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The workers have spoken: They're staying home
- steelframe 2y agoIf you give me a private office I will come into work every day from 9-5 and make sure I spend at least 40 hours a week being "fully present" for work. If you force me to hot desk I will come into work as infrequently as possible and may or may not be "present" for work whether I'm at home or in the shared-space environment at the office. But the "fully present" metric doesn't show up on the bean counters' spreadsheets as a quantifiable metric, so here we are.
- _xiaz 2y agoIt's not even your fault. You'll be so distracted by the turbulence of the open floor plan that even at your best you'll barely concentrate
- dudus 2y agoWhy would US companies continue to pay US wages for people at home when there are remote people much cheaper in south America and Europe ?
- rsanek 2y agoIf they could do this, why would they be waiting to do so until now? Employers have been hiring remote US workers for years before the pandemic.
- _xiaz 2y agoAssuming this isn't just rhetorical: - Language - Culture - Time Zone - Bias (Racism to some degree) - Tax Law just the top of my head
- pmlnr 2y agoIt's interesting to read the comments complaining about all the zoom/teams calls, not questioning or addressing why on earth we need that many zoom/teams calls.
- SebFender 2y agoWorking for the past 30 years, I've had the chance - like many others - to live the closed office times, then the open space extravaganza to finally the "work from home" era. I've seen companies spend tens of millions in open space offices in the past decades and this was by far the greatest work killer of all time. Many, if not most companies, self created this ridiculous situation to finally realize it was a complete failure at so many levels, all that was left was to justify it. From awful diners and mini restaurants to ridiculous spaces no one really uses unless they need to make a phone call - open concepts don't work and never will. Now days the only thing I see are noise cancelling headsets, people leaving early and a complete lack of interaction. For many, working from home just works. My setup here is now years ahead of what the office may offer...
- resource_waste 2y agoIve seen it. I see people take 25% pay cuts to have WFH/Flex hours. I've done it and I've still made work friends. Heck, if it wasnt WFH, I would have been gone because there are closer places to work.
- da02 2y agoWhat type of work do you do?
- buildbot 2y agoCompanies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work.
- ramesh31 2y ago>Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work. This is what I find so funny. We accomplished more in the two years of full remote than any period before or since. Half the company now runs on software built during that time. But management refuses to acknowledge the fact, and mandated RTO. I am 100% convinced that a full remote team can run circles around the same team in-office. Probably we will see a new crop of startups eating people's lunch that haven't figured this out.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI got to meet some of my coworkers in person for the first time recently and it was obvious that the structures re: who respects whom that we had built online were ignorant of meaningless physical details like how commanding a presence one has when they enter a room. This informed my new hypothesis: The people most in opposition to remote work are those who rely on charisma rather than other merits to remain relevant. They're losing the ground on which they have an advantage. They tend to be tall and with a voice that carries well over a crowd.
- buildbot 2y agoThe team I work on was created at the start of covid, as we didn't all meet in person for the first time until 2 years later too - it was really funny to learn that one person on the team was like, 6'4! Nobody knew!
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoSomebody on my team who I respect very much turns out to have a small voice. Like, you just can't hear him over any kind of ambient noise. He's still a badass in my eyes, but I have to ask if he would be if we shared an office. Not that I'd consciously dismiss him. But accidents happen.
- dfrey 2y agoThey have given us fuck all for raises during a period of rampant inflation and now they want to take away the one good thing that covid-19 did for workers.
- taylodl 2y agoA period of rampant corporate profits
- phone8675309 2y agoNever forget this - if this were "real" inflation and not corporate fuckery then their profits would be down.
- gonzoflip 2y agoIf it is just corporate profits the state and county sure piled on by increasing my property taxes 40% over the past 3 years. That's an extra $300 a month for me which is more than my car payment. edit: changed country to county
- skywhopper 2y agoDid the value of your property also increase over that time period?
- gonzoflip 2y agoyeah, almost entirely due to inflation, it isn't like I improved my home.
- SoftTalker 2y agoSo the assessor says. But what does that have to do with how much tax reveneue the local government needs to operate?
- prewett 2y ago
- giantg2 2y agoThat's the strategy. The places calling for return to office are mostly doing it to thin the herd. Make people voluntarily leave.
- LordKeren 2y agoI wonder how many zombie firms we’re going to see fall apart when there is a significant economic downturn turn. A lot of companies calling for RTO are gutting morale and filling their halls with many contributors that are only too eager to leave the moment they can. Selectively filing your company with dispassionate, or desperate devs may not be a good long term plan
- RiverCrochet 2y agoIt shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.
- andrepd 2y ago>drive There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.
