim happens in the office is people talking to pretty/handsome people in other departments, without necessarily adding to the bottom line. In person collaboration is definitely worth it, but this needs to be planned. It doesn't happen automagically if you are being forced to sit at a desk. I can see why middle management's hates it thought. You can no longer tap on someone shoulder and pester them in prioritising your work above others. You need to make a business case rather than bullying a poor Engineer.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  How much more would you be willing to spend to get these employees to work in your office? Or put another way, at a fixed salary budget, how much smaller a talent pool would you accept to recruit from? Recruiting only from the pool of "people who accept to work 100% in an office" is a massive handicap, at least in some regions and positions.
  - dmitrygr 3y ago
    +1. I tell any recruiter not offering WFH to pound sand. It’s not the 1920s. I don’t need to commute to sit in front of a pc. I can do that just fine at home.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
At this point, there’s literally nothing useful / new that can be said on this. This is very clearly well into the territory of being a culture war issue. Both sides are entirely talking past each other, misrepresenting each other’s POVs, and there’s little if any room for nuanced discussion. As made evident by any HN thread on this topic, tech nerds are among those buying into this BS hook, line, and sinker.
- benterix 3y ago
  I disagree - the new thing is that it's the fourth year of this global revolution re. worker's rights and we partially won. I'm actually tracking the ratio of permanent/hybrid to remote jobs in my niche and I'm very happy there is no negative trend, i.e. the ratio of remote jobs is stable and they are the top-paid positions (which makes sense for other reasons). So I guess every year we can celebrate this enormous achievement that is positively affecting the lives of hundreds of millions around the globe.
  - aurizon 3y ago
    You speak of worker's rights, and you use the term 'won' - this implies there is a loser(s) and this harkens back to the slavery of yore, people unpaid and later minimally paid. I recall Ford paid wages that the other car makers despised him for just around WW1, he said he wanted his workers to be able to buy the cars they made. One of the key successes of the Industrial Revolution (IR) was the added wages induced by scarce worker competition. For many hundreds of years workers were in craft guilds. The classic crafts ( carpenters/iron/weave////) were all in craft guilds with strict rules to enter a guild, and to finally become a master craftsman after they passed their final approval of their work by that guild (now you know what a masterpiece is). All of day to day life was parcelled up in these guild, it was a rigid hierarchical society. It ran this way for thousands of years, with slow progression. The printing method of Gutenberg was the first crack in this near permanent society in that it allowed people to create large numbers of printed pages to spread information to people, and they allowed a cleric (Luther) to spread the word and shatter the mediaeval corrupt theocracy (the catholic church) by revealing how crooked and corrupt they were to people at large who could read or be read to. Before this, books were made by the scribes guild, pages were hand copied word by word, and often decorated with ornate glyphs, etc = Manuscripts = written by hand. Early printed books, incunabules, were made to closely resemble manuscripts, often with several colors and small ornate blocks added later to be like the manuscripts they replaced. The RC church had a fake religious structure of a god/saints/heaven/hell/angels etc, carefully structured to control people and steal from them. One of their bogeymen was heaven/hell/purgatory. Purgatory was a half-way house. The worthy went to heaven, the permanently damned went to hell, those not that good/bad went to the half-way house = purgatory = purge your 'sins', what these RC weasels did was to monetise purgatory by an 'indulgence' = pay $$ to the RC church = less time purging = to heaven you go - this was a classic monopoly = all your $$ belong to us. So Luther printed tens of thousand of 1 pagers(there were also many books/pamphlets) that exposed this as BS = a wide protest was born = protestant church, that soon won most of Europe - the closer to Rome, the harder it was to win. The RC lost and is in the final stage of decline. Here in Canada well under 5% of people bother at all, but a higher % are bribed to pay lip service for various benefits. I digress. Print was the crack that started the Scientific Revolution (SR) as teachable data could be cranked out in huge volume at low cost, and the SR led to the IR and the decline of the crafts when the IR allowed mass production of anything. This meant more workers, more wages etc and TRIH!! Getting back to 'we partially won' = that means the maker is the classic enemy of the worker. In fact, I believe you are wrong. They need not be enemies, there is no war. There are people helping each other. One of the reasons that Japan and Korea and Europe mastered this was to get the workers and manufacturers to be on the same side. I recall the UAW refused to have 2 board members on the car makers board of directors!!. Remember, board members have full access to all financial of the company = whatever they want = they get. The UAW wanted to be a pure adversary. From the 1940's they have done this. What did it get them? Good wages for one, but they lost 85% of their jobs as the high wages allowed Japan/Korea/Germany/UK/Italy the ability to make cars for the US/Canada market because those high wages made US/Canada costs high = allowed their entry. European/Korean/Japanese unions had board memberships that properly and rationally allowed their unions to chart a reasonable wage where at the end of their process their members had good wages and the products they made could achieve good market sales, which is a win-win for company as well as employees. Thus the USA/Canada needs to move from this adversarial positioning at both the union and maker management level for the good of all. /rant
dakiol 3y ago
Wasn’t that clear? The goal of, time and again, is always to increase the workers rights. Workers 100 years ago didn’t have the rights we have now, and in 100 years workers then will have more rights than us now. In that regard, working from home (and thus avoiding a long list of time consuming activities that have no positive outcome at all: commute time, traffic jams, etc.) is a step forward into that direction.
- datascienced 3y ago
  There is no guarantee workers rights will keep getting better, but I hope they do! As long as unions etc. keep fighting for them and getting that written in law. I think WFH is going to be more of a supply demand thing than a right though. Allow WFH and you have access to wider talent pool. Don’t allow it and you may limit your hiring rate.
  - benterix 3y ago
    > I think WFH is going to be more of a supply demand thing than a right though. Allow WFH and you have access to wider talent pool. Don’t allow it and you may limit your hiring rate. And that's exactly what is happening. I monitor job listings in my niche and practically all top-paid positions are remote (with the few exceptions that ask for a visit in the office like once a month etc.).
aurizon 3y ago
I recall the first manifestations of work-from-home showed up in Academe where, in the late 80's, grad students as well as post docs were involved with both students and faculty, both of which worked to teach and supervise their multi-year student bodies (from year 1 to grad school and post docs). This meant you had teachers as well as levels of students with a wide scatter of study places as well as learn spaces. Initially large main frames were coupled with various campus wide networks (token-ring and later ethernet - which ultimately triumphed). These were called TSO, (time sharing option) with a complex time of use/department where each processor-second(often less) were tracked and debited to each department/prof/student = sucked increments from each associated grant. It was soon found that a department could buy an Apple II or 8088/186/286/386/486 and use widely spread free programs to do much of the data processing. These boxes cost on the order of $3000-10,000 and could be coupled with low cost dot matrix printers with the result of doing tasks locally, and more importantly at very low cost to a grant than the TSO = huge IBM filled rooms with huge costs on an hourly basis, with the TSO accounting scheme aggregating these CPU milliseconds to each project. This TSO was in fact a data empire, with Kings/Princes/Vassals. Turf wars developed, departments were forbidden to use grant $$ to buy IBM/Apple/Clones as the data Kings were greedy. So the profs bought them with their own personal $$, then they would not allow personals in the labs - ultimately, the Apple/IBM Queens said "Off with their heads" and logic prevailed. Early data shares by FTP or sneaker net and then email = the start of what we have today. Drawing a parallel with work from home, I know how this will end, heads are even now rolling. Working from home will win in most cases - the places that demand presence will fade as old manglers (managers) are pensioned off, and things that demand presence will endure - we would hardly see The Boat Race worked from home - but with modern robotic rowers, it could be done, but that is another empire/war yet to come.
