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Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)
- _tk_ 2y agoFrankly, a 2021 opinion piece doesn’t tell you anything about the state of remote work. So much has changed in the last three years. CEOs and companies have adapted, and in my anecdotal experience, lots of employees as well. Notably those who were once bullish on full remote, would like to see some form of hybrid setup if it makes sense.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>those who were once bullish on full remote, would like to see some form of hybrid setup if it makes sense. interesting, so many of my peers are full on the remote train. I guess it depends on the age of the workers? I know for sure I haven't heard any one of my coworkers > 35 ever preferring hybrid to WFH.
- zztop44 2y agoMy peers (similar age bracket) are the same. That’s not to say there aren’t downsides to remote work; of course there are. But on balance I don’t know anyone who would willingly go back to in-office or even hybrid.
- bevacqua 2y agoCount me as anecdotal evidence in the 35+ bucket of those who went from full remote to hybrid and highly prefers hybrid (after a decade of full remote). Having a thriving office has been a breath of fresh air for when I want to see people. The key is it being optional and up to employees to decide what's best for them.
- _tk_ 2y agoFrom what I've heard, the key differentiator is the plan/concept, whatever you wanna call it, that went into the hybrid setup. If it's just an office where everyone can come in whenver, you will face all the - almost cliché - problems: people being stuck in virtual meetings while being in the office, only 20% of your team being in the office on every given day, etc. etc So if you have a manager that really manages your in-office experience, hybrid is seen as preferred by my peers.
- prmoustache 2y ago> The key is it being optional and up to employees to decide what's best for them. Agree. My issue is not about remote, hybrid or onsite, but more about some management mandating one way of working for everyone.
- RHSeeger 2y agoThe problem is that that doesn't really work. The people working in the office don't get the benefit of in person social connection if others aren't coming in, too. Either you have people coming (win for the office people, loss for the remote) or you have people working from home (the reverse). Leaving it up to everyone to work it out on their own doesn't really solve the problem. That being said, working it out "per team" is generally reasonable. I've had hybrid stints, and I always coordinated with my team so that we all came in on the same day. Then we could do the social thing together at the office.
- prmoustache 2y agoThere is always a fraction of people who will chose to go to the office. That's enough to have social connection. These persons do not have to be on your own team. The last 10 years or so I have been working on teams splitted in 3 to 5 different countries, and now in 3 different continents. In that case you are effectively working remotely even when your are working in a company's office.
- RHSeeger 2y agoCan't say I agree with that. Seeing "anyone" is not the same as seeing the people you're close to (work closely with, know well). It certainly doesn't bring me the same mental benefit.
- prmoustache 2y agoIt is not the same but having teams split in different timezones has other benefits and it is often desirable to work that way. One example: on teams handling operationnal roles having teammates in different timezones being primary responders avoid being on call outside of your office hours.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI am starting to think that part of the issue is 'one size fits all' approach that we centered our society around. I genuinely hate hybrid. I would rather have either full remote or full office, because hybrid messes with my routine and sleep pattern. Unfortunately, employees choosing their preferred mode means more headaches for employers ( they want to track it somehow ). I know what I prefer. I know what is possible. As humans, we do not agree on what is the 'right' way. And in US, employers used to hold all the cards ( which is part of the reason they are praying for a recession ).
- izacus 2y agoHow big is your peer group? Which region? How is it applicable as a general case?
- the_af 2y agoWe're a fully remote company that offers a pretty good office in a fashionable part of town for those who want it. It's almost always deserted. Some people go some days, mostly to socialize. So I don't trust those who claim people prefer returning to the office. I also see news of companies forcing employees to return and laying off those who won't. Doesn't seem to me people prefer the office...
- scrapcode 2y agoThe best setup is that my organization builds an office that is a 10-15 minute walk from my existing home and I come in whenever I want. And whenever I decide to come in, everyone else does too. Until that happens I guess I'll just have to settle with fully remote.
- themaninthedark 2y agoSorry, not trying to be mean but the company should build(or rent/buy) an office for you to use part time?
- DougN7 2y agoAnd everyone else decides to come in on the days they do. But hey, they said the “best” (fantasy) case so let them dream! That would be my best case too!