- nemomarx 2y agoI think they're right to complain that cities should be fixing that by building the public transportation more?
- gedy 2y agoOr, heaven forbid, make living near office affordable.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoironically enough, if living near the office was affordable then there wouldn't be so many RTO mandates. Real estate are on their death throes trying to recover their tax deals over this
- ryukafalz 2y agoBut that doesn't seem like what they're suggesting: > congested, underbuilt roads
- whatever1 2y agoBuses also are useless. Thry routinely waste you hours due to their slowness and inconsistency. The choices really are two: subway (or any dedicated rail thing) or car.
- api 2y agoWhen someone says you must RTO to a place like San Francisco or Seattle just respond that you will require a 250% pay raise for real estate cost differences. Might help change zoning policy in those cities too if managers and executives see that the entire local economy is basically an elaborate machine to funnel money to property owners with extra steps like employment.
- mikestew 2y ago[flagged]
- lucaspm98 2y agoThe poverty line for a family of 4 in San Francisco was $149k in 2023. I live in a MCOL city with all the modern amenities and on $150k can be a comfortably upper-middle class sole income earner, buy the average house, and send 2 kids to private school if needed. A 2-3x pay differential is a fairly accurate COL difference for a family moving to NY or SF, maybe even on the low end if comparing to a rural area.
- mikestew 2y agoI’m not debating the accuracy of GP’s statement, but rather the level of success one might have with that negotiation tactic. I’m waiting to hear the success stories of negotiating that 250% CoL raise.
- bunderbunder 2y agoI think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a productivity hit on a good day, but they're extra awful when every day it's a new set of voices to learn to tune out, and another half hour spent packing and unpacking all your shit, adjusting computer monitors to minimize glare from the overhead fluorescent lights, etc. And, if you want to actually take advantage of the co-location, 15-30 minutes spent figuring out where all your collaborators are sitting today, and scrambling for meeting rooms and huddle spaces, which are now in high demand since collaborators can no longer sit together in any sort of stable way and must instead fight for huddle space if they want to do any in-person collaboration. Alternatively you spend the entire day with headphones on (uncomfortable!) because you decide not to do that, and instead spend the whole day on team meetings because it's easier. And even headphones when you're not actively in meetings because everyone around you makes the same decision. A couple years ago, I was eager for a return to office. That died pretty quickly after return to office happened, because the reality is that we're not returning to anything. Office life post-COVID is an entirely new thing that's worse than what office life was like pre-COVID in almost every way. And so the mandatory in-office days are, in practice, just the days that fully remote team members need to cut the hybrid members some slack for not being able to get anything done.
- xfz 2y agoVery well said. Just to add I have problems with my eyesight and the company I work at makes zero effort to accommodate this. It took me a while to be sure as I don't want to exaggerate, but for some tasks I reckon I'm only half as productive in the office. This includes pair programming - share your screen on Zoom and I can use my big monitor and accessibility tools, which gives me half a chance. Oh, and the chairs make my arse* hurt. This isn't a stupid little startup either, it's a listed and profitable company worth billions. I stay because they know how bad it is so I just go in a few times per month to socialise. (* Please forgive the lewd British slang).
- 2y ago
- dangerboysteve 2y agoThis is an opinion piece, not a researched article.
- rsanek 2y agojust like every other RTO vs WFH article
- DrBazza 2y agoGive me my own office and flexible hours. That’s what I have at home.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoDon't forget access to a fridge full of food that you picked, and a separate space to prepare it for lunch if you choose to do so.
- ozim 2y agoMy fav perk is having clean toilet and not shared with the people who don't understand why that brush is there on the side. Well maybe they know but they might also be super important managers who don't have time to be decent and not having time to wash hands because they have to make a dump and have 30 sec to get to the next meeting to shake hands firmly to assert dominance. :D
- _xiaz 2y agoIronically I like the shared toilets because they are cleaned daily and I can get away with cleaning mine at home a little less frequently.
- stanford_labrat 2y agothe number of bad bathroom hygiene at my current workplace makes me very glad to be living right across the street where i can go use the facilities whenever i please in the peace and quiet of my own bathroom. underrated perk for sure!