cwales95 3y ago
I've had this conversation with quite a few people recently. As I say to them, once the genie is out of the bottle it's hard to put it back in again. People will simply go to companies who allow them to be remote or more flexible.
- benterix 3y ago
  I mean, if these CEOs had even one strong argument (apart from the old and dubious "it increases collaboration" whereas everybody knows it's all about control), we could have a normal conversation as adults. Instead, if I want to change a job, I filter by "remote positions only" and that's the end of the story.
NKosmatos 3y ago
WFH won't go away. It's not suitable for every company and not good for everyone, but it's ideal for many of us. I'm a heavy proponent of WFH, but I have the experience to understand that it's not suitable for all occasions (and especially for middle management ;-) )
- benterix 3y ago
  > especially for middle management I divide them into two groups (it's not about being middle, low, or top, or junior/senior): reasonable and flexible ones and unreasonable and inflexible ones. The former can provide convincing reasons why in a given scenario WFH may or may not be preferable and you can discuss it with them on equal terms - after all, if an employee leaves, it is an extra cost for the company. The latter are unable to do so, for various reasons - fear, insecurity, bias, need for control, distrust and other traits they are sometimes not fully aware of.
- criddell 3y ago
  The discussion is often about efficiency and productivity and from the point of view of someone who really likes working from home, I think that’s the wrong way to frame it. I think of WFH as a perk akin to paid vacation or health insurance benefits. Are workers more efficient when they get 4 weeks of paid vacation? Maybe or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter though because vacation isn’t framed as a way of increasing productivity. It’s a perk. I think flexibility around WFH is should also be talked about as a perk that companies offer to attract and keep talent.
- whiplash451 3y ago
  I think a truly usable (quiet) office will be a perk.
ergonaught 3y ago
I've worked 100% remotely for over 20 years, and plan to continue. There are tradeoffs to everything, but most of the problems I've encountered came from people who aren't suited to working remotely at all, or people/companies operating as if they were a single-location in-office company/team/etc when they aren't.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  > but most of the problems I've encountered came from people who aren't suited to working remotely at all I think this is where a lot of the dichotomy in people's experiences come from. Existing remote companies select for people who are effective in remote (who in turn self-select too). But if you force an existing organization (or even the whole economy) to go full remote, you will get many people being very inefficient since they just don't work remote just as well as in-person.
  - cladopa 3y ago
    I believe that the best rule is that young people can learn and adapt while old dogs could not learn new tricks. Old people are never going to learn, but young people can.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mulmen 3y ago
      This is ageism and it’s bullshit. You seriously need to evaluate your biases.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      I think the split is rather in people's communication skills, where remote amplifies the weaknesses. It's further complicated by the prevalence of async communication - e.g. it's more difficult to prevent/clarify a misunderstanding in async. Communication skills, like everything else, can be learned. But still, some people will be disadvantaged.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pquki4 3y ago
If CEOs want to push people out and do silently layoffs, it doesn't matter WFH is good or not, they are going to find all kinds of reasons to make you want to quit. We might find out what CEOs really think about WFH if the job market looks like 2021-2022 again and forces companies to compete on perks to attract workers. Although I doubt it will happen anytime soon (or ever)
api 3y ago
What I keep repeating on this issue: for a lot of people it’s not about not going to an office. It’s about breaking real estate and escaping high cost of living cities that refuse to build housing. At this point it’s clear that the Bay Area in particular and much of the West Coast in general refuses to build enough housing to meet demand because it’s controlled by owner and real estate speculator cartels. The only economically rational move is to leave. CEOs who insist on locating there with no remote work option should skip the middleman and pay property speculators directly.
- mbg721 3y ago
  This confused me a little, because the commute is traditionally the tradeoff to avoid big city real estate. And then I saw "Bay Area". Ah.
martin_drapeau 3y ago
It's all about saving time. Musk got a private jet to save time travelling around. Employees WFH to save time too. That's the hack they found to avoid commuting to work. In such they improve the quality of their lives. Musk, Jasys and Benioff should treat their employees like they do their customers. Adapt to their needs. Asking people to come back to the office is just like selling something a customer no longer wants. As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  [flagged]
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
  > treat their employees like they do their customers So, with disdainful indifference?
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    I was like w0t, like, have you seen what kind of garbage Musk sells his customers
    - firecall 3y ago
      I’m not going to defend Musk. The sooner he is removed from his companies, the better. However, the Tesla Cars made in China are excellent. The Tesla model Y is the biggest selling EV in Australia for a reason. Also, the Tesla Powerwalls are very good, and anecdotally based on discussions with owners of other home batteries, superior to other battery products. And Starlink actually seems to be pretty decent! Plenty of people in Australia love their StarLink! Space X is doing Ok too it seems… So yes, Musk has become rather odious, but the people in his companies are doing great work IMHO :-) We won’t mention Twitter….
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse. Exactly. I had a service job and I didn't mind going into work at all because that's what the job is. And besides, interacting with customers is much preferable to being in a building surrounded by people typing on keyboards when no one actualy needs to be there. Should we now say that executive jobs are unfair to employees because employees don't get to run the company?
wkat4242 3y ago
Personally it's also because the office has become such a horrible place to work since the pandemic. We've gone from fixed desks and floors divided by department to stupid flex desks where you have to drag your stuff from a locker and are sitting mixed with people you have nothing to do with whatsoever. Often noisy sales people besides ones that need to concentrate. I used to enjoy going to the office 3 times a week. Now I officially should go 2 days but I hate it so much I rarely actually do. It's really a fancy place for management to see butts in the seats and the needs of the employees are a total afterthought.
- whiplash451 3y ago
  Agreed. Although it does not have to be that way. We could have a physical, post-pandemic office that addresses your concerns (e.g. quiet zones, pods for calls, etc)
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Oh we have quiet desks with huge cubicle walls and pods for calls. But what's the point in coming to the office to sit in a pod or isolation cubicle all day? What I liked was that our floor had its own atmosphere. Where people understood the needs of IT work and respected our conversations (eg headset on = leave me alone). That's all gone now with these hippie flex offices. I don't see how the office could be made productive again with flex desking. It wasn't like the old office was perfect, there was already a huge reduced productivity from the late 90s when people had actual offices where you could close the door. It was already pretty poor with the large open spaces but it's now been ruined completely.