- art-not 2y agoThe poster is creating a purposefully difficult situation to indicate the lack of interest they have with returning to office. In other words, they’d only return to office in a fantasy world
- DragonStrength 2y agoThe point is this is essentially what upper management is doing. They aren’t going to wave a wand and have a national housing crisis fixed and high cost of living areas be suddenly more affordable to mid level developers. Moreover certain cultural changes, like mothers staying in the workforce, mean it is going to get more difficult and more expensive to get workers back to long commutes.
- scrapcode 2y agoI should have better hinted at my psuedo-sarcasm. I do find meaningful in-person interaction and collaboration are valuable for personal, professional, and mental reasons. However, the real beneficial interactions seem to happen only infrequently, and when they do I don't think that what we have to give up for the slight chance to realize those moments to happen a small percentage of the time are worth the squeeze (work/life balance, commute times, etc.). Hybrid situations in my experience only end up providing the worst of both worlds as everyone isn't in-person at the same time.
- cess11 2y agoI've been "bullish" on it for more than a decade, and worked as a developer full remote since 2019, with roughly one or two office days per month at most when employers have insisted on it. The company I work for now is fully remote and has been since it started. We have two to three meetups per year. Project leaders and CEO do roughly as many trips to customers and prospects per year. When we hire and bring in consultants this is one deciding factor, that people are willing and able to work remotely. To me, if I were to demand that someone spends time on a commute, then I'd also want to pay for this time. I much prefer that they don't commute and I instead get work out of it, and that they have a short distance between work and family or hobbies.
- nerdjon 2y ago> Notably those who were once bullish on full remote, would like to see some form of hybrid setup if it makes sense. Within my social group I don't know anyone that agrees with this that isnt working a job that already could not be remote so this never affected them. Personally, I like the idea of Hybrid but I don't need it by any means. I do it at my current job because we have an office but if we did not have one I would not miss it. I go in one day a week, but that was also my choice. I was not told I had to do it, if I wanted to stop going in I am still classified as a remote employee. The fact is, I am more productive at home than in the office. I have less distractions talking to coworkers, I am comfortable in my space, I am less incentivized to want to leave because I need account for the trip home. When I WFH I will hop on later in the day to check in on something, I am online more hours, and just the week by week output is higher. Sure I have the distractions of home stuff, but again more hours. If I need to take a break I can go play a game for a few minutes and feel far more refreshed than I would in the office. I don't feel drained by the end of the day. There is value in being seen by colleagues, but that is something that can be addressed virtually and there are full remote companies that find solutions to this. Side Note: My cat deciding to come and sit on my lap while working is a pretty good motivator to get some work done.
- knallfrosch 2y agoI don't think a May 2021 article – before widespread vaccination even made return-to-office policies possible, and before the tech layoffs – is the best starting point. Okay, calling CEOs that demand a return "bad" and "fearful" is a provocative take, but the article doesn't back up these assumptions. Much less does it actually explain the reason why bad, and only bad, CEOs "fear" remote work. With, for example, Apple enacting RTO, one has to wonder whether the author would go so far as to say that Tim Cook is a "bad" CEO who "fears" remote work.
- rlili 2y ago> Apple enacting RTO, one has to wonder whether the author would go so far as to say that Tim Cook is a "bad" CEO who "fears" remote work. Still, the author isn't saying "A CEO is bad if and only if they hate remote work". Being bad is the premise.
- sidewndr46 2y agoI can't really agree with the idea that a vaccine made return to office "possible". I was only sent home (mandatory WFH in my case) because the local government told my employer there was the possibility of liability if they had me keep coming in the office. At this point, plenty of people were already getting sick and some were dying. That didn't motivate my employer to close their offices. The government and legal counsel did.
- xkbarkar 2y agoWe still had country wide lockdown just a few months after a +90% population wide vaccine uptake in my home country. Omicron opened up society, not a single other pandemic measure and that includes masks. On another note. With EU countries being so loud about green transitions I would have thought encouraging WFH would have enormous environmental benefits. There is a plethora of green fees on every single transportation fuel source that we have come to depend on. Whats greener than not clogging up the roads at all ? Wonder why EU simply does not ban mandatory in office attendance for work that can be done from home, unless you can show that it is detrimental. WFH school teachers for example. Remote learning for children was a catastrophe. Imagine the tonnes of CO2 saved.