- jmyeet 2y agoFor the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special. We believe we can act on our own behalf against our employer on equal footing. We start to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere. We are now in permanent layoff culture. Some of us still believe this is companies trimming the fat. It is not. It is wage suppression. If you get rid of 5% of your staff and just make the remaining 95% do what the 5% were doing then you've saved money. Even better, the reamining 95% won't be asking for or demanding raises. After all, aren't you luck to have your job? But severance packages cost money. You know what's cheaper? Return to office mandates. A certain percentage of people will quit. That's a cheap layoff. Now some of you think your WFH status is safe. You may even take a pay cut to continue WFH (even though it's objectively cheaper to employ people remotely). Trust me when I tell you that the flood waters are rising. You're just temporarily on the high ground. Your remote status won't last. For a handful it might but for the vast majority, you will be faced with the choice of losing your job or going back to the office. This is more wage suppression. It is employers forcing their will on you so they can walk around the cubicle farm and see what you're doing. It's the compliance of having you there regardless of whether you need to be or not. As a tech worker, you are just like any other worker. You are not immune. The only effective counter is to act collectively with your fellow employees. Unfortunately we've spent the last 50+ years completely dismantling any kind of collectivism.
- btbuildem 2y ago> For the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special Because we are. In the sense that we own the means of production: our education and experience are the tools we take with us wherever we go. We own the process of (for example) software development like the craftspeople of old used to own production processes of material things. We can dictate terms, because when we walk away, we take our workshops with us. The laptops and networks and all the infra any tech company owns/maintains, these are simply interchangeable shells. The RTO struggle is incidental here; what really threatens our productive autonomy are the nascent AI tools, where big capital again threatens to hold a new generation of tools captive. If we're not careful, what has played out over the course of the Industrial Revolution (fragmentation of workflows, despecialization into piece work, transfer of ownership of tools, etc) will happen again in the Information Age.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoRemote work for developers is a viable option. We are rapidly moving the majority of our software development to India, and only keeping product leads in Europe and the US.
- Analemma_ 2y agoEvery 10 years, like clockwork, a bunch of dimwit managers think they're the first to realize they can outsource software development to India and save so much money. You're apparently next in line to discover that this gets you nothing but a pile of unmaintainable code that will destroy your business's viability.
- Suppafly 2y ago>We are rapidly moving the majority of our software development to India Good luck with that, almost every company that does that either fails or brings development back to their main location.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoIt’s working out spectacularly.
- aantix 2y agoWhy the move?
- BenFranklin100 2y agoRestrictive US immigration policy. Our chief architect was forced to return to India. We decided to keep him on at his US salary under a wholly owned Indian subsidiary and have been adding hand-picked Indian nationals to the team. It’s working out well.
- MitziWunder 2y agoDo they have diversity hire quotas in india? I guessed so
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoMy problem is that I quite like working with other people. It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change . It’s vital. Most large companies think that as they are hiring “the best from around the world” that leaving them around the world is fine. Look leaving people on different floors of the same building screws up team cohesion. So from a certain standpoint, it does not matter. Companies have long ago chosen to cripple their productivity and WFH simply helps, but frankly it annoys me. Get better at building and releasing great code. In the same office. Move people, pay them well. Or maybe I am wrong - maybe the extra cost to co-locate and do the job well is more than the loss of productivity by seperated teams But I bet you the CEO of Crowdstrike is rethinking that idea right now
- tomp 2y agoIt’s simply unrealistic to move people. A local good developer would cost ~200k in SF, but to move me and my family would take at least 2x that (to compensate for my partner’s lost income), possibly more (so that I can catch up to peers who’ve been saving US salaries for 10+ years, so that I can buy a house in a reasonable time).
- phone8675309 2y agoI'm the opposite from you. I would rather light my hair on fire than do anything in person with anyone on my team. I was no less productive working from home during the pandemic, a metric I can back up with completed user stores and completed projects. If you want to go back into the office then please, by all means, as that's clearly the place that you work better in, but don't force people who are less efficient in the office to come into the office.
- Suppafly 2y ago>My problem is that I quite like working with other people. Which is fine as long as you understand that the rest of us don't. Most of the push for back to the office is being pushed by extroverted people that miss being about to chat with people and not because of any results driven data.
- nashashmi 2y agoI know how to get the workers back. Make office workdays 6 hours long. And home workdays 8 hours long.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoWe'll be writing about why this is for years. COVID gave people or in many cases made people re-evaluate what's important to them and many people concluded that their work-life balance placed too much importance on work. People had been thinking, what parts of their life were they willing to give up for work, but now the question of what parts of work are they willing to give up for their life is considered a valid, and possible decision. This decision wasn't made in the abstract; WFH gave people real experience in what they would gain and lose by not going into the office, and what they would gain and lose by not commuting, and in many many cases, the tradeoff was worth it.
- Clubber 2y agoI feel like a lot of this could be solved with a month long holiday like they do in Europe. US workers are lucky to get a few days off in a row without interruption. Open office is also just horrendous.