    - pineaux 3y ago
      I am offended. How is this hippie? Hippie would be respecting solitude and trying to give everyone what they want. This is just some kind of neoliberal bullshit that fits the narrative of "leaders".
      - frumper 3y ago
sylens 3y ago
Once again, my position is - if you want people to want to work from an office, you have to make the office an appealing place to work. Open office environments with temporary desks and tons of noise pollution is just not going to cut it.
Barrin92 3y ago
Alex Pentland wrote a book about a decade ago, Social Physics[1], where he empirically studied how ideas spread in firms. Comparing remote and office workers was one part of it, and he found a strong advantage for in-office work. The reason is pretty straight forward, there is virtually no spontaneous social interaction ("watercooler conversations") in remote work, and teams who worked in person were significantly more dynamic, ideas are generated more often and spread more easily. Other than routine labor like doing paperwork for the municipal office aside, in person companies are going to have an extreme edge, Musk is right on this point, it's also an explanation for the geographic concentration of say, the tech sector, people don't pay those horrendous SF rents for nothing. [1]https://news.mit.edu/2014/social-physics-0304 https://news.mit.edu/2014/social-physics-0304
- rwmj 3y ago
  > there is virtually no spontaneous social interaction ("watercooler conversations") in remote work This part is wrong, or maybe it was more right in 2014, but it's definitely wrong now. Our fully remote team is on chat all day talking about all kinds of things, and we have regular video conferences.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    It's very unlikely those are the same kind of interactions. Typical programmer example: You work on a problem and are struggling. Your colleague walks by, sees that, takes a glance at your monitor, knows the solution, helps you out right there. That's extremely unlikely to happen remotely. Video conferences and chat interactions are always deliberate, nobody really sees what you're doing or struggling with spontaneously. You always have to go and initiate an interaction.
mojo74 3y ago
Having worked 30+ years in various office environments (some good, some bad) I believe that hybrid is the sensible option for everyone. And that should be optional as well. I had a great job working for a company that was one day a fortnight in the office. Pretty much everyone who could make it in did and they came from 50-60 miles (some more) but the expectation when you got there was 'hello let's do a bit of work together, chat, have a nice long'ish lunch and leave before the trains get too busy'.
atribecalledqst 3y ago
My company did a hilariously stupid thing where, towards the beginning of the pandemic, corporate decided that hybrid work was the future and ordered everybody to change to open offices. We are a small company and have few enough people that there is room for everybody to have a cubicle. Our management sometimes fights stupid pointless orders but not this one -- so they began a lengthy process of tearing out all the cubes and replacing with a bunch of open spaces, including more conference rooms and labs for some reason (that I guarantee will never be used because again -- very small company). They went so far as to change where walls were -- when I visited recently and took a tour back there, it felt super claustrophobic. When corporate changed their minds and said everybody needs to start coming into work again, our management realized that, because of the way they did the conversion to open offices, they no longer have enough room for everybody in the company to be there physically! I still can't decide whether I'm bitter about the pointless change to open office, or if I'm thankful they did because otherwise they would have pressured us harder to start coming in again.
- probably_wrong 3y ago
  > because of the way they did the conversion to open offices, they no longer have enough room for everybody in the company Stop me if you heard this one: Act I: "Since most employees are working from home we'll move to a smaller office and assign shared desks. Please remove all personal items from your office." Act II: "No one is coming to the office and the few that do feel lonely. Please come to the office three days a week." Act III: "You are all coming Tuesday-to-Thursday and we don't have enough space for everyone at the same time. Please choose three non-consecutive office days." Act IV: "There are too many people using the meeting rooms. If you have lots of meetings then please stay at home that day."
5u5jjfit 3y ago
I had interview recently. Company allows dogs in the office. I had very bad experience with dog owners in past (a few weeks in hospital) . I asked some questions about self defense, insurance, sick leave... Interview went downhill pretty fast. In past I would deal with that, and just pay cost from my own pocket. But pandemic changed that. Now I demand fair compensation for work in hazardous environment.
- 255kb 3y ago
  I absolutely don't get this office dogs thing. I like animals, but I don't particularily like dogs. They jump and drool all over you. How is "liking" dogs considered as universal or even a perk?
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    As someone with a nasty allergy to dogs(all dogs with zero exceptions) I wouldn't be able to work in such an office. And from experience, this isn't seen as a reasonable thing, even in agencies/companies purporting accessibility.
  - lithos 3y ago
    Pick an obsession, allow it in the work place. You suddenly have employees less likely to leave on lower raises and similar "abuses"(tm).
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    Service dogs and well-trained dogs definitely don't jump all over people. Older togs tend to just chill under a desk for most of the working day, next to their owner. Seems like you just had a few bad experiences with dogs.
MEMORYC_RRUPTED 3y ago
Yeah, I'm not going back either. Worked remotely for a few years. Got impacted by lay-offs and joined a hybrid company. Would still have been able to work 4 days from home, and 1 from the office. Went to the office 4 times, and spent 90% of my time either alone at my desk, or in an office room in a meeting that should have been an e-mail. Sure, in person collabs might (!) be easier for ideation and greenfield work, but in all honestly, don't get to do that all to often anymore. Needless to say, I'm back at a fully remote place now. I'm fine if they offer hybrid, not everyone has the room/situation to work from home. I can imagine that for some, having a desk at an office is a net benefit, but don't make me come over and waste my time because you have control issues.
SunghoYahng 3y ago
Let's be honest: where do we make friends if we work from home? To make friends, we need to be in a sort of co-living environment. It's hard to make friends if all we do is passively set up appointments with someone.
- fire_lake 3y ago
  Yes! But the workplace should never have been that.
  - SunghoYahng 3y ago
    Then where? You don't mean hobby or social clubs, do you?
    - thechao 3y ago
      I live in a pretty remote part of Texas; so, see, what I did was walked out of my front door, down the road a little while and introduced myself to Justin — a local roofing expert, and small (medium?) business owner. I offered to help him take down a lightning struck tree.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  School, hobbies, social activities, friends of friends...? I have made very few lasting friends at work that last beyond the current job. Offices are not actually great places to make lasting friends. I can understand missing the social aspect of work though (although at my age it doesn't bother me at all).
ghthor 3y ago
I’m pretty sure the government should just make it law that employers have to pay employees for their time commuting and this whole fight would be over.
- thechao 3y ago
  I think this is my favorite idea. I already pay for commute time for the plumber, electrician, HVAC, etc. I'm paying for their time, and it works pretty great: I know where their office & my home is, and I know they're hustling to get jobs done (travel pay is less than job pay). I'm not sure to how to align incentives for employee-to-office, though? It's a different problem, and I've never been able to figure out a satisfactory answer!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