- 34jklajsdfasdf 2y ago[flagged]
- jawns 2y agoI am at a point in my career where I can be selective and only consider 100% remote roles. I am also a manager, so I understand some of the management challenges that lead people to dismiss or be skeptical of the claim that remote work can be just as effective as office work. One thing I will admit: It is harder, as a remote manager, to manage low performers or people who show signs of disengagement. You can get more out of an office worker who lacks intrinsic motivation than a similar remote worker. But that's not a knock on remote work itself. You just have to have the right people on the team, just as in any other circumstance.
- onethought 2y agoOnboarding is harder. Social cohesion is… different. Remote work has just as many issues as in person. But perhaps a lot of the issues are the employers problem more than the employees. Hence the shift and the tension
- CuriouslyC 2y agoOnboarding is different. The work you would put into onboarding directly, you mostly put into documentation and architecture so people can achieve goals without having to have a mental model of the whole application. Try to design your application so you can part out components/endpoints/modules to people on Fiverr - you code is decoupled and documented well enough that short term contractors can come on, look at an example/template and fill in the blanks for the current requirements without a ton of direct support. When you're at that level, onboarding basically reduces mostly to a quick task overview/ticket discussion, a few DMs over slack and a code review.
- econner 2y agoAgree with this completely. I have found it consistently challenging to create the structure necessary for low performers to turn their work around. We have also had issues with people actively working for other companies while turning in poor work, spending most of their time freelancing, etc. It is hard to correct that level of effort when they think it is "good enough". Sadly the whole overemployed phenomenon is ruining it, not because they work multiple jobs but because they are disingenuous about it.
- paulcole 2y agoYeah and bad employees fear office work lol.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI think the position lacks nuance, but I can easily undermine it. If anything, in person work favors people, who rely on relationships rather than skills. Remote is almost the exact opposite of this as it requires a verifiable result.
- paulcole 2y ago> Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021) This is not a particularly nuanced position either. If you suck at your job you should be afraid of working remotely and working in an office.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI did not claim that mine was right or nuanced, but that OP' claim was easily subverted with similar claim. As for the shoulds, I think a lot of people are afraid of working remotely IF they are held accountable ( I am willing to accept not everyone has the same level of focus, follow through and so on ) . But that is the fun part, management is either unable or unwilling to learn how to manage remote workforce so from a 'slacker' perspective, it is, likely, an ideal habitat. Why would they be afraid if management can't wrap their heads around it. But, and I may have mentioned this on this very forum, that is a management failure.
- cajunboi34213 2y agoThe hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and they can catch up by listening to previous messages at 1.5X
- sshine 2y ago> Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Chat isn't soulless. Chat being async has benefits over conference calls. > Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. Work lacks cheap interrupts, which is not a remote-only problem. In my most recent position, when working from home, I've made a habit of writing to people on chat if I can bother them for 5-20 minutes. It works great. I have typically interacted with at least one customer and 2-3 colleagues during a day at home. But I can only interrupt certain people. Having sat in the office with them before, we have built a relationship.
- cajunboi34213 2y agoThe interrupt is where walkie talkie really shines. Instead of asking to bother someone, where they now may feel obliged to engage, you just walkie talkie them with what you want to discuss. They can listen in real time or they can ignore and then listen ore read when they're available. Perhaps it's because our team is global that this works as timezones are hard. The expectation is you manage your notifications, so the sender never has to worry that the message they're sending is bugging you at 1 AM.
- _tk_ 2y agoCan you elaborate on the difference between DM'ing someone with "Hey can I call you about problem X/Y/Z?" I'm not sure I understand the benefit of the walkie talkie solution. To me this sounds as or more annoying as a landline.
- api 2y agoThe latest salvo in the RTO war is reposts of stupid TikTok and Xhitter videos of people bragging about goofing off the entire time while they WFH. That’s a sign of either a shit manager, over hiring, or bullshit jobs (jobs that you think you need but you don’t). It still happens in an office except instead of baking or lounging they are fucking off on the Internet or creating make work to look busy but not actually creating value.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago> It still happens in an office except instead of baking or lounging they are fucking off on the Internet or creating make work to look busy but not actually creating value. I wish bad managers would understand.