- foretop_yardarm 2y agoFor me, regardless of the length of the holiday, the second I’m back at work it’s like I was never away at all (in a bad way). And I work from home.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago> I feel like a lot of this could be solved with a month long holiday like they do in Europe. It could, but my initial assessment is that US workers tend to not make the connection that a reduced social safety net raises the stakes of employment and results in workers eventually playing a game of chicken sacrificing aspects of their quality of life like vacation, commute, and environment for job security.
- jmathai 2y agoI think people realized, in part as a result of changes from Covid, that they don’t care about work as much as they thought. And when they evaluate what they are willing to give up moving forward, it looks a lot different than it did pre Covid.
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoI would be interested to hear from Indian, Philipino or other off- near- shore locations. Is this “give me WFH or give me death” actually just USA/European entitlement and Chennai Devs will gleefully work in air-conditioned offices (hopefully not open plan cubicle hell but nicely designed “WeWork-like” places) and discover the turbo-charge of a co-located mission locked team? Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson?
- surgical_fire 2y agoThis bullshit again? Outsourcing is nothing new. Companies have been outsourcing jobs to cheaper locations for longer than I have been working. In fact, my first job was as cheap outsourced labor. This comes and goes in waves, because outsourcing to cheaper locations have a lot of downsides too.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoit comes in waves, but it might be a longer wave given the pandemic forcing companies to actually get good remote work pipelines.
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago>Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson? I'm sure off/nearshore folks will happily take any work corp america gives them. My company is still remote and we've expanded significantly in 'near shore' hiring. Industry wide, we may well be setting ourselves up for a 'hard lesson'. Our nearshore devs are actually pretty productive. I'm not finding nearly the same amount of friction that I've seen working with offshore devs that are in significantly different time zones. I don't see how tech TC doesn't eventually 'equalize' more with the rest of the world. For me personally, I've had some recent 'come to jesus' moments losing some elderly family members and my own health issues that make me realize I should be working to live, not living to work. My current company is remote. I do not see me going 'into office' to satisfy the arbitrary whims of management. I'm old enough and well established enough that I can pretty much do what I like without worrying too much about the repercussions for my 'career'
- 2y ago
- vondur 2y agoIs this really the case? I've seen countless companies pull their employees back to the office, either full time or part time. With the economy slowing, I don't see that workers will have much say in it.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoIt really is a 'you need to double my salary' kind of negotiation with your employer. When you're actually functional doing remote/home work, adding a commute to the job requirement is like adding vinegar to wine.
- LordKeren 2y agoEven outside the salary negotiations, it’s astounding to me how many companies are calling for RTO just to have people go to the office and sit on zoom meetings — because the company has several offices. I’m actually ok with RTO, but I’m not going to do it when there are no actual upsides because it’s only some days and the team is spread across the globe.
- mgkimsal 2y agoHad a friend get forced in to RTO, then was 'let go' less than 6 months later because of 'decline in performance'. He wasn't getting as much done as when he was WFH. All felt very orchestrated to get rid of someone over 50, but.. hey. Yeah, driving 60 miles round trip in rush hour 4 days per week... yeah, you might lose some productivity from a knowledge worker that way. If they were productive before, why rock the boat? "But everyone needs to collaborate!". In my friend's case, there was no one from his unit in this state - everyone he collaborated with were already 'remote' (mostly CA, and we're in NC, but I think there were some other folks in other states too).
- LordKeren 2y agoThat’s discouraging. I hope he’s able to find a new position that he enjoys
- mmaunder 2y agoFor all the talk about the environment, there are no incentives for companies to reduce commutes. We’re still at only 7% percent of EV cars in the US. Our freeways are packed with gas guzzling engines pumping out smog during rush hours. Reducing the number of commuters is an easy environmental win.
- godshatter 2y agoI work in an admnistrative office on a university campus. Work from home was great for IT folks, but not so much for a lot of regular staff. Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight. Some of them had to use their own computers to connect to their machine at work through a vpn, and had a lot of trouble getting that to work. Some had noisy roommates, some of them had problems "turning off" at the end of the day. Some of them had to call students back and didn't have a private place to have those conversations. There were some that enjoyed it, of course. Also, most everyone in the office loved using Teams to stay connected and it's still used for everything even after we've been back in office for years at this point. But not everyone lives in an environment where they can just set up a chair on the deck and sip wine while they work on their items for the sprint. It was a pretty easy sell getting workers back in the office for us. It helped that most people lived less than a 10 minute drive away.
- d357r0y3r 2y ago> But not everyone lives in an environment where they can just set up a chair on the deck and sip wine while they work on their items for the sprint. That one product manager who posted a TikTok of her working by the pool has completely distorted people's view of what WFH is.