114 points by agomez314 3y ago

Having WFH for the past 3 years, Im not sure I would start my own WFH company. Maybe Im in a company that doesnt have the culture to support it very well, but the amount of inefficiency I see on the engineering level would make me prefer a hybrid solution for my own company. As an employee though, Im happy with WFH :)

toomuchtodo 3y ago
I own equity in a fully remote company worth billions of dollars and highly profitable, and I would buy more if I could. There is (edit: at least) roughly $120B in enterprise value in fully remote and remote first orgs. Feelings and anecdotes aside, the data shows the model to be effective imho.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  Are there blogs on essays out there on how to do it properly?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job (See resources listed) https://basecamp.com/books/remote https://basecamp.com/books/remote
- datascienced 3y ago
  Where does the 120B figure come from? In aggregate it seems low. Atlassian would be almost half that alone.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    A Google Sheet I lazily keep updated. I encourage someone to put something public and up to date if they have the time.
    - northhanover 3y ago
      You can just say you made up the number, it’s okay!
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I am lazy and time poor, not a liar. No need to troll if you [1], for whatever reason, take issue with the concept of remote work. You’re free to the opinion. I believe in the model based on a preponderance of the data (enterprise financial success and metrics, worker quality of life, environmental impact, etc). Probably a bit of “talking my book” [2] too if you will. I’ll make time to have the Google Sheet cleaned up and shared here as a post. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858529 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703 (Strong believer in putting my money where my mouth is)
- Kiro 3y ago
  > Feelings and anecdotes aside, the data shows the model to be effective imho. Both sides are driven by feelings and anecdotes. The few data points that exist are inconclusive.
  - kkfx 3y ago
    Just see the FLOSS model: internet works on FLOSS software, typically developed in full-remote ways...
- chollida1 3y ago
  > There is (edit: at least) roughly $120B in enterprise value in fully remote and remote first orgs. There aren't any North American private companies that have an enterprise value of over $120B right now so the company is public, why not just name it?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Figure presented is an aggregate if that was not clear, not a single enterprise. Open to suggestions how I could’ve improved that sentence in that regard.
ivan_gammel 3y ago
WFH just amplifies management incompetence, it’s not a problem per se. If it doesn’t work, it’s better to look deeper to understand the root cause of inefficiency.
- onion2k 3y ago
  WHF amplifies all incompetence, especially around comms. Managers are particularly bad at that but in my experience everyone is at least a little bad at it...
  - mojo74 3y ago
    The comms thing is a bit of a bug bear for me too. I like to respond quickly to messages/emails because I believe the person at the other end appreciates having their questions answered quickly so they can get one with their day. When I have to wait an hour (or whatever timeframe feels disproportionate) for a reply to my message it grates. Still, I can live with it if I don't have work in a noisy shared space.
    - fcatalan 3y ago
      About the remote work comms there is a widespread attitude that irks me: People texting "can we talk?" or simply "hello". No! tell me straight away what you need so I can judge how and when to respond. When people state what they need, most of the time the response is immediate and it's the thing they need or some ok followup. "can-we-talkers" I'm starting to let stew for a few minutes, because I suspect they do that on purpose to "skip my queue".
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - mojo74 3y ago
        I agree. Having worked on the shop floor I don't like my time being wasted and I'm careful to add detail for my colleagues so that they are engaged from the outset with my query. All I ask is 'give me half an hour' or some similar response so I can manage other people's expectations.
pydry 3y ago
I've worked for two types of WFH company - the kind where everybody is kind of just left to their own devices and the highly collaborative kind. I think a lot of people really like the former but I don't think it works very well. There's a marked tendency of many people to drift apart and communication breaks down within and across teams and the fallout it quite ugly - a lot of people individually doing their jobs (and perhaps doing them well), but nothing really fits together very well. I personally found working in this environment to be torture because my work felt performative and meaningless. I find that the highly collaborative kind works about as well as working in person - possibly better. However, I think it's only really possible with a lot of camera-on video calls which many people find quite draining.
- photonthug 3y ago
  Things “fitting together” is generally on management though. Can’t speak for other industries but if you leave this up to engineers then they settle down into something like design by contract, or you write my tests I’ll write yours, etc. management often actively resists that with or without wfh because they don’t get to run fiefdoms on the strengths of their network and charisma, look important by forcing meetings, etc. So effectively you have middle management failing to be fulfilled at an emotional level as well as failing at a professional level to do management, and their plan to deal with this is to first blame others, then try to convince leadership to kill wfh for line workers before anyone notices the real problem. Nothing against any individuals out there, just seen these things play out a lot and have been having the wfh discussions since long before Covid. Technical alignment is easy in a sense because it’s clear when two ends of a bridge don’t meet in the middle. Product people or department heads have a harder time of things, but if I were a ceo, I don’t want to buy office space for 2500 when 25 will do. It’s kind of evil to advocate for back-to-office if you know it’s good for you, but bad for both the company and your coworkers, and I expect many of the most vocal advocates know these things in their secret hearts
- anal_reactor 3y ago
  > I find that the highly collaborative kind works about as well as working in person - possibly better. However, I think it's only really possible with a lot of camera-on video calls which many people find quite draining. I think it's something else. It's providing space for employees to interact spontaneously. In software there's a huge push to have everything public and recorded, which makes me very cautious about how I present myself. When I switch to private messages, I get much higher sense of connection with the other person, because I don't need to stay that formal.