- efitz 2y agoI’ve been thinking recently that a lot of the pathologies in tech work culture come from the fact that a lot of the most successful tech executives are “wunderkinds” - people who have an extremely rare combination of incredible talent AND incredible drive - who want to only work with people like themselves. The upside of this is that if you are such a person, as an employee you’ll be amply rewarded. I’ve worked with a number of such people at several of the big tech firms and they are recognized and compensated like the unicorns they are (such people could easily go start their own businesses if they wanted to be entrepreneurs, so they have to be rewarded lavishly to keep them as employees). But most people aren’t Elon Musks or Jeff Bezoses or the like. Most of the people I have worked with are talented and motivated but not nearly so far out on the right hand long tail. And motivation waxes and wanes for most people; most people have balanced lives that include lots of time spent not working for someone else. When I see pathologies such as RTO (which is always combines with making the offices more shitty with hoteling and such), and performance management practices reminiscent of Roman decimations, I see wunderkinds who are unable to accept that most people aren’t like them.
- hahamrfunnyguy 2y agoIn 2008 or so I worked for a consulting company where most of the workers were remote. Eventually, they opened up an office where I lived. We were encouraged (required?) to come into the office a few days a week. We free parking, table tennis and a cooler stocked with pop and beer. My teams were always remote but I found the social aspects to be beneficial.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago> My teams were always remote but I found the social aspects to be beneficial. Yeah, but did you use those "office days" for work, really? Or for socialising? (Not saying socialising is unnecessary in a good team)
- aniforprez 2y agoThis was basically sort of my experience wren my company turned hybrid I'm sure I might have some undiagnosed attention issues but it became supremely hard to concentrate once at the office because of the open office plan and people constantly distracting me with questions or requests (I don't begrudge them this though). I had to essentially monopolise one of the office mini conference rooms to actually do any work. It got to the point of 3 days of the week essentially being close to useless because I'd get more done once I was back home. Not helped by the company hiring across the country and not having all the staff at office which meant we were still teleconferencing all the time
- hahamrfunnyguy 2y agoI'd say I got the same amount of work done in office as out of office. Usually I worked a slightly longer day if I worked from home though.
- constantcrying 2y ago>Remote work is seen as a threat to many CEOs simply because of their fear of change and resistance to progress. No. This just is false and extremely lazy thinking. CEOs do not "fear change" or "resist progress", these are absurd motivations to ascribe to thousands of people you have never met and it goes counter to what actually happens. CEOs change things, they like to change things a lot, they also love "progress" as progress is the only way to expand. What CEOs fear isn't "change", they fear that if employees aren't physically tied to an office, they aren't mentally tied to it during work. They fear that employees will neglect their duties and communication will get harder. Whether they are wrong or right is irrelevant. But if you aren't even willing to ascribe to someone the ability to think deeper than "change bad", then all your arguments are irrelevant as you are arguing against a man made of pure straw.
- osigurdson 2y agoOne thing that should certainly be considered is the externalities associated with on-premise work as more roads, transit, infrastructure, emissions, etc, is required. Taxes should probably be lower for companies embracing remote work.
- robertlagrant 2y agoTaxes only in theory pay for those things. In reality lots of borrowing from the future, and inflation, pay for them as well, so proportionally it's not that much.
- _tk_ 2y agoHow exactly does inflation pay for infrastructure?
- robertlagrant 2y agoYou print more money, devaluing everyone's savings, and you use the wealth transferred to pay back Macquarie.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoRelated, an all time classic: Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)
- throwaway22032 2y agoIt's really bizarre to me that people think that companies have been built on sand. It's really fucking hard to make a sustainable profit in business. Most businesses fail. Yet HN turns around and says - no, management are clueless, I, the worker, know all.
- chasd00 2y agoas someone who's been developing software for 25 years, software development workers are the worst when it comes to the "i know everything" mentality heh. I've always felt new college grads should spend 2 years in a small, eat-what-you-kill consultancy. There you'll learn that your direct deposit isn't a given, you don't produce then you don't eat. Also, another important thing you'll learn is that writing code is maybe only 15% of the effort to make a company work and keep the direct deposits coming.
- throwaway22032 2y agoIndeed. If you're taking advice on how to run a business from someone who doesn't run a business, that's your choice, it wouldn't be mine.
- jfranche 2y agoRemote work should just be for call center type jobs (where the feed of work is consistent); sales people that constantly visit clients (which doesn't happen much now ); or extremely talented superstars. For everyone else that has a bad commute and wants to be home, they should consider retiring or get one of the jobs above. If people can't don't 5 days in office, they should move to a 4 day work week and get 80% of pay.