- Aurornis 2y ago> Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight. One of the tech companies where I live had a problem where a lot of parents who got to WFH went on to cancel their daycare. They thought they'd save a lot of money by watching the kids while they worked. Companies were really lenient about kids at home for a while when daycares were frequently closed due to COVID. Some people saw this and thought it was an invitation to have their kids home all the time. It went about as well as you'd expect.
- JohnFen 2y ago> Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight. When you're working from home, you yourself have to treat it as being "at work" just as much as you expect others to. This means that if both parents are working from home, you still need someone else to look after your kids. Either out-of-home daycare (preferred) or an in-home babysitter.
- rednafi 2y agoWhen I started my career in late 2018 and went fully remote in early 2020, a ton of folks said that the worst thing I could do as a junior software engineer was to work remotely. Four years and a few promotions later, you couldn’t pay me extra to bring me back to the office. I like strict 9-5 work, and nothing can make me give up five hours of post-office daylight during the summer.
- dwighttk 2y agoI work in manufacturing, there is no wfh
- ThinkBeat 2y agoQuite a lot of companies are thinning the herd for the past months and it is set to continue for I have no idea how long. I might stop tomorrow but I highly doubt it. The more places get rid of workers the more the pendulum swings giving more power to the companies over their employees and who they hire. A lot of tech worker primadonnas who have not seen the ugly politics of downsizing, right sizing, and outsourcing are going to have a tough time, as companies won't be bending over to hire folks anymore. The possibility of being unemployed not by choice, for a few weeks, until a phone call is made and a new job awaits, but as a reality for months. The attitude that "I QUIT if I have to the office", might encounter "Good, we need to reduce headcount anyway". The tech worker primadonnas vastly overestimats their own value to the company. When X had mass layoffs, the general consensus for some techies was that X would die in a months' time, with all the essential people who had lost their jobs. I dont have any inside information in X and they may well have had disasters but they do appear to still exist and still function. (Or so it seems to me, but I dont even have an account) I dont like this. I dont want it to happen. but I have been around for a couple of cycles of seeing the pendulum swing one way then the other.
- SR2Z 2y ago> The tech worker primadonnas vastly overestimats their own value to the company. Lots of people have been saying this forever, but the truth is much more nuanced: tech workers are incredibly valuable IF interest rates are low. Look at the revenue per employee figures of most tech companies. The difficulty is that the value of tech workers tends to be speculative until they've delivered something, and the low rates give them more time to deliver.
- ThinkBeat 2y agoWhat you are arguing is provably false. Just look at the Twitter example. There are many others. Facebook has been thinning resources as well. There is consensus that major tech companies had hired resources they did not need. Then there is the sad fact that some tech workers (as in any field) are shit at their jobs and provide negative value to companies. More are mediocre. (again as in every field) There are also a lot of techworkers who are good at their jobs and some that are excptional at it. So no. The statement: "Tech workers are incredibly valuable" is far too broad and generic.
- wseqyrku 2y agoBy staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots. Note that a 'remote worker' is increasingly used as an analogy for bot performance. (edit: I should clarify that I don't mean it in absolutes, if you got a task at hand, wfh by all means, but I won't do zoom meetings, if you wanna talk, come to the place)
- nextworddev 2y agoThe reality is anyone’s replaceable with bots
- pipeline_peak 2y ago>By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots. How so?
- wseqyrku 2y agoBecause you're just generating tokens as opposed to actually engaging in irl discourse inside the company, whatever that means for your field of expertise.
- pipeline_peak 2y agoI'm not sure what you mean by "generating token", I'm guessing satisfying their requirements? That being said, I don't see how meetings are any less engaging. There's still the exchange of ideas and opinions, that's what really matters.
- Aeolun 2y agoIsn’t the goal to replace yourself with a bot? As long as the money keeps coming in.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoUnpopular opinion: Being an extrovert but living alone and working thirty feet from your bedroom is hell.
- cweagans 2y ago_Companies_ largely don't need people to be in-office, but if _you_ need to be in an office setting, why not find a coworking space?
- johnnyanmac 2y agogiven the current economy, you don't always have a choice in what environment you want to work for. Some RTO as a compromise for not finding good remote work, so I'm sure it goes the other way around, especially in a non-tech hub.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jsrcout 2y agoI definitely want to keep working at home. My workplace rebuilt all the cubicles to be half their previous size. Coincidentally, this was just as COVID started. Now we're required to work 2 days a week in the office. It's great to see people in person, but if you need to meet with someone in their cubicle, you're either going to be hanging out in the aisle or sitting very very close to them.