glitchcrab 3y ago
It's all down to the approach. I work for a company which has been remote right from the start (10 years ago) and if it's done right then it's great. A lot of it comes down to treating your employees as adults and trusting that they are doing their jobs. A good company culture is key to making it work.
oxfordmale 3y ago
At work there tend to be other inefficiencies. A lot of "spontaneous collaboration" that people claim happens in the office is people talking to pretty/handsome people in other departments, without necessarily adding to the bottom line. In person collaboration is definitely worth it, but this needs to be planned. It doesn't happen automagically if you are being forced to sit at a desk. I can see why middle management's hates it thought. You can no longer tap on someone shoulder and pester them in prioritising your work above others. You need to make a business case rather than bullying a poor Engineer.
alkonaut 3y ago
How much more would you be willing to spend to get these employees to work in your office? Or put another way, at a fixed salary budget, how much smaller a talent pool would you accept to recruit from? Recruiting only from the pool of "people who accept to work 100% in an office" is a massive handicap, at least in some regions and positions.
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  +1. I tell any recruiter not offering WFH to pound sand. It’s not the 1920s. I don’t need to commute to sit in front of a pc. I can do that just fine at home.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

At this point, there’s literally nothing useful / new that can be said on this. This is very clearly well into the territory of being a culture war issue. Both sides are entirely talking past each other, misrepresenting each other’s POVs, and there’s little if any room for nuanced discussion. As made evident by any HN thread on this topic, tech nerds are among those buying into this BS hook, line, and sinker.

benterix 3y ago
I disagree - the new thing is that it's the fourth year of this global revolution re. worker's rights and we partially won. I'm actually tracking the ratio of permanent/hybrid to remote jobs in my niche and I'm very happy there is no negative trend, i.e. the ratio of remote jobs is stable and they are the top-paid positions (which makes sense for other reasons). So I guess every year we can celebrate this enormous achievement that is positively affecting the lives of hundreds of millions around the globe.
- aurizon 3y ago
  You speak of worker's rights, and you use the term 'won' - this implies there is a loser(s) and this harkens back to the slavery of yore, people unpaid and later minimally paid. I recall Ford paid wages that the other car makers despised him for just around WW1, he said he wanted his workers to be able to buy the cars they made. One of the key successes of the Industrial Revolution (IR) was the added wages induced by scarce worker competition. For many hundreds of years workers were in craft guilds. The classic crafts ( carpenters/iron/weave////) were all in craft guilds with strict rules to enter a guild, and to finally become a master craftsman after they passed their final approval of their work by that guild (now you know what a masterpiece is). All of day to day life was parcelled up in these guild, it was a rigid hierarchical society. It ran this way for thousands of years, with slow progression. The printing method of Gutenberg was the first crack in this near permanent society in that it allowed people to create large numbers of printed pages to spread information to people, and they allowed a cleric (Luther) to spread the word and shatter the mediaeval corrupt theocracy (the catholic church) by revealing how crooked and corrupt they were to people at large who could read or be read to. Before this, books were made by the scribes guild, pages were hand copied word by word, and often decorated with ornate glyphs, etc = Manuscripts = written by hand. Early printed books, incunabules, were made to closely resemble manuscripts, often with several colors and small ornate blocks added later to be like the manuscripts they replaced. The RC church had a fake religious structure of a god/saints/heaven/hell/angels etc, carefully structured to control people and steal from them. One of their bogeymen was heaven/hell/purgatory. Purgatory was a half-way house. The worthy went to heaven, the permanently damned went to hell, those not that good/bad went to the half-way house = purgatory = purge your 'sins', what these RC weasels did was to monetise purgatory by an 'indulgence' = pay $$ to the RC church = less time purging = to heaven you go - this was a classic monopoly = all your $$ belong to us. So Luther printed tens of thousand of 1 pagers(there were also many books/pamphlets) that exposed this as BS = a wide protest was born = protestant church, that soon won most of Europe - the closer to Rome, the harder it was to win. The RC lost and is in the final stage of decline. Here in Canada well under 5% of people bother at all, but a higher % are bribed to pay lip service for various benefits. I digress. Print was the crack that started the Scientific Revolution (SR) as teachable data could be cranked out in huge volume at low cost, and the SR led to the IR and the decline of the crafts when the IR allowed mass production of anything. This meant more workers, more wages etc and TRIH!! Getting back to 'we partially won' = that means the maker is the classic enemy of the worker. In fact, I believe you are wrong. They need not be enemies, there is no war. There are people helping each other. One of the reasons that Japan and Korea and Europe mastered this was to get the workers and manufacturers to be on the same side. I recall the UAW refused to have 2 board members on the car makers board of directors!!. Remember, board members have full access to all financial of the company = whatever they want = they get. The UAW wanted to be a pure adversary. From the 1940's they have done this. What did it get them? Good wages for one, but they lost 85% of their jobs as the high wages allowed Japan/Korea/Germany/UK/Italy the ability to make cars for the US/Canada market because those high wages made US/Canada costs high = allowed their entry. European/Korean/Japanese unions had board memberships that properly and rationally allowed their unions to chart a reasonable wage where at the end of their process their members had good wages and the products they made could achieve good market sales, which is a win-win for company as well as employees. Thus the USA/Canada needs to move from this adversarial positioning at both the union and maker management level for the good of all. /rant