- gilbetron 2y agoLet me counter by saying in-office work should be just for poor performers who need to be watched, or socialites who like to pretend to work but maintain their role by being popular with the right people. I can be reductive as well!
- FromTheSteppe 2y agoI don't know why I have to commute 90 minutes just to open AWS consoles, terminal tabs, Microsoft teams and Outlook. Then any communication I have with my team members and leaders must be written before I can do anything anyways. Do I just have to sacrifice 5% of my lifetime to corporate gods? Because I gladly sacrifice more, and there is an opportunity to negotiate for better mutual terms.
- meindnoch 2y agoI'm the latter of the three, so I guess I'll keep working 100% remote.
- bitcharmer 2y ago[flagged]
- pragma_x 2y agoEvery time this comes up I'm struck by the same thought: do these cats measure _anything_ their people do? And what in the world happens when someone takes off for two weeks to go on vacation? The solution to all this is very simple. Management needs to hold everyone, including other managers, accountable for measurable output. These are usually based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and are semi-standard in many industries these days. From there, you don't have to care how, when, or why anyone does anything, just as long as they hit the target. This also has reaching ramifications for everything. People are no longer stressed out by working under ill-defined objectives or nebulous directives. Remote work is now palatable, since things are now results-focused rather than means-focused. Under-performing employees are now easier to discharge with cause, and identifying top performers is dead-simple. Reports are now easy to generate, sometimes without human involvement, so nobody can fib to the CEO. And all that applies to managers too, which I think we can all appreciate. In contrast, a workplace that runs on vibes and gut-checks will have the drama cited in the article. The whole org relies on a near co-dependent level of trust, leading managers to have anxiety attacks when they can't put eyes on things. Accountability is less about facts and more about feelings. Nobody has a firm grasp on how the company will make that quarterly objective, but we're all going to "work hard" and "do what it takes" anyway. It's all well and good for a startup of 20 people, but it's miserable for an army of 200 or 2000. Even in-office, we shouldn't be conducting performance reviews on a gut check or how happy you make your boss. It should be down to setting measurable goals, gathering supporting data through the year, and assessing the results at regular intervals.
- danaris 2y agoWhile it's absolutely true that KPIs or other clear, measurable metrics of success are objectively better than having no such metrics and just going off of vibes and gut-checks... ...it's important to remember that: a) People who are bad at creating KPIs can absolutely still make them ill-defined and nebulous. b) KPIs do not always measure the things that actually matter. c) Indeed, it's (unfortunately) all too common to have KPIs measure only the things that matter to the people making the KPIs, and not the things that will actually make the organization successful. (For instance, making the stock price a KPI, whether directly or indirectly, through targeting specific visible results that are likely to improve the stock price while having disproportionately low benefits for the actual core business.) d) Even if the nature of the KPIs are chosen well (ie, they're measuring the right things), the numbers being targeted for them can still be wildly unrealistic and lead to unnecessary stress. e) Goodhart's Law[0] applies whenever you're creating metrics. You may need to either actively combat efforts to game the metrics, or rotate the precise things being measured periodically to ensure no one has the opportunity to optimize their output too well for a specific metric to the detriment of actual productive output. TL;DR: KPIs and other ways of clearly communicating and measuring success are a necessary but insufficient component of a healthy workplace. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
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- synergy20 2y agomaybe we need tackle this from a totally different perspective. tie the performance to rewards monthly, no more stable monthly salary other than some base salary, you get paid each month based on your results, the manager can focus on how to itemize the tasks and set expectations, instead of how to watch out low performers. the better you perform, the more you earn, if the produce is not good for a while, you're let go so you can focus on your other freelance jobs. yeah this is rare a common approach, but something needs to be changed to cope with remote jobs.
- noashavit 2y agoHigh-performers will perform regardless of location. If they are constantly unblocking people and being pinged they might have some lags in deliverables and the reason for that might not be as clear as if they were in office and everyone can see them being tapped on the shoulder and being distracted. Those that lack internal motivation/sense of urgency might perform better on-site, but you as a manager might need to micro manage them. Is it worth it? I’m not sure. The employee and manager will most likely not enjoy the situation, esp if it goes on for a while.
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