dakiol 3y ago

Wasn’t that clear? The goal of, time and again, is always to increase the workers rights. Workers 100 years ago didn’t have the rights we have now, and in 100 years workers then will have more rights than us now. In that regard, working from home (and thus avoiding a long list of time consuming activities that have no positive outcome at all: commute time, traffic jams, etc.) is a step forward into that direction.

datascienced 3y ago
There is no guarantee workers rights will keep getting better, but I hope they do! As long as unions etc. keep fighting for them and getting that written in law. I think WFH is going to be more of a supply demand thing than a right though. Allow WFH and you have access to wider talent pool. Don’t allow it and you may limit your hiring rate.
- benterix 3y ago
  > I think WFH is going to be more of a supply demand thing than a right though. Allow WFH and you have access to wider talent pool. Don’t allow it and you may limit your hiring rate. And that's exactly what is happening. I monitor job listings in my niche and practically all top-paid positions are remote (with the few exceptions that ask for a visit in the office like once a month etc.).

aurizon 3y ago

I recall the first manifestations of work-from-home showed up in Academe where, in the late 80's, grad students as well as post docs were involved with both students and faculty, both of which worked to teach and supervise their multi-year student bodies (from year 1 to grad school and post docs). This meant you had teachers as well as levels of students with a wide scatter of study places as well as learn spaces. Initially large main frames were coupled with various campus wide networks (token-ring and later ethernet - which ultimately triumphed). These were called TSO, (time sharing option) with a complex time of use/department where each processor-second(often less) were tracked and debited to each department/prof/student = sucked increments from each associated grant. It was soon found that a department could buy an Apple II or 8088/186/286/386/486 and use widely spread free programs to do much of the data processing. These boxes cost on the order of $3000-10,000 and could be coupled with low cost dot matrix printers with the result of doing tasks locally, and more importantly at very low cost to a grant than the TSO = huge IBM filled rooms with huge costs on an hourly basis, with the TSO accounting scheme aggregating these CPU milliseconds to each project. This TSO was in fact a data empire, with Kings/Princes/Vassals. Turf wars developed, departments were forbidden to use grant $$ to buy IBM/Apple/Clones as the data Kings were greedy. So the profs bought them with their own personal $$, then they would not allow personals in the labs - ultimately, the Apple/IBM Queens said "Off with their heads" and logic prevailed. Early data shares by FTP or sneaker net and then email = the start of what we have today. Drawing a parallel with work from home, I know how this will end, heads are even now rolling. Working from home will win in most cases - the places that demand presence will fade as old manglers (managers) are pensioned off, and things that demand presence will endure - we would hardly see The Boat Race worked from home - but with modern robotic rowers, it could be done, but that is another empire/war yet to come.

cwales95 3y ago

I've had this conversation with quite a few people recently. As I say to them, once the genie is out of the bottle it's hard to put it back in again. People will simply go to companies who allow them to be remote or more flexible.

benterix 3y ago
I mean, if these CEOs had even one strong argument (apart from the old and dubious "it increases collaboration" whereas everybody knows it's all about control), we could have a normal conversation as adults. Instead, if I want to change a job, I filter by "remote positions only" and that's the end of the story.

NKosmatos 3y ago

WFH won't go away. It's not suitable for every company and not good for everyone, but it's ideal for many of us. I'm a heavy proponent of WFH, but I have the experience to understand that it's not suitable for all occasions (and especially for middle management ;-) )

benterix 3y ago
> especially for middle management I divide them into two groups (it's not about being middle, low, or top, or junior/senior): reasonable and flexible ones and unreasonable and inflexible ones. The former can provide convincing reasons why in a given scenario WFH may or may not be preferable and you can discuss it with them on equal terms - after all, if an employee leaves, it is an extra cost for the company. The latter are unable to do so, for various reasons - fear, insecurity, bias, need for control, distrust and other traits they are sometimes not fully aware of.
criddell 3y ago
The discussion is often about efficiency and productivity and from the point of view of someone who really likes working from home, I think that’s the wrong way to frame it. I think of WFH as a perk akin to paid vacation or health insurance benefits. Are workers more efficient when they get 4 weeks of paid vacation? Maybe or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter though because vacation isn’t framed as a way of increasing productivity. It’s a perk. I think flexibility around WFH is should also be talked about as a perk that companies offer to attract and keep talent.
whiplash451 3y ago
I think a truly usable (quiet) office will be a perk.

ergonaught 3y ago

I've worked 100% remotely for over 20 years, and plan to continue. There are tradeoffs to everything, but most of the problems I've encountered came from people who aren't suited to working remotely at all, or people/companies operating as if they were a single-location in-office company/team/etc when they aren't.

The_Colonel 3y ago
> but most of the problems I've encountered came from people who aren't suited to working remotely at all I think this is where a lot of the dichotomy in people's experiences come from. Existing remote companies select for people who are effective in remote (who in turn self-select too). But if you force an existing organization (or even the whole economy) to go full remote, you will get many people being very inefficient since they just don't work remote just as well as in-person.
- cladopa 3y ago
  I believe that the best rule is that young people can learn and adapt while old dogs could not learn new tricks. Old people are never going to learn, but young people can.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mulmen 3y ago
    This is ageism and it’s bullshit. You seriously need to evaluate your biases.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    I think the split is rather in people's communication skills, where remote amplifies the weaknesses. It's further complicated by the prevalence of async communication - e.g. it's more difficult to prevent/clarify a misunderstanding in async. Communication skills, like everything else, can be learned. But still, some people will be disadvantaged.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pquki4 3y ago

If CEOs want to push people out and do silently layoffs, it doesn't matter WFH is good or not, they are going to find all kinds of reasons to make you want to quit. We might find out what CEOs really think about WFH if the job market looks like 2021-2022 again and forces companies to compete on perks to attract workers. Although I doubt it will happen anytime soon (or ever)

api 3y ago

What I keep repeating on this issue: for a lot of people it’s not about not going to an office. It’s about breaking real estate and escaping high cost of living cities that refuse to build housing. At this point it’s clear that the Bay Area in particular and much of the West Coast in general refuses to build enough housing to meet demand because it’s controlled by owner and real estate speculator cartels. The only economically rational move is to leave. CEOs who insist on locating there with no remote work option should skip the middleman and pay property speculators directly.

mbg721 3y ago
This confused me a little, because the commute is traditionally the tradeoff to avoid big city real estate. And then I saw "Bay Area". Ah.

martin_drapeau 3y ago

It's all about saving time. Musk got a private jet to save time travelling around. Employees WFH to save time too. That's the hack they found to avoid commuting to work. In such they improve the quality of their lives. Musk, Jasys and Benioff should treat their employees like they do their customers. Adapt to their needs. Asking people to come back to the office is just like selling something a customer no longer wants. As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.

wkat4242 3y ago
[flagged]
pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
> treat their employees like they do their customers So, with disdainful indifference?
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  I was like w0t, like, have you seen what kind of garbage Musk sells his customers
  - firecall 3y ago
    I’m not going to defend Musk. The sooner he is removed from his companies, the better. However, the Tesla Cars made in China are excellent. The Tesla model Y is the biggest selling EV in Australia for a reason. Also, the Tesla Powerwalls are very good, and anecdotally based on discussions with owners of other home batteries, superior to other battery products. And Starlink actually seems to be pretty decent! Plenty of people in Australia love their StarLink! Space X is doing Ok too it seems… So yes, Musk has become rather odious, but the people in his companies are doing great work IMHO :-) We won’t mention Twitter….
vouaobrasil 3y ago
> As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse. Exactly. I had a service job and I didn't mind going into work at all because that's what the job is. And besides, interacting with customers is much preferable to being in a building surrounded by people typing on keyboards when no one actualy needs to be there. Should we now say that executive jobs are unfair to employees because employees don't get to run the company?

wkat4242 3y ago

Personally it's also because the office has become such a horrible place to work since the pandemic. We've gone from fixed desks and floors divided by department to stupid flex desks where you have to drag your stuff from a locker and are sitting mixed with people you have nothing to do with whatsoever. Often noisy sales people besides ones that need to concentrate. I used to enjoy going to the office 3 times a week. Now I officially should go 2 days but I hate it so much I rarely actually do. It's really a fancy place for management to see butts in the seats and the needs of the employees are a total afterthought.

whiplash451 3y ago
Agreed. Although it does not have to be that way. We could have a physical, post-pandemic office that addresses your concerns (e.g. quiet zones, pods for calls, etc)
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Oh we have quiet desks with huge cubicle walls and pods for calls. But what's the point in coming to the office to sit in a pod or isolation cubicle all day? What I liked was that our floor had its own atmosphere. Where people understood the needs of IT work and respected our conversations (eg headset on = leave me alone). That's all gone now with these hippie flex offices. I don't see how the office could be made productive again with flex desking. It wasn't like the old office was perfect, there was already a huge reduced productivity from the late 90s when people had actual offices where you could close the door. It was already pretty poor with the large open spaces but it's now been ruined completely.
  - pineaux 3y ago
    I am offended. How is this hippie? Hippie would be respecting solitude and trying to give everyone what they want. This is just some kind of neoliberal bullshit that fits the narrative of "leaders".
    - frumper 3y ago

sylens 3y ago

Once again, my position is - if you want people to want to work from an office, you have to make the office an appealing place to work. Open office environments with temporary desks and tons of noise pollution is just not going to cut it.

Barrin92 3y ago

Alex Pentland wrote a book about a decade ago, Social Physics[1], where he empirically studied how ideas spread in firms. Comparing remote and office workers was one part of it, and he found a strong advantage for in-office work. The reason is pretty straight forward, there is virtually no spontaneous social interaction ("watercooler conversations") in remote work, and teams who worked in person were significantly more dynamic, ideas are generated more often and spread more easily. Other than routine labor like doing paperwork for the municipal office aside, in person companies are going to have an extreme edge, Musk is right on this point, it's also an explanation for the geographic concentration of say, the tech sector, people don't pay those horrendous SF rents for nothing. [1]https://news.mit.edu/2014/social-physics-0304 https://news.mit.edu/2014/social-physics-0304

rwmj 3y ago
> there is virtually no spontaneous social interaction ("watercooler conversations") in remote work This part is wrong, or maybe it was more right in 2014, but it's definitely wrong now. Our fully remote team is on chat all day talking about all kinds of things, and we have regular video conferences.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  It's very unlikely those are the same kind of interactions. Typical programmer example: You work on a problem and are struggling. Your colleague walks by, sees that, takes a glance at your monitor, knows the solution, helps you out right there. That's extremely unlikely to happen remotely. Video conferences and chat interactions are always deliberate, nobody really sees what you're doing or struggling with spontaneously. You always have to go and initiate an interaction.

mojo74 3y ago

Having worked 30+ years in various office environments (some good, some bad) I believe that hybrid is the sensible option for everyone. And that should be optional as well. I had a great job working for a company that was one day a fortnight in the office. Pretty much everyone who could make it in did and they came from 50-60 miles (some more) but the expectation when you got there was 'hello let's do a bit of work together, chat, have a nice long'ish lunch and leave before the trains get too busy'.

atribecalledqst 3y ago

My company did a hilariously stupid thing where, towards the beginning of the pandemic, corporate decided that hybrid work was the future and ordered everybody to change to open offices. We are a small company and have few enough people that there is room for everybody to have a cubicle. Our management sometimes fights stupid pointless orders but not this one -- so they began a lengthy process of tearing out all the cubes and replacing with a bunch of open spaces, including more conference rooms and labs for some reason (that I guarantee will never be used because again -- very small company). They went so far as to change where walls were -- when I visited recently and took a tour back there, it felt super claustrophobic. When corporate changed their minds and said everybody needs to start coming into work again, our management realized that, because of the way they did the conversion to open offices, they no longer have enough room for everybody in the company to be there physically! I still can't decide whether I'm bitter about the pointless change to open office, or if I'm thankful they did because otherwise they would have pressured us harder to start coming in again.

probably_wrong 3y ago
> because of the way they did the conversion to open offices, they no longer have enough room for everybody in the company Stop me if you heard this one: Act I: "Since most employees are working from home we'll move to a smaller office and assign shared desks. Please remove all personal items from your office." Act II: "No one is coming to the office and the few that do feel lonely. Please come to the office three days a week." Act III: "You are all coming Tuesday-to-Thursday and we don't have enough space for everyone at the same time. Please choose three non-consecutive office days." Act IV: "There are too many people using the meeting rooms. If you have lots of meetings then please stay at home that day."

5u5jjfit 3y ago

I had interview recently. Company allows dogs in the office. I had very bad experience with dog owners in past (a few weeks in hospital) . I asked some questions about self defense, insurance, sick leave... Interview went downhill pretty fast. In past I would deal with that, and just pay cost from my own pocket. But pandemic changed that. Now I demand fair compensation for work in hazardous environment.

255kb 3y ago
I absolutely don't get this office dogs thing. I like animals, but I don't particularily like dogs. They jump and drool all over you. How is "liking" dogs considered as universal or even a perk?
- iinnPP 3y ago
  As someone with a nasty allergy to dogs(all dogs with zero exceptions) I wouldn't be able to work in such an office. And from experience, this isn't seen as a reasonable thing, even in agencies/companies purporting accessibility.
- lithos 3y ago
  Pick an obsession, allow it in the work place. You suddenly have employees less likely to leave on lower raises and similar "abuses"(tm).
- antisthenes 3y ago
  Service dogs and well-trained dogs definitely don't jump all over people. Older togs tend to just chill under a desk for most of the working day, next to their owner. Seems like you just had a few bad experiences with dogs.

MEMORYC_RRUPTED 3y ago

Yeah, I'm not going back either. Worked remotely for a few years. Got impacted by lay-offs and joined a hybrid company. Would still have been able to work 4 days from home, and 1 from the office. Went to the office 4 times, and spent 90% of my time either alone at my desk, or in an office room in a meeting that should have been an e-mail. Sure, in person collabs might (!) be easier for ideation and greenfield work, but in all honestly, don't get to do that all to often anymore. Needless to say, I'm back at a fully remote place now. I'm fine if they offer hybrid, not everyone has the room/situation to work from home. I can imagine that for some, having a desk at an office is a net benefit, but don't make me come over and waste my time because you have control issues.

SunghoYahng 3y ago

Let's be honest: where do we make friends if we work from home? To make friends, we need to be in a sort of co-living environment. It's hard to make friends if all we do is passively set up appointments with someone.

fire_lake 3y ago
Yes! But the workplace should never have been that.
- SunghoYahng 3y ago
  Then where? You don't mean hobby or social clubs, do you?
  - thechao 3y ago
    I live in a pretty remote part of Texas; so, see, what I did was walked out of my front door, down the road a little while and introduced myself to Justin — a local roofing expert, and small (medium?) business owner. I offered to help him take down a lightning struck tree.
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
School, hobbies, social activities, friends of friends...? I have made very few lasting friends at work that last beyond the current job. Offices are not actually great places to make lasting friends. I can understand missing the social aspect of work though (although at my age it doesn't bother me at all).

ghthor 3y ago

I’m pretty sure the government should just make it law that employers have to pay employees for their time commuting and this whole fight would be over.

thechao 3y ago
I think this is my favorite idea. I already pay for commute time for the plumber, electrician, HVAC, etc. I'm paying for their time, and it works pretty great: I know where their office & my home is, and I know they're hustling to get jobs done (travel pay is less than job pay). I'm not sure to how to align incentives for employee-to-office, though? It's a different problem, and I've never been able to figure out a satisfactory answer!

deleted 3y ago

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